Falcon: yes or no?

[calimero]

4 hours ago, DarkLord said:

 

I'm curious if the others in this thread would regard the Falcon as being "unstable"...

 

Using Falcon with TOS was stable. 
If I had some software that bombs, it will bomb always. (Bad software/applications)

 

In 90s I was using MagiC on STe, later on Falcon. MagiC itself, depending on version, was unstable. I got lot of “System was overwrite” errors depending on the hardware (on some ST it was working better...) - I should probably open thread on this topic...

 

but I think that Falcon was really half baked product when it was released - just look how many revision and patches from Atari exists.

[zzip]

8 minutes ago, calimero said:

but I think that Falcon was really half baked product when it was released - just look how many revision and patches from Atari exists.

But that's par for the course with most tech products today.   Atari was just ahead of their time!   ?

[Justin Payne]

15 hours ago, calimero said:

Try to Google (DuckDuckGo  ) difference betwen XP (aka NT ver. 5.1) and Windows 2000 (NT ver. 5.0). 
 

btw

Microsoft hire creator of VMS to made “normal” OS aka NT. He pull lot of people from DEC (creator of VMS) with him to Microsoft. 

Not sure what specifically I'm supposed to be looking for but when I looked I remember that XP's released version is 2600 (Atari) but in reality, it was in the high 2500's and the rounded it up to 2600 during the final release push. It actually had to be built 3 times as 2600 if I remember correctly. On the discs they put little faces next to the version number that they called Zombies so the release candidate was called "3 zombies".

[stirrell]

I had a Falcon 4/85 (I remember them coming with 85 meg internal drives). My Falcon was definitely usable and I liked it but I remember things like AtariWorks crashing from time-to-time. I rarely used MultiTOS much because of the poor performance. Other machines of the time were also much less stable, of course, like classic Mac OS.

[Chri O.]

I'll be back with the Atari falcon 030 original Conner hard drive picture soon.

Believe it or not but back in the day I used Devpac 3 and created password protection in Assembly Language & I don't remember the freaking password?.

 

How is that I can't boot the system from this drive.  ?

 

BRB soon with pic.

Edited July 28, 2021 by Chri O.
pic add.

[Chri O.]

Conner CP2088 85.2 MB

[calimero]

8 hours ago, Justin Payne said:

Not sure what specifically I'm supposed to be looking for but when I looked I remember that XP's released version is 2600 (Atari) but in reality, it was in the high 2500's and the rounded it up to 2600 during the final release push. It actually had to be built 3 times as 2600 if I remember correctly. On the discs they put little faces next to the version number that they called Zombies so the release candidate was called "3 zombies".

I wanted to make a point that Windows 2000 already have everything that was needed to use it instead of Windows 9x. 

But only rebranded XP (with UI make up, color wise) make people move from Windows 9x. In reallity Windows 2000 was ready and XP have only cosmetic add-ons and strong marketing campaigne. 

[calimero]

3 hours ago, stirrell said:

 Other machines of the time were also much less stable, of course, like classic Mac OS.

I just bought Mac Performa 700 with 040/33MHz and with bunch of RAM. 
 

Performances are terrible for 10.000$ computer. I will probably reinstall OS (ver. 7) but at first impression, nothing special compering to Falcon. UI is quite slow, Jinnee on Falcon can look much nicer... and Falcon is more impressive with DSP stuff like real-time audio, Whimp, Ace tracker... I do believe that 040/33MHz will not be fast enought for MP3 stereo playback like on Falcon...

Edited July 28, 2021 by calimero

[atarian1]

16 hours ago, zzip said:

Yup, I believe ACSI was designed from the draft SCSI standards, but it's different enough that you needed a pricey ACSI<->SCSI converter to hook up SCSI disks.

 

Ultimately having in internal hard drive would be awesome!  but sounds like if I had upgraded from an ST to Falcon, migrating data from my ACSI hard drive to Falcon would have been a pain though.  I always assumed I could just plug it in to a Falcon.

I guess that would only be the case if you have a very old hard drive (pre-1988) or an Atari-brand hard drive (except the Megafile44) which used RLL or MFM hard drives which connected to a converter board to make them into ACSI hard drives. Atari brand hard drives were always more expensive than the third party brands and I still wonder who bought them. Unless you got it as part of the Atari MegaST DTP package or other cheap means, a little shopping around could have saved the buyer quite a few $$$ going with a non-Atari brand. But I digress...

 

I would think by the late 80s, most hard drives sold by reputable third parties and Atari dealers were SCSI drives hooked up to an SCSI-ACSI host adapter. If that's the case, all you have to do is remove the SCSI-ACSI host adapter, mount the SCSI port/cable to the case and that's it. You can now use your ST hard drive on your Falcon. I remember some Atari dealers doing this service because I bought a used ICD AdSCSI+ host adapter at a nice discount because the original owner upgraded to a Falcon, but still wanted to use his old ST hard drive.

 

Regarding the second floppy on the Falcon...I disagree that PC users wanted two floppy disk drives. The people I knew who bought PCs only had two floppy drives because one was a 3.5" floppy drive and the other was a 5.25" floppy. They wanted to cover their backs because software still came in both formats, but whenever they used floppies to swap files or something, they always used 3.5" disks. More durable, smaller, and stored slightly more data. They could have easily lived with one 3.5" floppy drive if it weren't for some software houses still selling their wares on 5.25" floppies.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

I don't think that any of computers, OS made by major companies in 90-es can be considered as 'unstable' .

All it was tested very well before sending on market.  The problems happened mostly because of SW, what was not written very well.

Or because of low quality motherboards - I remember era of 486 motherboards - there was lot of crap on market, especially in eastern Eu. I skipped it, and went with next gen. Little later, when AMD started with Athlon, Duron we saw again lot of poor motherboards (for instance they were the reason for bad Divx, not AMD CPUs, as Intel fans wanted to be, and missed not chance to say it).

It is normal that machine with OS in ROM needs sometimes update of it. TOS 4.02 is stable, and I really did not have problems with it.

 

What is really bad is how people is easy with judging: they try to run ST games, and worse, demos on Falcon, and then Falcon is culprit when it works not. Especially demos have small chance for success, because they using lot of 'dirty' tricks, so not regular code to achieve good looking, fast video. Many demos will fail even on Mega STE if it is switched to 16 MHz.

[zzip]

8 hours ago, calimero said:

I wanted to make a point that Windows 2000 already have everything that was needed to use it instead of Windows 9x. 

But only rebranded XP (with UI make up, color wise) make people move from Windows 9x. In reallity Windows 2000 was ready and XP have only cosmetic add-ons and strong marketing campaigne. 

It may have been ready, but Windows 2000 was never aimed at home use.   XP was where MS decided to herd the 9x/ME users to the NT codebase.  That gave 2000 a couple of years to iron out any issues.

[Justin Payne]

9 hours ago, calimero said:

I wanted to make a point that Windows 2000 already have everything that was needed to use it instead of Windows 9x. 

But only rebranded XP (with UI make up, color wise) make people move from Windows 9x. In reallity Windows 2000 was ready and XP have only cosmetic add-ons and strong marketing campaigne. 

Ahhhh. I'm not sure where you're getting your proof of this but if it was just cosmic add on, why so many daily builds? Why were their three last minute releases to get it to RTM status? I mean, with the addition of a 64bit version (Win 2000 only came in 32 bit), one would think it would contain more than cosmetic additions. I was there testing our contribution to it daily so that seems like a lot of wasted money just for a facelift. I will say, our piece (MMC & task scheduler) had no code changes because if it did, they would have fixed the one-off pixel placement of the OK button (or was it Cancel). Still, we had to ensure none of the code changes broke our stuff. It was not a new OS from the ground up, obviously, but I'd question your statement about it just being a rebranding.

Edited July 28, 2021 by Justin Payne
More deets.

[zzip]

7 hours ago, atarian1 said:

I guess that would only be the case if you have a very old hard drive (pre-1988) or an Atari-brand hard drive (except the Megafile44) which used RLL or MFM hard drives which connected to a converter board to make them into ACSI hard drives. Atari brand hard drives were always more expensive than the third party brands and I still wonder who bought them. Unless you got it as part of the Atari MegaST DTP package or other cheap means, a little shopping around could have saved the buyer quite a few $$$ going with a non-Atari brand. But I digress...

 

I would think by the late 80s, most hard drives sold by reputable third parties and Atari dealers were SCSI drives hooked up to an SCSI-ACSI host adapter. If that's the case, all you have to do is remove the SCSI-ACSI host adapter, mount the SCSI port/cable to the case and that's it. You can now use your ST hard drive on your Falcon. I remember some Atari dealers doing this service because I bought a used ICD AdSCSI+ host adapter at a nice discount because the original owner upgraded to a Falcon, but still wanted to use his old ST hard drive.

I bought mine second hand, but it was a Seagate RLL drive connected to a SCSI converter board with an adSCSI all mounted into a custom case.  The other issue is it used internal scsi ribbon cables, and I assume the Falcon would have required an external SCSI cable?   So I would have needed something to convert the two.   Nothing SCSI-related was cheap in those days so it would have been an inconvenience no matter what.

[calimero]

41 minutes ago, Justin Payne said:

Ahhhh. I'm not sure where you're getting your proof of this but if it was just cosmic add on, why so many daily builds? Why were their three last minute releases to get it to RTM status?

Just google about it. 
 

I switch from Windows 98 to Windows 2000 as soon as it become avaible. (Because Windows 9x was unstable piece of shit that was excuse for OS!)
 

It was funny for me to watch whole XP campaigne: They put CD burning software, Firewall, Windows Media Player (and try to lock users to WMA and WMV standarda, just like they manage with DOC and XLS), then they make funny colorfull UI (instead of composite, GPU/AltiVec driven, UI like on Mac OS X)... 

 

Summa sumarum: dongles and whistless. 
 

After I did not switch to XP for yeras, I did switch to Mac when eventualy price go down - switched to Intel CPU. 
 

I do believe that Microsoft did make zillions of build before they release Windows XP. You can find all sorts of stories of people that work for Microsoft: how whole process of developing looks like - shity mess. (What windows is - source code of Windows and Office is tall as Empire States building - no human can get a grasp in their had what is going on there: it is Ray Kurzweil “tecnologycal singularity” on place, in reality, right now! (It is not Ray original sintagma but in last few years he is most vocal). 
 

[Justin Payne]

2 minutes ago, calimero said:

Just google about it. 

With all do respect, you made the claim so I'd say the burden of proof is on you.
Now, pointing me to some Google results isn't proof. I can point you to several websites that say the Earth is flat. I'd expect someone making this claim to have done some forensic work comparing the code but at the very least, explain what goes into the effort of building a 64-bit compatible version of XP. Right off the top of my head, the Win32 is now located in WOW64 directory. I do remember this move of the 32-bit binaries did screw up a few things.  

[ParanoidLittleMan]

This about diverse Win versions is really off topic here.

Just couple, pretty well known things:  Windows NT was made in same years as Win 95. With professional users as target. And it was much more demanding, considering for instance min RAM needed. So, masses used 95, then 98. And as HW prices went down, win 95 concept was just removed, and all later Win versions were based on NT concept. That's all what is interesting.

My experience is btw. (and I promise no more Win talk here from me): older Win versions were better than Win10. Including 95. It is what I would call messy. Maybe Bill Gates knew some things better ? Or just new, smartphone times ?

[calimero]

1 hour ago, Justin Payne said:

With all do respect, you made the claim so I'd say the burden of proof is on you.
Now, pointing me to some Google results isn't proof. I can point you to several websites that say the Earth is flat. I'd expect someone making this claim to have done some forensic work comparing the code but at the very least, explain what goes into the effort of building a 64-bit compatible version of XP. Right off the top of my head, the Win32 is now located in WOW64 directory. I do remember this move of the 32-bit binaries did screw up a few things.  

Sorry, I only now realise that you worked for Microsoft as “beta tester” (or so...).
 

Then you are probably a right person to ask: is it true, like Alan Kay like to point: that there is a bug with hyphenation in Office, dating back to 90s, that still is not fixed? 

 

(not sure at exact minute...)

And to answer your question (Win2K vs XP):

(Beside I already mention many additional software that XP included like: CD recording, FireWall... nothing crucial or deal breaking that Win2K did not have). 

 

First proofe is myself

 I was using Win2k just fine years before XP come to light and I do continue to use Win2K (I did not lack anything from XP in years to come, until 2006.). 
 

Second proof could be:

https://www.itprotoday.com/windows-78/what-difference-between-windows-xp-professional-edition-and-windows-xp-home-edition
 

Please note that Microsoft used new XP to segregate different (best word would to: “to cripple”) versions. Praxis that come to culmination with Windows 7. They would use extra man-hours to produce crippled version if software (this is directly opposite to free-market and Adam Smith ideas!)
 

My experience, and point, is that Windows 2000 was OK for everyday use before XP. Far better choice (stable!) then Windows 9x/ME. 

Regarding 64bit: I use Windows 2000 on AMD K6 CPU so it was few years before I start to think about 64bit computing (I eventualy switch to Mac computers... and have a transition to 64bit on this platform)

Edited July 28, 2021 by calimero

[calimero]

All this Windows / PC talk bring me momories “when I saw the future” of computing (first time was when I got ST instead of ZX spectrum): 

 

OS/2 Warp running two instances of Doom on same PC connect over “virtual” serial port in window. 
 

Edited July 28, 2021 by calimero

[Chri O.]

The DOS based Windows (MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, and Windows 9x.) PC ecosystem was a house of cards built on an ancient patchwork of code, good thing those days are over.

 

[_The Doctor__]

The Falcon was stable when NOT using ICD's hard disk drivers... SO AHDI and HDDriver were the way to go... many demo's and applications choked when running ICD's drivers.

[Justin Payne]

1 hour ago, calimero said:

Sorry, I only now realise that you worked for Microsoft as “beta tester” (or so...).

Beta tester test beta version of the software. So basically version released to the public or a list of people who signed up for it. These people are generally not paid by the company and usually do it to get early access to a product. For example, to get early access to an online MMO game. They expect people to log bugs but there is usually logging that reports issue back to the company. I was a young professional software tester with (wow) only about 3 to 4 years of experience under my belt at that point. 

As far as that proof, that article just discusses the different flavors of XP and makes no comparison to Windows 2000, which is what you said. Microsoft did sell different version of Windows XP for different users uses. Home users didn't really need access to IIS. It's sorta like the different models of a car. You pay more for more features.
The way Windows XP is built is by "components" and very similar to how nLite works (as far as I know). When I worked on WinFLP (Window For Legacy PCs), we yanks a bunch of things out of XP for it to run of legacy PCs. WinFLP  was intended to allow companies to upgrade to Windows XP for systems that weren't lacking in CPU power and RAM. We allowed whoever was installing this to yank certain features out of this version at install time. For example, IE. What they seemed to have forgotten by the minds behind this project was driver support since older hardware might not have XP drivers. I remember the day I was sitting in stand up and my boss went, "I found this program called, nLite....". My response was, "Yeah, I know about it". He seemed surprised, especially when I told him I already had built a version of XP with the same featured yanked out as we did with WinFLP and did a performance test on it on my personal time....showing no real differences. ? That was an ill-conceived project but WEPOS was worth it, which is also something I had worked on.

Correct me if I'm wrong but it sounds to me like you considering XP to be a facial upgrade based on your experience only using the products and not based on any real data you have access to. Yes?

Edited July 28, 2021 by Justin Payne
Fixing my typical typos

[Chri O.]

Let's get back to the main topic yes or no?

If you got the cash go for it !!!

Here is another Atari Falcon demo ?

 

@ 7:55

               ELECTRIC DREAMS

     DSP only code with 64x64 textures.

68030 used only as a graphical coprocessor   ?

Edited July 28, 2021 by Chri O.

[Justin Payne]

1 minute ago, Chri O. said:

Let's get back to the main topic yes or no?

 

Sounds good.

[calimero]

Quote

Microsoft did sell different version of Windows XP for different users uses. Home users didn't really need access to IIS. It's sorta like the different models of a car. You pay more for more features.

EDIT: sorry for offtopic! I am using phone to write on forum and I can not move or delete post! I write it before I see that you agree to not off-topic anymore...

 

Difference is that: for more features in car, car-maker need to spend more time/hours/resources to provide you with more features. 
 

In Microsoft case, they need to strip down features in Windows and they spent more hours/resources to produce Home and other crippled version of Windows. 

Quote

Correct me if I'm wrong but it  sounds to me like you considering XP to be a facial upgrade based on your experience only using the products and not based on any real data you have access to. Yes?

Real data are features of Windows 2000 and features of Windows XP. 
 

Is there anything beside new UI and add-on programs in Windows XP that do not exist in Windows 2000?

 

Edited July 28, 2021 by calimero

[Justin Payne]

2 hours ago, calimero said:

EDIT: sorry for offtopic! I am using phone to write on forum and I can not move or delete post! I write it before I see that you agree to not off-topic anymore...

 

Difference is that: for more features in car, car-maker need to spend more time/hours/resources to provide you with more features. 
 

In Microsoft case, they need to strip down features in Windows and they spent more hours/resources to produce Home and other crippled version of Windows. 

Real data are features of Windows 2000 and features of Windows XP. 
 

Is there anything beside new UI and add-on programs in Windows XP that do not exist in Windows 2000?

 

I'll take this to a PM.