heuser.marcus@freenet.de wrote:
The Atari drives for all their complexity were flawed from the beginning: Shitty interface with 2KB/sec which was planned for tape recorders and modems only, low capacity compared to nearly all competitors, the need for a DOS in the Atari's RAM in spite of the ROM in the drive (the Commodore 1541 saved much memory - other flaws aside).
The speed is the problem of the serial interface. Of course, one can do it even worse than that, see the 1541. As far as the DOS is concerned, I never really got that. At least in the XL series enough ROM space was available, but they used it for supporting future hardware that never saw the light of the day. (Side remark: The atari++ emulator ROM has its DOS exactly there, one could burn this and use it.) Of course, a ROM
based DOS would have set the DOS structures in stone.
The only real technical advantage I see for the Atari drives is that they can be used to stream data into RAM and the application runs mostly undisturbed (display list interrupts have problems, IIRC) while the Apple has to "stop" the game, loads and then continues.
Problem is with sound. It uses two sound channels for communications, and the other two are only available if you bypass the Os.
So long, Thomas