Open
Letter To The ACP Developers
by Christoph
Brincken
Reinventing the Atari computer I see a
great chance in the new Atari ColdFire clone
for the Atari community - but I would like to
make some remarks. One error of Atari Corporation
was the marketing. It threw its computers
at the market and did not care about the press.
So we should ask, who would really buy this
machine. In the Déesse sound card forum, I argued
that the ColdFire machine should ship with the
card built-in, so that it would enter the market
as a solution. Every programmer can be sure
to find the same hardware. Every musician and
Falcon owner can be sure that the ColdFire machine
is a real replacement for his/her machine. Now,
I am happy that the ColdFire machine will ship
with Déesse. So, imagine
a reporter
from an audio magazine takes a look at the new
machine. He hears "Atari"
and is quite sure to find an obscure and therefore
obsolete machine. So the first
thing he does is to click around a bit. That's
why our
clone has to have a fast operating system
enhancement like NVDI or N.AES - that
gives the impression of power.
The desktop has
to have nice icons and Kobold should be pre-installed
to make the impression
of power and speed even stronger - MiNT would
do great, too. Some programs
should be pre-installed, like Calamus SL Lite
Edition - how about some 3D
icons - and a text program - how about Papyrus
Lite - which is able to eat Word
documents.
How about shipping
the system internet ready - I don't know much
about the software needed
for that. The most important
and impressive part is of course audio applications.
So how about having
some - like some kind of Cubase Lite and Digitape
being pre-installed
- if possible 10-20 applications. Give the testers
something to play with - a computer that cries,
"Connect me to your audio
equipment". When they love it, the
world will, too.
On one hand I
am happy that the new machine will support IDE
- it's much cheaper than
SCSI - on the other hand
it will make it more complicated to replace
an existing machine - Falcon
or TT and copy the data to the new hard disk.
So offer the
computer from the very beginning in two versions,
one with and maybe one without
SCSI. That means pre-installed and a name like
SX (SCSI eXtended) after
the name.
Offer the SX
machine as "professional version"
and the non-SCSI as a normal version. The SX machine
could be in a 19" case which allows it
to be easily integrated with other studio equipment.
The first Atari
was a Macintosh clone - with more connection
possibilities. Think of the
new clone as an improved NeXT clone. OK, NeXT
was not successful - but the DSP
chip idea made its way to the Falcon. A cheap PC case
will not get much sympathy - at least put
the SX version
in a nice 19" case!
![[Image: AtlanTOS logo]](images/atlantos.gif)
How about a logo
for the AtlanTOS? I had an idea. How about a
slogan like "The power... without the problems"?
How about another name, AvanTOS? (Pronounced
Avant OS)
![[Image: AvanTOS logo]](images/avantos.jpg)
christoph@myatari.net
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