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Pure Bollocks Issue 22_009
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* F A L C O N * I N F O
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FALCON030 MEMORY - Is 1 Meg Enough??
By Len Stys of Znet Online Magazine
The Falcon030 "personal integrated media" system was designed to be a
contender in the home multi-media market. Atari's engineers made the
Falcon so that it is excellent at mixing high resolution graphics with
better than CD-quality sound. This is absolutely necessary for the
system to have any chance of success in this area. Multi-tasking is
another important part of multi-media and thanks to "Multi-TOS", the
Falcon030 now has this capability.
The Falcon030 is also the first low-cost personal computer to have a DSP
chip and port. The DSP will allow the Falcon030 to do things that are
impossible to do on other multi-media systems. And lastly, at $799, the
Falcon030 is priced as a mass market product to sell in large
quantities. Atari's management must have felt that the more systems
that sell, the more market share Atari captures. This is smart thinking
since the more market share Atari captures, the more systems that sell.
So, where's the problem? The problem is that Atari's mass market Falcon
030 at $799 only comes with 1 Meg of memory. The Falcon030 with 1 Meg
is pretty much the same as a Mega STe. Programmers cannot really use
the Falcon's enhanced graphics and sound with this amount of memory.
Let's look at what it would take to make a video game in the resolution
of 384x480 in "true color":
To display a still screen: 384 x 480 x 16 / 8 = 368,640k (369k)
Animation requires two screens to reduce flicker. This is called
"double buffering": 737k
The computer already uses 737k of memory WITHOUT any game logic code,
sprite data, sound effect data, and operating system overhead. If all
of this was taken into consideration, a video game in this resolution
would need close to 2 Megs.
Let's look at what it would take to make a video game in the resolution
of 640x480 (PC games) in "true color":
To display a still screen: 640 x 480 x 16 / 8 = 614,400k (614k)
Double Buffering: 1.2 Mb
Add the game logic code, sprite data, sound effects, and operating
system overhead. The minimum amount of memory needed to produce a game
in this resolution with these colors would be 3 Megs.
The only thing you could do with 1 Meg of memory in these resolutions
and colors is display still pictures. And even though a lot of people
do this, I am sure most people would like to use these resolutions for
other things besides viewing pictures.
The Falcon030 with 1 Meg is also incapable of multi-tasking. And as
mentioned previously, multi-tasking is a very important part of multi-
media. On Saturday, January 23, 1993, Eric Smith, author of MiNT and
programmer of Multi-TOS wrote in the "Atari Corporation Online" category
(14) on GEnie:
"Just to inject a bit more reality into this: even if MultiTOS is free,
it still won't be on everybody's machine right away or even at all. The
present version of MultiTOS is loaded into RAM, and that means in
practice that you need 2 megabytes of memory to use it (and 4 megabytes
is a lot more comfortable). Also, it's really targetted for the 68030
machines; on a 68000 it will be somewhat sluggish and will also lack
memory protection (i.e. it won't be as safe). Eventually we hope to
have a ROM version of it, but for now it *is* a memory hog."
Atari's mass market home multi-media system soon becomes just another
ordinary single-tasking, low-resolution, mediocre sounding, personal
computer. The argument that you can always add memory to take advantage
of these features is silly. Can you imagine a company selling a product
for a certain purpose with intent that the consumer get it expanded
before he or she can use it for what it was created for? Besides, most
of the consumers purchasing the Falcon030 will be people that are
unfamiliar with computers. How is a dealer going to explain to a
consumer that the computer he or she wishes to buy for $799 needs to be
expanded for an additional $200 before it can be used for multi-media?
Let's suppose that most of the Falcon030 systems sold were the 1 Meg
configuration. We can assume that many of these Falcon owners will not
expand to 4 Megs much like many 520 ST owners did not expand to 1 Meg or
greater. Most developers will write software for the 1 Meg
configuration since they will want their software to be purchased by as
many users as possible. The developer may have to use a lower
resolution or less sound then he or she wishes. The software may not be
fantastic, but at least it will run on a 1 Meg machine. The developer
then writes the same software for the Commodore A1200. But since the
lowest amount of memory that the A1200 is sold with is 2 Megs, the
developer can use a better resolution or add some things not on the
Falcon030 version. A consumer looking to purchase a personal computer
will see that the A1200 has better software and will purchase it over
the Falcon030.
What happens if developers ignore the 1 Meg Falcon030 computers and just
write software for the 4 Meg machine? The new computer user will find
that most of the software for their computer will not work without more
memory. What do you think their feelings will be towards Atari for
selling them a system that needs to be expanded?
In order to find out what Atari users and programmers thought of the
Falcon030 memory, I posted a questionnaire on the Usenet
comp.sys.atari.st newsgroup. There were 34 responses. These are the
questions and results:
Do you believe there should be a Falcon030 without memory?
No: 82.35% Yes: 17.65%
What do you believe should be the lowest amount of memory sold with the
Falcon030?
1 Meg: 17.65% 2 Meg: 17.65% 4 Meg: 64.70%
Do you believe there should be a Falcon030 memory configuration between
4 megs and 14 megs?
No: 23.53% Yes: 76.47%
If so, how much:
6 Meg: 5.88% 8 Meg: 64.70%
No: 23.53% Anything: 11.76%
What configurations would you choose?
Falcon030 1 Meg: 11.76%
Falcon030 4 Meg: 23.53%
Falcon030 4 Meg/65 Mg HD: 64.70%
(Atari Works & SpeedoGDOS)
Does the Atari Works package influence your decision?
No: 29.41% Yes: 70.59%
Please note that the memory amounts between 4 Megs and 14 Megs were
written in. There were no answers to choose from. Also, everyone that
replied knows how to program computers.
Many people felt that the Falcon030 should not be sold without memory
because it would confuse new computer buyers. But others commented that
this may not be a bad idea. If a user wishes to move from 4 Megs to 14
Megs then he or she can just sell their 4 Meg memory board to a friend
that just purchased a Falcon030 without memory. This way, no memory
boards are thrown away.
Most people felt strongly that 4 Megs should be the minimum. The
reasons given were similar to what was said above.
A large number of people felt that there should be a memory
configuration between 4 Megs and 14 Megs. The number that most people
suggested was 8 Megs. They claim that they could use more than 4 Megs,
but would not need 14 Megs.
Atari's marketing department seems to be making a smart move by
including Atari Works and SpeedoGDOS with the Falcon030 w/4 Meg/65 Meg
HD system. This is because the addition of this software will influence
70% of the people that responded.
About half the people commented about the hard drives that Atari is
including with the Falcon030. A good number of these people said that
65 Megs is too small for their needs, but they would consider buying a
larger Atari hard drive if they included Atari Works and SpeedoGDOS.
These are the sizes that were suggested: 65 Megs, 120 Megs, and 200
Megs. Though, Atari's hard drives would need to be competitively priced
with other hard drives.
The general feeling is that if Atari wants to sell the Falcon030 as a
home multi-media system, the company needs to sell it with more memory.
If Atari can lower the Falcon030 4 Meg version to $899, the computer
will most likely continue to be a mass market product.
As of now, there are no known Falcon030 1 Meg configurations on the
market. Maybe Atari's management has already thought of all of this.
And if they haven't, maybe you will consider all of this before
purchasing the Falcon030.
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