# An ATARI in 1999
What does that serve to?

By The Beast

These last years, a lot of atarists passed on other machines. That it is by necessity, by obligation or by disappointment, reasons are very various. I organized a small poll in newsgroup (fr.comp.sys.atari) and I put some questions to the French atarists. I asked them what they make with their machine and what are the strong points of it and the weak points.

Even though only 11 people answered to the call (it is necessary to say that I organized this poll in the beginning of the month of July, that explains all), I think that their answers are nevertheless revealing enough of what he/it happens in general in the world of data processing. The interrogated atarists have in majority an Atari 32 bits, as the Falcon or the TT, and most between them kept their good old ST under the hand.

I would want to bring some precisions. First, these 11 answers are not representative of the population atarist, since all atarists don't have access to Internet. And can I specify that no the interrogated people don't possess a clone (Hades, Milan or other), there is no doubt that answers would have been different in this case.

But what does an Atari serve to in 1999?

I arrive there. He/it is clear that the one who uses a ST doesn't have the same works that the one who uses a TT, but the common point between the two summarizes himself in only one word: LEISURES. Hey yes, if atarists use their machine again, this is not to win money, this is not to wedge their cupboard with, it is simply for leisures. By leisures, I don't mean only " games ", but simply " hobby ", or " pastime ".

Atarists possessing machines bottoms of range especially serve themselves of it to play to either look at demos. Them others have some various works: programming, edition of pages for the Web, drawing, to reach Internet, to play and to make the PAO or simply of the text seizure.

The Atari in general: their strengths, their weakness

To summarize, the principal dawns strong of the Atari comes of his/her/its operating systems, that the interrogated atarists find, in majority, steady and pleasant. It is here about all systems of exploitation capable to make turn of them executable Atari (one doesn't speak of Linux): TOS, MultiTOS, MagiC, MiNT, etc.

As for the weak points, and that won't astonish anybody, the Atari lacks raw strength and software at a time.

But see these two points in detail, according to answers provided by the interrogated people,:

Strong points:

- Hardiness
- Adaptability
- Stability and reliability
- Conviviality, simplicity to use and to put in work
- Many programs that nearly cover all domains
- The system is coherent, transparent, concise and optimized
- A big choice of systems or alternative desktop
- Pleasant and easy to program
- The present SCSI on certain machines of the range
- Of the true " Plug and play "
- The presence of the MIDI
- Not of virus
- Not of micro$oft
- Cool for hacking
- Silent
- Alleviates the nostalgia

Weak points:

- The lack of strength
- The German applications are with difficulty available in French or in English. Lack of circulation of the logitheque.
- Difficulty to use some modern peripherals, there is a lack of pilots.
- Not of commercial presence
- Expensive to the interview
- Them different models are not versatile enough
- Not obvious to put in tower
- He/it misses a modern development environment
- A certain lack of evolutivity because of the TOS in ROM on machines bottoms of range

Participants

I would want to thank here the 11 atarists that answered me. I also indicated their configuration, so that those that remained some to the ST (or those that deserted for other horizons) see the material that uses today's atarists.

- "Ethhoack" (ethh@enemy.org)
  Equipment: Atari TT + 18 MB of RAM.
- Martin-Eric Root (q-funk@pp.fishpool.com)
  Equipment: Atari TT + card Ethernet Riebl + disk of 4.5 GB.
- Pascal Ricard (pricard@club-internet.fr)
  Equipment: Falcon 4+8 MB + hard drives (730 MB and 2.1 GB) + CD-ROM + scanner + printer throwing of ink color + Zip, and of course a modem: -)
- Bruno Savey (saveyb@club-internet.fr)
  Equipment: Falcon 14 MB + CT1 + VGA + CDROM + ZIP + DD 1.2 GB + Stylus Color II + USR Professionnal 56K, STE 4Mo.
- Guillaume Tello (gtello@wanadoo.fr)
  Equipment: Atari TT 4+16 MB (graphic card, CD, CaTTamaran, ZIP), STE + 4Mo + 2 screens + 2 hard drives 50 MB.
- Vince/FPS (fps@domoptim.com)
  Equipment: 1040 STE inflated to 4 MB (RAM) + 60 MB (HD).
- Patrick (fa3@club-internet.fr)
  Equipment: Falcon 030.
- Xavier Joubert (xavier.joubert@free.fr)
  Equipment: Falcon 030 + CT2b + 68882 + 14+32 MB + 3.2 GB IDE + Mitsumi IDE 12x.
- Alain GAYMARD (agaymard@club-internet.fr)
  Equipment: Falcon 030 4/65, 1040 STf.
- Thierry (ledoudou@club-internet.fr)
  Equipment: Swollen STF to 4 MB + TOS 2.6 + reader of disks HD (1.44) + ZIP SCSI (with interfacing ICD Link), another one 1040 STF + TOS 1.2 (for games), 800 XL.
- Jean-Luc Guillemain (JLGLN@aol.com)
  Equipment: 520 STF 1 MB (for games), Falcon 4/65 of origin (for the PAO), Falcon 14/540 (gone up in tower) + ZIP + scanner + Highspeed 32 + reader CD 2x.

(PS: thank you for your encouragements concerning the Toxic Mag)