Yes, and that's IMHO generally the reason why it won't work right (enough) for a special thing (for example like music).

Look, a synth is a sound machine built of electronical parts which were made for making sounds and their surroundings only, so this works (normally) perfect.

Instead of this a PC was made for simply all you want to do with it (it's called 'multi media'). You have a base machine which allows you to do with it nearly all you need. But, if you want to do a special thing with a PC you have to buy much extra elements like special cards, more RAM, more disc space, more of this and more of that. But do it work right then? No! You simply need the required drivers at first...and please, take care of it! Did you pay attention to the mother board's chip set? ...and so on...and so on...

I will reveal a 2nd secret for all of you who didn't know it: A further reason why I'm still using my 'old' Falcon is that it owns standardized MIDI in and out/thru plugs. Both plugs are controlled via the MFP chip which gives this computer an extra MIDI interrupt - not a translated PCI or USB interrupt like the PC does it.
Also my Falcon owns a 32 bit DSP chip which don't let me miss any modern audio cards. The eight channel analog device made by Soundpool (Germany) do afford its part for this pleasure.
I would change my system if I could find any adequate modern system viewing the performance in relationship to the payment. Remember the Atari ST was the first computer with 1 MB RAM under 1,000 $US...the Falcon was the next hammer under 1,000 $US...and they are all still working...

Well, I guess I've said enough about this thematic. I would be very glad if at least some of you would think about those arguments a little bit longer than 5 seconds. Thank you very much.

Have a nice day, guys!
I go 'playing' with my Falcon...

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Greetings from Frankfurt (Germany),
Sheriff ;-)

[This message has been edited by Sheriff (edited 04-20-2005).]

I understand very well what you've been saying Sheriff and I know enough about computers not to have to resort to a dictionary to see what an interrupt is.

The ONLY proble with your setup is that it has become obsolete. Not in the sense that it does not do the job, but in the sense that you simply can't recommend to anyone "get an Atari and make music" because there wouldn't be a new Atari to be found, the company ceased to exist many years ago, and the user base -strong it was once - is shrinking fast, I believe. This machine, was great, but the problem is that it WAS great, in the past tense.

Today, the only things available are Windows machines, yes Linux is good, but still not for the masses.

I may find interesting and clever enough that your machine reserves a real interrupt for MIDI, but most guys wanting to make music, don't know what it is and they do not care.
They want a thing that will start making music with not much hassle. In that sense, a generic keyboard/computer that can load sounds and styles from various manufacturers as "to the genesys" suggested, is a good deal. A PC with the appropriate software, stripped down from unnecessary programs and threads, will do fine instead, as the Atari used to do. It may still do good for you, but I think that less than 5 people in this forum will have the knowledge and time to invest in a 10 year old machine for making music today.

I really hope you take no offence with the above, it is meant as a comment only.

Don't be afraid, I'm not angry about such comments. The fact is that I have to agree with the most points you've written but I still can't believe that the Atari gets no new chance for the music market. As Atari stopped existing there were many developers in europe who modernized the system but the whole world seemed to be not interested anymore.
I've made a link to the project pages of the 'new Atari' in this thread: http://www.synthzone.com/ubbs/Forum1/HTML/003421.html
I know we are lightyears behind the actual market but we have the experience that the PC market never will get. I will aid this project as soon as they are ready with their new Atari'. I hope that the most old software will work on this system because we had so much of it with really good features.

I really like working with the Atari. Imagine, I switch on my PC and my Atari at the same time, then on my Atari I load my program, work with it, save the changes and switch off the computer, and then my PC has reached its login screen...
I spare so much time because I'm working with a small system. Windows has brought us many problems, including lost money and wasted time.
A secretary today needs more than the double time for writing a simple letter as with an Atari textwriter or for example an old DOS program like the early versions of Word (with the less of comfortability compared with !Signum). Imagine we had a kernel PLUS a graphic environment management (GEM which is similar to the today's GUI) in a 192kB ROM!!! Today the kernel of Linux only is bigger than the whole Atari system. That's the reason why it runs so fast until today.
What did you really got with your modern PC systems? Yes, the CPUs are running faster, the RAMs are running faster, the HD drives are running faster, the BUS is running faster...and so on, but the colours are many more, the screen resolution has grown up, the programs were grown to a maximum of many megabytes without doing much more than before. These are the mainreason why a PC won't work faster but nevertheless you're trying to speed the 'little trashcan' more and more without any success...
I don't really understand the policy of the big computer concerns because they don't do it for us...only for their pockets...

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Greetings from Frankfurt (Germany),
Sheriff ;-)

Amen...