| T.R | Title | User | Personal Name
 | Date | Lines | 
|---|
| 948.1 |  | AISG::MISKINIS |  | Tue Aug 28 1990 21:19 | 12 | 
|  |     You've stumbled upon a very powerful machine...  There used to be a
    a lot of manuals around, in fact Abacus published a whole SERIES!
    
    A friend of mine recently purchased an ST, and found that most stores
    (and mail order houses) do not offer the entire set any more.  I was
    told that "Compute" now offers a series though...
    
    Unless you want to real time stuff, BASICs should suffice.  The XBIOS
    supports MIDIWS (write string to MIDI), BCONIN (get a byte), and
    BCONOUT (send a byte)...
    
    _John_
 | 
| 948.2 | Use another BASIC and get ABACUS | BAGELS::FELDMAN | Jerry Feldman DTN 227-3279 | Wed Aug 29 1990 10:01 | 20 | 
|  |     Atari ST BASIC is a terrible version of BASIC. I would strongly suggest
    obtaining either True Basic or GFA BASIC, both are excellent
    implementations, and support GEM programming. GFA BASIC is probably
    stronger in its support of GEM, but True BASIC is highly portable with
    implementations available on virtually all systems with a portable
    windowing coordinate system.
    
    As far as books go, as mentioned in .1, the Abacus series on the ST is
    an excellent source complete with programming examples (mostly in
    assembler or C). There are a few Atari Dealers in the Massachusettes
    area, The Bit Bucket in Sudbury and West Newton, and Syntronics in
    Kenmore Square. There are also several very active user groups,
    The Boston Computer Society Atari User Group which meets every second
    Tuesday at MIT, The Nashoba Valley Atari Users Society (NAVAUS), and
    the South Shore Atari users Group (SSAG), and VAST in Haverhill. Note
    that the leaders of the BCS, NAVAUS, and the Nashua NH group are active
    in this conference.
    
    Jerry Feldman
    
 | 
| 948.3 | Thanks | SMURF::BENNETT | Be Bi Bo | Wed Aug 29 1990 11:13 | 6 | 
|  | 
	The use of BASIC is merely a necessity until I can drum up
	a suitable C or XLISP implementation.
	I'll drop into the shop of one of the vendors mentioned in .2
	and check out the Abacus books...
 | 
| 948.4 | Programmers' Reference Manual | COMICS::HOGGAN | No, I am not kidding !!! | Wed Aug 29 1990 11:47 | 11 | 
|  |     Hi,
    
    Try the "ST programmers' reference manual" by K. Peel - in my mind it
    is far better than the equivalent Abacus book! The problem is that it
    seems to be in reprint at the moment and so getting hold of it may
    prove difficult. As with any other techie book there are a few errors
    but they add to the challenge of programming the ST(E) :-)
    
    Try Turbo C if you want a good implementation!
    
    Dave.
 | 
| 948.5 | There are several good C compilers | BAGELS::FELDMAN | Jerry Feldman DTN 227-3279 | Thu Aug 30 1990 09:57 | 12 | 
|  |     Is Turbo C available in the US yet? 
    There are several good C compilers available in the US including:
    Mark Williams C which is in the registered developer's kit
    Megamax Laser C which is a K&R Unix flavor of C.
    Prospero C which is a complete ANSI C.
    All three of the above C compilers are excellent, and any debate as to
    which one is better is like comparing religions. All have reasonably
    good manuals with VDI and AES support.
    
    Aztec C is also available, but I found that it was clumsy to use.
    There are some good FORTRANS and Pascals available also.
    
 | 
| 948.6 |  | PRNSYS::LOMICKAJ | Jeffrey A. Lomicka | Thu Aug 30 1990 13:55 | 4 | 
|  | I've set up the author of .0 with Sozobon C, the free C compiler.  In
case you forgot about it, it's PRNSYS::RELEASED_TOOLS:[SOZOBON]*.*, in a
VMS backup saveset.  (It can run native on the ST, or be cross-compiled
form VMS to the ST.)
 |