** 2 page feature / 1806 words ** ** HADES.GIF here ** Running Out of RAM with Dave Barkin... The Atari Corporation has long disappeared yet the Atari platform still has life! Keeping this in mind three years ago I went out and purchased a Hades 68060 computer. I was the first on my block (probably in my country) to buy one of these machines. Since then I've conscientiously updated the ROM chips and this machine remains my main computer. Considering I've since purchased a 300 Mhz Power PC Mac that's saying something! I enjoy using the Mac, there's some software for which there simply is no competitive Atari alternative, but software such as Calamus SL, Das Repro, Das Layout, Photoline and quite a few others, make the Hades my machine of choice, especially for final output. So let's take a closer look... The Hades computer The Hades is available in a number of configurations. My machine configuration is as follows: ** UL ** * A floppy drive * IDE Hard drive * SCSI port * 4 PCI slots * 2 ISA slots * Standard Atari serial port * High speed (250,000 baud) serial port * Mouse port * Joystick port * MIDI * LAN port * Parallel port * VME slot * Standard IBM keyboard connector * 8 memory slots ** /UL ** The memory slots must be filled with a minimum of 4Mb of RAM and can be filled with up to a whopping 1 Gigabyte - and if you have that memory you can forget about "out of memory" messages! Over the three years I've had the machine I've slowly increased the memory and currently have 512Mb installed. It seems overkill but I needed the additional memory to edit 100Mb and larger image files. The Hades can be purchased in mini-tower or full tower configurations. You can also save yourself quite a bit of money by purchasing the components and building the system yourself - I'd rather be eaten by starving baby elephants, but I'm sure there are plenty of masochists out there keen to get stuck with such a job. How it works The Hades supports a range of graphics cards, I'm currently using an ATI M64 board which features 4Mb of video memory and is quite a bit quicker then the ET4000 I originally used. My ATI board uses a modified version of the software driver originally written for the NOVA graphics card and supports resolutions from monochrome to 32-bit colour, although (unlike the ET4000) it doesn't support ST-Low (300x200x16) or ST-Medium (640x200x4) resolutions. It works well and seems happy driving a 17" monitor at 24-bit resolutions. The operating system is a modified version of TOS 3.06 (used in TT machines) and comes on four ROM chips. So far I've replaced these ROMs twice, new releases became available to eliminate bugs and compatibility problems. RAM memory is considered as contiguous ST RAM although it acts as high speed RAM. My machine uses standard SIMM chips although newer Hades motherboards now utilise EDO SIMM memory modules. EDO RAM is about 15% faster then standard RAM so new purchasers can expect their machines to run faster than mine - although the actual speed increase will be nearer to 5% rather than 15% because overall speed is more dependent on processor speed than memory access speed. Speaking of processors the Hades can be purchased with a Motorola 68040 or 68060 chip. The 68060, fitted in my machine, is a 50 MHz chip clocked to run at 60 MHz by my machine. For anyone looking at PCs and Macs running in excess of 300MHz this doesn't sound very impressive but in real world tests the machine is a lot faster than it sounds - more detail on this later. I can't think of a good reason to opt for the 68040 variant, if you can afford a Hades, the extra cost of the 68060 shouldn't be a problem. Using the Hades Using the Hades isn't much different to using any Atari. There are some additional programs to place in your Auto folder, one to recognise the built in maths co-processor (FPU) and a few others. There's also a Hades desktop accessory to turn the Motorola cache on/off which is needed because some, mostly older, ST software won't run with the cache on. The Hades accessory reads its information file in which you can easily specify how individual programs use the cache system. This INF file is an editable ASCII file and once setup will automatically configure each program to make optimum use of the system caches. The popular HD-Driver software is used to support hard disks and ICD's driver software will not run on this machine. Compatibility Always a difficult question to answer because everyone has different requirements. Some programs like Calamus 98/99 run happily at the fastest settings the machine is capable of, others, such as my vintage copy of WordPerfect, need to be set to the slowest settings. Some programs won't run at all - graphical games generally won't run even with a graphics card capable of displaying them. This isn't the place to give a list - if you're serious about buying a Hades check with your dealer to find out if the software you want to run works, before making your purchase. Although some of the programs I depend on must be run on the slowest settings that statement is meaningless because this is still very fast! Programs I regularly use include Calamus SL (sorry Calamus 1.09N doesn't run), Outline III, Das Repro, Photoline, PixArt, Pagestream, Das Repro, Studio Photo and Das Vector Pro. Certainly most commercial quality programs written in the last two years should run on the Hades. Hades versus TT In general terms the Hades machine is between six and twelve times faster than a standard TT. I'm saving my favourite comparisons against my Mac, but in the meantime here are a few timings (in minutes:seconds format) ** NP ** Soften Filter Das Repro, One Meg file TT 1:18 Hades 0:08 Screen Redraw Calamus SL, Complex Vector file TT 0:07 Hades >0:01 Vectorise in Calamus SL 70K Image file TT 1:10 Hades 0:08 ** /NP ** Pretty impressive numbers eh? Using a TT I was able to spend my time learning the intricacies of coffee making! So there's a clear speed advantage over Atari's fastest machine but let's take the fight to the Mac... My Mac 8600 PPC running at 300MHz Power PC 8600 is around 75% as fast as the current Apple G3 models (according to Norton Utilities) so taking that into consideration let's see how the Hades stacks up. Obviously we can't run the same software on different platforms so we have to software differences into consideration. For example vector redraws are much faster in Outline III or Das Vector Professional than Calamus SL and different again using Adobe Illustrator on the Mac. Image Processing Once again bear in mind software as well as hardware is being compared which is especially important when comparing Quark Express with Calamus 98 because Quark, unlike Calamus, is NOT a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) program - images, rasters and vector objects are blown up thumbnails and text is often a special screen font. Calamus shows exactly what will be printed (There is an optional Calamus SL Module which displays thumbnails but because I have enough memory I don't need this). I should also point out the Mac is fitted with a very fast ATI Exclaim VR graphics card, and is also equipped with 512Mb of memory and consequently isn't set to use virtual memory. ** NP ** Redraw 20Mb TIFF file from 100% to 200% Zoom Photoshop v5.01 0:04 Photoline v2.30 >0:01 Das Repro v1.41 >0:01 Rotate 20Mb TIFF file 13 degrees Photoshop v5.01 0:13 Photoline v2.30 0:10 Das Repro v1.41 0:40 Redraw 250Kb Vector File from full page to 100% Illustrator v7.0 0:03 Das Vector Pro v2.12 0:12 ** /NP ** These are impressive times for both machines. Exactly what the hardware/software balance is impossible to tell but my overall impression is that the Mac is a faster machine. It's easy to pick and choose times to support any standpoint but, as Mark Twain said, "There are lies, damned lies and statistics." For example I use Photoshop on the Mac, which generally seems quite a bit faster than Das Repro apart from the Zoom function - but I have also compared Photoshop to Photoline which is the fastest Atari program. There are other plenty of other Mac image processing packages, some slower and others faster than Photoshop but the bottom line here is that the Hades is a competitive machine. As I mentioned above there are some areas where Atari software is not competitive with what is available on the Mac. This mainly consists of rendering/modelling software. But I much prefer Calamus to Quark and the combination of Photoline/Das Repro to Photoshop. Das Vector Pro is a much more powerful program than Illustrator. Problems, rumours and limitations Over the three years I've had the Hades I've only experienced one serious problem - a factory defect which made using 32Mb SIMMs impossible. These SIMMs, and apparently only these SIMMs, need a particular connection with the CPU and on my machine this connection was severed and it took a while to diagnose the problem then find a technician to fix it. The manufacturers, Medusa Corporation, were helpful tracking down the problem and even offered to repair the machine (if I could get it to them) so full marks to them for that. I've heard about one person who connected his machine to another computer using the SCSI "Bus Arbitration", which enables two computers to share one SCSI drive, but unfortunately this blew the SCSI controller chip in his machine. Maybe it's a generic fault or maybe it was a faulty controller chip. The Hades supports MiNT and Geneva multitasking but it doesn't support MagiC. I've heard there's a version of MagiC under development for the Hades and it can't come fast enough for me. I was also told, when I purchased my Hades, that a card to offer PC compatibility would soon be available. This turned out to be vapourware. Various sound cards and other options are available, including one to offer Falcon DSP compatibility - again, if you're serious about buying a Hades, check with your dealer. Although there are other Atari clones available and under development the Hades offers raw processing power and TOS compatibility which is what it's all about. I remain happy with my machine. ** Images/captions ** ** COMP2.JPG ** Here's the mandatory "guts" picture the editor demanded. What mysteries lie inside beats me! All I can add from a non-techy perspective is the components have a quality "look and feel" about them. ** COMP1.JPG ** Here's my Hades, positioned in pride of place on my desk sporting a T60 logo - added by the Canadian re-seller of imported Hades machines.