On Monday, January 15th, 1996 - Glenn West wrote:
 
GW> I have an old 520ST.  I really like it(sentimental value)
GW> Are there any software packages available to surf the internet?
 
There is actually a graphical (monochrome) web browser available for the 
ST put out by the Toronto Atari user group.  You need a lot of memory
and a hard drive to use it though.
 
GW> Memory is not really a problem as I can up-grade the memory much 
GW> easier than I can invest $2000 in a computer to go surfing with?  Any
 
You can upgrade your current Atari system to be internet/web capable for 
far less than $2000.  For example, to get hard drive capability, you can 
get an ICD LinkII SCSI adapter for $90, and a Syquest EZ135 external
SCSI removable hard drive for $239.  The RAM upgrades are available
also.  In fact, you could buy a used Atari 1040STe with 4megs of RAM for 
a lot less than $2000!
 
GW> suggestions?  Are they just old boat anchors or can I still play with
GW> the big boys??
 
I don't know about anyone else, but my Atari ST has been of great
benefit in creating web pages.  It is particularly useful for me because 
I have an old PC clone with very limited graphics programs.  I do the
web page editing on the PC, using a fairly new Windblows-based program.
Since I lack certain Windblows VGA drivers and any decent graphics
software, I use the Atari ST (1meg) for designing all the graphics.
 
And I'm using a very old program - DEGAS Elite.  It is quite good for
making small images which are perfect for web pages (large images eat up 
space and slow the browser down).  I don't even have to crop the images
- I just save them as DEGAS blocks.  They are really .IFF images.
Then I use GEMVIEW to covert them to .GIF files.  As long as there's a
PC boot sector on the floppy, I can just take the floppy out of the ST
and pop it into the PC.  The identical file format between the two
systems makes it very easy.
 
Even the oldest ST has a nice color palette of 512 possible colors, so
it is very easy to produce nice looking graphics.  The ST has proven to
be a very helpful (and in my case vital) tool for web editing.  An STe
would be even better (keep in mind, a lot of common images have about 32 
colors total with a 256 color palette).  A Falcon, of course, would be
the optimal solution, because it can do all of the editing, browsing,
and graphics that any PC based web browser can do.
 
It is a fantastic testament to the value of Atari products that a
machine that is essentially a 1985 vintage system can hold its own doing 
tasks in 1995.  Think of it, I'm using the oldest, clunkiest ST with the 
oldest, clunkiest ST software, and it's still useful!
 
--- RiBBS v2.10        

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