                               ST_TYPE.DOC
                      Documentation for ST_TYPE.TOS
                           Mark S Baines 1990

Atari, in their wisdom, have  created  a  situation  where there are many
different types of STs in people's homes and offices. What have we got in
Britain (TT not included)?

There are 4 different legally released  operating systems (TOS), 1.0 (ROM
TOS), 1.2 (Blitter TOS), 1.4 (Rainbow TOS), 1.6 (STE TOS).

There are 2 versions of GEMDOS, 0.19 (TOS  1.0 and 1.2) and 0.21 (TOS 1.4
and 1.6).

There are 2 versions of the AES, 1.20 (TOS 1.0 and 1.2) and 1.40 (TOS 1.4
and 1.6).

There are 2 versions of GDOS though you should only use Release 1.1.

There are 15 different nationalities of ROM.

STs either have a Blitter chip fitted or not.

There are 3 different resolutions  (Overscan and graphics cards excluded)
and many different amounts of RAM memory from 256 K to 4 Mb.   I'll leave
it to you to work out all the different combinations.

All this can create problems for software developers and subsequent 'bug'
troubleshooters.  If you ring up  or  write  to your software company for
some technical advice, reporting a  bug  or undocumented 'feature', it is
of great help to them  to  know  what  system  the program is running on.
HiSoft provide a program called CHECKST.PRG which provides them with this
information but it is not Public  Domain.   I have therefore written this
program which does the same thing  for all you non-HiSoft software users!
It is called ST_TYPE.TOS and comes with the source code in HiSoft Lattice
C v5 - ST_TYPE.C.

Just double-click on ST_TYPE.TOS to run it.  You will be given the choice
at the end to print the information to your printer by pressing 'P' (make
sure the printer is on-line, of course) or quit.  This program should run
on all STs and in all resolutions.  Very simple but very useful, I hope.


Mark S Baines
on Village and STarbase 1 FoReM BBs
