Why?

Why acquire an Atari TT030?

 * It's an ATARI WORKSTATION -- Need I say more?
 * If you still don't get it... This is a UNIX box with a CARTRIDGE PORT. How cool is that?
 * It came out right at that wonderful time around 1990 when the PC world was transitioning to modern CPUs. In fact, the TT030 has a 68030 -- it's got an MMU and all the features necessary to run a modern OS. It may be a little pokey, but it's no toy!
 * It's very similar to a PC
 * Which makes it easy to work with as a hobby
 * You don't need to be some sort of Atari expert to make this your hobby. I had never touched an Atari in my life before I bought my TT030 on eBay a few months ago, and now it's up and running NetBSD wonderfully!
 * Want a new drive? It's SCSI, knock yourself out.
 * Want to plug in a monitor? It's VGA, you can deal with that.
 * Want to copy files over? No problemo, it's got a standard floppy drive.
 * And in fact the floppy filesystem is (usually) FAT and native OS can read/write FAT just fine.
 * It's got ethernet (optional)
 * There's one VME bus slot and you can plug in an Ethernet board.
 * I was even lucky enough to obtain a rare Atari branded board for my system.
 * It may not be as eye catching as a NeXTcube but it's still pretty unique and attractive in its own right.
 * It's relatively small and quiet (although this does vary depending on your choice of hard drive).
 * It runs NetBSD rock solid.
 * Some interesting hardware/software challenges remain that you can help solve and contribute back to this wiki!

So what are you waiting for! Go get yourself an Atari TT030 and start hacking!

David Ross 05:39, October 23, 2010 (UTC)