JIUINEY INTl CYIE ISMCI John S Davison explores the Internet and discovers all the wonders of a brave new electronic world
recently came across a reference to an Atari resource on the Internet id not heard of before. It's a World Wide Web site called the Atari Reference Desk (ARD), which can be found at http://www. geocities.com/SiliconValley/Peaks/ 6320/atarioo I .htm. it sounded just the sort of thing Atari fans needed - a central reference point for all things Atari. So, I decided to check it out and report my findings here. It's aimed at users of the Atari 68000 based systems (STs onwards), although future coverage is promised (and is starting to appear) for 8-bit and Portfolio users. As a general observation. Web sites sometimes tend to be disappointing, as the material they contain can be either out of date or turns out to be just a list of references to other sites. It's possible to waste a lot of time just hopping across links from site to site and never actually getting anywhere in terms of finding useful information. Occasionally a sites prime reason for existence seems to be as a vehicle for the owner to show off his technical skills as a web page builder, containing screens full of flashy presentation gizmos that take forever to load, but offer very little in the way of real, useful content. ARD was said to be different, so I was keen to try it Out. Here's what I found.
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ST-FRIENDLY SITE ARD's designer, Terry Ross, has taken the view that his site should be accessible by Atari users with relatively modest system resources rather than PC owners with incredibly powerful Pentium II systems. This means that the coding behind the site's pages has 50
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