Our old nemesis, the Atari ST... a few questions...

[Waccoon]

The only thing I know about the ST, or any other Atari computer, is that a local model hobby store still uses one as a cash register.  I smile every time I see it.  My uncle also had an Atari 800 (I think), hooked up to a B&W TV.  I played River Raid for hours every time I visited.

[CU_AMiGA]

I would like to own an Atari ST. You can get then nowadays for next to nothing, and the games. You can get them from mainly boot sales as a package and also ebay. I would love to play Stunt Car Racer against someone, me with my A1200 (making it a little faster than the A500) and someone else with an Atari ST! :-) Brilliant!

Sort of off topic:

Did anyone own an Atari 800XL? That was a way kick ass computer and was more than a match for the C64. Why didn't it do better? Had the best version of Donkey Kong, plus a whole load of Atari titles including Gauntlet and Pole Position! :-) Great stuff!

[manicx]

The ATARI ST was a nice computer. Some people covered some of the things I wanted to say. I would like to point out the following:

-90% of the Amiga games up to late 91 were pure ST conversions. Only thing that changed a bit was the sound.

-GEM was not the best OS, but you could see it running. To use WB back then, you had to insert the floppy disk, wait some time and then insert another disk just to format it. I preferred to use X-Copy for that. On the ST, GEM was providing basic things instantly. The OS was in ROM and you could do virtually anything in seconds. We are always talking about A500s and 520STFMs here.

-ST from STFM onwards had a TV modulator. Amiga was charging extra for that.

-Atari's B/W monitor was just lovely. It is one of the main reasons why the ST became popular to sound studios, DTP etc. The ST had by far more solid pro software than the Amiga. Amiga users started realising that their computers can be used for more things than play games and using X-COPY with the arrival of A1200 and the cheap HD IDE technology used.

-The STE was a computer that very few people explored. Believe me though, I have seen things in STEs that made my jaws drop. All these after I bought a A1200 and a A4000.

-Community-wise, the ST users were mad. They used to have the Demo wars that was only good. Why? Because it was these demo wars that allowed users to meet and create companies that made brilliant software like Thalion. Thalion was nothing else but old ST demo coders. If you want to see ST games with 512 colours used at the same time, go for Thalion games. One of the best computer musicians ever, Jochen Hippel was member of the Lost Boys and Thalion.

-Overall, I never got into the hype of Amiga users slugging ST users off. All I could hear from Amiga users back then was "Your computer sucks"... All this based on games!

-Atari, as a company, lasted longer than commodore. It was commodore that died first and then Atari.

-I still laugh at the post saying that the Falcon was produced as a dev machine for Falcon! Jesus, I needed a good laught today....

[Adasha]

@cu_amiga: I had an 800XL! My first computer in fact, I remember it well...

[carls]

I wouldn't mind getting my hands on an Atari Falcon but they are almost impossible to come by here in Sweden. Sometimes you see the odd 520 STFM but they don't really interest me.

The Mega STe also seems like a nice machine, with it's switchable 8/16MHz 68000.

I've never used an Atari - not even for a minute - but from what I've read they have inspired just as much creativity to their owner as my Amiga has to me.

Nowadays most Atari people who are still active use Falcons and there's graphics cards, 060 turbos and (unofficial) OS updates just like with the Amiga.

Bonus URL: Mega STe Love

[CU_AMiGA]

Adasha wrote:
@cu_amiga: I had an 800XL! My first computer in fact, I remember it well...

Yeah! It was my first computer as well! :-) My dad introduced it to me when i was a nipper and gasped in amazment at the graphics at the time, even though the Amiga and Atari ST were already out, but of course, i never seen them! :-)

I had the tape drive and the disk drive, couldn't you get a modem for this baby as well, oh yeah, i had the 64k upgrade as well! :-) I used it mainly for games on carts and tapes!

[downix]

What I think is hilarious is that some guy hacked an "ST card" for the Atari Jaguar.  Drop it into the cart slot, and viola, you get an Atari ST.

[mikey2001]

I still love my second-hand 520STFM (upgraded to 1mb) and it still works...but I no longer use it. It was my second computer that I owned and I used it regularly between '92 and '97 until I bought a PC. Time to get it out of mothballs methinks...  :-)

[Crumb]

\Bloodline

The First good Atari was the Falcon, which deserves a lot of credit, for having most of the specs the A1200 should have had.

I agree completely, but the main drawback is that it hasn't a cpu slot like the 1200 so it is harder to expand... on the other hand it included on board ram sockets so you didn't have to buy a memory expansion...

[Khephren]

I loved my little Atari STFM, it was the first machine I used as a computer, and not just a games machine.
But as I got into art programs, the ST's 320x200 in 16 colour got blown away by my friend demoing his Amiga running in 640x512 in 16 colours, +photon paints HAM modes.  The ST was fun, but my Amiga got me my job in the games industry.

Mind you, talking about the STe and falcon being to late- so was the A1200, if it had come out a few years earlier, or far more beefed up in 92 (say, extra 1meg of fast  ram 28mhz 020-making it 4 times faster than what we got), we might still have (commodore) Amiga models coming out today.

C= and atari were so busy slugging it out between themselves, they didn't pay enough attention to the consoles creeping up from the cheap seats, and the PC rolling down the mountain reducing it's price as it went.

[Tomas]

Mind you, talking about the STe and falcon being to late- so was the A1200

agree totally there... Not many native games was really released for the a1200 before commodore went busted.  :-(

[Jiffy]

Khephren wrote:
Mind you, talking about the STe and falcon being to late- so was the A1200, if it had come out a few years earlier, or far more beefed up in 92 (say, extra 1meg of fast  ram 28mhz 020-making it 4 times faster than what we got), we might still have (commodore) Amiga models coming out today.

Agreed. I really like my A1200, but only because it's beefed up considerably. Without all the extra hardware, I wouldn't use it anymore. Although I have my Amigas for nostalgia's sake, I still want them to be usefull.

And back then, it would have been much more succesfull with a few extras: with the cheap additions you mentioned, it would have been a much better computer without adding much to the price.

Ah well, all's history and _I_ still like both my A1200 and my A2000. And I still dislike the ST range of computers... ;-)

[Karlos]

Are there any decent ST emulators for beefed up amigas then? Something that could perhaps run cubase reasonably ;-)

[Cyberus]

@ DoomMaster

But Gods was also available for the Amiga wasn't it?

[Cyberus]

@tpg

that_punk_guy wrote:

My Speccy has MIDI ports too :-)

How? Show me!

[Karlos]

Cyberus wrote:
@tpg

that_punk_guy wrote:

My Speccy has MIDI ports too :-)

How? Show me!

The 128K speccies (and possibly the 48K Spectrum+) had additional functionality that vintage rubber key ones like mine had to get expansions (such as the ZX interface 1) for. This included an RS232 port capble of supporting the baud rate required for MIDI, but IIRC youd need a serial to TTL converter (a simple chip from maplins, a 5V rail and a resistor or two).

The 128 BASIC 'PLAY' command which drove the inbuilt sound chip could actually play several channels via MIDI in this way. The first three channels were always on the internal chip, a further 8 (I think) could be used also. It was pretty neat :-)