What to do with an Atari STe ?

[dougal]

I have this Atari 1040STe which I had bought from a carboot sale about 5 years ago. I never really bothered with it except for switching it on to try it when i bought it.

Anyway, recently I decided to mess around with it but I know absolutely nothing about these machines. The OS (TOS i believe) looks green and awful compared to Amiga Workbench.

I did manage to download this program on the PC which writes ST floppy images back to floppy disk and have tried it out and it works. Played Lotus Turbo & James Pond. Graphics similarish to the Amiga but the sound was terrible.

Is there anything fun I can do with this other then play games which look worse than they do on the Amiga ? Maybe something with the OS etc.. ?

[shoggoth]

It's a humble 8MHz STE sans harddrive, which is by definition kind of limiting There are some nice demos for this machine, however.

Check out: http://dhs.nu/dhs-demos.php?sd=1988-01-01&ed=2011-12-31

Given the technical limitations some of that stuff is pretty amazing, notably the beam-synchronized coding required to do overscan, and overcoming the limitations of the sound system.

There's also a Wolfenstein 3D port, which actually runs pretty well.

[LoadWB]

Send it to meeeeeeeeee.

[dougal]

It's a humble 8MHz STE sans harddrive, which is by definition kind of limiting There are some nice demos for this machine, however.

Check out: http://dhs.nu/dhs-demos.php?sd=1988-01-01&ed=2011-12-31

Given the technical limitations some of that stuff is pretty amazing, notably the beam-synchronized coding required to do overscan, and overcoming the limitations of the sound system.

There's also a Wolfenstein 3D port, which actually runs pretty well.

Nice.. Will check that out. Looks like i will have to open it up and hope that i have 4 1MB ram simms in my little box of old ram sticks.

[dougal]

Send it to meeeeeeeeee.

LOL!! Think I will keep it for now. Just been reading about it and apparently the STe has much more stuff than a standard ST like the Blitter, ability to take Ram simms and better audio.

[spirantho]

Atari STe's are good machines.. they have a lot of stuff the ST should have had originally (especially the audio!).

Of course the amount of software using it is practically nil. Bit of a shame really, the STe would have been nice with a bit more oomph (and a bit less TOS

[dougal]

Commodore should have taken note and added Simm slots to the A600 and A1200.

Atari STe's are good machines.. they have a lot of stuff the ST should have had originally (especially the audio!).

Of course the amount of software using it is practically nil. Bit of a shame really, the STe would have been nice with a bit more oomph (and a bit less TOS

[kamelito]

play good Atari ST exclusives games.  Super Sprint (with 2 friends it's even better), Get Dexter 1 & 2, Bobo (infogrames IIRC), Starquake, Joust to name a few, check a list there.   http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=37111  Kamel  PS if you're a coder port some of theses games.

[Tension]

Use it to control an Akai sampler over MIDI, or use it as a doorstop.

[jj]

Does it blend

[Bamiga2002]

Throw the STe in the closet along with an Amiga for a "friendly" brawl and hear them rumblin' and battlin' it out!
Ofcourse betting the money on the miggy will make you rich

EDIT: or poor because of the odds...

[bloodline]

I found one in a bin last year... Not managed to find the right cables to make it work... I guess the ultimate goal is to get some variant of AROS booting on it.... :-/

[dougal]

All you need is a kettle plug/cable for power and an RF lead to the TV and it will work.

For software i downloaded a windows program (forgot the name, will check when i get home if you like) which writes ST disk images downloaded from the web to floppy disk using the PC's floppy drive.

I found one in a bin last year... Not managed to find the right cables to make it work... I guess the ultimate goal is to get some variant of AROS booting on it.... :-/

[save2600]

Use it to control an Akai sampler over MIDI, or use it as a doorstop.

The last 520 I had made a wonderful doorstop and I miss it dearly because standing on its edge, was at the right height for easy removal. Gave it to a classic gaming buddy that I thought would actually use it, but nope. He ended up nailing it to the wall of his gameroom for decoration. :lol:

I also found it more convenient to add a MIDI box to the parallel port of one of my Amigas than to set up a whole other computer system.  

[countzero]

well, I had the atari bug some while ago too, used 1040ste and TT briefly. Sadly, whatever the ST does, Amiga does better so there's little there that can entertain you. If you're into demoscene some ST demos are really cool (check dead hackers society). The software support is horrible for the ST, they don't have something like Aminet, you have to hunt the softyou're looking for among dozens of outdated ftp sties sprayed across the net, praying the version you're downloading is cracked/serialed properly and actuallyy works, before taking all the hassle to transfer it to the ST. which is another nightmare in itself ...