Cost of Atari Falcon when it came out?

[Franko]

I've heard over the years a lot of folk say that, seems It was quite popular amongst many professional musicians, although I can't say personally I've ever heard anything that was produced on it...

[save2600]

Extra Features of the Falcon: 68030 processor @ 16 Mhz, 65,000 colors @ 640x480, 1.44 meg floppy drive, 4 meg RAM (expandable to 14), internal 65 meg hard drive, DSP processor, SCSI-2 port, Price: $1,299.
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Wow, unbelievable. Atari was totally off their rocker back then. Anyone get the double-plus-good pun there? Think Amiga and 2600  :laughing:

Anywho, Franko... you're absolutely right. I recently tried resurrecting an ST for old shits sake and I could not believe how primitive and crippled the OS was. Completely out of order and damn near useless. It took a TOS ROM update before you could do something as simple as rename a folder. Not kidding.

[dentunes]

I used Atari 1040STs in school with Notator (I am a muso). It was the only way to do it back in the early 90s. That connected to Korg 01s/M1s, Yamaha SY77s. Ah, the memories. The Amigas at my school were used for animation/ray tracing exclusively at the time.

[dentunes]

Wow, unbelievable. Atari was totally off their rocker back then. Anyone get the double-plus-good pun there? Think Amiga and 2600  :laughing:

Anywho, Franko... you're absolutely right. I recently tried resurrecting an ST for old shits sake and I could not believe how primitive and crippled the OS was. Completely out of order and damn near useless. It took a TOS ROM update before you could do something as simple as rename a folder. Not kidding.

Then again, without jailbreaking, you can't rename an application on the iPhone/iPad!

[save2600]

I used Atari 1040STs in school with Notator (I am a muso). It was the only way to do it back in the early 90s. That connected to Korg 01s/M1s, Yamaha SY77s. Ah, the memories. The Amigas at my school were used for animation/ray tracing exclusively at the time.

That's awesome your school had such diverse computers! But, Amiga could be just as MIDI "ready" with a $40 parallel port MIDI box. And there's plenty of music/MIDI capable software written for the Amiga as well.  

Funny how a few musicians gravitated toward the Atari line just because MIDI was built-in. BTW: I've known musicians that have used ST's before. Guess what? They could care less and knew nothing about the computer as a whole. It was nothing more than just a bridge or an appliance of sorts for them. Never used their computers for anything else.

Same is true with a friend that owns an embroidery/screen printing shop here in town. Used a MegaST for years before he went PeeCee. Only ever used his ST for the one "simple" process of laying out patterns to be scanned in and printed. Nothing else. Veird!

@Dentunes: yeah, I have an iPad. There's a few stupid aspects about it I don't like, but all things considered - it's pretty neat for what it is.

[Franko]

Anywho, Franko... you're absolutely right. I recently tried resurrecting an ST for old shits sake and I could not believe how primitive and crippled the OS was. Completely out of order and damn near useless. It took a TOS ROM update before you could do something as simple as rename a folder. Not kidding.

I only ever knew one person who claimed to own an Atari, though we never got to see it he was always hanging around with us Amigans, strange kid he was...

So I never got to actually see one working as the odd one or two that were in the shops were always switched off for some reason... :lol:

(Still got me old Pro-Midi interface (£25) and still use it with an old Yamaha keyboard & Bars & Pipes on the odd occasion...

[save2600]

So I never got to actually see one working as the odd one or two that were in the shops were always switched off for some reason... :lol:

Would you believe our local Amiga store in Wheeling, IL actually used an ST with b/w monochrome monitor as their Point Of Sale cash register? These were die-hard Amigans too. Guy that ran it also belonged to a user group nearby. Was soooooo funny purchasing Amiga goods and then seeing an ST behind the counter. DOH!

[Franko]

Would you believe our local Amiga store in Wheeling, IL actually used an ST with b/w monochrome monitor as their Point Of Sale cash register? These were die-hard Amigans too. Guy that ran it also belonged to a user group nearby. Was soooooo funny purchasing Amiga goods and then seeing an ST behind the counter. DOH!

Perhaps it was a crafty sales ploy, I mean if you saw an ST running on a B&W monitor you'd be sure to buy the Amiga Instead, or maybe the didn't want to reduce the Amiga to the status of a cash register...

It's either that or they were just plain weird... :lol:

[dentunes]

It wasn't that Amigas couldn't do MIDI, Atari STs had MIDI ports built in and Notator software (the Killer Music App) is what made it the popular choice. The software on the Atari ends up being Cubase today. The music apps on the Amiga were more focussed on MODs rather than MIDI.

And yeah, the high school I went to rocked where it came to computers. 386s when they just came out, a room (yes a ROOM!) of Amigas and a couple Ataris in the music labs. I spent my lunch breaks playing games in the Amiga room though lol. They even upgraded to Amiga 3000s when they came out including a digitiser!

[dentunes]

Perhaps it was a crafty sales ploy, I mean if you saw an ST running on a B&W monitor you'd be sure to buy the Amiga Instead, or maybe the didn't want to reduce the Amiga to the status of a cash register...

It's either that or they were just plain weird... :lol:

I can see why. At work we always use the crappiest computers as tills, the good stuff to demo software on. The Atari was probably the crappiest at the time and it was relegated to POS duties hehehe

[Reiknir]

I just read how, despite having a 16mhz 030 inside, the Falcon was still based on the ST's 16-bit architecture. Blech. Talk about a poorboy's 030 computer or better yet... The Atari Falcon: Choking a faux 32-bit chicken.  :lol:

:furious:

No, it was actually quite a revolutionary computer, the backward thing about it was the operating system, that harked back to CPM68 and Atari could not and would not update it, they had a dispute with DR about license fees and were stuck with a GEM/CPM system from 1984 and only partial sources and a management team that did not understand software.

The Falcon had a hardware multiplexer, so you could route data from one entity to another without a load on the CPU, eg the DSP bus could stream from the hard disk while the CPU was playing around with the graphics, this meant 16 track 16bit audio recording by using the DSP as a simple lossless audio compressor (since the 16x16b data stream was larger than HD's at the time could manage in RT), something we did not get reliably on a PC until 97/98 and then only just.

Atari really had something special, but no clue how to market or develop it, by the time I bought one it was cheaper than an A1200 and soon discontinued, I bought 3 more when they blew the last few off at silly prices

[Reiknir]

Wasn't there two models of Falcon?

Four, one from Atari and three from C-Lab

[Reiknir]

Funny how a few musicians gravitated toward the Atari line just because MIDI was built-in. BTW: I've known musicians that have used ST's before. Guess what? They could care less and knew nothing about the computer as a whole. It was nothing more than just a bridge or an appliance of sorts for them. Never used their computers for anything else.

Same is true with a friend that owns an embroidery/screen printing shop here in town. Used a MegaST for years before he went PeeCee. Only ever used his ST for the one "simple" process of laying out patterns to be scanned in and printed. Nothing else. Veird!

Not weird in any way, the answer in both cases is software, Cubase and Notator on Atari were miles ahead of anything else and people are still using them as Yamaha Cubase and Apple Logic (Notator).

The graphic software was probably Calamus (http://www.calamus.net) At the 1987 to ca 1993 timeframe superior to the Mac and PC eq. in most respects but a bit outdated now, very extendable so it was often sold as a part of an embedded/specialized solutions

[bloodline]

Then again, without jailbreaking, you can't rename an application on the iPhone/iPad!

But you don't need to jailbreak it to rename a folder

[Kesa]

I only ever knew one person who claimed to own an Atari, though we never got to see it he was always hanging around with us Amigans, strange kid he was...

So I never got to actually see one working as the odd one or two that were in the shops were always switched off for some reason... :lol:

(Still got me old Pro-Midi interface (£25) and still use it with an old Yamaha keyboard & Bars & Pipes on the odd occasion...

I saw one Atari ST in use at my friends house. He was playing simcity. I tried in vain to convince him my A500 was slightly better but it was no use...    

I mean, being an Atari user he was used to using the tv set whereas as an Amiga user i was used to the sophistication of using a monitor. Worlds apart...   :rolleyes:

[Ral-Clan]

Not weird in any way, the answer in both cases is software, Cubase and Notator on Atari were miles ahead of anything else and people are still using them as Yamaha Cubase and Apple Logic (Notator).

Really better than anything else available at the time?  Better than Bars & Pipes for the Amiga (the flat-out best MIDI only sequencer I have ever used)?  I have never used Cubase or Notator, but I judging by these screen shots they seem relatively primitive compared to Bars & Pipes.

Cubase (Atari ST):


Notator (Atari ST):


Bars & Pipes (Amiga):