So did you ever have an atari computer?

[runequester]

Whether 8 bit or the ST and its offshoots ?

When I got my amiga (late 92) atari had all but disappeared from stores where I grew up (Denmark). Never knew anyone who had one, never saw them in stores, nothing.

So a few years ago when I read about this rival to the amiga, I got curious, and I've been researching them quite a bit.

Anyone had one?

[Gulliver]

I still have an Atari 65xe, and dare admit I allways wanted to get an Atari Falcon!

[HammerD]

Whether 8 bit or the ST and its offshoots ?

When I got my amiga (late 92) atari had all but disappeared from stores where I grew up (Denmark). Never knew anyone who had one, never saw them in stores, nothing.

So a few years ago when I read about this rival to the amiga, I got curious, and I've been researching them quite a bit.

Anyone had one?

No, I have an Atari 2600 (still), and had (much later) an Atari Lynx, but it just stopped working one day...

My first computer was a Commodore 64C, then I jumped to an Amiga 2000 in 1989 or so.

The Amiga was better for me, better OS, better chipset, so I didn't pay much attention to Atari computers.

[B00tDisk]

Like most middle class suburban white kids in the US who grew up in the 80's, we had a 2600.

I briefly owned an Atari 800XL.  About all I did with it was work on a game in BASIC that went no-where, and play Defender (cartridge).  Man I must've run up millions of points playing that.

Sold it after a few months (the 800XL).

[LoadWB]

I have an 800XL with a 1050 disk drive, a modem, and the 1010 program recorder.

[Franko]

Never owned one myself, kinda knew one person who claimed to own one back in the early 90's, he was a kid who used to follow all us amiga users around the software stores on a Saturday (back when we used to have lots of Amiga soft/hardware stores), he was always going on about how the Atari had better sound than the Amiga, bit of a strange kid really, but that's the closest I've got to an Atari.

[JimS]

I had a 800, 800XL, and a 400 for a while, with all the external drives and stuff. I even started & ran a user group for years. But when the 16 bit machines came out, the Amiga looked better to me so I jumped ship and handed off the group to the ST folk.

There's a lot of similarity between the 8bit Atari machines and the Amiga, more than just the hardware - designed by the same folks.

[actung_bab]

no never had one but didnt get home computer till quite late my best friend had amstad 128 always wanted one of those love game socerry
apprently they where best for music because had in build midi port connect to electronic keyboard appently musician fatboy slim still uses his atrai for composing music with
best friend had atrai st   showed me it had os n the rom thought that was cool
looked alot more pc looking to me a had 720 kb floppy disks

[actung_bab]

Never owned one myself, kinda knew one person who claimed to own one back in the early 90's, he was a kid who used to follow all us amiga users around the software stores on a Saturday (back when we used to have lots of Amiga soft/hardware stores), he was always going on about how the Atari had better sound than the Amiga, bit of a strange kid really, but that's the closest I've got to an Atari.

if thats strange kid was fatboy slim quick cange your story u might get some cash hehe
say where did that cool kid go .... hehe

[redrumloa]

2600 if consoles count. I've had Atari computers in my possession before, but never used them.

[countzero]

I never had one back in the day, but I got an STe, TT and Falcon in last two years just out of curiousity. I have to say I am severely disappointed, especially for the lack of software, and lack of information and organisation (no aminet,) it just takes too much time to set up these babies which I dont have atm ...

I tried to stir up some folks at atari-forums for something like classic workbench equivalent for the Atari, they didnt get idea unfortunately ...

[lsmart]

Atari? If you asked such a question in an Amiga forum in 1990 you probably would have been accused of trolling. I knew people who had Ataris. STs were usually bougt by the parents, because they wanted to do word processing, or expected their offspring to become like Kasparov (who was in the ADs). We knew that the ST had great midi-software, but none of my friends used them for that and they also didn´t own a color monitor.
A cousin of mine had an Atari 800XL and while it was not much different to a C64 it always felt like a cheap "me too"-product to me - made for people who mainly wanted to play games. In fact I don´t know of any serious application or programming package even today, but I guess this is just my ignorance.

[zipper]

Just an 2600 and a bagful of broken joysticks; probably 50 cartridges.

[fishy_fiz]

I only ever knew one person in who owned an atari st back in the day. We'd often do the amiga vs. st thing at school, but it was mostly in good fun as he was pretty willing to admit he'd have preferred an amiga. Even though he was pretty honest about the differences in the machines he swore that Super Hang On was faster on the ST, which is something I should check one day.

Ironically I never played any ST software until I ran StonX on amithlon/os3.9 about 6  or 7 years ago. Was fun to see what I was "competeing" against all those years ago.

After being used to the amiga versions of much of the software I looked at you really "feel" the use of the amigas custom chips. Even things like sound (which incidently is awful) could sometimes slow things down onscreen on the ST vs. Amiga. Games that were little more than ST ports in particular are a good showcase of this as when static they look the same.

Anyway, it was interesting to check out what the "other side" was using back in the day, but it mostly re-enforced I'd made the right choice back then  :-)

[spirantho]

I didn't used to - but I do now. I actually have a 1MB upgraded 520ST (that's the original 1984 one with no disk drive, no TV modulator, nothing!), a 1040STfm or 2 and a Falcon 030.

Funny this is that Atari suffered the same problem as CBM did at the time - Atari would keep throwing upgrades at the users, but the software developers always stuck to the baseline as that was what sold the most.
The STe was a much better machine, and had a blitter, better palette and much better sound. Hardly anything used it.
The Falcon was better than a 1200, in hardware. Still, nothing used it. I remember when the Falcon was coming out Amiga users were pretty worried that their computer wasn't as good as an Atari any more. In 1992 PCs were still predominantly machines that went ping and had up to 16 colours while needing a mortgage to buy. VGA was there but very expensive. It was all Atari vs Amiga.

I miss those days *sniff*, at least the ST had character. It's kind of like in the 60s everyone arguing who's better: The Beatles or The 'Stones? Then a few decades later it's Leona bloomin' Lewis (that's her real full name, by the way, honest) spat out of the Cowell machine who's topping the charts.

Oops, looks like I got side-tracked. Must be getting old...