Difference between Amiga and Atari 520?

[Amiduffer]

Hey all. I was at Weirdstuff warehouse today, and next to the C=128, was some old Atari stuff, an 800 with external floppy drive, Atari monitor, and a somewhat beat up looking 520. I haven't really thought about it too much, nobody I hung around with had them, and the "rivalry" so-called between C= and Atari as far as their computer systems went, was a topic in the magazines in the early days.

How does the 520 and Ami size up, processor wise, use, and stuff made for it? If I remember, it was marketed as a game machine to counter the A500.

Just curious.

[InTheSand]

Summary (from a 1985 perspective):

Atari ST: cobbled together from mostly off-the-shelf parts, limited graphics-related capabilities, very limited inbuilt audio, nasty keyboard, nastier operating system (GUI provided by Digital Research's GEM, other OS parts via "TOS" which was a CP/M clone) with no multi-tasking.

Amiga: designed over a period of years, highly configurable video capabilities / graphics modes, highly advanced audio capabilities, fully pre-emptive multitasking operating system designed from scratch to suit the hardware (e.g. use of multiple draggable screens, etc).

The ST gained acceptance in music studios as a MIDI controller, thanks to its inbuilt MIDI interface, and also as a cheap DTP system, thanks to a dedicated monochrome 640x480 monitor (which gave a rock-solid display) and a cheap laser printer. Its 68000 was also clocked slightly faster than the Amiga's. For the early years of both machines, the ST was significantly cheaper than the Amiga.

And the Amiga story I guess we all know!

Just my 2c worth! I'm sure my description of the ST will be savaged!  :-D

 - Ali

[tormedhammaren]

All amigans should watch this episode of "The Computer Chronicles" from 1985:

http://www.archive.org/details/Amigaand1985

Two really great machines.

[nadoom]

The Atari ST had built in midi apparently which meant it had quite a following in the audio industry, this and its cheaper price point were its only redeeming factors when compared with the mighty Amiga 500.

I nearly bought one back in the early ninties, im really glad i went for the A500+, its a much more refined piece of kit

From a games perspective, the A500 had 32 (64) colours and the ST had 16. The ST's 68000 was clocked at 8 Mhz, whereas the Amigas was clocked at 7.12 ish. You could emulate an ST on an amiga 500 but you couldnt do visa versa on an ST, says it all really!

i could go on all day,

[chsedge]

it was not the builtin midi only but the fact on the ST you had cubase which wasn't available on the amiga. cubase dominated the music world for the subsequent years on st and on the mac then.

again at the end the software is maybe more important than the hardware...

[Dr_Righteous]

Gee, a simple change of oscillators and you've pretty much blown the dreaded ST out of the water with an A500... How sad is THAT?!

[_ThEcRoW]

"fully pre-emptive multitasking operating system designed from scratch to suit the hardware (e.g. use of multiple draggable screens, etc)"

Workbench 1.3 is a great piece of software, but it wasn't built from scratch by Commodore. They used an already made os calle pios or so, and the Amiga team only did the final touches.

[McVenco]

Workbench 1.3 is a great piece of software, but it wasn't built from scratch by Commodore. They used an already made os calle pios or so, and the Amiga team only did the final touches.

Urgh. I hate it when people say that.

Pure and utter blasphemy! :madashell:  :pissed:

[tormedhammaren]

Tripos, actually. Most of it was implemented in a programming language know as BCPL (precedor of B which is a precedor of C), which AmigaOS 4 finally have got rid of. There were never many BCPL-fans (Amiga Guru Book says that there were two)... TRIPOS is actually still developed.

Tripos was actually a backup plan. Here is a very good article by Andy Finkle about CAOS: The original project, not based on Tripos:
http://www.thule.no/haynie/caos.html

[Marco]

_ThEcRoW wrote:it wasn't built from scratch by Commodore.

Doesn't take away from the fact that it was a fully pre-emptive multi-tasking multi-threaded OS and AtariTOS wasn't. Nor was anything else for quite some time afterwards. Took Microsoft until Win95 to actually have a GUI OS that wasn't just a graphical shell for DOS.

[InTheSand]

Marco wrote:
Took Microsoft until Win95 to actually have a GUI OS that wasn't just a graphical shell for DOS.

I remember Mac users at the time saying Windows 95 = Macintosh '89!

And then the Amiga users hit back with Windows 95 = Macintosh '89 = Amiga '85!

And don't forget it took Microsoft until Windows XP to have a consumer OS that finally dumped the underlying DOS-based stuff!! Though at the time, Win95 with purely 32-bit applications was good enough (and still seems to be for some! - I still find people here using Win9x-based PCs for everyday use!)

 - Ali

[K7HTH]

InTheSand wrote:...I still find people here using Win9x-based PCs for everyday use!)- Ali

A continuing trend.

[TjLaZer]

The Atari 520ST was Atari's answer to the Commodore's Amiga 1000.  They actually beat CBM to the punch by releasing it first!  Sold fairly well, especially in Europe.  The Atari 1040STf mostly competed with the Amiga 500 with 1MB for a few years until the Mega series continued to compete with the A2000.  Then the MegaSTE/TT030 competed with the A3000/4000!  I own all these machines btw  

[chsedge]

For completeness Tj we can say that the 030 lines featured new video modes at 32k or 256 colours (320x200, 640x480) and a sound chip better than the amiga one. I think prices of the Atari were always a bit lower then the Amiga couterparts, am I right?

[chsedge]

win95 is an hybrid 16bit/32bit system, win98 is not but it has compatibility with the dos stuff. winxp is based on a different kernel (derived from the NT family). If many people still use Win9X is because it has a lot of software and still good hw support even if is a discontinued product.