so I picked up a Atari 1040ST

[TheMagicM]

..for next to nothing. is it good for anything other then just gettin rid of it on ebay? lol  

I dont have any software for it so I cant play any games or anything..

[TjLaZer]

I have a whole ST collection.  It is very comperable to the Amiga.  But the Amiga is better.  If you want to get rid of it let me know. I am actually looking for a 1040 as mine has a bad motherboard.

[coldfish]

If I remember right, the ST has a standard 720K PC DD compatable floppy drive.

"The disk drives used by Atari ST computers are industry standard 360K or 720K double-density floppy drives, exactly the same as those in PCs... at least in those days.

PC drives can be used as replacement drives, only nowadays it is difficult to find 720K drives. You can however use just about any 1.44Mb HD drive as these will perform perfectly well in DD 720K mode."


You can copy ST-roms to a ordinary PC floppy (with a disk image dumping app like Makedisk) and then run them on the real ST.

very good ST link:
http://www.megacom.net/~q-funk/ST/

[badalias]

I have an Atari 1040STe too, I was thinking of posting a similar post but never got around to it... I'd like to put some software on it so I can show it off... Anybody with ideas of how to do this?

[TjLaZer]

You just copy the disk images on a PC to a 720k DSDD floppy disk!  Or if you are lucky to download a Zip file of the programs, you just copy them to a PC 720k disk and then boot the disk in the ST!

[TheMagicM]

hmm..now to find a game to put on there..hopefully I can compare a Amiga game and a Atari game to see which is better.. A500 vs. Atari 1040STf

[badalias]

TjLaZer wrote:
You just copy the disk images on a PC to a 720k DSDD floppy disk!  Or if you are lucky to download a Zip file of the programs, you just copy them to a PC 720k disk and then boot the disk in the ST!

Ok, I have a 720Kb MS-DOS format disk with sysinfo.zip and sysinfo.prg on it. The *.prg file seems to try to run, but then quits with TOS error #35. What's that all about? How do get this to work? I have the 1040STe with (I think) "rainbow" TOS 1.04, and the 720Kb floppy drive.

[TjLaZer]

I tried that program and it does not work for me either, here try this one:

http://www.vintagecomputercafe.com/files/atari/SYSINFO.Zip

[TjLaZer]

Here to get you started!  Some Atari Games and the ST Tour:

http://www.vintagecomputercafe.com/files/atari/STTOUR.ZIP
http://www.vintagecomputercafe.com/files/atari/ATARIGAMES.ZIP

Just copy the files to a PC 720k disk and run them on the ST.  Enjoy!

[Argus]

TheMagicM wrote:
hmm..now to find a game to put on there..hopefully I can compare a Amiga game and a Atari game to see which is better.. A500 vs. Atari 1040STf

Try Dungeon Master or Chaos Strikes Back, I'm playing CSB on the 1040ST right now.  I got my versions from the Dungeon Master/Chaos Strikes Back Encyclopedia site (http://dmweb.free.fr/).  There are zip and msa (an atari ST archive format) versions for download, iirc.  You definitely could use a second floppy drive (SF357 is the double-sided double-density version/SF354 does only single-sided dd disks i.e. 360K).  Your built in floppy should be a 720K drive.  One thing I've found is that the ST floppy drives don't seem to like 720K disks formatted on the Amiga with Crossdos, format your floppies with the ST or on a PC first.  DM and CSB seem to be a little less impressive on the ST, though not by much (e.g. there's no map feature for CSB as in the Amiga version).

Overall, hardware-wise the ST seems to be a poor man's 1MB OCS Amiga, using the 68000 cpu and four "custom" chips (glue, mmu, video shifter and dma).  It also uses an off the shelf Yamaha sound chip for 3 voice sound and MIDI support (Paula has 4 voice support). A base ST can display up to 512 colors compared to the original Amiga's 4096 in HAM mode (more with the STe, but not even up to snuff with ECS).  The gui is the mac-like GEM by Digital Research.  I recommend at least TOS version 1.02 ROMs for better gui, floppy access, etc.  

The only area I can see the ST was better really is the built in dma port and it's midi ports.  The dma port is where you can plug in either an Atari dma SH204 ahdi 'pseudo-scsi' mfm drive or a 3rd party scsi controller and drive.  The Amiga needed extra hardware to supply a dma peripheral port and midi.

You can really see the influence of the C64/128 C= hardware in the ST design that Jack Tramiel must have favored from his C= days.  The floppy and video monitor ports have round DIN ports, and of course the 'computer in keyboard' look that the A500/600/1200 later used.

I'm starting to like the Amiga and the Atari ST just about the same, they grow on you and seem like long-lost cousins once you get to know them.

[Argus]

TjLaZer wrote:
I have a whole ST collection.  It is very comperable to the Amiga.  But the Amiga is better.  If you want to get rid of it let me know. I am actually looking for a 1040 as mine has a bad motherboard.

What's wrong with your motherboard?  I think I have some replacement dip chips if you know which one you might need.  

[Speelgoedmannetje]

TheMagicM wrote:
hmm..now to find a game to put on there..hopefully I can compare a Amiga game and a Atari game to see which is better.. A500 vs. Atari 1040STf

STdisk (plain dos program) will do the job for putting images on disk. Mostly, the Amiga games sound better, rather than look better (well, but there's no ElfMania for the ST)

[badalias]

TjLaZer wrote:
Here to get you started!  Some Atari Games and the ST Tour:

http://www.vintagecomputercafe.com/files/atari/STTOUR.ZIP
http://www.vintagecomputercafe.com/files/atari/ATARIGAMES.ZIP

Just copy the files to a PC 720k disk and run them on the ST.  Enjoy!

Got it going... The SysInfo program you found works...

It also helps if you unzip the files before you put them on the 720Kb disk...

I got a couple games from here but you'll need a copy of MSA on your Atari to use them...