Atari ST Kickstart Disk

[Pentad]

Hello all,

I don't know how many of you knew that the first shipping Atari ST's did not have TOS in ROM.  They came with a TOS - Start Disk if you will.  I had only read about it but somebody posted a neat video of how the Atari cold booted and asked for a TOS Disk.

You can see it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1jscTrkeso&feature=related

I have to admit it was more colorful than the Amiga 1000 Kickstart Hand Screen.  Atari referred to the TOS disk as a System Disk which I thought was interesting...if not confusing for the user.  System Disk??  TOS Disk seems more accurate.

Anyway, the video shows that and the ST Tour Program (though I don't care about the Tour).  

I thought it was cool as I had never seen it before so I hope you do too!

Cheers!
-P

[thedocbwarren]

Very cool, never seen that.  I've owned several Atari STs and it was very clear from the start the ST was meant to compete with the Macintosh not the Amiga.  That explains the 'System Disk.'

The STe was the Amiga competitor somewhat.

[Belial6]

I wasn't an Atari guy, so my experience with them was only at friend's houses, but that screen looks familiar to me.  Is there anywhere else that the shimmery Atari logs wallpaper the screen like that?

I would say that System disk actually makes more sense.  TOS as I understand it is the OS.  Many users might not know what that means right off the bat.  They likely would know what a system disk was as long as they spoke English.  After the first boot of a new machine, it would likely not matter anymore what was on the screen, as the user would already know what was meant.

[OldSkool]

A 520 ST. Yeah my cousin had this computer.
It was one of the first Atari ST computer. It had an external PSU and no floppy drive (no modulator).
It also had the mouse and joystick connector on the back and not under the keyboard (stupid place).
The poor man's MAC brings back memories (people called it this way because it competed against the MAC during the first years of it's introduction. The ST was designed to beat the MAC on specs but at a lower price (probably also the reason why it had no special game hardware).

[Digiman]

A 520 ST. Yeah my cousin had this computer.
It was one of the first Atari ST computer. It had an external PSU and no floppy drive (no modulator).
It also had the mouse and joystick connector on the back and not under the keyboard (stupid place).
The poor man's MAC brings back memories (people called it this way because it competed against the MAC during the first years of it's introduction. The ST was designed to beat the MAC on specs but at a lower price (probably also the reason why it had no special game hardware).

Erm the only negative thing was the basic sound chip and no WOM like A1000 for OS disk to load. The styling was gorgeous, and the mouse/joystick ports were on the right side same as a C64.

At £399 for the model with a modulator built in ie similar price to the Commodore 128 (but not the bulky FM with built in disk drive) it was great for pixel art, second only to the £1250 A1000 at the time.

The bad point was the OS loaded into regular RAM so a 512k ST was left with about 300kb after the disk loaded. Also there was no colour monitor available on launch so all you saw was the monochrome screen in shop displays with the boot disk requester

I've got one of these disks and it's still new and never used too.