Atari ST Users

TL · March 06, 2012, 23:33:31 PM

dot.fyre · March 07, 2012, 08:26:04 AM

I have to say I'm not a frequent "user" (ie they're still stored at my parent's house) but I do have an 800xl and a 65xe

Greyfox · March 07, 2012, 11:42:55 AM

yes..I was..got my ST in 1986 and used it nearly every day for 5 years, if it wasn't playing games, I was painting in Degas Elite , Cyber Paint and Neo Chrome, then doing my own Compacts, watching demos, from all the best demo makers of the time TEX, Lost Boys, The Union and allot fo Grazy's stuff, the ST holds for some of the best years of my life, from Pen Pal swapping to collecting LSD, Medway, FoFt and Pompey Pirate Compacts, this was the machine to have infront of your telly back then,

before that, I was a total Atari head, starting up from the Atari VCS, Atari 800, Atari 600xl and then 800x and the 130xe, and once we could afford a 1050 Disk Drive, the whole Atari 8bit scene opened up, as it wasn't long before I had a U.S. Doubler installed (very few people will know what this is) and with the ability to noch holes on the left side of a 5 and quater inch disk, I could use the back side of the disk, compression on this machine was simply awesome, with the U.S.Doubler, later on the "Happy Drive" you could have like 20 + games on each side of the disks, I think I left the Atari 8bit scene with over 2,000 games..mostly bootleggedÂ :-[

but I did have about 30 originals, and to this day, I completely regret ever selling them off..so yes Atari played a big part of my Computer experiences

Greyfox · March 07, 2012, 13:05:26 PM

Quote from: "The Laird"What the hell?Â

TL · June 20, 2012, 15:57:41 PM

onthinice · September 22, 2012, 05:03:14 AM

Quote from: "Greyfox"
Quote from: "The Laird"What the hell?Â

This made my day!!!!!Â LOL!!!!!!

zapiy · September 22, 2012, 10:55:03 AM

That's impossible. You must have but this made me spill my coffee. LMFAO.

zapiy · September 22, 2012, 12:35:01 PM

Are yes I remember. It's your post that I made a thread. So you inadvertently did it.

onthinice · September 22, 2012, 16:47:16 PM

This keeps getting better! LOL!!!!!!

zapiy says "Laird did you take the trash out."

Laird replies "You did before you split my post."

zapiy: Oh yeah!

LOL!!!!!!

Katzkatz · October 15, 2012, 20:39:51 PM

As an Amiga, I looked on the ST as the nemesis.Â Hehehehe.Â Not really.Â I did consider getting one before I got my Amiga.Â In the UK, it came out before the Amiga and also had that massive games pack with it(I think it had IK+ and loads of other things).Â I was also heavily into 'Gauntlet' at the time, and drooled over the US Gold conversion of it for the ST.Â

It was loved by musicians, because of the built-in MIDI ports.Â

Has anyone seen the 'Satan disk' for the ST.Â It was basically an add-on to allow you to use a SD card as a hard drive.Â It looked good.Â I don't think that they are made anymore.Â

Rogue Trooper · August 01, 2013, 18:32:52 PM

I was an ST owner during the ST/Amiga wars (bought an A1200 years later) and whilst i prefered SID music to the Amiga stuff (and still do), the Amiga chip was so, so far ahead of the crap Atari put in the St, it's honestly like comparing chalk and cheese.

Clever folks got some decent stuff coaxed from the ST chip, but it really was a huge dissapointment in a 16 Bit machine.I'd rather they kept the A8 sound chip myself....

Anyone know why they changed chips?.

Greyfox · August 01, 2013, 18:59:07 PM

Didn't they do that with Atari STe Range with stereo sound?, I myself think the YM has. Great distinctive sound and adored it for so long before I got my Amiga, plus the tunez the ST demo scene were knocking out where incredible, I actually felt this chip was better than the a8 pokey, it was crisper and cleaner, yet the pokey had 4 channels vs the 3 channels the YM chip had..and to me at the time Atari seemed to be going backwards? But as Laird explained they had their reasons and mishaps with incompatible sound chips..either way we where all exposed to sound fantastic music from both chips and am eternally grateful to have experienced it

DreamcastRIP · August 01, 2013, 19:18:56 PM

Quote from: "The Laird"Yep, they wanted the ST to have MIDI capabilities and the YM chip had that. It was a wise decision putting it in given how the ST became the choice of musicians everywhere and revolutionised the dance music scene.

Well, it was 'a wise decision' for some of the ST's userbase (and in helping attract certain types of user to buying an ST) but not necessarily for ST gamers.

As someone who used an ST primarily for gaming I'd much rather have had a computer with a better soundchip that rivalled the Amiga than the computer's MIDI ports which I seldom ever had cause to use.

Rogue Trooper · August 01, 2013, 19:21:18 PM

Quote from: "The Laird"
Quote from: "Rogue Trooper"I was an ST owner during the ST/Amiga wars (bought an A1200 years later) and whilst i prefered SID music to the Amiga stuff (and still do), the Amiga chip was so, so far ahead of the crap Atari put in the St, it's honestly like comparing chalk and cheese.

Clever folks got some decent stuff coaxed from the ST chip, but it really was a huge dissapointment in a 16 Bit machine.I'd rather they kept the A8 sound chip myself....

Anyone know why they changed chips?.

Yep, they wanted the ST to have MIDI capabilities and the YM chip had that. It was a wise decision putting it in given how the ST became the choice of musicians everywhere and revolutionised the dance music scene.

Originally the ST was supposed to have an AMY chip too (the replacement for POKEY said to be far superior to SID but similar in design) but the new Tramiel engineers could not get it working with the ST hardware so left it out. I personally think they should have bunged in a stereo alongside the YM rather than nothing instead.

Hmmmn.'wise' only from a marketing to a select % of your target market, more like.when your selling your computer as a games machine also, not so wise, to have your 16 Bit games computer having a worse soundchip, not only compared to it's rival, but also your 8 Bit machine it replaced, wisdom of Solomon was not.

ThinkÂ one of Oceans music people said the Speccy 128K soundchip was superior to ST's as it had a buzzer that could be used also.

Atari really should have done something better than just rush it out with cheapest thing that worked at the time.

Rogue Trooper · August 01, 2013, 19:24:52 PM

Quote from: "DreamcastRIP"
Quote from: "The Laird"Yep, they wanted the ST to have MIDI capabilities and the YM chip had that. It was a wise decision putting it in given how the ST became the choice of musicians everywhere and revolutionised the dance music scene.

Well, it was 'a wise decision' for some of the ST's userbase (and in helping attract certain types of user to buying an ST) but not necessarily for ST gamers.

As someone who used an ST primarily for gaming I'd much rather have had a computer with a better soundship that rivalled the Amiga than the computer's MIDI ports which I seldom ever had cause to use.

Mates and myself used to put music on in the background LOUDLY when gaming on ST games 95% of the time.Sure St games used samples, but that ate up CPU time and often samples sounded tinny and fuzzy.The ST chip sound FX in games always sounded very harsh on the ears.Of the 5 ST (well 4 and 1 STe-Snobby bastard) owners i knew as a teenager (and later 1 1040STFM owner, snobby 1 Meg bastard :-) ), none of us bought the ST for MIDI.

It'd be like us saying we bought a PS3 as it had that 'Folding' thing you could run when PS3 was'nt being used or...HOME, lol!!!!