Atari ST Users

[Rogue Trooper]

I split this topic off and moved it into the St thread where it its more suitible.


What you have to remember is DC that Jack Tramiel NEVER intended the ST to be a games machine, he was aiming it head on at the Apple Mac, hence why the computers early nickname was the "Jackintosh". So thinks like hardware scrolling and a kick ass sound chip were not priorities. The Amiga was originally designed to be both a console and computer so its design had games in mind from day 1.

That differs from story i heard about Amiga, lot of the mags i used to read back then were saying how odd it was CBM had designed what looked like the dream games machine (4096 colours, Blitter, powerful sound chip etc) and yet had it down as a buisness machine.Maybe CBM's marketing was off from the early days?

[DreamcastRIP]

... 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 :-)  ...

Well, when the 520 STFM that I ordered from Silica Systems arrived by courier it was a 520 STE they'd sent me instead - the STE had only just made it to the UK so they sent me one instead in the presumption, they stated when asked, that because it was 'Enhanced' their customers would be delighted.

Because the STE (then) wouldn't work with Kick Off (most notably, as far as I was concerned) I had them exchange it for an STFM so to play Dino Dini's sublime masterpiece.

So what does that make me?  :4:

[Greyfox]

The Amiga main selling point was not games, but video desktop computer capable of creating visual elements for tv and multi-media and sound and animation and expected to be treated as an extra piece of kit at tv stations etc.. But they also envisioned it for educational and business , but thank to software companies at the time wanted to produce games on it too..so it all worked out fine in the end, it even had a midi add-on released to par with the ST, but didn't didn't fair out ..

[Rogue Trooper]

Looking at issue 1 of TGM's feature The Duel (ST VS Amiga) they claim:

-Rumour had it the ST hardware design was underway when Tramiel arrived.

-When the Amiga arrived, CBM could'nt afford the up-front cash to market it as a mass market machine, so they decided to sell it as a mixture of buisness micro and executive toy.

-Within weeks of Amiga being launched Tramiel annouced ST-a direct and much cheaper competing piece of hardware and:

GEM was imported from IBM systems, TOS was just an old, crude 8 Bit O/S (bought off the shelf and only likes of Amstrad still used it), just renamed to add credibility.

Digital Research were originally asked to supply a BASIC programming language for the ST, but they could'nt get it done in time, so Atari had to use a rather shaky BASIC written by a Bristol student in his summer holidays.(This version then tided up by Digital  Research+Metacomoco, who wrote the Amiga's O/S).

Andrew Braybrook said the St's 512 colours don't include dark shades.

Any comment on above claims?

:-)

[Rogue Trooper]

The Amiga main selling point was not games, but video desktop computer capable of creating visual elements for tv and multi-media and sound and animation and expected to be treated as an extra piece of kit at tv stations etc.. But they also envisioned it for educational and business , but thank to software companies at the time wanted to produce games on it too..so it all worked out fine in the end, it even had a midi add-on released to par with the ST, but didn't didn't fair out ..

Before you or anyone else mention 'Amiga used for Babylon 5 graphics' (TV show's CGI.Yes it was, but it was a high end Amiga with Video toaster card and said CGI only for parts of the pilot episode.....

:-)

[Rogue Trooper]

... 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 :-)  ...

Well, when the 520 STFM that I ordered from Silica Systems arrived by courier it was a 520 STE they'd sent me instead - the STE had only just made it to the UK so they sent me one instead in the presumption, they stated when asked, that because it was 'Enhanced' their customers would be delighted.

Because the STE (then) wouldn't work with Kick Off (most notably, as far as I was concerned) I had them exchange it for an STFM so to play Dino Dini's sublime masterpiece.

So what does that make me?  :4:

With the STe-It makes you the owner of a machine, which if i go by stuff my mate had, played host to some fab.P.D demo's, but as far as retail games went, only Captive seemed 'enhanced' (more colours, better sound) and you'd be lucky if a lot of the St games your mates had worked on your ST.

With the souped up ST-Know of sound enhancement carts (Monster and did'nt Ubisoft's B.A.T have cart that doubled as anti-piracy dongle and stero sound thing?), but how much did the enhancements cost and did you get your moneys worth?.

[Rogue Trooper]

Looking at issue 1 of TGM's feature The Duel (ST VS Amiga) they claim:

-Rumour had it the ST hardware design was underway when Tramiel arrived.

-When the Amiga arrived, CBM could'nt afford the up-front cash to market it as a mass market machine, so they decided to sell it as a mixture of buisness micro and executive toy.

-Within weeks of Amiga being launched Tramiel annouced ST-a direct and much cheaper competing piece of hardware and:

GEM was imported from IBM systems, TOS was just an old, crude 8 Bit O/S (bought off the shelf and only likes of Amstrad still used it), just renamed to add credibility.

Digital Research were originally asked to supply a BASIC programming language for the ST, but they could'nt get it done in time, so Atari had to use a rather shaky BASIC written by a Bristol student in his summer holidays.(This version then tided up by Digital  Research+Metacomoco, who wrote the Amiga's O/S).

Andrew Braybrook said the St's 512 colours don't include dark shades.

Any comment on above claims?

:-)

The ST hardware was apparently being designed at Commodore and the Tramiels took it with them, I believe Commodore tried to sue Atari over it too.

HiSoft did the ST BASIC so not sure about that story.

TOS was just a disk operating system, did not need to be fancy. GEM however was very advanced for the time as far as an OS goes. The ST was actually supposed to ship with Windows originally but MS couldn't get it ready in time!!!

Of course the ST has dark shades, what utter nonsense.

Well, Braybrook did say he found the Amiga's 4096 colours a bit limiting....

[Rogue Trooper]

The Amiga main selling point was not games, but video desktop computer capable of creating visual elements for tv and multi-media and sound and animation and expected to be treated as an extra piece of kit at tv stations etc.. But they also envisioned it for educational and business , but thank to software companies at the time wanted to produce games on it too..so it all worked out fine in the end, it even had a midi add-on released to par with the ST, but didn't didn't fair out ..

It might have been in the early days but the A500 and A600 were definitely games machines and pretty shite for using as anything else.

Lot of budding artists from that era might have something to say on that.....

[Rogue Trooper]

Re:Braybrooks ST comment, it does appear he might have been refering to no shades of grey....quick google search threw up sites saying ST in High res can only do a white or black pixel.Any 'shades' you see are just an effect created with different pattern fills.

I only used mind for gaming, so clueless, but does seem to be a lot said about it out there.

[Gorf]

Yep, they wanted the ST to have MIDI capabilities and the YM chip had that.

Incorrect. The Atari ST's YM2149F PSG had nothing to do with the MIDI other than one could
write code that would receive MIDI data from the ST's MIDI In port and play the tunes on the
YM chip. All the YM was capable of is 3 voice sound, and some I/O ports for RS-232 and Centronics
parallel printer port type stuff.

The ST used a MC6850P ACIA chip which was specifically designed by Motorola to do MIDI and special
similar communications between computers at high serial speeds(for that day). In fact, just about
every function in the ST, pretty much had its own chip. This is why the ST dominated for a long time
in the music industry, IN SPITE of Atari's dropping the ball on supporting the machine as Apple and
Commodore did. The Hardware for musicians was definitely superior in just about every way.

[TL]

[align=center:vbj5ap9g]The Computer Chronicles - Atari ST (1989)[/align:vbj5ap9g]

[dubchaser]

I was given an Atari 1040STe by one of my customers. Only thing is it didn't comes with a mouse or any leads. Anyone got any spares kicking around? (mouse/power/rf?). Do these run via rf?

I've never owned one previously but played the odd occasion on my mates back in my high school days (I'm mow 38). We used to play Lotus. Can't remember which one but it had the light popping out the bonnet animation.

[retromod]

I remember the time the Atari 130ST was first announced, dropped, 260ST was announced delivered in short quantities, dropped. Atari 520ST announced and then the best one arrived: Atari 1040STF. I finally bought one for about 2000 DM including monochrome monitor. Great deal for a great device. Perfect device for programming, source code editing etc and in comparison to my Amiga 1000 (which was very expensive at the time I bought) a real professional machine with professional tools.

The only bad thing was the split of the user groups due to color/monochrome monitor. In europe the community used the Atari with monochrome monitor, in other countries the color monitor was sold in larger quantities. And exactly that was a big problem. If you develop software as I did it was a mess dealing with games in monochrome AND color. The problem expanded as accelerator cards arrived and newer models which splitted the existing base into smaller fan groups vanishing to history finally. No wonder an Atari ST is only $20 worth these days. I have plenty in my garage but do not use them at all - only for collector purpose.

Finally the Atari was a business/programming/music machine in germany where as the Amiga dominated the gaming universe. For business purpose the Amiga was too bad with it's highres flickering output.

Finally I owned an Atari 520ST, Atari 1040STF, Mega 1, Mega 4.  The Mega ST were sooo nice, too. Blitter Chip, great design and plenty of memory. Then the Atari TT hit the street with it's ugly housing and PC's finally dominated the offices.

The great software on Atari ST allowed me to convert source code very quickly. I loaded the assembler/basic sources from Amiga, PC etc. into the top window and rewrote it to C in realtime at the bottom. Then I copied it on disk and moved to my PC or Amiga to compile and link it with my highspeed I/O functions. Then starting testing on the target device. Scary but required as PC have had no GUI and limited software and Amiga monitor lacked any health requirements with it's awful highres mod.

[TL]

[align=center:322newoh]This is seriously impressive!!!!

Atari ST hicolor video - Tokyo HDR Timelapse[/align:322newoh]

[Greyfox]

Another amazing little demo, this time for the "Silly Venture 2014 scene event"

[align=center:30bzq7xv]www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJHiLCaC_dQ[/align:30bzq7xv]

Hard to believe the power of the ST sometimes with amazing stuff like this.