Atari ST Retrospective Exhibit Demo at Vintage Computer Festival VCF East
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- čas přidán 3. 08. 2024
- Our Virtual Vintage Computer Festival East continues with...Atari ST ??? Have we lost our minds? Well, come check out our buddy Peter Fletcher aka Recta_Pete Atari ST retrospective exhibit at VCF East and see what you think. Peter demonstrates the entire line of Atari ST computers starting with the 520ST and ending with the Falcon 030. There are also some other goodies sprinkled in like the Stacy 2, Atari Lynx, Atari Portfolio, and the very rare Atari ST-PAD. Come check out the Amiga's arch rival and see why the Amiga rules!
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Music:
Homunculi by AceMan / Agenda ^ Dreamweb ^ HUGE LOAD ^ Resistance
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Atari ST-PAD Courtesy of Atari Museum
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Dave Needle Photograph Courtesy of Remotely Interested
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#AtariST #Atari #retrogamer - Věda a technologie
I was an Atari ST guy, just because at the time of buying my next computer from starting with a ZX-81, then Spectrum, then Sinclair QL, I wanted to go to Amiga but I just couldn't quite make the price of a A500, back in those days the cost of an Amiga was about half a year's salary for me at the time. I managed to get a 520 ST as they were just that much cheaper. Only the rich kids could afford the Amiga. We all wanted one but just couldn't justify it with a family and other bills to pay. Of course when the rich kids used to poke fun at our cheapo machines, that hurt quite a bit as deep down we all wanted the A500 or the A1200 so we retaliated in kind and went out of our way to prove that the Amiga wasn't necessarily better in all respects. I think now the war should be over as we can all afford Amigas and STs and we should all get along as the one great family of guys who love retro computers and bury the hatchet. The key thing now is to love and care for these machines and particularly now, show love and care to each other as we all fight this blasted disease. I really feel for you guys in the US, particularly in New York. We seem to be getting through it (touches wood) here in the UK. Be safe everyone.
I have more love for the 8-bit days of Commodore, Apple and Atari, then the 16-bit Amiga, Atari ST, and Apple Mac, as here in the US many of us went straight to IBM PC clones from the 3 major 8-bit lines, myself included, as you could piece together a system from computer/gray market fairs that rolled into town a few times a year here in the US for a reasonable price, so coming across old Atari ST, and Amiga machines at least in my neck of the woods of the Southeastern US is not as easy as it seems to be in the UK, and mainland Europe, and prices online like eBay have gone high even with some of the 8-bit stuff. But I agree we should all be getting along no matter what system we enjoyed back in the day, as these machines become more rare each passing day, and love learning anything I can about all retro computers.
Also New York, and New Jersey are indeed the hot spots, but for most of the country, but it's not as bad as the MSM media has made it out to be for the rest of us far as the spread of the "Human Malware" thankfully, and as things start to open back up, I do hope people use caution, and keep wearing a mask when shopping, and follow the distancing guidelines.
Extremely well said Graham! Thanks for sharing your story. We do feel very fortunate to have had the Amiga. It is very strange, but we never really felt the whole Amiga vs ST thing strongly here in NY. We were just all Amiga guys and didn't really know anyone with a ST. The 1000 was out of the price range, but we were able to swing the 500 when it came out. And you are 100% on point. These days preserving all these vintage computers is so important. We are all on the same team. Also, thanks for your well wishes. Fortunately we are OK here in NY even though it has been very bad here.
@@CommodoreFan64 Well said and glad to hear you are doing well. Please be safe it's so easy to forget and get infected and us older guys (I am 61) seem to be at more risk than the ladies and younger folk. I just hope they find a vaccine soon and we can all come out of hibernation and get back to computer clubs and retro meets etc.
@@TheGuruMeditation Glad to hear you are doing OK, I was very concerned when all the news came out about New York as I know you are from New York State. Be safe, it does seem like you are coming through it like us in the UK. We just have to be careful not to relax too much and get infected until there is a vaccine. Thanks for your reply.
@@Wallygjs Yes, very true. And we are just a few minutes from New Rochelle, NY where it all started here. Very scary, but fortunately we are OK. Thanks for your concern and all my best to you and your loved ones
Atari forever!
Atari is the best tool for musicians, the livig legend.
Cheers, love your passion for Atari
I bought a 520ST from my college roommate when he traded up to a 1040ST, then traded up to the 1040 myself not too long after. The ST was a machine with some limitations, but it was the platform on which I taught myself C, programming in Megamax Laser C. That's a skill that's been valuable for my whole career.
That is great to hear Matt! It is awesome how many of us have our roots in these classic computers
@@TheGuruMeditation Even better, recently I found some of the programs I wrote back then (fractal graphics generators)--I'd uploaded them to local BBS systems as public domain software, and in the early 90s somebody put them on a commercial shovelware CD that eventually got archived on Jason Scott's cd.textfiles.com, where I was able to dig them up and run them again on an ST emulator.
This brings back some memories. I had an Amiga 500 and an ST1040. I still have that ST1040 and it's still running. I use it as a sequencer occasionally.
It's not the fastest technology today but it was very reliable back in the 80s and 90s. Thanks for the video... kudos!
Cheers Guido! Wow that is pretty cool. I didn't know anyone that had both an Amiga and an ST. That really cool.
Thank you. I used the Amiga for graphics stuff and games. The ST1040 was the control center of my home studio.
Today that probably doesn't mean much but 30 years ago the Atari did an awesome job.
I really enjoyed this. I had a 520 STFM for about 4 years, my first computer, and I loved it. It didn't match the Amiga on video, on sound output, or on the sheer polish that the Amiga could bring to games, but it was a terrific general purpose computer. The strengths for me were it's value for money, the high-res mode (if you had a monochrome monitor) and the fact that the OS was on ROM. In the days when a hard drive was way out of my league, not needing to boot the OS from floppy was huge. As for games, while it didn't quite match the Amiga it had a huge library and if you ignored the sound many weren't all that different.
Amiga and ST people spent a lot of time trying to tear each other's machines down, but in the end, both were overtaken by computing history.
Thanks for the insightful comment Bennycake! It is so true. Amiga and Atari could beat each other up, but Mac and IBM were the real enemies! Anyway, great points about the ST. That monochrome monitor is great and the ST does deliver an amazing bang for the buck. I didn't even think about the OS being on a ROM. That is a really cool feature. How difficult was it to upgrade that, or was it upgradeable?
@@TheGuruMeditation You just need to upgrade the ROM chips. There are toggle hardware ROM upgrades even going back to then. What Atari Corp didn't do was follow through with a clear upgrade to the Blitter chip. The ST was finished and out the door before the Blitter chip was completed and then Atari Corp had a bunch of issues with contract chip companies to manufacture it for them [I think they went with GE mostly] and then there was a shortage so when the MegaST arrived with the Blitter, they didn't follow through with the Blitter upgrades for the 520ST and 1040ST. There was also the DRAM crisis at the same time that really hurt the ST - and others - in the States at the time. Then there were also the software publishers who didn't support the TOS ROM upgrades well so a lot of people - myself included - kept the OS stock. Since that time, most of the games have been patched but that was long after the platform was dead. The STe series also had a Blitter plus the Enhanced Joystick Ports that weren't supported well by the publishers but were re-used in the Atari Jaguar. The TT didn't have a Blitter because the 68030 at 32MHz was deemed to be fast enough to not use one... and others to this day claim that the software "Blitter" known as "NVDI' was better than the Blitter anyway for software that was GEM based, and outside of the STe's version which had hardware scrolling and sprites built into it as well...
Small correction: The Atari 520 ST was rushed to market to beat the Amiga 1000, not the Amiga 500 (which came out in 1987).
You are correct. I knew I'd screw at least one thing up and you've found the first. I'm sure I've got a few other things confused too.
@@atarimac I will let that one slide Pete ;-) Man I can't believe I didn't catch that either
Good call JW3HH you are right.
@@TheGuruMeditation We can overdub ;)
What are the evidence that Atari 520 ST was "rushed to the market" due to the Amiga 1000?
Really nice coverage, I’m a big fan of both machines (Amiga and ST)
Best computers ever built. Both of 'em :)
Cheers WB. Thanks for the comment and glad you enjoyed!
10 minutes of Atari History by the Amiga Gurus. Respect on both Amiga and ST line
Cheers guys! We love all computer history even though Amiga is out favorite!
I never can get enough of the Guru Meditation!! More! More! Please...
Thanks so much Brad! I was worried about going "off brand" and have one more video left, but I figured these are interesting and I wanted to share them
Growing up, I never knew any other people who owned Atari machines (even we Amiga fans were few and far between), so knew little about the ST. I just accepted the common knowledge that the ST was kinda lame compared to my A1000. Recently, I've been studying computer architecture and designing my own 8-bit system from scratch, and having since taken a close look at how the ST works, I have to say the Atari architecture is a pretty decent machine. The Amiga chipset is tricky to replicate and cost-reduce, especially if you try to move from the CIA timers to a proper peripheral controller. The ST is far more straightforward, flexible, and expandable, and it would have been nice if the A1200 had a few of the features the Falcon did. I have a lot more respect for the Atari guys these days. 8)
That is cool Waccoon. Wow, building your own 8-bit computer? that is amazing. I would love to hear more about that. Yeah I imagine the Amiga's custom chips are difficult to replicate, but man are the cool :-) No hate for Atari here. I always though Commodore and Atari were cool. Never liked Apple and IBM as much
Had the Amiga been released by "Atari" as originally planned, I bet they wouldn't have used those CIA chips. I bet that was a Commodore call to use those chips from MOS/CSG instead of something possibly better from a different chip company. I still contend with them owning MOS, Commodore should've been able to have sold the Amiga cheaper than the ST...
If you’ve watched a Bil Herd video (or seen him speak at VCF) then you’d know that was the same Commodore that delivered the Plus/4 (or “minus 4” to some) with its TED chip architecture (designed for budget machines) at a price far too high. Get less than C64 for more money. What could go wrong?
Me? Bitter about how CBM consistently shot themselves in the foot? Oh no definitely not! 😇
A very interesting peek over the fence. Thank you very much!
Cheers SledgeFox
thanks for taking the little journey with us
@@TheGuruMeditation keep well and healthy!
Nice video guys, very interesting and Peter's passion shines through as the star. Despite being an Amiga girl through and through, I have a huge amount of respect for the ST line, that monochrome monitor with Cubase or the DTP packages made a great computer, certainly gave Apple Macs a run for the money.
That monitor is really cool! Yesh, Pete is the best. We have a blast every year with our Amiga exhibit next to his ST exhibit. It is great fun. Hope all is well in Japan Vickie !
@@TheGuruMeditation Yes all is well here Bill!
Like with the Amiga, there were hardware Mac emulators for the ST. The Magic Sac being the most famous. Arguably, the Atari STacy was the first Macintosh laptop. It made Apple so mad that they tried to restrict their dealers from selling Mac ROM chips to non-Mac owners.
Absolute Great Video as usually! , Anthony doing very well and the other guy Too , Grettings Amiga Bill!
Thank you so much Johnny! You are correct, Anthony did a great job with the interview and Peter is a super cool guy
Where I went to school, Amiga and Atari ST users were allies in the war against the IBM compatible. Not enemies.
It is SO true. Apple and IBM were the real bad guys. Commodore and Atari were the cool kids :-)
@@TheGuruMeditation if only more people thought that way back then...
Really enjoyed watching. Great to see Peter too. I used to have a Falcon and TT late 90s. Like an idiot I got a mortgage and sold everything 😑
Long live the Atari ST!!!! #AtariCrypt 👀
Great video and interview! Thanks for sharing!
Cheers, thanks Dave4Shumps. Stay Rad!
Got my ST hook in 1984 in Chicago. Software Plus store was my extreme hardware and software magnet. Got the 520ST, upgraded to internal memory upgrade, added the Tweety board, external Atari HD, sprung for PC Ditto and then the suite of Magic Sac products. Still have it and play often. Then got a Falcon and TT with full memory outlays. Since sold both those two (note to self: should not have done that). Have since added Mega STs and ICD scsi hardware.
Long live Atari ST fanbase - Long live Commodore Amiga fanbase
Whoo hoo! We have to do our best to keep all the old machines alive. Even though Amiga is the best ;-)
@@TheGuruMeditation if only there were more native games for the STe and the Falcon030. :)
This was quite neat to watch knowing almost knowing nothing about the Atari. :)
Thanks Dave! I am glad you enjoyed and hope you are well!
Bliss is owning an Amiga 500, Amiga 1200, and an Atari 1040STe. ;)
That is bliss for sure, but I would go Falcon 030
I still have my Amiga 500, 1200 and Atari 520STe... The STe can be upgraded with memory chips on the motherboard, right?
@@FindecanorNotGmail Yes, 30-pin SIMMS which can be found all over the internet (and Exxos) as long as they are FPM and minimum 150ns ram speed.
@@TheGuruMeditation ode for a Vampire board for the Falcon030 and a shedload of "AltRAM" for it beyond the 14MB max of "ST RAM". :)
that falcon!
The Falcon is sweet!
@@TheGuruMeditation Another thing to be envious of the modern Amiga platform... having Hyperion Entertainment continuing to develop for AmigaOS. Atari TOS is kinda in limbo because it's abandonware but people hoarding the source code aren't releasing it because it isn't officially open source and the modern "Atari" - ahem, "Infogrames" - won't pay to have the source code cleared to be released under an open-source license. Meanwhile, the owners of DRI's IP has released non-Atari GEM code as open source...
Atari ST forever !
Awesome video
Thanks so much!
@@TheGuruMeditation You are welcome
Including the ST name inside the guru logo is pure blasphemy :-P
Nice video brother and that was a cool guy!!!
Ha ha, I know. I almost had a mental breakdown when I was making it. Yeah, Pete rocks. It is so fun having our exhibits next to each other at VCF
I really appreciated TOS (The Operating System) being on ROM. It allowed for very quick start-ups, only going to the drive to fetch user preferences. I wish PCs had an OS on chip option.
Nothing wrong with covering Atari as well. An honourable (but lesser) rival for Amiga
I never knew anything about the ST so this was a good learning experience. Also VCF East was postponed this year and Peter is a great friend of ours with a beautiful exhibit so we want showcase his hard work
@@TheGuruMeditation I owned an ST before my Amiga. When I saw the spaceship/asteroid sequence in Blood Money intro I bought an A500 within a week. A week after that I sold it and bought an A2000, 40Mb Quantum HDD and it spiralled after that!!! :-) Amiga always is the machine I most "loved"
One disadvantage that the early STs had was that you couldn't use all graphics modes on all monitors. They had a black and white one which could do the high res (uninterlaced if I recall) and the color one that could do the rest. Of course later monitors were released that could handle both.
Good point. It does seem like a pain to have to purchase 2 monitors. I bet most people wanted to use the ST for both color games & applications as well as B&W ones
Same problem on the Amiga. I remember the multisync monitors were quite expensive, and a reason why the "Flicker Fixer" boards were invented
There were a lot of ST owners who did buy both monitors. Practical Peripherals sold the "Monitor Master" switcher box that was very popular. Although probably not as popular as their "Mouse Master" switch box... But yeah, a lot of ST fans did drool over the NEC MultiSync monitors back then. Personally, I liked the extremely rare Atari PS3000 monitor. The only downside to it was that the floppy drive was an internalized SF354 single-sided drive instead of an internalized SF314 double-sided drive...
I put a flicker fixer in my A2000 back in the day. I remember the Mouse Master and Monitor Master. When I started to dip my toes into ST after all these years I went to the Bay of e and bid on each of those (and the “video key”). My apologies those whom I outbid. A collecting fool and his money are soon parted.
10 BID HIGHER
20 GOTO 10
@@nickpalance3622 It's great that all of us "kids" who are now adults now have the money to buy the things we could only dream of back in the day, or NEW stuff coming down the line like brand new accelerators like the Vampire or even all-new retro computers such as the Mega-65 or the Commander X16. Both of those are starting to look awesome!
Beautiful are those ST machines I admint ;-)
I think I saw a SST case there among Atari computers! Probably it was also lend by Computer history museum! I would also be interesting to hear some story about SST!
@The Guru M. it was really nice video! THANK YOU!
Thanks so much for the kind words. Glad you enjoyed the video. I will ask Pete about the case
@@TheGuruMeditation That would be great! Thanks in advance! :)
and don't forget you could by a cartridge, add 2 Mac roms, and turn your ST into a Mac that ran faster than an Apple Mac.
You turned to the dark side. :)
LOL don't worry. We checked out the competition, and the winner is clear...AMIGGGGAAAAAA!!!!!
lol. this guy sounds like a military trainer. :p
LOL! He is the R Lee Ermey of Atari ST. Ha ha. Pete is the best though. Such a good guy
I keep seeing retrospectives messing this up. The Portfolio was not an MS-DOS computer. It ran an OS called Dip-DOS, which by all appearances looked like MS-DOS, but it was not DOS-compatible. It had the same prompt, and the same commands as DOS. However, you could not take a MS-DOS application and run it on the Portfolio. It was file-compatible with a few DOS applications, though. You could take a spreadsheet done in something like Lotus 1-2-3, and transfer it over to the Portfolio, and work on it in its built-in spreadsheet application, for example.
I still have my 520stfm.
Nice!
Nooo Atari nooo... Only Amigaaa! 💪
Don't worry this is a brief pause. It is good to check out the competition and see what those rascals are up to. The Amiga will come out looking A-OK
@mauro esteban rodriguez zubieta Atari is bad copy of the Amiga and workbench. 🤪😅
Respect to Atari, but nothing will beat Commodore 8-bit's, and Amiga for retro computing.
Yes, Amiga is the best! But I do like the Atari 8-bit as well and of course the C64 is legendary
Not sure what the race or battle is where someone wins and “beats” others. Nor what makes “retro” special and different. I still have my A1000, A2000, A3000T, 800XL, and a 130XE.
There is nothing like Print Shop and an old Epson (or compatible) dot matrix printer. Everything is cut-sheet these days and the photo roll paper (and the ink carts needed) are costly!
I enjoy a few modern games on my Wii and Wii-U but there isn’t much new these days that interest me. Old school Activision and Electronic Arts is where it’s at!
And by having XL & XE computers for 8-bit, I keep it in the family with regards to the Amiga. Or I should say vice versa. The Commodore label doesn’t condone anything special. Just ask the Plus/4. CBM bought their way to an excellent 16/32 platform. They bought the Atari 8-bit’s big brother. The C64 and ST are each “the computer that Jack built.” Nothing wrong with that. Fine fine machines. I’ve got all four platforms now. But I never forget that labels are skin deep and they both couldn’t market themselves out of a wet electrolytic capacitor. Sad. 😞
Beat the Amiga (1000) to market, not the 500. There was also a 130ST in the magazines with 128k RAM.
And don't forget about the 260ST which did have a limited release in Europe. Also, the 520ST+.
Yeah Pete knows he miss spoke there. Can't believe neither of us caught this in the edit, ugh
@@TheGuruMeditation no worries. It's a great video. I'm surprised the guys didn't have an Atari PS3000 monitor. It was limited run and basically only Federated sold it [long before Atari Corp bought Federated]. It was an SC1224 color monitor with a built-in SF354 disc drive. It's too bad it was the 354 instead of the double-sided SF314. But it looked hella cool back then. Like a non-existent color Macintosh at that time...
Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the early 520ST’s (that booted TOS off floppy before the ROMs were finalized) use a good chunk of main memory? And the A1000 had a separate memory bank just for Kickstart? Meaning you got your 256KB for you in the A1000? My A1000 was bought used and had the 256 upgrade in the front bezel. I’d assumed that it was a given that A1000 owners sooner or later got that.
What set it apart vs the Amiga 1000 and Mac? PRICE with monitor!!!!!!! I was too frugal to buy the (Atari/Jay Miner) Commodore A1000, so I bought the (Commodore) Atari 1040ST.
The price was right for sure. And it is surprising how people don realize that Jay Miner was an engineer at Atari before designing the Amiga. I hope people learn that from our other videos.
Hey now, there were Atari Inc. people that worked on the Atari ST as well. DRI's GEM GUI wasn't so hot on the PC but Atari Corp's version was, in part thanks to Landon Dyer, the ex-Atari Inc programmer who wrote Donkey Kong for the Atari 8-bits... Hardware-wise, the ST would've had Atari Inc DNA in it had Shiraz been able to get the AMY sound chip working in it. But unfortunately, that didn't happen and Atari Corp went with the YM2149 sound chip since Yamaha wouldn't sell them the much better YM2151. The YM2151 was in most arcade games from 1985-1995...
@@TheGuruMeditation I remember the Amiga 1000 being about $1,600 when it came out and that was only with 256K RAM too. It was the Amiga 500 that turned it all around for Commodore which allowed the Amiga line to ultimately beat the ST in sales... Atari Corp got too distracted with Federated and all of the console gaming competition against monopolist Nintendo at the time to get the STe out in a decent amount of time and they foolishly didn't upgrade enough of the hardware. Atari fans were expecting a 68010 or 68020 and VGA graphics inside the STe as its release dragged on and those rumored [critical] upgrades just didn't happen...
@@TheJeremyHolloway Yeah, exactly. The A500 was a game changer and possibly Commodore's greatest achievement with Amiga. Getting the 1000 into a more affordable package
@@TheJeremyHolloway Cheers, thanks for this info!
I don't think Fatboy Slim still uses an ST. He still has one and has been shown loading up his old projects. But I imagine he has a Mac now.
You are probably right, but who knows, he may still use it in some cases. I worked with Trent Reznor a few years ago and he actually uses all sorts of vintage audio equipment and even an old Mac on some of his songs. He even had an old Mac on stage with him. Too bad he didn't use an Atari or Amiga
Fatboy Slim takes a MacBook with him for his public performances but it wouldn't surprise me at all if he still makes everything in the studio with his STs... The MIDI timing on the Macs still aren't as good, supposedly.
Can you imagine being on stage with a with a Windows 10 setup and it suddenly decides to force install an update right then and there? 🤣
Just think about this... the Amiga chipset isn't much different from what Jay Miner and Joe Decuir sketched out back in 1979 before they left Atari Inc. Had Atari Inc gave them the funds to proceed, the "Amiga" could've been completed by 1980 and a product could've been out by the late 1980-81 period. And if that isn't heart-breaking enough, read up on the "OMNI" chipset - at the Atari Museum - that another group at Atari was working on and almost had completed in early 1984 right before Warner broke Atari Inc up and sold it off into pieces. That chipset could've done "VGA" level graphics resolution with an insane amount of sprites in 1984. And consuming something like less than 50K RAM to pull it off too. Oh what could have been...
Oh wow, awesome. I never heard of the "OMNI" chipset. I will look it up. Thanks Jeremy!
@@TheGuruMeditation the capabilities of that chipset back in 1984 would've been pure insanity. Especially with the ability to add more sprite co-processors to it. It's so awesome that it'll make you cry for what-could've-been...
The two advantages, that the ST had over the Amiga, was Midi port and a complete OS in ROM. Else I really dont see the ST being a better machine.
That’s funny. I’ve got a TOS boot disk here for my 520ST 😁
Think I had something called “AMAS” for my A2000. Two ribbon cables ... Serial connection for MIDI and parallel connection for digitizing audio. Don’t recall Deluxe Music Construction Set being available on the ST. But the ST did have plenty of other MIDI software. But guy with the nicest setup that I knew had s MAC with MOTU interface. The ST crowd seems to forget Performer and the other Mac software. Weird.
@@nickpalance3622 Sure you are able to use MIDI on Amiga. However you need a special cable, compared to Atari that had dedicated DIN midi ports. As we know, then Midi is a protocol and can be used on whatever type of connector that you choose to send the signal through.
Yup. There are TOS on disks as well, however the Amiga operating system are splitted into Kickrom and then Workbench on disks. If you insert an bootable Disk, yet empty, on the Amiga. Then you get straight into CLI.
I didn’t need a special cable. The AMAS has the standard DIN MIDI ports. And an audio input for digitizing sound. I can’t imagine ST owners didn’t let lack of built-in digitizing stop them from buying an accessory to do such. How many computers came with a built in printer? Didn’t stop desk top publishing from becoming a thing. I played games even though I had to buy a joystick. And what good is MIDI without some to connect to? Well the Apple IIGS had an an Ensoniq chip (from their MIDI synthesizers) built in. Built in synthesizer. Now you don’t need MIDI!
It’s a nice to have. But never seemed like an “advantage”. By that yardstick anything other than a classic Mac is at a disadvantage for lack of built in display. By that logic. I mean, how can you consider using a GUI computer if it the display isn’t built in? 😂
interesting.. :-P ;-)
LOL hope it was for you bud!
@@TheGuruMeditation ;-)
The paradox here is that the amiga is a very great machine for MIDI too ^^ (but i recognize that high res with no flicking monitor could be cool for pro use...)
That is SO true. Amiga could do MIDI wonderfully, It just didn't come with it built in. Lots of my friends used the legendary Bars & Pipes which is a great program
@@TheGuruMeditation Octamed was a great program too, considering you could use the 4 Paula's channels like an additional sampler to your MIDI set !
Pete Fletcher, so many wrong information from someone who is claiming to be retro computer expert ;-) .
1. first your display is not 85-92 but 85-93 since Falcon sales started in early 93 (except paper launch in Germany in late 92).
2. ST was not rushed to market at all, and definitely not to beat Amiga, Atari saw ST as Apple Macintosh competition and Mac came out in 1984. There was only one thing that was not finished and that was TOS in ROM. Since ST has full blown OS with GUI and wanted to pack it all inside ROM and ROM chips of larger size were not exactly cheap, it took software guys little more time to squeeze the TOS inside a 192k ROM, so first STs did load the TOS from floppy. The only chip not ready for the launch was BLiTTER which came first to Mega ST in about same time as first usable gaming Amiga, the A500. The game studios didnt use it due to stupid politics and poor support of Atari corporation.
3. Atari ST is NOT a 68000 reference platform, not even close! The Apple Macintosh is. This is a common miss-believe of Amiga fanboys that ST has no co-processors so its slow, in reality ST has co-processors doing about same tasks as those glorified Amiga custom chips, and even has four custom chips (GLUE, MMU, DMA and SHIFTER). While Amiga architecture can be faster at some tasks, especially with bitblock transfers and sprite graphics and can do HAM mode based on chroma/luma switching via bitplanes, the very same advantage is a huge disadvantage hindering the system in general computing tasks and making the ST a much faster system. And if we dont speak general computing but games, the ST is faster in more modern 3d games due to higher clock
4. While Digital Research did work on GEM for ST, it was not DRs product since Atari engineers worked on it and didnt take DRs "DOS" but made its own. So the TOS/GEM was a product of Atari not Digital Research and Apple would have to sue Atari directly in separate lawsuit... At least this is how I understand this matter.
5. The Atari 1040ST is NOT the first computer with 1MB RAM under 1000USD, Atari did sell in late 1985 model 520ST+ which (unlike suggested by the name) has 1MB RAM and was sold for 999USD including monitor and floppy. The 1040STF was the first ST in compact design integrating computer, floppy and PSU in one keyboard like compact body. This heavily inspired Commodore when creating A500 since the surveys showed that no one took the desktop design of A1000 as home computer.
6. Mega ST did not have CPU in slot, the CPU was soldered in in most if not all Revs., it had a Mega slot which was a direct Bus slot, you could use for expansions. Not that you could not use it for CPU expansion, but mostly it was already used by graphics card expansion and if I right remember ST logic didnt have a direct feature for onboard CPU disabling other then de-soldering.
7. The ST was not trying to catch up on Amiga in 1987 with BLiTTER on Mega ST, it was planed from start. Also the first Amiga that really took use of BLiTTER was A500 since the A1000 had such a big RAM limitation that it was unfit for advanced games or serious graphics programs... But as I said, Commodore did approach software developers before A500 introduction with a huge support, Atari failed in this area (maybe they wanted all the money from game sales via ATARI GAMES) so BLiTTER didnt take off on ST...
8. Since ST had MIDI since day one, saying that Amiga had better sound is not accurate. Yes the MIDI music was not much supported in games on 68000 computers unlike IBM PCs (which became a norm), but ST with MIDI had slightly better sound out of the box then Amiga. And after STE introduction A500 got HW-wise the music underdog...
9. "After introduction of STE line it had 4096 colours, HAM mode Hallo".... Absolutely NOT. HAM6 mode is beaten by spectrum512 mode of OG ST already, while it has "only" 512 colours instead of 4096 of HAM6, it is not bound to just chroma or luma change like HAM6, so spectrum512 could do 48 independent colours per scanline. Basically both do have their own limitations but HAM6 is good for computer painted pictures where a artist can wisely choose the colours and is very static with no sprites moving over (thats why it was not much used in games), while spectrum512 is much better for displaying digitized photographs with possibility of some movement (not really a gaming platform, but...). So in reality Atari ST could bring out on screen higher colour fidelity then Amiga in HAM6 mode in most use scenarios. It was also less prone to artifacts like fringing, banding and flickering then HAM6 which was often very unpleasant to watch. In 1989 (hmm, I hope I remember it right) the so called Hi-colour mode came out for ST that was capable of same as spectrum512 but adding a NTSC and PAL modes switching enabling thousands of colours at about same flicker rate as HAM6, easy much much higher colour fidelity then Amiga. And this was all OG Atari ST, now STE hardware can do up to 32k colours with Hi-Colour mode, show that on A500...
And just for sake of completion, the spectrum512 was ready in about same time as HAM6 got started to be somehow used with A500 introduction in 1987. The best Amiga software that used HAM6 was Deluxe Paint IV, but here we talk 1991 (yes there was also the PhotonPaint in 1989).
10. "STE got DMA sound that could finally rival Amiga sound capabilities", are you kidding me? STE sound totally destroyed A500 sound capabilities, or is 4x8bit 28kHz DMA sound same as 4x8bit 51kHz DMA sound +3.1 sounds of YM2149 + MIDI? Not even in same league...
11. The TT030 was sold for about a year, you meant the Unix version was sold for 3 months, right? Im not sure it was sold at all, resp. the UNIX was never ready for it, but here I might remember it wrong. Where I think you are also wrong, while the TT was very popular for DTP due to large memory space and two page 19" monitor, it was not what you referred as half the price of Mac, since the TT was sold just slightly below comparable Mac. Where you got confused was offering for 1040ST+SM124+SLM804 was half the price of a Macintosh with laser printer. But then again, you might have seen the adds as you describe, and I might be wrong as well.
This is not meant as a rant, just a reminder and correction of some facts you maybe dont remember anymore.
Easy money.
Ha ha, nailed it! Such a great scene. One of my all time favorite flicks
France was always a bit of an outsider....:
- the Oric1 was more successful than the Spectrum.
- the Amstrad CPC was more successful than the C64.
and....
- the Atari ST was more successful than the Amiga
"The French copy no-one, and no-one copies the French" :D
Wow super interesting. Our friends do an exhibit of French computers every year. I love the way the Alice looks
The Guru Meditation Oh yes.. the Alice by Matra and Hachette! All red with a great suitcase! It was a Tandy clone if i’m right. They looked great indeed!
The “true” french microcomputers were the Thomson: TO7 and MO5 mostly. They were used massively as educationnal tools then: each elementary schools had a bunch of them. They were trying to teach us, 7 year-old kids, the programming language LOGO. Ask any 40ish year-old French about LOGO: he/she’ll be an expert!
The Thomson MO5 and TO7 were to us what the BBC Micro was to the British and, I guess, the Apple II to you guys =)
Yep. Loads of STs out there have AZERTY (French) keyboards instead of QWERTY.
@@Horos_de_Vega Thompson made damn-fine monitors back in those days. That was the other brand to drool over besides NEC's MultiSync monitors. Oh, and Sony's RGB monitors too. I remember one of the local computer dealers back then - which sold Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64/128, Atari ST, and the Amiga - had a gray Sony RBG monitor hooked up to one of their display Amigas for gaming. It was bigger and sharper than the official Amiga monitors. And they had a sweet set of external speakers connected as well. I think they were Bose and not Altec Lansing because if I recall correctly, Apple partnered up with Altec Lansing for the official external speakers for the Apple IIgs.
As for the French market, what about Group Bull's PC compatibles? If I recall correctly, they bought Zenith's PC business here in the States and operated under that brand for a few years here...
I hesitated to click play, and if it wasnt you guys doing it I wouldnt bother. The only thing worse than an ST is two STs.
I hope it was OK for you Lifeschool. Ha ha. Pete is an awesome dude too and we always have a blast ragging on each other at VCF East. Of course they always put us next to each other so people can see why the Amiga rules ;-)
@@TheGuruMeditation - Yes great show! Good to see the ragging of each other, and yes putting you guys together shows which is the superior product. They tried to sue PC users over the use of GEM, but with the ST they couldnt give a TOS.
@@lifeschool did you arrive at that by using your Intuition?