OldAtarian

Atari still hadn't caught up with the Falcon030. By 1992 when the Falcon was released, both Apple and Commodore had released 68040 based systems, or were about to, and their 68030 machines were all clocked higher than the 16mhz chip in the Falcon. That is an unfair comparison. The Falcon030 was the low-end system and the never released MicroFalcon was going to be the high end 68040 system. Note that the Apple and Commodore 68040 systems were MUCH higher in cost much like the MicroFalcon was suppose to be. If you compare the power and price of the 68030 machines, the Falcon030 would have won out or was very close. Don't forget the Falcon030 also included a DSP chip which allowed it to do things the plain 68040 machines could not do. Apple would release the Quadra 660AV and 840AV the following year so even if the high end Falcon had been released, it would have been overshadowed by those machines in performance. The Amiga 3000/4000 and Mac II and Quadras were also more expandable than the Falcon and TT. Also, video boards with one or more DSP chips on them were released during the 68030 Mac era, so that capability was available to anyone who wanted it then. I managed to find a Radius Thunder IV board cheap a few years ago and that thing is simply amazing compared to factory Mac video.

They are a form of artistic expression and that's their use. It may be art that you don't like and then it has no use. And by the way, if you found a game that wasn't patched to run on an STE then it was probably not worth the trouble. What game released prior to the STE was ever patched? The STE had a relatively short life compared to the rest of the ST line, so it would not have made financial sense for publishers to go back into all their past releases and patch them to take advantage of the STE's extra features and it also would not have made financial sense for them to release games that required the extra features of the STE and would not run on a non-STE machine. So, demos are useless and the number of games that took advantage of the extra hardware in the STE was small, so why recommend an STE at all? Any non-STE model will run just about anything you throw at it and you'll never miss the few things that actually need STE features. I only got an STE because I needed one to fill a hole in the collection and I managed to find a bulk lot of Atari stuff cheap that it happened to be in, but the fascination soon wore off when I found there wasn't much that actually needed an STE to run. The same thing happened when I bought my Falcon030 when they were released. There was never much released for it here in the US and I ended up mostly running my old ST software on it so what use did I really get from it that I couldn't have had from my old 1040STF? Anyone new starting to collect ST computers should start with a basic ST model first because it will be cheaper and run most everything out there without issues. Dumping a ton of cash on an STE, TT, or Falcon straight away is only going to be a disappointment for most people because of how little was ever released that took advantage of the extra features of those models and how hard it will be to find and how expensive that software/hardware will be when you find it because of the rarity.

I have a copy of CAB, but still have no way to get online with an Atari. My internet connection is cable modem and I have no way to interface it to the ST.

Do you have a Mac ADB mouse? I've never tried it, but the ball in one of those might work if it fits.

Did anyone ever get the PowerPC build of Windows NT running on a Powermac?

Atari still hadn't caught up with the Falcon030. By 1992 when the Falcon was released, both Apple and Commodore had released 68040 based systems, or were about to, and their 68030 machines were all clocked higher than the 16mhz chip in the Falcon. They also had more software and peripheral support than Atari did. And mentioning the fact they were more successful in Europe doesn't really say much at all. The US is the largest market for consumer goods in the world, and Atari failed to capture more than a niche market here with the ST. European sales and sales to niche markets were never going to be enough to keep Atari afloat in the computer marketplace, as evidenced by the termination of all computer lines as the Jaguar as nearing release.

Ha ha! I love how you attempt to trivialize PRICE, by referring to it as "the only saving grace." PRICE IS EVERYTHING. Price is FIRST consideration of EVERYTHING. In 1985, a complete 520ST system cost about the same as a Commodore 128 system, and you know they weren't selling Amiga 1000s for the same price they were selling C128s. There was a significant price difference, for some time. The ST was close enough to the Amiga to give a similar 16-bit home computer experience - similar resolutions, etc. But sure, Amiga's impressive, too. No, price is NOT first consideration of everything. A person who wants to buy a Corvette is going to buy a Corvette regardless of how much it costs because it's the car he wants and it does what he wants it to do. He's not going to settle for a lower performing car just because it's cheaper. The ST was the cheaper, lower performing car of the 16-bit era while the Amiga was the Corvette. And yes, the C64 did as well as it did because of aggressive price cutting. The machine with the largest market share at the time the C64 was released was the TI99 and Tramiel set out to destroy it. He used MOS Technologies as a bludgeon against TI so he would have pricing power over components that TI didn't have with the 99. When Atari came out with the 1200XL, it was $200 more than the C64 and they weren't making outrageous markups on them, either. Nobody could compete with the C64's pricing. The C64 wasn't anything special, other computers were already doing the same things that the C64 did years earlier. Commodore was just doing it for hundreds less than anybody else and that's what made the difference. If they had been priced in line with other computers of the day, they wouldn't have done nearly as well because they would have been a newcomer in a field of computers that were already established and had all the capabilities that the C64 had, so why would anyone want to change? And before anyone questions the "newcomer" remark, I don't count the PET or VIC 20 because the PET was a business machine that almost nobody would have had in their homes and the VIC 20 wasn't much more than a games console with a keyboard as that is what is it was originally conceived as. The C64 was the first serious home machine that Commodore had that could compete with rival systems with more memory or graphics power than the VIC 20 came with out of the box, hence, a newcomer.

I've done the comparison. I used a 520ST originally (the original without the built in floppy drive) then a 1040STF, followed by a 1040STE, and now my main ST is an upgraded Mega 2 because there isn't enough that makes me want to use the STE over the others and some early games are either unstable or don't work. And of what use are demos? You sit in front of the screen and watch a bunch of shapes and colors fly past with maybe some music in the background with little or no input or interaction required. I can go to Youtube and watch most of the demos in videos, why do I need to run them on my computer? For the few programs that are actually STE enhanced or STE required, it's not worth the hassles that come with it. I also have a Falcon030 and guess what I run on it? ST games. Very few Falcon only games. If they weren't highly valued collectibles today, I'd say it was a complete waste of money. A 1040STF or STFM will be more than enough for most people and if they need something with more memory or the extra video speed of the Blitter, then the Mega ST is a good option.

*Waiting for the 7800 XM version of Doom.*

Thats not what my email says!!! My email tells me I have won millions of dollars at least 3 times a day. That doesn't mean I believe it.

Is 2mb enough? A Mega ST 2 is the machine I have with the most RAM atm. I have a 1040STE I can upgrade with more if I have to.

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It's not real. It's taken from DeviantArt. DeviantArt=Photoshop kiddies.

The first game looks like Xevious to me.

If you're just getting it for games, then any garden variety early ST will do. The Mega STE is going to be hard to find and expensive and it was a hassle to program support for the upgraded features of the STE machines so a lot of games won't look any better on the STE than on a standard ST. A regular 1040STF or 1040STFM is probably the best way to go. They'll be easier to find and cheaper.

Where do you get it from? I went to the Netsurf website but can't find it in the download section. In the history it says an Atari port was made in Jan. 2011 so they should still have it in the download section if it's that recent, no?

Amiga was the better machine. Atari was constantly trying to play catch up to the latest Amiga models after they were released. The only saving grace for the ST was that it was a helluva lot cheaper than the comparable Amiga model. Also, Atari's "catch up" machines, the STE, TT030 and Falcon030 all suffered from a certain degree of incompatibility with earlier ST models. Most software was written to the model of the 520ST with single sided floppy drive and TOS 1.0 to appeal to the broadest possible customer base. Any hardware that deviated from that model either went unsupported or required a special version of the software to take advantage of the extra hardware which made programming for the TOS computers a real headache for developers. Why would you write a program for a machine that may only represent 5% of the Atari user base when you can write it for a machine that is owned by many more users and make more money?

Atari ceased to exist under his family's "leadership". I think that alone speaks volumes.

Are you sure that wasn't TOS 4.98? There was supposed to be an experimental TOS under development that was buggy as hell and caused a lot of crashes like what you described. It was never officially released, but some copies of it managed to sneak out. Someone might have burned it to EPROM and installed it in your machine at some point in the past or your machine might be an Atari developers machine that had the ROMs installed at Atari. I'd love to see some pictures of the ROM chips and any numbers on them to see if this was the experimental TOS version or if your ROMs just became corrupted somehow and are reporting their version number incorrectly.

Get a Mega ST. The STE has some incompatibilities with earlier software. A Mega ST 2 or Mega ST 4 is probably going to be easier to find and cheaper than an STE anyway and come with more standard memory for running serious apps like Pagestream and Calamus and it looks so much cleaner and saves desk space stacked on top of a Megafile 30 with a monitor on top.

Well my Hades is right beside my PM 9600/G4 800 that two are my main systems. Macs, as a "political" decision, only with Mac OS 9! But I am not doing very complicated things. Little bit photo editing, some layouts, web issues, office and listening to music. Sadly I have to take the Mac not only for browsing modern sites with huge CSS and JavaScrips, but also for Mail, as my provider needs TLS authentification for the IMAP server that is not availaible at the Atari side. But I hope situation will drastically improve with Netsurf further development and others. But I am in no case the "die hard atari user". There are others that ar much deeper inside "just using Ataris". Because of all the communication at the ACP/FireBee with all the potential customers, I know that there are several people out there using their Ataris productive, and as well for jobs. Mostly because of special issues. Calamus, Sequencers, Database, or very special things. For example last week a guy from Australia contacted us, because he got a mixing-desk automation software at his MegaST, and would like a hardware replacement. Such very special fields occure all the time. And I have the feeling, there is a very huge user basis. And, most of these people willnever show up at the forums. They are working with their Ataris, and do not count it as Game machine, retro, or cool lifestyle item. But what I would really like to know if there is somebody outside "just" using Ataris, with no fallback or backup possibility for the tasks not possible with our beloved machins. What web browser are you using with Mac OS 9 that can handle the "modern" internet? There is none as far as I know. Classzilla is the newest and it's still a long way from being as functional the latest FF and IE releases, and I know iCab 3.0.5 can't handle it, so what are you using?

99% of what I do with my main computer revolves around the internet and there is no web browser for the Atari that can handle the internet as it stands today. I also don't have any way of getting my ST connected to my cable modem which would mean dial up with a phone modem and I don't even have a standalone 56k modem. The fastest standalone modem I ever had, and I'm not even sure if I even still have it, was 14.4k.

But you must admit, being able to gutpunch, ball-kick and spit on someone simultaneously is incredibley hard to do, but Atari pulled it off I don't see why there's so much hate for Zaxxon on the 2600. I LOVE Zaxxon 3-D on the Sega Master System, and it used the EXACT same point of view, granted the 3-D glasses make it that much cooler, but mainly I have a much better idea of how high I am, and how far to the left/right I am, just makes more sense to me to use that viewpoint. I suck at Zaxxon (arcade) but LOVE Zaxxon 3-D (Sega Master System). It plays more like River Raid than Zaxxon, only River Raid is better.

Those games are made by the same people who made Intellivision so to save money they used the Intellivision carts with an adapter attached so they would fit the 2600 slot. The games were playable, but that was about all. Nothing terribly exciting about any of them. I actually don't mind this one... took a little practice but it's never left me angry... The 2600 never had the hardware to do the 2.5D top down view of of Zaxxon the way it was meant to be played. They compromised the game too much just to get something on the store shelves with the Zaxxon name on it. It would have been better if they hadn't made it at all.

They're probably white box Athana's with his own logo on the box. There's not a lot of places still manufacturing them.