Atari 8bit is superior to the ST

[carmel_andrews]

ANother trump

 

My PCB/Mainboard (ST) is bigger then yours (A8)

 

There again, it isn't the size that matters, its what you do with it that counts

[STE'86]

 

As for C64 as a games machine, I think I have made it very clear here that I do not like it, it's games,it's sound and washed out colors or crappy non dos system. I collect most all game systems and arcade machines, however c64 never made the cut. A8 was always more to my liking.A8 at least had a real arcade sound chip. Pokey (usually dual) was used in many arcades from the classic period.

 

Do try harder,happy to help you here!

 

at the risk of this turning into yet another a8/c64 thread, i have to say u are completely entitled to your opinion and i am very happy for you, tho why you keep having to bang it home i am not sure.

 

also i would guess it differs somewhat from most of the rest of the forum. Even on here the coders and games players appear to hold the c64 as the "yardstick" by which a game is judged.

 

the games players WANT c64 conversions on their A8's. This cannot be denied, the forum is full of posts wanting c64 stuff. The coders who write for the a8 aim their products to be "as good or better than the c64". again this cannot be denied the forum is full of it. so are the foreign ones.

 

finally i have seen you quote this "arcade perfect" sound on more than one occasion now and i do feel it needs a bit of clarification. the a8 doesnt use the same chip as arcade machines for any other reason than its the cheaper option for the arcades at the time. the SID chip was a much more costly bit of kit than a POtentionmeter KEYboard reader that just happens to be able to do the job of basic music and admittedly "zappy" sound effects.

 

lets take a for instance. do u honestly mean to tell us that Capcom would have stuck with the AY sound on something like Commando if they could have had the Hubbard c64 version pounding out of their arcade machines for the same price?

 

and i do hate to break this to u, but have u heard the Pokey experimental stuff recently. its all trying desperately to sound like a Follin SID tune.

 

Oh and to try and keep this on topic(ish) i always loved the ST with Degas Elite to develop graphics on for 16 bit machines. i always felt it was a much smoother and stabler platform to use than say the Amiga (i loathe dpaint in all of its versions and platforms). so much so i have badgered the Atari-Forum a couple of times to do a windows version of Degas

 

 

Steve

[Lazarus]

Sorry, you appear to be the ignorant one on the technical side once again.

I was referring to the fact that A8 and amiga chipsets were designed by Jay Miner and the Amiga chipset it generally viewed as the evolution of the A8 (in the hardware sense ONLY) You know,graphics co processor etc. Things the ST and C64 both lacked and why they are more similar in that regard. Also Shiraz Shivji designed the ST and was an engineer at commodore(though not it;s designer)

Shiraz Shivji did not design a single part of the C64. And as I said before: ST and C64 are extremely different in design.

[kool kitty89]

Hey, off topic, but I found a C64 game with music I think you'll actually like. (but skip to 0:21)

Thanks! you are right that sound is alot nicer, kind of a cross between pokey and NES.

I guess they were trying to be accurate to the arcade:

(too few channels to do so properly though) Interesting that that game was also one to include sound effects (sacrificing a music channel when playing sfx), rather than a lot of C64 games which seem to prefer sacrificing sfx alltogether for richer music.

 

 

finally i have seen you quote this "arcade perfect" sound on more than one occasion now and i do feel it needs a bit of clarification. the a8 doesnt use the same chip as arcade machines for any other reason than its the cheaper option for the arcades at the time. the SID chip was a much more costly bit of kit than a POtentionmeter KEYboard reader that just happens to be able to do the job of basic music and admittedly "zappy" sound effects.

Or perhaps because there were Atari arcade games?

 

Then there were even simpler sound chips popular for arcade machines, as well as home consoles/computers. (AY-10-xxx and SN76894)

 

Maybe if Commodore was making Arcade games they'd have used the SID. (although, I seem to recall the C64 chipset initially having arcade boards as an intended use -not sure if that was just for the VIC-II though and not the chipset in general)

 

And of course, the Arcade industry quickly moved on to FM Synthesis in the mid 80s (often with the YM2151), which quite a few C64 ports attempted to aproximate the digital synthesis with the SID's analog synthesizer capabilities. (somethimts to good effect, others not so much -the number of channels being bigh limiting factors of course) Coupled with that were voice synthesizers and PCM (or compressed) playback hardware. (then sample based synthesis)

 

 

lets take a for instance. do u honestly mean to tell us that Capcom would have stuck with the AY sound on something like Commando if they could have had the Hubbard c64 version pounding out of their arcade machines for the same price?

Was commodore selling the SID to the open market? (I don't recall any non Atari arcade games using POKEYs, let alone dual/quad POKEYs, often using the common, generally inferior AY/SN PSGs)

 

Anyway, yeah the VIC-2 isn't really comperable to the Shifer in that sense (hardware support for character modes, sprites, scrolling etc), so the ST is not THAT comperable. (VIC-20 perhaps moreso in that respect -the VIC is pretty much a simple bitmap disply controller with integrated sound, right? Except it has character modes too)

 

 

And yeah, way off topic with this.

 

 

What's really lesft to discuss/compare between the ST and A8 though, other than completely subjective stuff?

Edited January 11, 2010 by kool kitty89

[Lazarus]

Was commodore selling the SID to the open market?

Yeah but usually on the spare part market for pretty expensive prices.

 

Anyway, yeah the VIC-2 isn't really comperable to the Shifer in that sense (hardware support for character modes, sprites, scrolling etc), so the ST is not THAT comperable.

Both are computers, enough for atarian63 to claim that C64 = ST.

[frogstar_robot]

finally i have seen you quote this "arcade perfect" sound on more than one occasion now and i do feel it needs a bit of clarification. the a8 doesnt use the same chip as arcade machines for any other reason than its the cheaper option for the arcades at the time. the SID chip was a much more costly bit of kit than a POtentionmeter KEYboard reader that just happens to be able to do the job of basic music and admittedly "zappy" sound effects.

 

 

As used in an arcade cabinet with a lot more CPU to throw at it, POKEY is a different animal anyway especially if the cab is using four of them. And a bit of digging reveals that many cabs that employed POKEY didn't have it as the exclusive sound generator. Star Wars uses a quad-POKEY and a TMS5220 for the speech for instance. If the output of three or four POKEYs is mixed to make a chord then that is a sound that even a stereo modded A8 won't easily duplicate. If the cab has the ability to adjust POKEY's clock or just runs it slightly faster or slower then that is a further alteration than the A8 won't exactly duplicate in spite of having similar hardware. A cab might also have mixer or EQ hardware than an A8 lacks.

 

That the POKEY is good enough to use in A-list arcade titles is an argument in its favor but it isn't a slam-dunk for all circumstances and just because a cab has a POKEY(s) doesn't mean an A8 can exactly (or profitably in a game) replicate all the sounds it makes. The Parker Brother's version of Star Wars on the A8 doesn't sound much like it's big brother......

 

As an aside, I'd be interested to hear from someone knowledgeable any differences in how POKEY is "wired up" or clocked in Atari cabs compared to how it's used in the A8. I played a lot of Atari cabs with POKEYs and almost all of them made sounds I wasn't accustomed to hearing from my A8s.

Edited January 11, 2010 by frogstar_robot

[JamesD]

As an aside, I'd be interested to hear from someone knowledgeable any differences in how POKEY is "wired up" or clocked in Atari cabs compared to how it's used in the A8. I played a lot of Atari cabs with POKEYs and almost all of them made sounds I wasn't accustomed to hearing from my A8s.

I'm not sure about the POKEY, but other sound chips can be clocked to change the range of frequencies the chip can produce. Many arcade machines also had analog circuitry to tweak the sound.

[potatohead]

It would be very interesting to hear about their sound development process too.

[atarian63]

 

As for C64 as a games machine, I think I have made it very clear here that I do not like it, it's games,it's sound and washed out colors or crappy non dos system. I collect most all game systems and arcade machines, however c64 never made the cut. A8 was always more to my liking.A8 at least had a real arcade sound chip. Pokey (usually dual) was used in many arcades from the classic period.

 

Do try harder,happy to help you here!

 

at the risk of this turning into yet another a8/c64 thread, i have to say u are completely entitled to your opinion and i am very happy for you, tho why you keep having to bang it home i am not sure.

 

also i would guess it differs somewhat from most of the rest of the forum. Even on here the coders and games players appear to hold the c64 as the "yardstick" by which a game is judged.

 

the games players WANT c64 conversions on their A8's. This cannot be denied, the forum is full of posts wanting c64 stuff. The coders who write for the a8 aim their products to be "as good or better than the c64". again this cannot be denied the forum is full of it. so are the foreign ones.

 

finally i have seen you quote this "arcade perfect" sound on more than one occasion now and i do feel it needs a bit of clarification. the a8 doesnt use the same chip as arcade machines for any other reason than its the cheaper option for the arcades at the time. the SID chip was a much more costly bit of kit than a POtentionmeter KEYboard reader that just happens to be able to do the job of basic music and admittedly "zappy" sound effects.

 

lets take a for instance. do u honestly mean to tell us that Capcom would have stuck with the AY sound on something like Commando if they could have had the Hubbard c64 version pounding out of their arcade machines for the same price?

 

and i do hate to break this to u, but have u heard the Pokey experimental stuff recently. its all trying desperately to sound like a Follin SID tune.

 

Oh and to try and keep this on topic(ish) i always loved the ST with Degas Elite to develop graphics on for 16 bit machines. i always felt it was a much smoother and stabler platform to use than say the Amiga (i loathe dpaint in all of its versions and platforms). so much so i have badgered the Atari-Forum a couple of times to do a windows version of Degas

 

 

Steve

Actually I would have to say that the majority here do NOT think the c64 is any yardstick, most of the beneficiary of a comedy of events, those being Atari and the video game crash creatng an opening that occurs once in a lifetime. C64 just happened to be there with no software but a cheap price.

Of course we all have our opinions on sounds, my tastes are 79-82 arcade, which being the classic era is more of a pokey sound. c64 was never in the running for arcade use,it did not appear.

As I have mentioned SID is a love it or hate it sound so there is really little middle ground or changing on minds (damn buzzing bees..ooh sorry, thats SID) but to each his own.

 

Anyways.. the 2 machines, ST and A8 are apple and oranges to me, both good,just different.

[atarian63]

Was commodore selling the SID to the open market?

Yeah but usually on the spare part market for pretty expensive prices.

 

Anyway, yeah the VIC-2 isn't really comperable to the Shifer in that sense (hardware support for character modes, sprites, scrolling etc), so the ST is not THAT comperable.

Both are computers, enough for atarian63 to claim that C64 = ST.

Pleae, read my previous post. then think before posting.

[atarian63]

Sorry, you appear to be the ignorant one on the technical side once again.

I was referring to the fact that A8 and amiga chipsets were designed by Jay Miner and the Amiga chipset it generally viewed as the evolution of the A8 (in the hardware sense ONLY) You know,graphics co processor etc. Things the ST and C64 both lacked and why they are more similar in that regard. Also Shiraz Shivji designed the ST and was an engineer at commodore(though not it;s designer)

Shiraz Shivji did not design a single part of the C64. And as I said before: ST and C64 are extremely different in design.

Did you read the post.. evidently not.

Here let me help you.

Also Shiraz Shivji designed the ST and was an engineer at commodore(though not it;s designer)

[kool kitty89]

Actually I would have to say that the majority here do NOT think the c64 is any yardstick, most of the beneficiary of a comedy of events, those being Atari and the video game crash creatng an opening that occurs once in a lifetime. C64 just happened to be there with no software but a cheap price.

Of course we all have our opinions on sounds, my tastes are 79-82 arcade, which being the classic era is more of a pokey sound. c64 was never in the running for arcade use,it did not appear.

Hmm, I thought Commodore's price war with TI (facilitated by vertical integration with MOS) had more to do with catylizing the crash than the other way around. (ie cheap, game oriented computers displacing consoles and helping to push the precarious VG market over the edge -put on the edge largely due to Warner/Atari Inc managment problems and Atari owning ~80% of the market)

Of course, along with that, Atari screwed themselves with their 8-bit computers in '82/83 with the 1200XL, 600/800XL finally being released in '83, but then Morgan halting activities in fall of '83, giving Commodore an open market for the holiday season. (not trying to demonize Morgan, he probably was the best thing to happen to Atari since management started convoluting things, but that hold really couldn't have come at a worse time -they really needed someone like him at least a year earlier, maybe they could have avoided soem of the problems with the 1200XL and 5200)

 

Had Atari gotten the 800/600XL out in '82 rather than the mess with the 1200, things may have gone differently. A more cost competitive computer, streamlined and more compact. Even if it wouldn't have helpped to aviod (or reduce severity of) the video game crash, at least it would have given Atari a leg to stand on with a popular home computer to fall back on. (Mattel and Coleco scrwed themselves even more with their computers, especially Coleco who could have done much better with the basic hardware, they just went in th ewrong direction with Adam and rushed it -opposed to MSX for example, or even Sega's SC-3000)

 

As I have mentioned SID is a love it or hate it sound so there is really little middle ground or changing on minds (damn buzzing bees..ooh sorry, thats SID) but to each his own.

It's not love or hate for me. I like it, but I don't "love" the SID's sound (or analog synthesizers in general) to the extent of excluding others. There is soem SID stuff I don't like though. (but most of the loading music and such would not be included in that; R-Type's intro is neat, Shadow of the Beast title/demo screen, Treasure Island Dizzy -and Amiga stuff which mimicks SID, like Out Run, or the Dizzy games) I also like NES games that tend to mimick the SID/C64 style. (ie most codemasters games)

 

 

Again, off topic, but what really is left to compare the 800/ST on objectively? Any ideas?

[oky2000]

Actually I would have to say that the majority here do NOT think the c64 is any yardstick, most of the beneficiary of a comedy of events, those being Atari and the video game crash creatng an opening that occurs once in a lifetime. C64 just happened to be there with no software but a cheap price.

Of course we all have our opinions on sounds, my tastes are 79-82 arcade, which being the classic era is more of a pokey sound. c64 was never in the running for arcade use,it did not appear.

Hmm, I thought Commodore's price war with TI (facilitated by vertical integration with MOS) had more to do with catylizing the crash than the other way around. (ie cheap, game oriented computers displacing consoles and helping to push the precarious VG market over the edge -put on the edge largely due to Warner/Atari Inc managment problems and Atari owning ~80% of the market)

Of course, along with that, Atari screwed themselves with their 8-bit computers in '82/83 with the 1200XL, 600/800XL finally being released in '83, but then Morgan halting activities in fall of '83, giving Commodore an open market for the holiday season. (not trying to demonize Morgan, he probably was the best thing to happen to Atari since management started convoluting things, but that hold really couldn't have come at a worse time -they really needed someone like him at least a year earlier, maybe they could have avoided soem of the problems with the 1200XL and 5200)

 

Had Atari gotten the 800/600XL out in '82 rather than the mess with the 1200, things may have gone differently. A more cost competitive computer, streamlined and more compact. Even if it wouldn't have helpped to aviod (or reduce severity of) the video game crash, at least it would have given Atari a leg to stand on with a popular home computer to fall back on. (Mattel and Coleco scrwed themselves even more with their computers, especially Coleco who could have done much better with the basic hardware, they just went in th ewrong direction with Adam and rushed it -opposed to MSX for example, or even Sega's SC-3000)

 

As I have mentioned SID is a love it or hate it sound so there is really little middle ground or changing on minds (damn buzzing bees..ooh sorry, thats SID) but to each his own.

It's not love or hate for me. I like it, but I don't "love" the SID's sound (or analog synthesizers in general) to the extent of excluding others. There is soem SID stuff I don't like though. (but most of the loading music and such would not be included in that; R-Type's intro is neat, Shadow of the Beast title/demo screen, Treasure Island Dizzy -and Amiga stuff which mimicks SID, like Out Run, or the Dizzy games) I also like NES games that tend to mimick the SID/C64 style. (ie most codemasters games)

 

 

Again, off topic, but what really is left to compare the 800/ST on objectively? Any ideas?

 

Not much, just a thread for the factually incorrect bitter trolling of Atarian63 I guess

 

(as for the SID, well as there's at least 5 composers whose music on that chip sound completely different, unlike pokey which always sounds the same 99% of the time, unless someone can quote me some different composers I will count their comments as trolling/fanboy dreams)

 

One of two things need to happen now.

 

1. the factually dubious bitter old trolling people need to be banned.

2. thread needs to be locked.

 

Think we have done this to death, the A8 was like a C64 more or less as far as custom chips go, the ST was like a supercharged Amstrad CPC (pseudo vertical hardware scroll, no pixel scroll, no sprites, off the shelf cheap sound chip relying on CPU power alone..(read my technical comparison 2 pages back) and despite the A8 having one of THREE designers in common with the Amiga (ie not the one that did the Blitter or 4 channel DAC sound or even the CPU/Chipset multitasking alone...just the weak sprites and half the copper instructions) this romantic notion that the A8 is a baby Amiga is pure bullcrap, what made the Amiga games better than Genesis/SNES/TG16 sometimes like Lotus Turbo 2 was the 4 channel DACs flexibility and the blitter+68k combination....none of which is comparable on the A8 (nothing like a blitter and an average CPU for the time compared to the TI99/4A) sorry. Even a CPC game like Sorcery would be impossible to make as colourful or at the same resolution on the A8...so....just a supercharged VCS with all the same kind of restrictions (which incidentally is the only machine Jay designed alone apart from the A8 unlike the Amiga) or at best a Lynx from a system bus point of view (but without the Lynx awesome chipset which the other 2/3 Amiga designers were responsible for btw).

[kool kitty89]

(as for the SID, well as there's at least 5 composers whose music on that chip sound completely different, unlike pokey which always sounds the same 99% of the time, unless someone can quote me some different composers I will count their comments as trolling/fanboy dreams)

Hmm, I've heard a lot of different sounding POKEY stuff, soem that sounds more like NES stuff (a mix of pulse and square wave stuff), simple pure square wave stuff, a mix of thsoe along with soume sounds distincteive to POKEY (the noise generation and some other features like the polynomial counter), and finally stuff seeming to use a lot of pulse wave stuff, soem variable pulse wave, and a lot of arpeggios. (especially in demos, and what I assume you ment by "SID sounding" stuff -though it sounds quite different IMO, other than the compositions)

 

Think we have done this to death, the A8 was like a C64 more or less as far as custom chips go, the ST was like a supercharged Amstrad CPC (pseudo vertical hardware scroll, no pixel scroll, no sprites, off the shelf cheap sound chip relying on CPU power alone..(read my technical comparison 2 pages back) and despite the A8 having one of THREE designers in common with the Amiga (ie not the one that did the Blitter or 4 channel DAC sound or even the CPU/Chipset multitasking alone...just the weak sprites and half the copper instructions) this romantic notion that the A8 is a baby Amiga is pure bullcrap, what made the Amiga games better than Genesis/SNES/TG16 sometimes like Lotus Turbo 2 was the 4 channel DACs flexibility and the blitter+68k combination....none of which is comparable on the A8 (nothing like a blitter and an average CPU for the time compared to the TI99/4A) sorry. Even a CPC game like Sorcery would be impossible to make as colourful or at the same resolution on the A8...so....just a supercharged VCS with all the same kind of restrictions (which incidentally is the only machine Jay designed alone apart from the A8 unlike the Amiga) or at best a Lynx from a system bus point of view (but without the Lynx awesome chipset which the other 2/3 Amiga designers were responsible for btw).

OK, but I think the A8 to Amiga parallel would be Jay Miner and the multiple custom chip layout and the way their duties are integrated. (the actual architectures are drastically different in that sense, the ST probably closer with its bitplanes and CPU, albeit still drastically different as well witht he lack of coprocessors)

 

And in the sense of the ST being a simple, CPU driven system with basic sound, it is more comperable to the CoCo, Speccy, CPC,PCJr or Tandy-1000, etc in that respect. (probably VIC-20 too, except it used custom sound hardware integrated with the video sort of like TIA, and I think the VIC supported some additional things like character modes which the ST did in software -same for the CoCo though, and several of the others, but still generally comperable in that sense) The intended markets of such machines may not parallel that of the ST though.

 

I'd say the 8-bit is a good bit more than a supercharged VCS though, there's a lot added compared to the VCS. Besides RAM and CPU differences, there's CTIA's additional capabilities, the enhancements with POKEY (more than just double of TIA's sound, liek direct access to the DACs among others), but ANTIC was really the defining feature over the VCS chip set. (and CTIA's abaility to be driven by ANTIC -capable of things TIA would be too slow to accomplish even with something like ANTIC driving it -that latter bit came up in a previous discussion on hypothetical alternative VCS successors) So the restrictions are quite different, granted there are similarities which clearly show the relation to the preceding VCS chipset. (but also, the 8-bit uses more custom chips in general, the VCS only had TIA, the CPU and RIOT were off the shelf, the 8-bit replaced RIOT with PIA, had the sound and pot I/O separated from video, though the fire buttons were still read by CTIA/GTIA as they were with TIA iirc)

 

 

And I think sorcery could have been managed on the 8-bit fairly well. Trade offs of course, but good optimization could allow it to even look better in some ways. (the much larger palette for one) You'd be limited ont he C64 in some respects as well. (both would drop resolution and have to optimize for colors)

Edited January 13, 2010 by kool kitty89

[atarian63]

Actually I would have to say that the majority here do NOT think the c64 is any yardstick, most of the beneficiary of a comedy of events, those being Atari and the video game crash creatng an opening that occurs once in a lifetime. C64 just happened to be there with no software but a cheap price.

Of course we all have our opinions on sounds, my tastes are 79-82 arcade, which being the classic era is more of a pokey sound. c64 was never in the running for arcade use,it did not appear.

Hmm, I thought Commodore's price war with TI (facilitated by vertical integration with MOS) had more to do with catylizing the crash than the other way around. (ie cheap, game oriented computers displacing consoles and helping to push the precarious VG market over the edge -put on the edge largely due to Warner/Atari Inc managment problems and Atari owning ~80% of the market)

Of course, along with that, Atari screwed themselves with their 8-bit computers in '82/83 with the 1200XL, 600/800XL finally being released in '83, but then Morgan halting activities in fall of '83, giving Commodore an open market for the holiday season. (not trying to demonize Morgan, he probably was the best thing to happen to Atari since management started convoluting things, but that hold really couldn't have come at a worse time -they really needed someone like him at least a year earlier, maybe they could have avoided soem of the problems with the 1200XL and 5200)

 

Had Atari gotten the 800/600XL out in '82 rather than the mess with the 1200, things may have gone differently. A more cost competitive computer, streamlined and more compact. Even if it wouldn't have helpped to aviod (or reduce severity of) the video game crash, at least it would have given Atari a leg to stand on with a popular home computer to fall back on. (Mattel and Coleco scrwed themselves even more with their computers, especially Coleco who could have done much better with the basic hardware, they just went in th ewrong direction with Adam and rushed it -opposed to MSX for example, or even Sega's SC-3000)

 

As I have mentioned SID is a love it or hate it sound so there is really little middle ground or changing on minds (damn buzzing bees..ooh sorry, thats SID) but to each his own.

It's not love or hate for me. I like it, but I don't "love" the SID's sound (or analog synthesizers in general) to the extent of excluding others. There is soem SID stuff I don't like though. (but most of the loading music and such would not be included in that; R-Type's intro is neat, Shadow of the Beast title/demo screen, Treasure Island Dizzy -and Amiga stuff which mimicks SID, like Out Run, or the Dizzy games) I also like NES games that tend to mimick the SID/C64 style. (ie most codemasters games)

 

 

Again, off topic, but what really is left to compare the 800/ST on objectively? Any ideas?

 

Not much, just a thread for the factually incorrect bitter trolling of Atarian63 I guess

 

(as for the SID, well as there's at least 5 composers whose music on that chip sound completely different, unlike pokey which always sounds the same 99% of the time, unless someone can quote me some different composers I will count their comments as trolling/fanboy dreams)

 

One of two things need to happen now.

 

1. the factually dubious bitter old trolling people need to be banned.

2. thread needs to be locked.

 

Think we have done this to death, the A8 was like a C64 more or less as far as custom chips go, the ST was like a supercharged Amstrad CPC (pseudo vertical hardware scroll, no pixel scroll, no sprites, off the shelf cheap sound chip relying on CPU power alone..(read my technical comparison 2 pages back) and despite the A8 having one of THREE designers in common with the Amiga (ie not the one that did the Blitter or 4 channel DAC sound or even the CPU/Chipset multitasking alone...just the weak sprites and half the copper instructions) this romantic notion that the A8 is a baby Amiga is pure bullcrap, what made the Amiga games better than Genesis/SNES/TG16 sometimes like Lotus Turbo 2 was the 4 channel DACs flexibility and the blitter+68k combination....none of which is comparable on the A8 (nothing like a blitter and an average CPU for the time compared to the TI99/4A) sorry. Even a CPC game like Sorcery would be impossible to make as colourful or at the same resolution on the A8...so....just a supercharged VCS with all the same kind of restrictions (which incidentally is the only machine Jay designed alone apart from the A8 unlike the Amiga) or at best a Lynx from a system bus point of view (but without the Lynx awesome chipset which the other 2/3 Amiga designers were responsible for btw).

Or.. you could go troll elsewhere, or get you facts straight (which wont happen). Seems anyone with a different experience or opinion you drag out the old troll arguement. Kinda like calling "mommy mommy the big kids are picking on me".

[Lynxpro]

The proprietary format of the Amiga disks most likely hurt Amiga in many ways... The ST disk design was simplistic and PC compatible, it was a smart choice - Atari saved themselves a lot of time and energy by just using what already existed versus reinventing the wheel.

Curt

 

 

True, but what hurt the ST market greatly was that damn SF354 disk drive. Atari Corp. should've never offered it because all commercial [game] software shipped with single density owners from then on [for the most part]. Had they only shipped double density - the SF314 - we would've all been much better off.

 

And is the Amiga 880k format any weirder than what the later Macs [and the //GS 3.5" drive too] shipped? They had an 800k disk format...

 

 

Is my memory getting faulty or wasn't Atari's original plan with the Falcon to release it with one of the 2.88MB disc drives that never seemed to catch on?

 

 

Some other things I have a hazy memory about... [feel free to correct me if I'm wrong]...

 

Wasn't Diamond programmed because Atari refused to make an 8-bit port of GEM [and GEOS was never released for Atari 8-bit]? I seem to recall some of the 8-bit owners verbally asking Sig Hartmann about Atari porting GEM to the XE line circa 1987 at one of our user group meetings.

 

I also seem to recall some sort of "trade up" discount that was offered to 8-bit owners that were user group members as a means of enticing them to buy STs...

 

 

Only 2 things I'd like to add.

Problems with a modern OS like GDI memory leaks famous in Win95/98 still persist even in Windows XP so to be fair what they achieved on the Amiga is nothing short of a miracle.

GEM for the ST was pretty much hand assembled from x86 source code by Atari technicians...D.R. gave very little input to the final code....in fact just some source code and very little technical help to transcode it to 68k and implement it on the ST within cpm 68k/TOS.

 

 

Working with DRI must've been such a pain that Atari Corp. never felt the need to update their version of GEM to go along with DRI's x86 releases. Of course, Atari would've had to have again used staff to convert the DRI code over from x86 to 680x0. It was a shame because I liked GEM/3. At school, we had a 286 clone from some outfit called "Sun Moon Star" and it came standard with GEM/3.

 

As far as your other comments, I think Amiga was great - too expensive at the start though and too virus prone compared to the ST - but what I found gawd awful was the GUI. I didn't like the old Workbench at all. It seemed as odd then as some of the aspects of Mac OS X [or the earlier MacOS] still does today [like dragging a Disc icon to the Trash Can to eject it, for example]. The only positive thing I can say for the old Workbench GUI was that the bench/desk was the color "blue" and not green like with GEM. [well, that and the draggable screens, that is still cool to this day]. The first thing I did with my Falcon was set the default desktop color scheme to blue.

 

 

Lots of good stuff snipped here, but ST outlasted the Amiga? No way matey! Or do you mean as a functional company per se? Atari vs. Commodore up until the mid 90's? Ignoring the multitude of practical 3rd party products that continue to this day for the Amiga, remember companies like Amiga Technologies, Escom et al, produced Amiga systems for many years after Commodores demise. Still, the history of it all is mind boggling. Amiga really is a 'current' platform and OS for all practical intents and is supported by many companies. There's even a couple of current FPGA projects, one is an A500 clone and with the AGA patents expiring in a year or two, I bet we'll have new A1200's, etc. While the ST may not be dead-dead, pretty darn close. I don't see new cases, sound cards, video cards, usb cards or any TOS OS being developed or replicated anywhere in the world except for maybe high atop a secluded German mountain. lol But I'm sure as soon as I say that, someone will point to some link(s).... lol (I am aware of a new or semi-new IDE or SCSI interface for the ST)

 

I'm sorry to say this but I think the problem with AmigaOS today is that the powers that be won't step up to the plate and do what is necessary to make it a truly viable third computing platform option in the world of Windows and Mac OS X. That would mean going the Apple route and release a new version of the OS with FreeBSD underpinnings but have the upper layers and custom APIs as "Amiga" as possible to distinguish it. Then in addition to appealing to the "die hards" it would also attract Linux developers as well as as Mac developers growing dissatisfied with Apple in general [like with their refusal to release decently priced PowerMacs]. It would be easy to port titles from Linux and Mac to it. As it stands, you don't have that with AmigaOS 4.1. Plus Hyperion and MorphOS sticking with PowerPC as an option became DOA more than 3 years ago when Apple moved to x86.

Edited March 5, 2010 by Lynxpro

[+rdemming]

True, but what hurt the ST market greatly was that damn SF354 disk drive. Atari Corp. should've never offered it because all commercial [game] software shipped with single density owners from then on [for the most part]. Had they only shipped double density - the SF314 - we would've all been much better off.

 

I think you meant single/double "side" instead single/double "density".

Indeed for a long time software was shipped on single side disks because of this. But I wonder if it had much effect on the quality of the software since many games just shipped on two single side disks.

 

Robert

[Lazarus]

True, but what hurt the ST market greatly was that damn SF354 disk drive. Atari Corp. should've never offered it because all commercial [game] software shipped with single density owners from then on [for the most part]. Had they only shipped double density - the SF314 - we would've all been much better off.

Also a lot of Amiga software shipped 1-sided, with side 2 often used as "backup" if reading side 1 failed.

 

And is the Amiga 880k format any weirder than what the later Macs [and the //GS 3.5" drive too] shipped? They had an 800k disk format...

 

Is my memory getting faulty or wasn't Atari's original plan with the Falcon to release it with one of the 2.88MB disc drives that never seemed to catch on?

3.5" HD was already quite unreliable. I heard 3.5" ED is much worse.

[flashjazzcat]

I thought it was quiet round here, but I didn't expect this topic to show signs of life again.

 

 

 

[MEtalGuy66]

True, but what hurt the ST market greatly was that damn SF354 disk drive. Atari Corp. should've never offered it because all commercial [game] software shipped with single density owners from then on [for the most part]. Had they only shipped double density - the SF314 - we would've all been much better off.

Also a lot of Amiga software shipped 1-sided, with side 2 often used as "backup" if reading side 1 failed.

What?!?! Ahem.. b#llsh!t ahehem... After sector copying thousands of AMIGA floppies over the span of 20+ years, I can tell you that Ive NEVER seen a single one that had a 440k filesystem, mirrored on both physical sides of the disk.. Whoever told you that has a very creative imagination, to say the least..

And is the Amiga 880k format any weirder than what the later Macs [and the //GS 3.5" drive too] shipped? They had an 800k disk format...

Not at all.. The actual physical format AMIGA uses is 920k.. 880k is how much storage space you get after file system overhead, etc.. and The actual specification for Double Density 3.5" media is 1024k.. It's actually printed on ALOT of brands of 3.5"DD floppies.. So no, 880k is no less reliable than 720k on a 3.5" DD disk, and anyone who claims that 720k is some kind of "magic number" for media reliability needs to go read more about the technology because theyve got some obvious misconceptions..

Is my memory getting faulty or wasn't Atari's original plan with the Falcon to release it with one of the 2.88MB disc drives that never seemed to catch on?

3.5" HD was already quite unreliable. I heard 3.5" ED is much worse.

I'll certainly agree with that...

[Lazarus]

Also a lot of Amiga software shipped 1-sided, with side 2 often used as "backup" if reading side 1 failed.

What?!?! Ahem.. b#llsh!t ahehem... After sector copying thousands of AMIGA floppies over the span of 20+ years, I can tell you that Ive NEVER seen a single one that had a 440k filesystem, mirrored on both physical sides of the disk.. Whoever told you that has a very creative imagination, to say the least..

I've seen a lot of those. For example all Novagen games, P47, Out Run etc etc. I am not talking 440k filesystem, but usually own physical and logical disk formats (usually $1800 or $1830 bytes / track) without any file system at all, just bootblock + data.

 

And is the Amiga 880k format any weirder than what the later Macs [and the //GS 3.5" drive too] shipped? They had an 800k disk format...

Not at all.. The actual physical format AMIGA uses is 920k.. 880k is how much storage space you get after file system overhead, etc.. and The actual specification for Double Density 3.5" media is 1024k.. It's actually printed on ALOT of brands of 3.5"DD floppies.. So no, 880k is no less reliable than 720k on a 3.5" DD disk, and anyone who claims that 720k is some kind of "magic number" for media reliability needs to go read more about the technology because theyve got some obvious misconceptions..

Yes, after all both formats (Amiga 880k, MS-DOS 720k) use the same MFM-encoding at the same frequency. The only reason I see why people thought DOS was more reliable is that it reports less errors to the user.

[Lynxpro]

I think you meant single/double "side" instead single/double "density".

Indeed for a long time software was shipped on single side disks because of this. But I wonder if it had much effect on the quality of the software since many games just shipped on two single side disks.

Robert

 

Thanks for the correction. Yes, single density. I hated those things. Yet one more "feature" that Amigans used to point out about how the ST was "inferior" to their machines. It led to unnecessary disc swapping for those of us with SF314 drives and it must've raised the costs for the publishers for having to ship 2 discs for a title on the ST when they only needed to ship 1 disc for the Amiga release.

 

 

3.5" HD was already quite unreliable. I heard 3.5" ED is much worse.

 

 

I didn't have problems with 3.5" discs until long after the switchover to 1.44MB discs and not until the late 90s.

 

 

I thought it was quiet round here, but I didn't expect this topic to show signs of life again.

 

 

Better than the ST vs. Amiga thread. I just discovered this thread and I didn't notice until after I had officially replied that it already had 50+ pages to it.

 

 

I seem to remember it being mentioned in a previous discussion that POKEY would have trouble interfacing with the ST architecture (or 68k system in general) for some reason, making its I/O capabilities useless. (otherwise it could have been used for keyboard reading as well) If that had been possible, it wouldn't replace the YM2149's I/O functionality, so the 2 would need to be used together. (although that wouldn't make too bad a combo for sound, dual POKEYs probably better, lest alone quad) I still think the YM2203 is the simplest/cleanest option: available in 1985, same I/O (and sound) functionality as the 2149 but adding 3 4-operator FM synthesis voices. (4-op being significantly more capable than 2-op of the OPL series like in Adlib/SB, and the type used in the popular YM2151 in arcade/x68000 plus the chips used in the Genesis and Neo Geo, plus various other arcade machine -often the 2151, but sometimes others)

 

 

It must've been due to the ST architecture since Atari Games used dual Pokeys with the 680x0 in several of their arcade games.

 

 

and "On The Edge", is a really good book - I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and wish there was

a version that covered Atari. ALL of Atari - from the 8bits through the Jaguar. Now that would

be truly fascinating reading!

 

 

"Zap - The Rise and Fall of Atari" and "Game Over" are great reads. Neither obviously go up to 1996 though.

 

 

 

Hmm, it's definitely an Atari Corp. product, though it very well could have been the TTL ST had Tramiel not acquired Atari Inc. consumer. (and instead invested capital in TTL, marketing, manufacturing capabilities, etc) Even if Atari Inc had stayed, the 7800 wouldn't have been "Atari" in that respect either... (not being designed internally) Whether or not the 7800 was more "Atari like" or not. (neither were the Lynx or Jaguar in that sense, they were 2nd/3rd parites working with Atari Corp.) Then there's asking whether Atari Games was "really Atari" either, all I can say is that prior to Midway Acquiring Atari Games and Atari Corp being sold off, both were pretty "Atari" still, granted both were distinct from the original Atari Inc with some portions of that company persisting to some degree.

But that's getting pretty philosophical.

And hell, the ST may be Commodore like in the sense of a cheap, streamlined system, but it's just as much a mismach compared to the C64 as it is to the A8-bit line. (both being far more game oriented) Then again, perhaps the ST would have had some other features if MOS engineers had played a significant role in development.

You can argue for the Amiga being a Commodore or Atari, you can tell the C64 is a Commodore, and you can tell the XL is an Atari. The ST is always the odd one out. But I like the idea of calling it the TTL ST!

 

 

Mr. Dyer's involvement with the ST makes it an Atari product in my book. Same with John Skruch (sic). If Jay Miner's involvement with Amiga makes it an Atari product, then it also applies to the ST due to the previously mentioned Atari Inc. employees working on the project...

 

My solution to the 8bit vs. ST is for everyone to have both... And throw in an Amiga for good measure too.

 

Watching Curt in that BBS flick makes me with the ST had the feature to make noise while using the modem during the dial up process. That was cool.

Edited March 7, 2010 by Lynxpro

[kool kitty89]

I seem to remember it being mentioned in a previous discussion that POKEY would have trouble interfacing with the ST architecture (or 68k system in general) for some reason, making its I/O capabilities useless. (otherwise it could have been used for keyboard reading as well) If that had been possible, it wouldn't replace the YM2149's I/O functionality, so the 2 would need to be used together. (although that wouldn't make too bad a combo for sound, dual POKEYs probably better, lest alone quad) I still think the YM2203 is the simplest/cleanest option: available in 1985, same I/O (and sound) functionality as the 2149 but adding 3 4-operator FM synthesis voices. (4-op being significantly more capable than 2-op of the OPL series like in Adlib/SB, and the type used in the popular YM2151 in arcade/x68000 plus the chips used in the Genesis and Neo Geo, plus various other arcade machine -often the 2151, but sometimes others)

 

 

It must've been due to the ST architecture since Atari Games used dual Pokeys with the 680x0 in several of their arcade games.

Well, a few things: I'm not totally clear on the specifics of what made POKEY (or PIA for that matter) undesirable for use on the ST, but at least part seems to be the clock speeds used. It was suggested in a previous discussion that the 8-bit chips might not work properly when clocked at speeds based on the STs clock (or division thereof), that might not have been an issue if the ST used a clock based on the NTSC colorburst signal (like the Amiga did), but the ST wasn't designed around that. (and it would mean different clocks speeds for ST components -or multiple clock oscillators, increasing cost -the latter may have been the case for soem Arcade implementations)

 

The ST design (RBP project) was well on its way before TTL had anything to do with Atari, so it couldn't have been designed from the outset to work with the chips and may have been difficult to adapt to them at the stage the ST project was at when Atari got bought. Otherwise it would seems advantageous on Tramiel's part to incorporate the A8 components were useful (they could have gone for full backwards compatibility, but that wouldn't have been in the interest of minimal cost); PIA should have been useful in a similar I/O role as the YM2149 if not more flexible in some ways, but PIA was designed specifically for use with the 6502 and has some problem when used with CPUs of dissimilar bus type (like the 68k). I'm not sure if POKEY has any similar specific interfacing problems (some of the 68k arcade board had 6502s dedicated to sound, which would address that problem). In fact, looking at system-16's site all the later atari arcade board listed with POKEY also have a 6502 coprocessor:

http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=767

http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=768

http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=769

http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=766

 

Any machine which was specifically designed with A8-bit backwards compatibility in mind would already be including a 650x compatible (either an updated main CPU like the 65816, or a 6502 coprocessor), so that would not be an issue for using the old chips obviously, but that's not the case with the ST.

[+wood_jl]

 

My solution to the 8bit vs. ST is for everyone to have both... And throw in an Amiga for good measure too.

 

 

Exactly!!! I'm just now coming around to this. Amiga requires a bit of homework now if you've never owned one; lots of forum reading to try to catch up on the current scene. Same solution to Atari vs. C64. I'll see your Amiga and raise you a Commodore 64.

[atarian63]

 

My solution to the 8bit vs. ST is for everyone to have both... And throw in an Amiga for good measure too.

 

 

Exactly!!! I'm just now coming around to this. Amiga requires a bit of homework now if you've never owned one; lots of forum reading to try to catch up on the current scene. Same solution to Atari vs. C64. I'll see your Amiga and raise you a Commodore 64.

Heresy! really though,you are probably right, though I sold amiga and c64 back in the day, I could just never adopt them,though I tried a few times. Took an sx64 on a plane trip in the 80's,that got some looks! looked like I was lugging an oscilliscope