If you could change one thing about the 520ST/STM/STFM......

[Keatah]

8 hours ago, Zogging Hell said:

The weird thing about PCs is that everyone goes on about their expandibility and what not, but you still end up buying a new one (at least) every five years due to redundancy anyway. 386 to run Wolfenstein in 91, er well in 1993 you need to buy at least a decent 486 for Doom... couple more years and you have to buy another with a Pentium for Quake. Same with Windows, a 486 is ok with 3.1, but with 95 it is struggling, and your Pentium won't be happy with XP. Personally I think it is the complete disposability of the platform that at least partially why it won the computer war, hardware manufacturers get constant income, Microsoft continues to make Windows more bloated (or arbitarily discontinues support for your hardware - Windows 11) so it won't run on your CPU/ memory/ graphics card combo.. and the cycle repeats. So how much does the expandibility really help really (particularly now most things are actually buit in anyway)?

Nowadays? Less and less. PCs have long been commoditized into disposable devices. The SFFPC typically only allows for plug in storage to be upgraded, assuming you've maxed the memory to 64GB or 128GB - and with memory so cheap, why not?

 

I get it. And I don't like the forced obsolescence being created by new software not supporting old hardware either. Or new hardware not supporting old software. At least with the latter there's emulation and virtualization to help out.

 

They say a typical homebuilt rig made from standard parts is good for 5-8 years for the average user. I say closer to 5-6, but whatever. In the end it's this constant evolution that allows us to have games progress from Wolfenstein to Doom and Quake and beyond. BTW I use an e-Machines class Pentium-M from 2004 for all my critical business correspondence.

 

8 hours ago, Zogging Hell said:

For serious stuff the ST actually was still completely useable in the 90s (if you weren't tied to a particular mainstream software package). My dissertation at Uni (all 12000 words with multiple fonts and pictures) was done on an Atari in 1999, and it was producing better output than the Windows NT computers in the uni labs were doing.. as I could buy decent software for the ST at half the price. And that is probably why there aren't STs today. If a machine is good enough to run for years, and not need replacing, and the software is too cheap, it isn't making anyone any cash is it

Right. I know I'm pissing off Microsoft left and right by continuing to use XP and Office 2003. Not out of defiance or masochistic bravado or anything. But simply because it just works and doesn't bog me down with excessive online crap.

 

Not interested in all the online logins and distractions. When I hit the power button I expect to get right to work.

 

[Atari8guy]

4 hours ago, zzip said:

And it didn't help that Atari wanted to be a "jack of all trades" computer company, like embarking that transputer misadventure, licensing System V Unix,  trying to get into the high-end workstation market.   Atari was a consumer brand. They should have kept focusing their marketing dollars on that instead of trying to break into business markets with a brand name that everyone associated with games.

This is it to me.  The ST (more than the Amiga or Mac) could somewhat interoperate with low end work PC's.  The diskettes worked and text files and some spreadsheets could be shared.  It was all marketing, focus the ST as the cheaper, but more multimedia (I know, sound, but the Yamaha chip was way better than a PC in 1986, plus Midi) general purpose machine for home and maybe small business and improve the dealer network or expand into appropriate retailers...and you could see how the ST could have garnered a lot more market share fairly easily - it might have even killed off the Amiga before the Amiga really got going or least pushed it into the video editing niche almost exclusively.  Then who knows how it plays out, probably a lot more ST games and life span into the early 90s as something of a mainstream (vs. niche by 91-92) machine?

[Keatah]

I always thought it would've been interesting and amusing if Atari tried to consumerize the PC. Bring it home like RadioShack tried. RS' salesforce didn't have the right approach. RS packed in just a little too much custom software early on (pre-486). RS' also asked a little too much money for what you got.

 

My old man had first bought a solidly built 286-12 Packard Bell. Turned out not doing too much stuff other than a mundane database or flight simulator 4 IIRC. I did use it to get an introduction to x86 however. Still smarting from blowing $2000 on it the old fart skipped the 386 and slipped into a slimilne 486SX-25 from RS.

 

I asked why RS. The answer was the "localness" and support and not-a-computer-store atmosphere. The gasser would go on to use it for old-man stuff. Some ebay watching. Some solitaire. Email and Nutscrape Invigorator Those boring trivia games.

 

Unless you had a specific task in mind, the PC could be very costly, very boring, very not-state-of-the-art even.

[zzip]

9 minutes ago, Keatah said:

I always thought it would've been interesting and amusing if Atari tried to consumerize the PC. Bring it home like RadioShack tried. RS' salesforce didn't have the right approach. RS packed in just a little too much custom software early on (pre-486). RS' also asked a little too much money for what you got.

Well they did:  http://www.ataripc.net/pc1-8088/

Atari ultimately sold 5 models from an 8088 through a 386.   They were reasonably priced,  came with MS-DOS and GEM (because of course it would)

 

Also they did the Atari Portfolio, a palmtop PC (the first of its kind):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Portfolio

 

 

Edited December 22, 2022 by zzip

[Keatah]

I knew they existed.. I'm now wondering why they didn't catch on.

[Muzz73]

18 hours ago, Keatah said:

Being stuck in the 80's is a good thing!

 

I recognized this sometime in the 286/386 era. And solidified it to where I was done and done with Atari/Amiga when word of the 486 hit the public consciousness.

 

Absolutely. This applied equally with hardware, software, services, add-ons, and more.

 

The promise of what the Amiga was supposed to do and never did is what royally disappointed me. I was used to expansion and growth from the Apple II line. And I expected that from the Amiga, because that's what they told me it would be. (sorry to all of you that keep hearing me complain about that.)

 

I got more and more interested in the PC when I observed that there were multiple (big name) packages that would do the same or similar things. And that gave me choices to pick from. No fear of getting pigeonholed into something.

 

Technical superiority is only one aspect of a package. The stuff has to be affordable, realistic, durable, versatile, and most importantly available.

 

IDK. When I looked at an Amiga I saw a one-trick-pony, toys and games. When I looked at a PC I saw business possibilities, mathematical studies, celestial computations and astronomical simulations. Serious word processing with solid WYSIWYG features. In retrospect I may have at home, too, because my Apple II had a Microsoft 16K RAMCARD and "Microsoft" printed on some of the ROM chips. I had a good experience with it in the late 70's and very early 80's. And I figured I'd have a good experience with a Microsoft branded OS. And I did. An ineffable continuity was taking place.

 

I don't know about that. It was like building up your system. It is the essence of the system. Equipping it to fit your needs.

 

I didn't need resolutions much beyond 1024x768. But I wanted billions of colors. And I could have that for about $200 in the early 1990's. (yes I had to wait till 1992 when the price/performance and personal funds aligned)

 

Computers like the C64/IIgs/ST/Amiga/Mac/400/800 could not change out their graphics or sound chips or allow you to pick one that had the features you most wanted. You were stuck with what originally came with the machine.

 

And that's what the slots were for, to give you that all-godlike customization. And in 1992 that consumed 3 slots. Sound. Graphics. And a Multi-IO board (2-serial, 1-parallel, 1-game, 2-HDD, 2-floppy).. Progress! And you still had 5 slots for more stuff yet.

 

Sounds like a typical starter system. I had cassette, RF modulator, and family TV, as peripherals for my Apple II.

 

Apple II had slots because the industry was so young and new. No one knew how home computers would develop or what as-of-yet undeveloped peripherals would be needed. Slots were a solution to a future undefined problem. But unlike today where pointless solutions are in search of a problem, it was clearly known there would be a some need to expand a system.

Oh yeah, you're totally right... I was just sighting early examples in the industry when no particular platform was "industry standard" yet.

 

I didn't mention multi I/O cards on the PC because I was focusing on the machines that were available when the early Macs, ST's, etc. had hit the market at large. When I built my first XT back in the 80's, that was what I had to deal with; eight slots, most of them full just to get basic functionality out of the thing. When I built my first 286, that was a different story... "You mean I can have two serial, a parallel, a game port, high density floppy control AND RLL hard disks off of one 16-bit card?! Whoa!!!" LOL

Edited December 22, 2022 by Muzz73

[oracle_jedi]

3 hours ago, Keatah said:

I knew they existed.. I'm now wondering why they didn't catch on.

 

Cause they had an even worse sound chip than the ST

 

I actually considered buying an Atari PC1 around 1989/90, when I finally gave up on the ST and decided to move to the PC.  I liked that I could reuse one of my ST disk drives, but the lack of expansion slots put me off.  Had the machine shipped with  MCGA or VGA graphics and something resembling a sound card my decision might have been different.  There was also the PC2 that did have slots, but 1988 was about the time when the market was flooded with cheap clones, often unbranded, sold by everyone as his uncle.  My childhood friend's father, who had retired from British Leyland a few years before, was now selling PC XT clones by mail order out of a shed in his back garden.  Against that backdrop I don't recall the PC2 being especially attractive.  Later came the expandable PC3, PC4 and PC5 but again I don't recall the machines standing out from the crowd in terms of specs, design or price.  In fact I thought the later Atari PCs were quite ugly.

 

In the U.S. Tandy had a network of retail stores to help push their cheap PC clones.   In the UK, Amstrad had established a name for themselves and were able to position their machines through stores like Dixons and Comet. Both the Tandy and the Amstrad were expandable.  Other clone manufacturers like Dell and Compaq chased the corporate market and/or had customer support that Atari just could not compete with.

 

I ended up buying a used PC XT clone called an Advance 86B.  It was very cheap but utter crap, and I quickly replaced it with a 286 system from some outfit in West London run by a couple of students.

 

 

 

[Zogging Hell]

14 hours ago, Keatah said:

Nowadays? Less and less. PCs have long been commoditized into disposable devices. The SFFPC typically only allows for plug in storage to be upgraded, assuming you've maxed the memory to 64GB or 128GB - and with memory so cheap, why not?

This is true, the only thing most people will buy to add to the PC nowadays is a GPU and storage, and the intergrated graphics on PCs nowadays isn't a bad option either. Compared to the rigmaroul you have to jump through to get a 486 to work with DOS and any card (IRQ settings, software drivers and so on), we are nearly back to the original idea of the home computer.

14 hours ago, Keatah said:

Right. I know I'm pissing off Microsoft left and right by continuing to use XP and Office 2003. Not out of defiance or masochistic bravado or anything. But simply because it just works and doesn't bog me down with excessive online crap.

 

Not interested in all the online logins and distractions. When I hit the power button I expect to get right to work.

 

Office 2003 was the last one without the ribbon and I used it for a long time to avoid that, even after I switched to Windows 7 and then 10. Did finally get a later edition, but only because I needed the PDF output, and definitely not the 360 online version (I'm such a luddite!).

[Zogging Hell]

5 hours ago, oracle_jedi said:

 

Cause they had an even worse sound chip than the ST

 

I actually considered buying an Atari PC1 around 1989/90, when I finally gave up on the ST and decided to move to the PC.  I liked that I could reuse one of my ST disk drives, but the lack of expansion slots put me off.  Had the machine shipped with  MCGA or VGA graphics and something resembling a sound card my decision might have been different.  There was also the PC2 that did have slots, but 1988 was about the time when the market was flooded with cheap clones, often unbranded, sold by everyone as his uncle.  My childhood friend's father, who had retired from British Leyland a few years before, was now selling PC XT clones by mail order out of a shed in his back garden.  Against that backdrop I don't recall the PC2 being especially attractive.  Later came the expandable PC3, PC4 and PC5 but again I don't recall the machines standing out from the crowd in terms of specs, design or price.  In fact I thought the later Atari PCs were quite ugly.

 

In the U.S. Tandy had a network of retail stores to help push their cheap PC clones.   In the UK, Amstrad had established a name for themselves and were able to position their machines through stores like Dixons and Comet. Both the Tandy and the Amstrad were expandable.  Other clone manufacturers like Dell and Compaq chased the corporate market and/or had customer support that Atari just could not compete with.

 

I ended up buying a used PC XT clone called an Advance 86B.  It was very cheap but utter crap, and I quickly replaced it with a 286 system from some outfit in West London run by a couple of students.

I have a PC4 (the cut down 8mhz 286 version), it is well built, for a clone PC. But it isn't an Atari design iirc, other than the case. The motherboard is a rebadged effort from someone else. The problem with it is that Atari removed the simm sockets on the cut down version, and used SIPPs rather than SIMMs, which makes it a bit of a odd one to upgrade. It compares well to the IBM PS/2 in terms of specs, but you probably could have got something better.

[Tuxon86]

If I had a go at designing the thing I'd make sure that the ram available to the video chip would be greater than 32k. This is what crippled the system the most when compared to the Amiga who's chip ram could be increased. This and having a blitter from day one.

 

The audio chip was also subpar, as many have already mentionned. The addition of midi was nice, but buying a synth or roland mt-32 in the 80's wasn't cheap either and few could afford one. The YM3526 (OPL) was release in 1984 and the YM3812 (OPL2) was released in '85 and even with the added cost the ST line would've cost less than the Amiga and Mac but with way better sound (equivalent to an adlib card).

 

The other ST quirk that annoyed me was that you needed two monitors to fully enjoy the full graphical capabilities of the system. Yes the mono monitor was great with its higher refresh rate, but it was an added cost (plus the switchbox). 

[zzip]

1 hour ago, Tuxon86 said:

The audio chip was also subpar, as many have already mentionned. The addition of midi was nice, but buying a synth or roland mt-32 in the 80's wasn't cheap either and few could afford one. The YM3526 (OPL) was release in 1984 and the YM3812 (OPL2) was released in '85 and even with the added cost the ST line would've cost less than the Amiga and Mac but with way better sound (equivalent to an adlib card).

It's better for music, but I've never heard an AdLib game that has good sound effects,  especially when noise is needed for explosions or revving a car.

[zzip]

13 hours ago, Keatah said:

I knew they existed.. I'm now wondering why they didn't catch on.

probably because they lacked cow spots?

 

seriously though,  they had competition.   Commodore also had a line of PCs with similar specs and price,  not to mention Radio Shack Tandy..     As you mention Radio Shack stores were in virtually every community.   I have no idea who the dealers were for Atari PCs.   Sure you could order them mail order, but locally?  Tramiel Atari burned lots of bridges with dealers.

 

The other thing is only the PC1 looked remotely like an Atari design.   The rest looked like generic PCs that any mom and pop PC shop could assemble for you, except with an Atari badge slapped on.   So unless you were an Atari die hard, why go out of your way to get one over all the other choices?

[MrMaddog]

1 hour ago, Tuxon86 said:

If I had a go at designing the thing I'd make sure that the ram available to the video chip would be greater than 32k. This is what crippled the system the most when compared to the Amiga who's chip ram could be increased. This and having a blitter from day one.

 

The audio chip was also subpar, as many have already mentionned. The addition of midi was nice, but buying a synth or roland mt-32 in the 80's wasn't cheap either and few could afford one. The YM3526 (OPL) was release in 1984 and the YM3812 (OPL2) was released in '85 and even with the added cost the ST line would've cost less than the Amiga and Mac but with way better sound (equivalent to an adlib card).

 

 

 

Yeah, I couldn't figure out why someone didn't just put an OPL2/3 chip in a small size cart that takes MIDI input and output music audio.  ST game makers actually expected people to go out and buy expensive full size syth keyboards just to listen to better music in games?  At leas PC owners had options like AdLib cards and MT-32, though they also had to buy MIDI controller interface cards.  I do know Sierra & LucasArt games support the MT-32 on the ST, but what about older games that expect a Casio CZ-101?

 

[Tuxon86]

43 minutes ago, zzip said:

It's better for music, but I've never heard an AdLib game that has good sound effects,  especially when noise is needed for explosions or revving a car.

Or, the OPL chip could've been a cheap cart to be plugged in to augment the sound capability like it was for the MSX computer line. At least that cartridge port would've ad a better use than just for anti-piracy dongle...

 

[+DarkLord]

On 12/21/2022 at 1:37 PM, Zogging Hell said:

Yeah I certainly got my monies worth out of the ST and Falcon. I managed to stay Atari for most things until the very early 2000s thanks to an extravangant Milan clone purchase, so I was most tech capitalist's nightmare. I had to admit defeat (I started doing a C++ course on Windows and the web was getting too complex) and bought a cheapo Compaq Armada laptop and a no brand name PC. The Armada was sporting a Pentium 233 and was out of date - had been fairly high end five odd years earlier though. The cheapo clone had a Cyrix CPU allegedly clocking in at 500mhz, and onboard SiS graphics and was actually worse than the laptop! However, when I want to write something complex and I mean really write something, that requires a lot of concentration and no distraction, I still use the Mega ST even now and swap the files into Word later.

 

You know, I still do the same with some things. Back in the day, when I was still working (retired respiratory therapist now, 39 years at ARH Our Lady Of The Way Hospital), I would take my STacy into work with me as I worked 12.5 hour night shifts and during the summer time it would slow down. Our office was in a back wing of the hospital, isolated from the patients or anyone else. Perfect for an Atari guy.

 

I would play games (of course!) as well as code scripts for my BBS, stuff like that. I also used "TextBook" downloaded from Anodyne Software. It allows the text format files from the Gutenberg Project to be read on your Atari ST. The Gutenberg Project is loaded with great literature, both classic and modern. I would sit and read using my Atari STacy for this and it was awesome.

 

Now as I mentioned, I'm retired so those days are over but in the last few months, when I'm awake at 2-3am (remember I worked night shift for almost 4 decades!),  I have found myself missing that so...I'll fire up my STacy and...read a good book. 

 

Yeah, yeah, I know - there's Kindle's and a ton of other modern readers out there that do a superb job for this purpose, but it's just not the same.

 

Here's a couple of screenshots:

 

(Atari STacy)

 

 

 

(Mega STe, medium res on a Dell 27" monitor)

 

 

Now if anyone tries this out, some advice - use NVDI, it helps immensely, especially on

the larger books. The Mega STe @16mhz and using NVDI is the least machine I used it

on and it's fine there. My STacy has a Pak 68/3 board with NVDI so it loads and displays

the books fiendishly fast.

 

I would imagine that using this on an 8mhz ST without NVDI might be a tad bit slow.. Of

course, a mass storage device of some sort and 1 mega of RAM is really needed.

 

[Zogging Hell]

1 hour ago, DarkLord said:

 

You know, I still do the same with some things. Back in the day, when I was still working (retired respiratory therapist now, 39 years at ARH Our Lady Of The Way Hospital), I would take my STacy into work with me as I worked 12.5 hour night shifts and during the summer time it would slow down. Our office was in a back wing of the hospital, isolated from the patients or anyone else. Perfect for an Atari guy.

 

Now as I mentioned, I'm retired so those days are over but in the last few months, when I'm awake at 2-3am (remember I worked night shift for almost 4 decades!),  I have found myself missing that so...I'll fire up my STacy and...read a good book. 

 

Yeah, yeah, I know - there's Kindle's and a ton of other modern readers out there that do a superb job for this purpose, but it's just not the same.

 

Now if anyone tries this out, some advice - use NVDI, it helps immensely, especially on

the larger books. The Mega STe @16mhz and using NVDI is the least machine I used it

on and it's fine there. My STacy has a Pak 68/3 board with NVDI so it loads and displays

the books fiendishly fast.

 

That old Stacy screen does have a similar kind of feel to a Kindle screen, if you can find the mouse pointer (did you upgrade the screen on yours?). I actually used to drag my Stacy into work in the early 00's when I started work in archaeology. One of the bosses insisted on us working on a B+W Mac Classic, and I thought I'm not having that.. if we are going to be using retro then we might as well go Atari.

Did you ever try Tempus for text (not the WP, the original text editor), which was pretty fast without NVDI, which is a good job as it didn't like NVDI at all..

[Zogging Hell]

9 hours ago, Tuxon86 said:

If I had a go at designing the thing I'd make sure that the ram available to the video chip would be greater than 32k. This is what crippled the system the most when compared to the Amiga who's chip ram could be increased. This and having a blitter from day one.

 

The audio chip was also subpar, as many have already mentionned. The addition of midi was nice, but buying a synth or roland mt-32 in the 80's wasn't cheap either and few could afford one. The YM3526 (OPL) was release in 1984 and the YM3812 (OPL2) was released in '85 and even with the added cost the ST line would've cost less than the Amiga and Mac but with way better sound (equivalent to an adlib card).

 

The other ST quirk that annoyed me was that you needed two monitors to fully enjoy the full graphical capabilities of the system. Yes the mono monitor was great with its higher refresh rate, but it was an added cost (plus the switchbox). 

The video chip isn't limited to 32kb of RAM as such as far as I understand it, although the screen resolutions stick to that for simplicity. The ST, due to the shared memory, can actually use pretty address all the available memory (up to 4mb), which I think is something that Ghosts and Ghouls conversion that was being done a few years ago was leveraging. So in that respect it does have an advantage over the Amiga, which is stuck at 512kb of GPU memory I think on the A500, and 2mb on the A1200.

The two monitors was a bit annoying nowadays, but at the time you either ran off a TV style monitor and were limited to 50/60hz (Amiga) or had to use a proper monitor with higher refresh rates (ala Mac but - limited colours). The compromise for the ST if you couldn't afford both was to use a TV with SCART or RF and buy the high res monitor and you probably had the best of both worlds. Given VGA wasn't around at the time, I'm glad Atari went that route, the Amiga flicker route for high resolutions was painful without a flicker fixer, and the Atari mono monitor was actually pretty sweet at the time.

[+DarkLord]

4 hours ago, Zogging Hell said:

That old Stacy screen does have a similar kind of feel to a Kindle screen, if you can find the mouse pointer (did you upgrade the screen on yours?). I actually used to drag my Stacy into work in the early 00's when I started work in archaeology. One of the bosses insisted on us working on a B+W Mac Classic, and I thought I'm not having that.. if we are going to be using retro then we might as well go Atari.

 

Good for you! 

 

I did replace the El screen (not the entire panel), because it had gotten quite dim. Something that seems to

happen to a lot of STacy's as they age. I've almost gotten all the parts together and I hope to do the RGB2HDMI

mod like Derkom and a couple of others have done to their STacy's over at Exxos Atari Forums sometime soon.

I had a color screen setup in mine once, but I wasn't satisfied with it and changed it back (years and years ago).

 

4 hours ago, Zogging Hell said:

Did you ever try Tempus for text (not the WP, the original text editor), which was pretty fast without NVDI, which is a good job as it didn't like NVDI at all..

 

No, I haven't - although I seem to remember reading good reviews on it BITD. I might have to check it out, thanks.

 

[Zogging Hell]

8 hours ago, DarkLord said:

 

I did replace the El screen (not the entire panel), because it had gotten quite dim. Something that seems to

happen to a lot of STacy's as they age. I've almost gotten all the parts together and I hope to do the RGB2HDMI

mod like Derkom and a couple of others have done to their STacy's over at Exxos Atari Forums sometime soon.

I had a color screen setup in mine once, but I wasn't satisfied with it and changed it back (years and years ago).

 

Yeah might have to do something about mine at some point, I haven't even been able to unpack it since I moved to France as my man cave construction is delayed! So the colour screen is not recommended or was it just a bad panel?

[Tuxon86]

12 hours ago, Zogging Hell said:

The video chip isn't limited to 32kb of RAM as such as far as I understand it, although the screen resolutions stick to that for simplicity. The ST, due to the shared memory, can actually use pretty address all the available memory (up to 4mb), which I think is something that Ghosts and Ghouls conversion that was being done a few years ago was leveraging. So in that respect it does have an advantage over the Amiga, which is stuck at 512kb of GPU memory I think on the A500, and 2mb on the A1200.

The two monitors was a bit annoying nowadays, but at the time you either ran off a TV style monitor and were limited to 50/60hz (Amiga) or had to use a proper monitor with higher refresh rates (ala Mac but - limited colours). The compromise for the ST if you couldn't afford both was to use a TV with SCART or RF and buy the high res monitor and you probably had the best of both worlds. Given VGA wasn't around at the time, I'm glad Atari went that route, the Amiga flicker route for high resolutions was painful without a flicker fixer, and the Atari mono monitor was actually pretty sweet at the time.

You can page in and out into that 32k buffer, but this is where the lack of a blitter impacted the graphical performance of the ST line compared to the Amiga. You can go to 2mb of chip ram on the A500 with the help of a fat agnus and a gary adapter (or just soldering a few wire to the gary).

 

I'm not trying to rekindle the good old platform war of the 80's, and I did love my 520ST, but Atari dropped the ball trying to beat Commodore Amiga release. They should've spend the time to work on the Amy sound processor and include a better memory manager. 

[Zogging Hell]

5 minutes ago, Tuxon86 said:

You can page in and out into that 32k buffer, but this is where the lack of a blitter impacted the graphical performance of the ST line compared to the Amiga. You can go to 2mb of chip ram on the A500 with the help of a fat agnus and a gary adapter (or just soldering a few wire to the gary).

 

I'm not trying to rekindle the good old platform war of the 80's, and I did love my 520ST, but Atari dropped the ball trying to beat Commodore Amiga release. They should've spend the time to work on the Amy sound processor and include a better memory manager. 

Ah interesting, so you can breach the 512k limit with some hardware mods, but not on the original 1000? Forgive my lack of knowledge on that front, I had to look the Gary adaptor up (got to love those Amiga hardware naming schemes). May have to treat my Amiga at some point... Yeah they definitely should have included the blitter in the ST as standard once it was finalised as had originally been planned.

I'm not 100% Atari sped the ST into production just to beat the Amiga to market (although that was a benefit), personally I think it was more a case of 'we need to be profitable in 'x' years or we will go bust. Tramiel was flogging leftover Atari 8bit hardware at the start just to keep the company solvent.

[Tuxon86]

1 hour ago, Zogging Hell said:

Ah interesting, so you can breach the 512k limit with some hardware mods, but not on the original 1000? Forgive my lack of knowledge on that front, I had to look the Gary adaptor up (got to love those Amiga hardware naming schemes). May have to treat my Amiga at some point... Yeah they definitely should have included the blitter in the ST as standard once it was finalised as had originally been planned.

I'm not 100% Atari sped the ST into production just to beat the Amiga to market (although that was a benefit), personally I think it was more a case of 'we need to be profitable in 'x' years or we will go bust. Tramiel was flogging leftover Atari 8bit hardware at the start just to keep the company solvent.

The 1000 was a more limited architecture than the 500/2000. I'd say the 1000 was more a prototype/proof of concept than a viable system. The 500 saved the amiga by making it simpler and easier to tweak.

 

 

[+DarkLord]

5 hours ago, Zogging Hell said:

Yeah might have to do something about mine at some point, I haven't even been able to unpack it since I moved to France as my man cave construction is delayed! So the colour screen is not recommended or was it just a bad panel?

 

Oh, the RGB2HDMI mod they've got going now, with replacement color screens apparently works great from pictures

and video's I've seen.

 

Keep in mind, it was somewhere in the mid 2000's? that I attempted a color screen on my STacy. There were not Pi

powered RGB2HDMI mods anywhere in sight then - I was trying to rig up something on my own. It worked, and I

actually had a color STacy for a few months but the picture quality wasn't great (onscreen characters would have

dropped or faded out sections) so I eventually reverted.

 

You can see it here:

 

[Zogging Hell]

3 hours ago, DarkLord said:

Keep in mind, it was somewhere in the mid 2000's? that I attempted a color screen on my STacy. There were not Pi

powered RGB2HDMI mods anywhere in sight then - I was trying to rig up something on my own. It worked, and I

actually had a color STacy for a few months but the picture quality wasn't great (onscreen characters would have

dropped or faded out sections) so I eventually reverted.

 

You can see it here:

 

Ah yeah I see, kind of the same effect you get on some TVs that don't really like the ST's video signal. Must admit I'd prefer the mono screen for the Stacy anyway, I wonder if there are any Kindle like paper like panels that could be swapped in. Fair shouts for the attempt that early though

[Keatah]

10 hours ago, Tuxon86 said:

The 1000 was a more limited architecture than the 500/2000. I'd say the 1000 was more a prototype/proof of concept than a viable system. The 500 saved the amiga by making it simpler and easier to tweak.

Jus that it had a WCS that had to be loaded on startup was indicative of proto-status. I had an early unit, SN less the 400 IIRC and the whole thing felt very experimental. In no way was it ready for primetime.

 

On 12/22/2022 at 5:43 AM, Zogging Hell said:

This is true, the only thing most people will buy to add to the PC nowadays is a GPU and storage, and the intergrated graphics on PCs nowadays isn't a bad option either.

Integrated graphics is a good thing. Elegant. Low power consumption is key. And compare it against the 4090 which has issues with melting power connectors. Draws something 500 watts of power.

 

When I recommend new PCs I always start with integrated graphics. Then there's really only 2 or 3 choices for add-in graphics cards. Low, Medium, and High. The market may have hundreds of over-granulated choices available, but you needn't look further than those three levels.

 

On 12/22/2022 at 5:43 AM, Zogging Hell said:

Compared to the rigmaroul you have to jump through to get a 486 to work with DOS and any card (IRQ settings, software drivers and so on), we are nearly back to the original idea of the home computer.

I recall installing my 1st graphics card in a 486 was rather straightforward and trouble-free. Plugged it in and away I went. Windows 3.1 drivers worked the first time around. I wouldn't have driver and irq/dma issues till the 3D world got underway.

 

On 12/22/2022 at 5:43 AM, Zogging Hell said:

Office 2003 was the last one without the ribbon and I used it for a long time to avoid that, even after I switched to Windows 7 and then 10. Did finally get a later edition, but only because I needed the PDF output, and definitely not the 360 online version (I'm such a luddite!).

I hated that ribbon thing. And I refuse to use a cloud-based office package.