After 30 years absence bought Atari STFM 1024

[BeigeFM]

Hey! Hello!

New poster first post here.

Had an urge to buy an Atari ST to play stuntcar racer and Damocles lol it's been over thirty years.

Back in the day my STFM had a single sided drive and my parents so tight fisted I had a black and white TV. I had 512 shades of grey.

 

Anyway I picked up an ST. 73 pounds delivered. I have had all the keys off, had everything in the bath and checked the disk drive caps etc. The case is fragile with a few missing bits but it's not so bad to be honest. A little bit brittle perhaps.

 

Turns out it's got 1024 so that was an unexpected bonus. Looks like someone's upgraded it.

 

It doesn't have rainbow tos. It's a 1.2 I think. It only has two tos rims. So I'm a bit confused by that.

 

Can anyone give me any advice? Should I sell and get an STE ? Now I'm learning a bit about Atari again is 4mb worth it? Should I do anything to this one and then keep it?

 

So far I spent 30 pounds on the USB mouse adapter.

 

Thanks in advance.

[+Sauron]

Welcome! Whether you should upgrade to an STE depends on what you want to use it for. If you just want the play the classic games that you had from back in the day, or even just delve into some apps that you liked, then there is no reason at all to upgrade. A 1 MB ST will play the vast majority of the available games from back in the day just fine. However, if you want to check out many of the latest newer games as well as some of the upgraded older games that members of the community have done, then an STE is a must. 

 

Regardless of whether or not you replace it with an STE, though, you will most likely want to get a Gotek for it, which will make checking out software both new and old much, much easier.

 

[BeigeFM]

Thanks for the advice Sauron. What do you do with your ST? Day to day what is your go to software/games and what do you enjoy most about it? 

 

Do you know of any YouTube videos demonstrating a reworked or modern STE game? Just a little taste of what to expect or what can be done?

 

In an effort to pick up some old software I've ebayed for Pompeii Pirates disks but no luck so I've picked up a few games. 

 

I see there is a space for a Bitter on the STFM board. Has anyone successfully upgraded an STFM to an STE?

 

I'll do some reading about TOS roms and see what can be done. To be honest I'm thinking I should just put the old girl in a box for posterity and buy an STE as well. She's cleaned up a treat! 

 

Gotek is a pricey little device but it's on my list. I've read it has two modes which are hard disk mode and floppy mode so I will need to some reading on that 

[+Sauron]

Believe it or not, I currently do not have an ST. I sold my Falcon about 10 years ago, so I've been relying on emulation ever since. Having said that, if I can ever get to visit Texas, a friend of mine promised to hook me up with one, so I guess there is an actual ST out there with my name on it. As far as what I do with it, mostly gaming and a little writing in Word Writer ST. What I am planning to do is mess around a bit with STOS, as my own experimenting with it back in the day never really went very far. 

 

Regarding newer software and such, there's plenty out there. Here's a couple of YouTube videos to check out:

 

 

 

As far as upgrading an ST to an STE goes, I don't believe that's possible, as doing so would require more than just installing a Blitter chip. STEs have an expanded color palette and 4 channel 8 bit PCM audio with DMA, neither of which can be easily added to an ST. As for whether you should upgrade to an STE, like I said before it depends entirely on what you want to do with the system, but you will get more possibilities for modern games with an STE. If you stick with your ST, you should be able to upgrade the ROMs to TOS 1.4 without much fuss, although I believe it is possible to actually upgrade them to 2.06, but would involve more work. 

 

For examples of fully tricked out ST systems, there are tons of videos on YouTube about this, with this one being a good example of upgrades that will make things a bit more convenient in this day and age:

 

 

Just check out some ST videos for a while and you'll get to see some great examples of what you can do with it as well as other upgrades that will probably pique your interest. Just keep in mind that you'll need to spend a pretty penny to get many of these upgrades. Regardless of whether you stick with your ST or end up getting an STE, I'd suggest checking out the Exxos Forum: https://www.exxosforum.co.uk/forum/index.php

 

 

[zzip]

18 hours ago, BeigeFM said:

Can anyone give me any advice? Should I sell and get an STE ? Now I'm learning a bit about Atari again is 4mb worth it? Should I do anything to this one and then keep it?

4mb is definitely nice to have, especially if you have a hard drive or modern equivalent.   STe?  They are more Amiga-like but still fall short of the Amiga specs.  STe features are mostly supported by demos and homebrew/shareware games.    Finding STe support in commercial games is kind of rare.  I also think they are considerably more expensive than vanilla ST's.   Keep that in mind when deciding.

 

 

[TGB1718]

On 4/27/2023 at 6:14 AM, BeigeFM said:

I've read it has two modes which are hard disk mode and floppy mode so I will need to some reading on that 

Don't think it has a Hard Disk mode, it's connected to the floppy port, not the DMA port.

It has an SD card which can hold loads of ST floppy images, you can select the images via

buttons on the device or use an auto-loader which put a menu on your ST screen for

you to select the images.

[+DarkLord]

Why I prefer the Ultrasatan -  mass storage, with easy data transfer between

my ST, Kubuntu Linux laptop, and Win10 computer.   

 

[BeigeFM]

Ok chaos sorry for late reply. Currently at work so sorry for short response.

 

 

Waiting on delivery.

 

Gotek and sd4st+

Some tos roms to attempt to take it to1.04

Err yeah. No idea what I'm doing but will work it out! That's the fun bit 

 

Thanks so much for your help guys I'm sure to be back!

 

Have to hide these purchase from the good lady!