LGR - Atari ST Computer System Review
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ก.ย. 2024
- The Atari ST was introduced right before the Commodore Amiga in 1985. Popular with gamers, musicians and desktop publishers, the ST earned its right as one of the best 16-bit computers of its day. But is it still worth owning to a current collector of vintage computers?
This is an overview of the history, hardware and software of the ST from the perspective of an American collector. How do the pros and cons stack up, and is it worth getting an ST over similar systems like the Amiga?
Many thanks to Borin81 for the 1040STfm!
/ borin81
For lots of great info on the Atari ST and other Atari computers:
www.atari.st/
www.atari.org/
Download the floppy transfer program:
atari.8bitchip....
Get your LGR swag here! Help support the show and your own geek pride!
www.cafepress.c...
Or just donate via PayPal:
donate.thebasin...
Follow LGR on Twitter:
#!...
Like LGR on the Book of Faces:
/ lazygamereviews
This video contains music by The Insider and Kevin MacLeod that is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license for commercial use. Those photos at the beginning are CC images sourced from Wikimedia.
"One thing that really bothers me is that the default color scheme is white and lime-green"
* Side-eyes LGR logo *
Aww snap!
HAHAHA wow, good observation actually! xD
That's why it bothers him.
i think hes setting a 80s video vibe pritty good really
hey.. look on the bright side. At least its not white and lemon-yellow
Man...those old 16-bit machines were sweet looking.
They were fantastic too, lucky enough to have a 520ST fm in the day.
We had an STE with Notator Software, SMPTE synced to a 16 track tape deck and about 10 MIDI Synths and Effects wired to it. It NEVER missed a beat, it NEVER crashed. Best music system ever.
My family owned a 520, 1040, an Amiga, and several PCs back in those days. We wrote our own games and everything. Thanks for the walk down memory lane.
Lucky. My grandparents that raised me had absolutely no interests in computers (despite being big on new tech; they got their first home CD player in like 1984) so I had to live with hand me downs. Like a hand me down Compaq 486 from a great uncle.
Extra fun fact. The cartridge port was used by the required dongle for C-Lab Notator, which was the MIDI software we all used on this great machine. The connector was in close proximity to the MIDI ports, mounted directly on the PCB with little mechanical support, and a lot of the used units out there have dodgy cart slots as a result.
This was my first computer and I used it for years to make music on, and really loved it - despite the fact that I had to secure the dongle with gaffa tape in the end.
+The Bright Pixel Interesting, thanks for the info!
+Lazy Game Reviews Thank you for the incredibly entertaining videos! I'm a new subscriber - after Mr. Ben Heck told me about your channel on twitter the other day. Love the retro tech.
+The Bright Pixel +Lazy Game Reviews - I used to have a mono audio sampling interface that used the cartridge port. When I was a teenager I used to hook it up to a CD player to take samples, then I made my own remixes. I used to love the Atari so much =)
Also I'm not sure if it was mentioned in the video but shortly after the ST FM was released, the ST E came out which featured 'E'nhanced graphics and sound which equaled the Amiga. It's a shame you didn't get to review that model as pretty much all the negative points made are unique to the ST FM line.
Cubase was invented on the Atari, it was originally called Notator.
*****
Ah okay :)
Something I really liked about the ST was coding in assembler, it was a joy to do, with excellent reference books available. I'd done a fair bit of 6502 coding on BBC Micros and an Electrion, but asy on the ST was in a different league. I ended up writing an entire word processor in 68K, which was ridiculously fast in use (it was my main 3rd year project at uni, the largest they'd ever received, the listing took 2.5 hours to print out). Funny thing, the program became popular with other students, they used it in preference to the editor supplied by the uni. :D
Ian.
The end of each word in Lazy Game Reviews spell YES
Lazy
Game
Reviews
*YES*
YES
Half-life 3 confirmation!
Not if you count the W
and the 123 letters spell LAV!.
You could link up to 16 computers using the midi ports and play multiplayer MidiMaze. The tagline was "KILL A HAPPY FACE" It looked something like hover, but the characters were all round balls/happy faces. You roam around a maze and shoot at each other. FUN! A buddy and I also made a hard disk interface that converted the Atari DMA port (proper terminology) to a SCSI port so you could hook up any hard drive. Mine had a 480mb NEC drive, a CDRom from an Apple, an 68030/12mb upgrade (the SST from Gadgets by Small), and a video card upgrade to 1024x768x16 bit graphics. It outpaced PC's for 10 more years. I still have it, but haven't fired it up in 20 years.
MidiMaze is also afaik the first FPS game.
Wow! Considering when the computer came out, those games look super impressive!
Yeah, good for the day -- just Amiga was 32 color, Atari was 16 color, and that made a difference.
Glorious ST master race
@@cathrynm jepp in the beginning the amiga was the way better gaming machine, the ST caught up later, but not that many games used its extended capabilities on the other hand the Amiga was held back by cheap ST ports which did not use the extended capabilities of the Amiga either!
The Atari ST’s joystick placement still beats 90s PCs, where there was a single joystick port, on the sound card, at the back.
Atari , always so close to being great. I loved my 800 as a kid
The timing of the midi ports on these machines still scores the highest accuracy scores in midi timing device shootouts,the midi clock is unburdened by a bloated OS like modern pcs which have shockingly bad midi timing.I learnt all i know about music using cubase on the 1040ste.Great machines :-)
Very neat story, Scotty! Thank you!
Still have mine, had cracked Cubase, without a dongle, it never crashed though and was always rock solid, use Ableton now, which has crashed often.
Pretty much started (or enabled) the whole techno /Industrial /Euro dance craze of the early '90. Almost every professional (and most amateur) studios had one with a B/W monitor (exceptionally easy to work with for longer periods of time), sometimes even with SMPTE timecode sync (so the MIDI playback cursor would follow along with the tape). Great stuff!
@@christophergodawski5663 Yeah, I'm actually watching this (though I'm an LGR fan in general), because it was on a list of hardware used for Aphex Twin's _Syro_ from 2014.
Interesting bit of info, thanks
I bought the Atari ST because I could not afford the Amiga. I knew I was making a devil's bargain but it was still AWESOME (at the time). The IBM compatibles were just shit.
I had a lot of fun with the MIDI ports. :-)
Actually I should thank my girlfriend at the time since she actually bought it for me... and then reclaimed it when we broke up a few years later. :-(
I was the proud owner of a 1040STE, loved the games, and I'm super glad that you put Hunter and Vroom here! I cannot count the days I spent on these two in addition to Midnight Resistance, Prince of Persia, Toki, R-Type and Metal Mutant which is a hidden gem in my humble opinion. As for apps, I mostly used Audio Sculpture, Fun Face, Publishing Partner and Calamus. Of course, no Atari user of the era overlooked the amazing demo scene and my favourite by far was Punish Your Machine! I also used the MS-Dos boot loader disk, which was very quick to load and handled some early dos applications well without having to buy an expensive PC expansion. All in all, it's one of my most beloved machines of all time and I do have plenty, but this one has a special place in my heart❤️❤️❤️
I had the whole line and the last one I bought was the Falcon. While in the US the Atari was dying, in Germany it was still one of the best PC's. The only reason I stopped using it earlier then I wanted, was because I needed a laptop. After selling all my Atari stuf I bought a 386 IBM laptop for around 8000 Dollar, which was a bargain at that time, in Hongkong. In my country I would have payed 2000 Dollar more... But the ST will always have a place in my computer-heart!
Very amazing presentation of the ATARI ST from American people :)
There are always a community (gamers, coders, etc.) of this computer and events mainly in Europe like the SillyVenture in Poland every years.
Really nice STFM computer on the video, very clean so far with many years.
@thepirategamerboy12 There is a link in the video description.
That's a great analogy about emulation vs having the actual equipment. Compared to emulation, having the real thing gives you the authentic, visceral experience. But at the same time, it takes a lot of time, effort, and money and one day you might just wake up to find that it's not working any more and everything you built up over weeks, months, or even years has just gone to waste. So yeah, just like a real relationship :p
@PSLover9 Why? It works fine. And besides, this is a PAL system, as explained in the video. I don't have a PAL TV/VCR/DVD player or whatever thing I use.
This is the best description of emulation I have ever heard : "it's like adult entertainment, when you could be with a real girl". haha, brilliant!
FinalBaton meaning that it's around 100x more expensive with the same result. HEYOOOOOOO
underrated ^
I didn't get it... 🤔
Lol
No I couldn't. At least not one that looks like the ones in adult entertainment.
@hewey999 Thank you, I'm happy to bring on some loved-reviews!
A few of my friends owned Atari STs and I think they are pretty great computers. Yes I give the edge to the Amiga but not to the point of looking down on ST owners (because that I find childish). As someone who owned a humble Speccy seeing some of the games on the Atari ST was incredible.
Especially since the Speccy was a piece of junk. Seriously, the graphics system was risible, the audio was a pathetic beeper until the 128 version, and the build quality was always terrible. Don't forget the "dead flesh" keyboards of the 16 and 14K versions.
Desmaad The ZX Spectrum didn't come out with a 14K version. There were 16K and 48K versions but never a 14K one. And yes they were cheap and the specs not great but I still loved mine very much and I have a Spectrum emulator for my PC along with an Amiga emulator and I enjoy playing on them both.
Sorry, typo, my bad. I meant 48K.
Desmaad hehe yeah was a little confused by it.
What stopped it from being merely rubbish was the software, combined with it's affordability, and general '80s-ness, that made it awesomely rubbish for UK kids across the land. :-)
I had a sound sampling cartridge in the expansion port. That plus built in MIDI was music heaven. I also bought a short extender cable to get around the joystick port hassle. Great machine, off to play some Oids now, completely forgotten that gem.
My 1988 vintage 520 STFM shipped with (IIRC) Game disks "A" to "K". Many of these disks had a menu that let you choose between 3 or 4 popular game titles. Games that I remember clearly playing from that A-K range: Eliminator, Bomb Jack, Super Hang-On, OutRun, Altered Beast, Turrican (?), Nebulous, Star Ray, Star Goose, Space Harrier II, Gauntlet II, Black Lamp, Xenon. I had many other games I bought separately of course. Beyond that, the single most important influence on me as an 8 year old Atari ST gamer was the wonderful "ST Format" magazine. Little Green Desktop is a website that I used to go to to find ancient game ROMs and cover disk images. I'm not sure if it is still a thing. Thank you for this wonderful step back in time.
Jeez, i used to have so many ST format magazines. Good times
I did CAD reviews from STart magazine. The Cyber System which was one of the first major 3D design systems came out for the ST and eventually because 3D Studio and was purchased by Autodesk and because 3ds Max.
Wow. I had no idea. I always wondered how these massively complex and sophisticated programs started out. When you see how TRON was made one appreciates just how tenacious those involved had to be to, -using a poor analogy-, build Cathedrals with seaside buckets and spades. I cannot imagine how they didn't just walk away, so impossible the task, and that the studio had the faith to believe these people could come up with the goods.
@EriclawElitewolf There will be, yes! Should be online next weekend.
Fun fact - You can use Sega Mastersystem controllers.
Or genesis
Genesis controlers are wired slightly differently and do not work with the st.
Oh, i thought they were the same pinout. I was wondering, since i've used master system controllers on the genesis.
Genesis controllers, even the six button ones, work just fine on my Commodore 64, though, so it's probably something to do with Atari trying to limit the amount of controllers to use and really just failing with SMS controllers still usable.
Fun fact, you can use an Atari joystick in the Genesis (however it really only works with Sonic, or other games that use one button).
@KubaPSP Yeah, not possible here. I'm unfortunately in the habit of ignoring all things SCART! I really need to get a good SCART->VGA adapter...
I dont know why but I love the look of the function keys since I saw them for the first time around 1987
I just set up my dad's old MEGA ST2 last night. Bought new in the US for music, of course, which he used to develop music for commercials, one of which aired during the Super Bowl which is neat.
"...does not grate cheese" - Next!
@TheDXDan Oh yeah, I guess I might ponder that perhaps we maybe I dunno, possibly?
that hunter game was quite impressive for its time
Eight years ago … Fun to watch after seeing your ten-year anniversary video!
llamatron, now, my eyes can rest in peace
@keoni29 Calling your bluff. Feel like sending over some Atari STs for cost of shipping?
One of the wonderful things about the ST was indeed the PC compatibility. I was able to port all my word processing documents onto the PC I replaced it with. Still got those 80s files today which I think it pretty awesome.
Gary Leigh 80s BBS porn?
I love this channel because it actually talks about the classics! for the old players to renember old good days and fpr the new plays to learn the story of gaming! keep it up man!
This is the computer that I dreamed about owning as a kid in the 80s. I'm surprised that I didn't want an Amiga since it was designed by the Atari 800 team, but at the time I would not own anything with a Commodore badge on it! I loved my Atari 800XL, just an amazing machine.
Seeing IK+, Double Dragon, and a demo with Madonna's 'Into the Groove' playing on it made me want it so bad too.
Yeah it's sad the Amiga was the more powerful&shoulda been an ATARI machine
Aw man, this brought back so many memories. I was 8 in 1990 when i got my ST (must have been an FM) but the Vroom and Llama clips sent me back to that. Thanks for video.
A great machine that has been criminally nearly airbrushed from history.
Just wanted to say I think you do a real good job with your back-story and history of the reviews. Keep em' coming
I modded my 520STFM to output composite some years back.
I don't understand, are all American TVs just simply not PAL compatible? Here in UK I got my first TV back in 1997 and it could display NSTC just as easily as PAL.
To be fair, how PAL TV's displayed NTSC varied a lot. I live in Finland, and along years tested 3-5 TV's with an NTSC source. Only one of them displayed it perfectly, i.e. changed the refresh rate (flickering notably decreased), and changed the spacing between lines to keep the aspect ratio (PAL and NTSC have different number of lines). Other TV's would produce variable results, usually black&white picture that was distorted. That being said, the one that did show NTSC correctly was bought around the change of millennium, so it was about the same age as yours. The ones that had problems with NTSC were a few years older, so it could be that the compatibility started to be included only around that time. All flat-screen TV's I've tried have displayed NTSC without problems -- that is, from video inputs. I'd expect that not many of even current DVB/PAL TV's would be able to actually use their tuners to show NTSC broadcast signal like what some old systems output from their RF outputs.
12 C cells? Holy hell.
Also, one of the pins of that big RGB monitor port is actually a color composite video output, and of course another pin is for the audio, so that way you can connect it to any modern TV and get better video quality than through the RF modulator. You can make your own cable, or sometimes find pre-made ones on eBay. (However, I've heard that only models with the built-in modulator have the composite output, but I haven't been able to verify that.)
i miss playing Hunter sooooo much
Man this brings back memories. My HS built its first computer lab with ATARI ST machines in 1988, I learned how to program BASIC on those machines. Not long after that my girlfriends parents got a 1040ST, I played many hours of Spy Hunter on that machine.
I always thought a jackintosh was a computer you used exclusively for watching porn
+Ralph Dreijer lol
No, thats Jerkofftosh
Local Ork Iporn
+XxXRekinSkrubsXxX Mac OS X is an operating system not a computer
SouthPark634 wow.....
fantastic review buddy I bought my stefm 1040 new in 1999 for music sequencing ..... still using it today! - I have enjoyed the past hour watching your excellent programmes,
Thank you buddy! nice work - great channel.
I have a question for you, one that I've always wondered about. While we in Europe enjoyed the home computer explosion during the 80s, what were you playing your games on? PCs really were drab and nothing at all for gaming until about 1995, half-decent consoles arrived only as late as 1985, and with only a couple decent, very expensive cartridges each at the start. I guess you'd have to be born around 1970 to be a teen at the time, so maybe you don't know for sure. But it's just one of those questions that have been gnawing at me for a while.
ScoopexUs Not really. Even in 1990 you had fast 486 CPUs, VGA/SVGA graphics cards, and the original SoundBlaster. It would have cost a fortune, but you technically could have had a very capable PC.
ScoopexUs In the us we had many arcades then at home we had the atari 2600, channel f, intellevision, colecovision, bally, and then the many pong clones and such not to mention powerful tower pcs were always big in the states. Don't forget the N.A. Gane crash didn't happen because we had no consoles, it happened because we were flooded with different consoles, each using their own carts, and almost anyone could put a game out causing a massive flood and confusion of games which bottomed out until the NES came along and revived us!!
I believe what ScoopexUs was getting at was that the PC between 85-95 was sub-par on the gaming side (and OS) in comparison as to what was then available. With most PC's being sold as business machines and being a mess of standards, incompatibilities, terrible OS and missing functionality. While there were certainly some good games released for the PC in this time, all of those games could have been put on a better system. Take a look at Amiga, X68000 & Archimedes, these systems when they came out, were all better than the PC of the time. Unfortunately ppl were sold on the marketing (which came at every direction) and due to the basic nature of the PC it was flooded with software making it "good enough" Hundreds of PC companies folded due to bad business decisions and the PC went on, but as these superior systems were made by one company (individually) they didn't have that luxury.
Anyone else ever come back to his old videos and just give them a watch just because Clint rocks?
I've spent all day binge watching. Every one a gem :)
man I loved BUGGY BOY :)
Buggy boi
Been a computing-enthusiast since the 70's, and your system-reviews are super-enjoyable. Perhaps a bit early for Xmas-wishes, but a future review of the Apple IIgs would hit the spot; that system and it's story is such a weird blend of brilliance and incompetence.
The Operating System (TOS), great name until you realise the users were called TOSsers by Commodore users.
I lol'd pretty hard there
OWNAGE
Found this gem in recommended videos, LGR you are so young here ;)
me too bro
The MIDI port was the sole reason that it didn't die and disappear overnight due to the Amiga. Everyone in the music industry used an ST back then and why it stayed popular. Apart from that there was no reason to buy an ST over an Amiga
Lots of parents still bought the ST in the UK because it was 1/3 the price and it had a big userbase for gaming
Amiga was not a success at first due to price and when it came down in price and Atari slow response to update and STE being a little late and could of done with 32colours the Amiga finally started to overtake the Atari STE but was short lived due the IBM PCs getting graphic cards, when you compare Atari and Amiga they purity much even and ironic that one could argue both are Commordor machines, and Amiga was heading to become Atari's first 16bit computer but Jack snapped up Atari and commodores payed off Amiga debts to Atari and snapped it up themselves were the founder of commordor came out with a cheep ear 16bit machine for Atart, ST
Atari also saw some success in the desktop publishing field with the Mega ST.
Ah, memories. I had a flight simulator with my Atari called Pro Flight featuring the british/ german/italian fighter bomber the Panavia Tornado. Its auto pilot amazed me and this flight sim was also used by the military for traing. Halcyon days indeed Clint. Oh, and greetings from the Isle of Wight, England.
LGR: reviewing computer products 25 years too late. Anyways, this was great.
I've still got mine from Christmas 1991. I was a little kiddie then. The disk drive clicks when I put in a game now. I cannot get it to read the disks. Just looking at it, makes me feel happy and reminds me of my childhood.
You should fix it :)
I moved to the ST from the Amstrad CPC6128, and so be honest it always felt more of a sidegrade than an upgrade.
Sure I got more processing power, lovely 68000 instruction set, lots more memory, twice the graphics RAM and a mouse.
One the other hand, as a programmer I was gobsmacked when I found (due to the graphical operating system) you couldn't change the graphics mode without rebooting the machine. The 320x200 mode was unusable as a text editor due to the amount of horizontal scrolling (no line-wrap like older machines) and horrible colour flicker on vertical scrolling. The 640x200 mode was unusable without a monitor.
Hence I was forced to buy a monitor (not an Atari monitor, a 3rd party monitor worked just fine) and was stuck programming for a 4 colour graphics screen since (in high level language) there was no way to change the graphics mode and still have the graphics commands still work.
So yes, more powerful than the Amstrad CPC, but the old Amstrad just felt like everything fitted together much more neatly.
I miss the Amstrad - don't miss the ST.
As a programmer, you could easily change the screen resolution between the modes supported by the attached display, and you could even design your own screen resolutions.
I had a 130xe. Tons of great pirated games and it taught me BASIC programming (I remember my mom helping me to debug very simple programs with the help of the manual). Thank you Jack T.
love the 70's hair :) LOL
My brain kersploded with all the info! Best review of old platform ever mate.
I can't believe that doesn't grate Cheese....
You probably dont care but does anyone know a method to get back into an Instagram account?
I was dumb forgot the account password. I appreciate any help you can give me.
@Yehuda Damari Instablaster ;)
@Musa Jeremiah thanks so much for your reply. I found the site thru google and Im waiting for the hacking stuff now.
Seems to take a while so I will get back to you later when my account password hopefully is recovered.
@Musa Jeremiah It did the trick and I finally got access to my account again. I'm so happy!
Thanks so much, you saved my ass :D
@Yehuda Damari No problem xD
I so miss my ST. I put it in storage 20 years ago as life was crap, ended up in a hostel. This video reminded me and now I'm trying to get it back. It's at a friend's mum's house lol in there big garage . We think it's still there but this was 20 years ago! Wish me luck. I so want it back.
Did you get it back?
The only thing wrong with Atari ST is Amiga 500.
You got that on the money. The Amiga was capable of a bunch more than most computers at the time. For example: many Windows applications that were made at the time had little problem with AmigaOS.
However, Considering that I don't have the budget, I might want to start with an Atari ST as my first pick.
retrogamer33
You could get midi adapter for 20 dollars or so. But on software side you are correct, there was much more midi software on Atari ST. Then again, real men used Soundtracker or Protracker, not some midi shite.
actually, it was the built in midi ports and hi-res monochrome monitor support which was ideal for applications. If you were a musician on a budget, the ST was the better out of the box experience, and as a result, it got very robust application support.
The same is true of the Mac to a certain degree: It found it's niche in Desktop Publishing.
The Amiga found a professional niche in video work as well as an excellent games machine.
To a certain degree all these machines were theoretically as capable as any other in all fields of endeavor. No surprise really, since all three are so closely related in terms of hardware.
Musicians also chose Atari ST because of Cubase software not available for Amiga.
That's the classic chicken & egg problem. Had musicians chosen the Amiga, Cubase probably would have arrived on it too. (certainly, there were alternatives, but cubase was industry standard)
So, we come back to the motivations of the ST buyers. And the answer once again comes back to the ST hardware. It had built in midi. And the hi-resolution, no flicker monochrome monitor the ST had for professional work, so if you were a musician and had little interest in a computer for anything but music, a single package purchase of an ST, Cubase and monitor and you had everything you ever needed from a computer.
@mighty3alloa It is and IT IS A DREAM COME TRUE. Jeff Minter is a god.
I was really intrigued by this dragondropping you mentioned, until I realized you said drag & dropping. Oh well.
Normally I couldn't care less about this era of computers (I'm a console kinda guy), but you always do such an awesome job that I can't help but to be entertained :D
Between you and JimPlaysGames I've found a whole world of (mostly) decent games that I never knew about and I'm really enjoying finding out about them, so thank you.
lol llamatron.
+MegaZsolti Ha yeah, I loved that too! That looks like a fan hack rather than an actual game release :P
Jeff Minter was obsessed with ungulates.
A professional, entertaining and educational review of yet another machine.
Really curious that knowing you, you didn't show SimCity though!
I don't want to scare anyone, but I'm posting from 1985 RIGHT NOW.
You...You are a Time Lord...
By the time you reach 2017 the ST should have finally loaded the video....
Stranger Things...
Does that mean I am 23 years old again?
I love my ST, but spend all my time playing Buggy Boy. I have however spent a fortune adding a Philips colour monitor an Atari mono monitor and SCSI hard drive, but with the 2 controller boards it won’t now fit into the broken mega file 30 case I have bought. I therefore have no money to go to the pub with my friends. However my interest in computers may lead to a long and interesting career as an engineer in the future.
I used one of these once back around 96. It was set up in an apartment reserved for visiting researchers at a Canadian government lab. I had never seen the OS before, so it took me a while to figure out how to use it. We mostly used it as a terminal to log in (over dial-up) to the lab computers and check in on our experiments from the apartment. The lab computers were a mix of PDP and microvax boxes. Man do I feel old now.
Now i can see why It was £100 cheaper than an A500...
Ik zijn nu toch blij met mijne pc nu amai wij zijn van ver gekomen zeg.Leuk om nog eens eens atari te zien.
I would choose this over Crapbox and ShitStation.
+A. Poogle The loading time is the same, any ways.
@moelli I hope to sometime, it's a forgotten classic to be sure.
The joystick port was "Atari-compatible". You could use the same joysticks as for Atari's 8-bit computers, the Commodore 64 and the Amiga. If the Sega controller does not work, then _it_ is the odd one out.
The mouse signals are _almost_ Amiga-compatible - you need only to cross two lines. Some third-party mice had a simple switch so it could be used for both Amiga and Atari.
The mice and joysticks were electrically very simple, no logic involved but at the expense of a thicker cable than today's USB peripherals.
Right on. The Sega Mega Drive/Genesis controller has a 74157 multiplexer in it, which needs power. On the Mega Drive itself, that comes from pin 5. but on other systems pin 5 had other uses. Often by chance the Mega Drive controller works, because pin 5 and 7 are both pulled high, so Up, Down, Left, Right, B, and C will function as expected. But that's by chance, and a cursory search reveals that pin 5 is NC on Atari ST machines, probably explaining things.
***** Are you sure that it is not the A button that works as the Fire button? After your post, I had to look it up and found a schematic that indicated that... if I read it right, that is.
Master system controllers works on ST
It's crazy that he's complaining that Atari did not make their controllers compatible with a machine that came out a decade or two later. Like why not mention that you also cannot plug a Logitek flight yoke into it??
Damn, LGR's hair looks...
Suave in this episode.
Luuuke! Luke!
my best and sweetest memories on st are turricane, ADS, sherman m4, lemmings, simcity, vroom and all that ive missed!!! st was a great machine at its time in France to upgrade your c64 or your cpc6128. st was a dream for me , but we had a IIGS 1Mo ver. thanks a lot for these memories. take care
The ST was inferior to the Amiga when it came to sound and graphics. The Amiga ports of games were almost always better, at least in the early nineties. There were some games with sampled sound, but the sound quality was not as good as it was on the Amiga. The STE on the other hand, was more like the Amiga, with 4 channel (8 with tweaking) dma sound, stereo outputs and more colours. Sadly there were almost no games that used the enhanced hardware on the STE. Obsession was a Swedish pinball game released in '94, way better than Pinball Dreams, which really showed the capability of the STE. It was later ported to the Amiga and the PC under another title which I can't remember. The cartridge port actually had many uses. Copy protection dongles, samplers, 'blitz' copying devices, hacking cartridges, a Macintosh Plus emulator and more... Here in Europe there were many, many peripherals, games and programs available for the Atari and Amiga. And all the great games or great ports of games you must have missed in the U.S, like Lotus 1-3, Supercars 1-2, Nitro, Oil Imperium, Cannon Fodder, North & South, Sensible Soccer (many of them best enjoyed with the legendary TAC-2 joystick)...sadly, I generally recommend the Amiga versions of these games. Of all the 16-bit systems, for gaming I place the SNES 1st followed by the Amiga 500.
nixpix2 Amiga may have had a slight edge in graphics, but cost 2-3 times the price so not really worth it and why Atari dominated as Amiga struggled only later did Amiga start to dominate for a short time until PC dominated, both the Atari and Amiga were quite similar and both just as good but Amiga aimed at the wrong market at first Atari slow to progress the ST to STE then to falcon
Nice video! I own Atari 1040 STFM, so I have some comments:
-you don't have to use Atari monitors if you don't have the modulator - you can buy Atari ST - SCART cable (to connect it to TV and use in color mode) or Atari ST - VGA cable (to connect it to VGA monitor and use monochrome modes). Of course there are schemes of that cables in the internet, so you can do it yourself.
-you don't have to use DD 720 kB floppies - you can use standard PC 1.44 MB HD - you just need to cover one of the holes in the floppy and format them as 720 kB.
-also it is possible to use old PC serial port mouse (at least in TOS/GEM), but you need some driver for that and you need to have RS 232 25 pin to 9 pin adapter to connect the mouse to Atari modem port. Then you have mouse connected to the back of your Atari which is less annoying.
It definitely had better 3d support than the Amiga,
No, it was actually the other way around. The Atari depended on the CPU for all graphics updating, while the Amiga had special hardware for drawing lines and filling them. The Atari STe did have a blitter chip, but it was primitive in comparison to the Amiga's and I don't think that many games supported it. The Amiga did though have a more cumbersome pixel format, which made using the CPU for 3D graphics more difficult,
Findecanor on TH-cam
To get beyond the Amiga's usual 32-colour-at-a-time limit, programmers had to use a technique called "hold-and-modify" or HAM. Effectively, it had two pixels on separate frames representing one display pixel.
I remember using my Sega master system game pad on my Atari ST back in the days.
They had 2 buttons like the Atari Joystick.
This review deserves a hi-res/new-camera/new-production-standards update please Clint!
As usual great video, love these old reviews.
My computer of choice at the time. Professional grade documents. I mixed microsoft and unix, pure unix. Off the top of my head I cannot recall the publishing program for the ST that I dearly loved. It was so precise and flexible that I could design PCB boards with it great detail, down to pixel width. Pagestream? At any rate I had access to any and all brands but even installed an ST in the controllers office to finese up the SCO Unix mule.
Great stuff.
Always enjoy your hardware reviews the most.
I bought the 260ST in 1986. Great
i remember using these in middle school the school upgraded from trs-80;s to atari these computers blew our minds
I had Atari computers when I was a kid not only were they fun and had some cool games but my dad ran a recording studio and an Atari was the brain of it for a long time. They blew my Tandy away that's for sure.
I still have an STE, also ST FM model both were hooked up to a TV via the monitor connection.
Great review, bring back memories.
Sega megadrive controllers wouldnt work on the ST, but i remember using an Master System controller worked fine.
The Joystick / Mouse ports were put underneath to save cost. Adding the 9 pin connectors on to the main PCB would have been cheaper than underneath the keyboard, the problem was the keyboard controller was on the keyboard and only used a few lines from the main PCB (compare that to the Amiga 600 / 1200). If the controller was on the main PCB it would have made connecting the 9 pin ports much easier, but then they would have required a huge cable for all the keyboard lines. With the controller on the keyboard, and if the ports were on the main PCB then another cable (at least 12 pin) would have had to then go back to the main PCB to connect to the controller ports, adding cost for more cables and connectors. Atari could have added another IC to control the 9 pin ports on the PCB, but they would have needed to add another hardware interrupt which would have slowed down the system a little more and added more cost.
I had a 1040ST since it was less $ than the Amiga. Had both the color and monochrome monitors with a selector switch, and had both a 2nd 3.5 floppy and a 5 1/4" floppy connected with a selector switch. With the PC emulator (used the high speed data connector) and the Apple Mac emulator (used the cartridge slot), I could run all three systems simultaneously with just a hot key combo to switch between them, all for the price of a Mac. I also used extension cables for the joysticks and mouse. The monitors were Sony Trinitrons, The computer was also very good at WYSIWYG desktop publishing. I carted mine all over the Arizona and Southern Nevada to create on site newsletters for numerous events. I still have it, and enjoy firing or up every once on a while.
The Atari ST was a joy to program for. 68k assembly was a godsend compared to Intel (tons of 32 bit registers, sophisticated instructions, flat address space) and the machine was very simple, with well documented BIOS/OS interrupt calls similar to MS-DOS and no weird coprocessors to program like in the Amiga. Unfortunately, the 68k by itself was not fast enough to update an entire screen each frame even for simple 2D games, so in absence of those processors and without sprite support, many games were slow, with 15fps or lower being very common. In addition, the screen layout was really weird, with four separate bitplanes interleaved every 2 bytes, so graphic routines were even slower.
I'm a Commodore guy but I used the 1040ST while in college (Computer Art and Animation). Good unit!
Damn you Clint, Damn you. Every video you make about new hardware makes me want to go out and hunt this stuff. That soundchip makes me HNNG.
This vid made me feel all nostalgic as a Atari 520 STFM was the first machine I got to play with as a kid.
Your videos always crack me up! Keep them coming!