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The 800 and 810 are beautiful machines. Noticed some color differences in the plastic. Is this just due to age or were the colors slightly different year over year?

I just picked up one of these and non of the chips are in sockets all surface mounted, first time I've seen that.. it has an old flexible keyboard membrane also. it powers on but goes straight to the diagnostics screen and I cannot select anything with the keyboard the only key working is the reset one. any idea's?

I concur, the Mega ST keyboards were excellent. My Mega ST2 was not only objectively better, but admittedly much more pleasant to use, than the Mitsumi one of my Atari 800XL - which had a huge advantage of me being really used to it and 100% OK with how it felt. I never had the opportunity to try the TT030 (raw power of which is still fascinating), but I had a chance to play with the Falcon a bit, and despite a little raw-performance downgrade (due to data bus being only 16-bit), the excellent M56001 DSP chip did marvels, both sound and computing-wise. Anyway, I would love to have had either, back in the day, for a number of reasons, but in regards to keyboard of the Falcon, I think I tend to agree with you.. When I used it for a couple of days, I again had that feeling that it was made as cheap as possible - and that compared to any other Atari machine I could ever lay my hands on.

Ha, I could tell by the music on Ultima IV that it was way slow. But why was it blue? My other question is... is it actually 'upscaling' it to 640x400? That would explain the slow down, for sure.

Interesting.. now I'm curious what Sundog would look like..

There were several different color emulators back in the time. I used them but can't remember the names in my 1.06 Atari STe. Of course only OS friendly software runs. Don't expect anything like Turrican 2 or Wrath of the Demon to run. I also remember some software that allowed doing the opposite: running mono software in color mode either by halving the vertical resolution or doing some kind of interlacing (worked only on STe's). Finally I also tried once a software that did overscan in mono mode and increased resolution. So, there is a lot to explore in this field 😉

Handy for those who bought vga adaptors. I ended up buying a ubswitch, fortunately my monitor displays all three st modes. The next problem though, modern joysticks/wireless controllers etc, there are some options, you might be interested in covering that area? From memory many games required swapping the mouse over, not ideal 😕

Glad I read the fine print - only runs in TOS 1.0. For those of us with later versions - is there a floppy image of TOS 1.0 that could be installed, just before this program, to enable running it.

So you were able to install a 256GB drive in a machine that only recognizes up to 160GB? Did you just make a 160GB partition and ignore the rest of the available space on the SSD?

Very interesting, thanks for sharing 👍 IDK that any program could display color only games in mono Hi-Res! No exactly "are you telling me for 40 years …" moment 😉 for me, since I had 1040STfm/SM124 and TV was good enough for games, but still it's cool to know.

I used a program called Sebra to run monochrome only programs on my color monitor. It was mostly for PD games from Germany and GDOS based apps where I need to have the screen to have the exact ratio for printouts. (Medium rez programs stretch their graphics vertically) But I was so happy to be able to use a VGA display for the ST's high rez mode. :)

Pretty cool, but I have a feeling that Goldrunner is not going to work well with this adapter ;-)

I just saw this video, never opened my Falcon so I am surprised to see no shielding. Was there shielding but you removed it for the mods?

For me, Space Harrier always reminds of who's king: ruclips.net/video/RhzitD2pecw/видео.html

Great video but.... The way you pronounce emutos. Surely it's "Em-U-Tos" as in emulator, rather than the big flightless bird? Just saying!😅

Very nice video. I admit that as I watch these retro computing (- related) videos, I'm sometimes quite sorry I have neither my (pride-boosting) Mega ST2, nor my (beloved) 800XL anymore.

What chip is under the fan? Thanks.

Interesting I have the Same Mega TT with the same 27" Dell monitor (VGA+HDMI) AMD sync that does 15hz too ;)

it'd be interesting to compare the TT with the unix workstations released at that time, it seems like the TT straddled the home and professional markets

Awesome card, but something seems off... The Black Lotus demo should run much faster on a 70MHz 060. Overall, something doesn't seem right with that setup. Even BadMood should perform much better. Perhaps I'm remembering it wrong, but the performance should definitely be better.

@Power of Vintage - I seem to remember MiNTOS which I believe originally stood for MiNT is NOT TOS, and later, MiNT is Now TOS. Say, would you be interested in creating / curating an Atari HD disk image for use primarily by MiSTer FPGA users? The AmigaVision group has done a fantastic job with their Amiga HD image... and I think they are also affiliated with the 0MHz DOS Collection.

I think a large part of the failure of the Atari line was that sickening green they used, seriously.

This is amazing! I need to have it in my STE!

Loving my mega ST4. A few years ago I was looking for Atari machines to add to my modest retro collection. I found Mega ST4, Megafile 30 and Jaguar. Very nice all of them :) I opened the Mega to clean some dust and reseat chips properly. I was super happy to find a DSP inside! I changed the fan to a Noctua and installed an Ultrasatan. Has been working flawlessly. I have huge collection of games but would like to get productivity software for it.

I bought a non working ST(still non working) but it's packed with add on parts that made it worth it anyway. It has a 256KB TOS decoder add on (with original 2.06 ROMS) a 4096 color upgrade shifter. Both work great, I'm putting them in the MEGA with EmuTOS 3.0( which saves me from loading the CD drivers hopefully freeing up some RAM). I also found my ROM burner, but thank you so much for burning those for me, I got a lot of use out of them over the winter break. It also has a RAM Upgrade I may or may not use.

I used my STFM, and later STE for typing out reports, I produced hundreds of reports and found it a God send, as specially as I could use the disks at work on an IBM XT. I think the two modem ports are actually serial ports and before parallel printers we had serial printers. All our printers at work were originally serial printers as we were originally running from a remote mainframe. The company used wang and eventually installed a smaller mainframe in our office which would connect to the head office mainframe after midnight, which was stupid, as we ran 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We were told when the system would go down, any work not completed would have to be done in a typewriter. Our million pound mainframe eventually had to be replaced with a relatively cheap PC set up (16 mghz AT, using concurrent dos to multi task), as the system failed to connect to DEPS, a system used by HM Customs at the time.

I have fond memories of owning my Atari ST Mega 4.

I test for "better-ness" by dropping one computer on the other. Whichever computer survives is better. (The Commodore 64 did not survive the Atari 800 😵‍💫).

Interesting video! Didn’t know it can do mp3 playback and doom 😅 I bought a Falcon (4mb + harddisk) when it came out. Great computer, but no software at all back then. Still, I liked it a lot, but switched to a PC next year. My Falcon is in storage, but after seeing this video, I think I’ll go play with it and see if it’s still running.

i dont like that Ram expansion ...

the TT might have been Atari's "best" computer, but it's specifications didn't shine like the ST compared to it's peers. The ST introduced itself with a sharp cool modern looking system, and standard with an 8mhz 16bit processor, 512MB Ram, Good sound and graphics, a ground breaking desktop with mouse in an age of MS-DOS and BASIC, and at a price that way way way undercut everyone else. Atari's motto was "Power Without The Price" and those were more than just words, they were facts in the eyes of everyone who read computer specifications. Although their sound wasn't exceptional they advertised with MIDI and a "Yahmaha sound chip" so it billed itself as better than others even though the sound chip was actually a bit lacking. . . . as for the TT, it was a "me too" system and the price was expensive like all the others. If Jack Trammel had still been managing I suspect the TT would have been a keyboard floppy computer like the STf and probably would have cost $799 for "8MB RAM" keeping it under a dollar per kilobyte as before. then they'd be in the game Power Without The Price, but that didn't happen, and neither did the TT

Well I've learned a few things* but first... The comparison chart did not really compare Atari and (then Commodore) Amiga. Graphics: Amiga ECS chipset in the 3000 used 4 bit colo(u)r in super-hi res (1280x???) that's not 2 color, the latter AGA (1200/4000) gave all color modes in all resolutions. 16 colors at 480p(VGA)? Even the OCS chipset in the original Amiga 1000 could do 32 colors (or HAM4096) in 640x480. The 3000 could also do it without the screen flicker in interlaced mode. It was the only Amiga to ship with a flicker fixer. RAM: 10mb ST/ 256Mb TT ...what is that, installed or 16 vs 32-bit access? 2/16Mb on Amiga? The memory for the Amiga was processor limited, which was the address bus space. 32-bit is 4Gb maximum, just like Windows 32-bit 4Gb limit. Though I hear it could address way more than 16Mb over the expansion bus (2GB allegedly, Wikipedia). The 3000 came with 2mb of RAM. 1Mb of Chip RAM (think of it as shared memory on a laptop) and 1Mb fast RAM exclusive to the CPU. CPU/FPU: Atari TT had a 32Mhz '030 and a same speed 68882 FPU (Floating Point Unit) companion. That was above the Amiga 3000 that only went to 25Mhz. Both systems should have set the standard. Instead Atari Falcon had a low clocked 16Mhz '030 and Amiga ends up with a 14.?Mhz '020 as baseline. While PC g... ets, seriously fast 486 variants and Pentium! Aesthetics: Atari TT and Amiga 3000, best looking culprits in a montage of 90's computing. Forget the Mac, it's monochrome 9" love life was at an end. Loved the look of the TT and its raw horsepower (hp?) but wanted the graphics of the Amiga and that '030, oh... just give me the TT, I no longer care! Requim: So in the long scheme of things, Atari TT was the pinnacle of Atari computing (transputer aside). *Wait, what? Amiga ECS (Enhanced Chipset) could do 1280x resolutions, wow! I mean that's amazing, who knew... yes who knew? Makes AGA look less impressive as super-hi res was pushed as a new feature. Oh, Commodore!

How would you connect a wired mouse? I don't see mouse/joystick ports that used to be on the older Atari ST/STE.

Atari 4Ever <3 !

Watching this and I'm playing Elite: Dangerous on my laptop as the Elite test shows on screen. It's amazing thinking how far systems have come in general but it's also memories of my youth playing the original (I think) Sid Meier's Pirates on my friend's Atari ST. I spent so many hours playing that game but had no clue what to really do so ended up with tons of ships, lots of crew and then fighting off a mutinous crew. Now off to watch your Falcon video, a computer that fetches a very high price these days.

Very cool! Do you have a link to the Pi Case STL?

"Love at first sight computer" for me... I was lucky enough to find two of them .. both of which were stored in awful conditions by their previous owners... the first one even had a leaking cap.. the crazy thing about these computers is that their plastics never go "yellow" no matter what

Lovely to see the TT! I still rather lust after one despite its lack of expandability. A TT with a decent graphics card is certainly the top of the Atari ST range IMO. Perhaps something like OpenDune would be playable full screen in TT-Low?

I remember when the TT was realeased I had a very convincing dream that I got to own one. Was pretty dissapointed when I woke up and found that I did not, in fact, own one 😅

I was wondering if there were any TT-specific games or ST games that would take advantage of TT video modes.

I remember thinking the Atari TT looked cool when it laiunched, but I was already lusting after Steve Jobs' NeXTstation by then, which had launched in the same year (1990). Sure, it was much more expensive than the Atari, but it was black and sleek and looked so futuristic. Plus, it had the latest and the greatest 68040 CPU with built-in FPU. Now, that was unimaginable computing power for me back then.

The capacitor looking thing on the power supply feed are MOVs (metal oxide varistors) - basically, surge suppressors. It's interesting comparing the Atari TT with the Amiga 3000: decent video, sound, 32 bit, lots of memory, SCSI, et cetera, all built in. It's a shame they're so rare.

8:50 The european Falcon keyboards have dark grey plastic.

About “Traimel” or “The” in the TOS controversy: I didn’t find anything official from Atari docs nor articles that supports “Traimel” as a reading for ‘T’ in TOS; first time (that I found) anyone questioning Atari about this is in the Creative Computing, October 1985 article by John J. Anderson: “Official word has it that TOS, the name of the proprietary ST operating system, stands for "The Operating System. We're willing to accept that if you are." /q First mention of Traimel OS that I found is in Norwegian magazine Hjemme-Data, Feb ’85, and then a couple of mentions in Spanish language mags after that; US magazines picked up on this somewhere in the mid’85, and it stuck 🤷. Also, “The First Atari ST Book” , 1St Publishing Ltd, 1985, also used “Traimel OS”: “This expanded CP/M68K has the name TOS (Traimel Operating Systems).”/q I already mentioned (but in reply, so I’m repeating here): first mention of “Jackintosh” that I found was in Chicago Tribune article: “Industry Awaits Atari `Jackintosh`”, January 4, 1985

Unless I missed it, U68 also needs fitting if not already for 2 chip to work :)

I never understood why there were no "big box" STs with bus slots.

One video I have yet to see online is some kind of comparison between the best Atari ST, Commodore Amiga and Acorn Archimedes models. Those were the big machines in competition with one another. The latter one was leagues ahead of any PC spec and the RISC ARM CPU went on to be used in nearly every smartphone in the world.

As a life long Amiga user (still have a couple of original machines) it never fails to amaze me what can be done on our "16 bit" era computers. I never really got to know 16 bit+ Atari range. I had an 800Xl and VCS!! The OS and GUI looks horrible (sorry) compared to Amiga, but great to see the expansions can keep the old girl alive.

You can’t really call TOS an OS, it does next to nothing beside me change your resolution and let you format floppies

Wow, what a really useful video. I had upgraded one of my STFM's to tos 1.04 and wish I had found a video that explained the tos versions so clearly at the time. I think I used 27c512 eproms (6 of them) and spilt the rom image. One thing I was never sure of though, was how important the speed or access time of the eprom chips was? I believe it's measured in nano seconds and printed at the end of the 27c512 -15, if I remember correctly? I've recently got a couple of STE's both have tos 1.06 and am gong to upgrade them to 1.62 because I'm only gong to using them for gaming.