LGR - Atari ST Computer System Review
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 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....
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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
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 :)
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!.
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.
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.
This review deserves a hi-res/new-camera/new-production-standards update please Clint!
I played a lot on my uncles ST in the mid to late 80s. Neither of us wanted to give up the fight for the Llamatron highscore, hehe! He used the cartridge slot for his music software, I believe. The ST is still on his desk, so I can probably check at a later time if yo're interested.
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.....
I still have an STE, also ST FM model both were hooked up to a TV via the monitor connection.
I used to have the Atari 1040STfm in 1988. That was the US market version. Great machine in my opinion. My parents even used it to make resumes for their work on a noisy dot matrix printer. I programmed a few stuff, play some awesome games, etc. upgraded to our first Macintosh since then.
Amiga was even better than Atari at the time. The guy at school had one and the graphics was amazing for its time and was very expensive too.
I didn't know an NCR 386SX could run Windows 7! :-P
I haven't had any trouble running PAL programs on my NTSC 520ST. Even the U.K. PAL version of TOS runs fine. The video output becomes 50 Hz NTSC, but it displays fine on any NTSC composite monitor or TV with a manual V-hold adjustment.
The Mega ST was also briefly popular for desktop publishing when Atari packaged it with a low-cost laser printer. You got most of the capabilities of a Mac and LaserWriter at a fraction of the cost.
Thank you so much for this review!! I had a 520STFM as a kid which we managed to upgrade to a 2.5MB machine by soldering on another 2MB of RAM and I spent almost all my time on it ...
Looking back, and having so much experience with emulation, there is no doubt that as far as games are concerned, the Amiga was the better machine for sound and graphics. Every ST game which also had an Amiga port was better on the Amiga, but the ST had a certain charm which I'll never forget.
HUNTER! I used to have that on the amiga back in the day, I spent the last month trying to remember the name of that game, thanks man!
My first computer was an original Atari 800 with 48k of RAM.
I still have it in a box in my basement and, the last time I checked a couple of years ago, it still works.
I haven't read through all the posts to check if this has been mentioned but a European Mega Drive pad will work fine with a European ST. My mate adapted a Mega Drive pad so it would work as a 2 button controller on the ST by disconnecting the up switch on the pad and soldering it on the C button switch, the B button works as the normal fire button. Having 2 buttons made ST games like Rainbow Islands and Super Hang On playable. First time I played an ST was with a Cheetah 125+ joystick.
I just got an Atari 520STE for free today. :). It came with 200+ disks, two mice and a joystick/game controller. Also all the necessary cables. Apparently it has also had a double memory upgrade.
When I was a kid, most of my friends felt that I was lazy including my oldest brother, because my family owned a Atari computer instead and all I did was play games on the Atari all day everyday. When ever I hung out with any of my friends all I was interested in was showing them computer games, even when it was nice outside. My potential friends eventually complained that I do nothing except play computer games. I had no life what so ever when I was a kid.
One of the best party games came out for the Atari ST: Midi Maze!!! Networked computer games before that was common in the home...
These joystick ports are not accidentally called "Atari joystick DB9 ports". At that time, most of the major home computers on the market had such ports in this - de facto - standard, and joysticks compatible with them were also compatible with many other computers/consoles. From WiKi: "The addition of the Atari joystick port to other platforms cemented its popularity. It was the standard for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers and was compatible with the VIC-20, Commodore 64, MSX, and later the Atari ST and Amiga.". So these ports are quite fine. The only problem is their inconvenient placement.
Just as a tip to people. if you cover the whole opposite the write protect tab on a 1.44mb high density floppy. It'll confuse a PC into thinking its a double density one and you can use it. DD Floppys can be a bit harder to get hold of and even be a bit more expensive. I've done this many of times when transferring from PC to the Amiga and its fine. BTW great review as always. I love all your videos and my wife's gonna hate you as you inspired me to start collecting old computers :)
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.
@mighty3alloa It is and IT IS A DREAM COME TRUE. Jeff Minter is a god.
I loved my Amiga,couldn't afford a top line pc so my Amiga was my baby.Atari was the choice for musicians though,the bass player in my band used one with a Roland Sound Canvas rack module and made a great living from it.
I owned an Atari ST 1024 that my wife bought for Midi playing around. Loved it. Dungeon Master has to be one my favorite games of all time. However, that port on the side. VERY IMPORTANT. Here in Dallas, you could go and purchase a module for the side that included the ROMs for the Machintosh. It immediately booted up as a MAC and could run all the MAC software of the day. Funny thing, when we were doing this, nobody knew that it was illegal. Not sure you can even find those anymore. My ST is long gone.
lowendmac.com/clones/atari.html
Found it. It was called Magic Sac and later was called Spectre 128. I think we had a Magic Sac.
We had the ST the moment it became available (I think my father pre-ordered it) and stayed with the line for most of its life. Great machines, they were! I recently picked up a 1040STf in box from a local seller (thank you Craigslist) for $50.
This is my favorite one you've done. Dry delivery made jokes even funnier.
My friend and neighbour had the 1040 and I had a C64 and I was soo jealous of its power when he was playing the Codemasters Dizzy games. They just looked like crap on my C64 compare to the 1040. We used to play games using a Cheetah Joystick and that was truly the first proper joystick I ever used for games.
I was thrilled when I received the my Atari ST for £299.00, It was pretty much the first and last time I was so pleased with a product. And I never had cause to unplug the mouse then as I don't now on my 5ghz PC which would require me to get on my knee's with a torch and grope around the back. So I can't imagine What Mr LGR up to.
Your rant about the joystick ports on the Atari ST reminds me of the Angry Video Game Nerd, watching him review these early home computers would be a scream, I know he's briefly touched on the Commodore 64 a few times, but he's not gone in depth about them really. I've never used an Atari ST and I'm not too sure how popular they were here in Australia, but I'd be interested in taking a look at one sometime.
I still have this console even though i was born in 1993 . my father bought it to me when i was
6 i loved it
So, the Amiga was designed by ex-Atari statt people, and the Atari ST was developed by some guys formerly working for Commodore? Man, that's mind-blowingly crazy!
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.
@ThomasGGebert If I remember correctly, the ST didn't have hardware support for scrolling, so although it was perfectly possible, it could often be rather slow and jerky(as in the awful SOTB port), unless the programmers really knew their stuff. 3D games weren't so much of a problem for the Atari, because shifting a few simple polygons around was a lot easier than detailed bitmap graphics.
Oh my goodness! Megatraveller: The Zhodani Conspiracy! i had that for the PC back in the day, it was probably the first crpg I ever played :D
Now i can see why It was £100 cheaper than an A500...
I had a 1040st, and used midi with cubase. The expansion port was used for the big red dongle that runs along the whole side of the computer. That also housed the cubase licence key...... If you owned it that is. :p
i hope to see in the future LGR HD reviews :)
05:03 oh jeez thanks, I was really confused there for a sec lol
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 RUclips
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.
@thedeterminator1 Working.
@888bobdaduck The randomness of this inquiry is indeed palpable!
A Buick Skylark.
@phreakindee The cartridge port can also be used for various expansion cards such as ethernet and usb as well as IDE adapters for hard disks.
I found a stack of studio software online and use an old Compaq with STEEM. It uses the Soundblaster MIDI for my controller needs and integrates as well as a real machine.
The ST had nothing too difficult to emulate. No real need for a proper one. Nice though.
Another great review, Clint. Keep it up!
@phreakindee You have some gnarly hair dude, the graphics/games on the Atari ST looks smooth and good!
I had a 520ST in America. SF354 single sided. All I could afford. Later I had a 12 or 2400 baud modem! Wow. And no monitor. TV. :) Must have been a 520STm. The RGB and paperwhite monitors looked GREAT. But I only knew people who had one.
Woo! Another review! Kickass!
Awesome review as always dude! What's with the metal enclosure for the graphics chip? Some kind of primitive heatsink?
Interesting how much has changed in your attitude towards emulation and your overall presentation of this information, compared to your more modern reviews, there's a definite growth in terms of knowledge and diction as well just generally less bad mouthing of options back then, I think I prefer the newer stuff you've done. Ha ha
Wow! Dragons Breath! Thought I owned the only copy in the world of that title (Amiga version though). I thought it was the most awesome game when I bought it in summer of 1990, but few of my friends agreed for some reason.
You know, while its no excuse for the bad joystick ports placement. A way to remedy the problem is to use extensions thus making so you would not have to lift the computer up.
The homebrew ATA/IDE HDD controllers are fairly easy to build, and burinig an EPROM to have a bootable driver Cartridge to plug in is a no brainer (as long as you have a sharpie [the Marker] and some ferric Chloride to etch the PCB).
I originally had a 1040ST, but hated the ports underneath. I sold it, got a 520, 2 external 3.5's and took it apart and upgraded it to 1MB.
Did... did he just make a disparaging remark about the little green desktop of joy? GET HIM! :)
even in 2011, thinking of importing Atari games from the 80's? that's a strange idea, specially since you could find them in the internet in all those abandon-ware sites for a few bucks or sometimes free.
I had a 520st and remember writing a lunar lander game in GFA basic. The monochrome monitor I had was very good (I thought) compared to IBM and clone machines. I ran a benchmark program from a magazine and the st was faster than the others listed. I later moved to a clone 286 simply because of the software I needed to use.
Its only a (small) problem the other way around. We used to drill a hole in the DD floppys to make them HD back in the day. If you bought a good brand it worked great. But could be problematic on some cheap non-branded floppies. Has to do with the density data is written. Just like Long play on old VHS videotapes.
@ValugaTheLord I'd like to point out this guy has more talent than Bieber ever will.
LCO, lol. Looks a lot better than when my hair gets that long, I look like a woman! Anyways, awesome review. I've only played a couple Atari ST games in emulation which weren't anything spectacular, but I believe they were just ports and nothing original. The games you showed off did look pretty good though, didn't think the graphics were bad at all.
This is now another computer I'm adding to the long list of machines you've made me want to buy.
Best review I have seen!
Here in Finland you start learning english when you go to 3rd grade and swedish when you go to 7th grade. Also you can choose if you want to learn other languages and I chose german.
So currently I speak finnish, swedish, german and a little bit of russian because I live close to the border of Russia. In Finland every sinhgle person have to study at least english and swedish. So I can speak swedish :)
I used to have the 1040 STFM and used it (albeit predominantly for gaming) also for text editing and DTP. (I miss Signum and Calamus to this day, they were awesome pieces of software.) And that not only makes me hark back to the good ol' days but also reminds me of the terrible, terrible keyboard that was built into the ST and that, as it was integral part of the machine, could not be changed, and gave me endless headaches and temper tantrums.., Apart from that, I'm still in love with the ST...
AWESOME video!! I may have missed this during the video, but how did you get the video to display on an NTSC TV, given that this ST is from Sweden??
I may of said this before but I love my ST :D
This is the ATARI I grew up with.
I think the cart port was often used for profesional software copy protection dongles.
LGR, if you still have this swedish ST and have another ST, i would love to work something out with you for this one if you aren’t overly sentimentally attached. i’ve been learning swedish since high school and i love the ST for the midi support!
i have a 1040 st with monitor and second floppy drive it also has a box that plugs in to those stupid controler ports that brings them out were you can reach them to switch from mouse to joystick you just turn a switch. i had this computer since it was new in 87. i also have tons of office software lol i could use it to run a busness. a lot of switching disks though
The Sega Master system game pad works very well with the ST
u should do a quick tour of ur room n stuff
i use to have a 130xe lol, great vid!
My Mom still has the Atari St 1040 !
Those were the days,....Atari 520/1040, Amiga 500/2000,...
I still got Atari 1040 ST, nice packed in a cardbox,..with a 200 games...:)....and I remember, it was built for an UK market, so I had to fine tune a sound, to make it even listen to something, ¨couse, we are on a shore,..and UK is an island:),..ah,.
And also got to change a single sided floppy to a double sided flopy, ¨couse some of games didn¨t want to work....
Llamatron...needs a sequel...I must make this happen.
I used the cartridge port to sample sound, for games that I wrote
Could there be an adapter for the RGB monitor's output to a VGA port? Might need some active conversion, though.
Also "switching power supply" doesn't refer to the ability to switch different input voltages. It just refers to the way it produces the output voltage by actually switching on and off very fast by some ratio.
The games look so cool
me and my dad had a couple of these one running thru a philips crt and on one the atari monchrome monitor for dtp ect we had a cd rom n updated the tos chips and even used it for video capture with a capture card on the cartrige slot will see if still have the bits and will arrange to ship them if they are any use to you
When I was little my family had a Atari ST and it had lemmings and noddy and everything! XD
The 2 ports underneath the front used to piss me off,Until I bought an extension cable,4 plugs 2 on each end,Funny It's still in the loft with 500 plus disks,Think I might dig it out
nice Duke t-shirt! :D
You've already been tipped off that the TT actually ran at 32mhz and had a full 32bit bus unlike the Falcon, right? :)
(as well as the former being mainly meant to use VGA-type monitors whilst the latter seemed more intended for use with old RGB ones, though they were still VGA compatible...)
amiga wiped the floor with it; but, imagine if you could change history and give the ST packed pixels instead of bitplanes (word size = 4pixel precision instead of 16pixels, and faster to plot polys/lines)... the contest would have been a lot more interesting.
walter0bz ST cost 1/3 what an Amiga went for. I lusted for an Amiga, but working for $14/hr, all I could afford then was the ST. After a flood of fun software came out, namely Sundog and Dungeon Master, I didn't mind having somewhat lesser graphics and sound quality.
I realise the atari ST still had virtues.
I would like to see a parallel universe where the ST had a packed instead of planar display, it would have been a far more interesting fight.
sillyone52062 also, the ste made up for the graphics and sound department. Still not as good as the amiga 500, but definitely in the same league
our first computer was an atari 1040 st :-)
i loved the games "egg hunter" and "bad uncle murray" xD
I remember back in the nineties that switching a couple of ROMs on the motherboard the ST was able to run Mac Os flawlessly
My 1040 had a mouse port on the back near power switch.
are u kidding me??? atari st...+ cubase = the most precise and solid midi set up ever still to this day.......0 latency....0 sound fluctuations.....solid solid solid midi ..as marble. trust me !
Still loving Qubert
Great cover dude. I love the Atari st's. And yes...i hate the stupid joystick ports!
if you are in games get an amiga if you are a musician get an Atari ST with MIDI port
Man...those old 16-bit machines were sweet looking.
They were fantastic too, lucky enough to have a 520ST fm in the day.
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. :-(
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.
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.
The Atari ST’s joystick placement still beats 90s PCs, where there was a single joystick port, on the sound card, at the back.
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.
"...does not grate cheese" - Next!
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.
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
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