The first computer that i bought with my own money as a teen was an Atari TT. Here in germany the ST line was quite popular and there was good software available. I mainly used Calamus SL and i’m still in the layout business. My brother soldered up an adapter to use an ET4000 VGA card in the VME bus and NVDI ET4K as the driver. I had several HDs so i took a standard PC tower and implanted the TT into it. This machine still works and my father used it for a long time to run Score Perfect. Fond memories..
I have completed put the sceamatic of the tt computer into kicad software bút it is still full of errors in it that í am trying to fix . I have averege skilst in this.but thanks for this video onthe tt computer .the tt computer is always intresting and thanks for the video.
Very nice review of the TT...! Atari probably built this machine to compete against fast-MACs on DTP and maybe even CAD applications... However, I think that the Falcon 030 is a better computer than TT for most users... not only because of the significantly better graphics & sound capabilities ... but also because of the monster chip inside, called DSP, which allows unique processes like playing MP3s and sound-recording on hard-disk... I would love a desktop Falcon 030, using the same TT case.. this would be the king!
Of course, the TT was two years earlier than the Falcon. Two years back in the 1990s was a long time. Just like Amiga 3000 users had no idea that the Amiga 4000 would be released a couple of years after the 3000. I don't disagree that the Falcon is the more powerful machine (it's a great computer). But people needing to get their work done (like a roboticist friend of mine) had to get to work back in 1990. Hence he went with the Atari TT.
Yeah, I agree that 2 years were a big deal back then.. as concerns the Amiga 3000, it was probably the best Amiga ever.. apart from the AGA graphics that it is missing
@@tradinglive The Amiga 3000 is a nice machine but I found the Amiga 4000 to be more useful for 3D rendering and 2D paint applications. That and the 3000's case was just a bit too small to fit a Video Toaster card (however, once LightWave was offered as a separate app, the Toaster was no longer an item I needed). AGA, while not perfect, did allow for some pretty good HAM8 render previews (and the 68040 was nice at the time). It's just a shame that the A4000 left out the scan-doubler of the A3000, forcing people to rely on the C= 1942 monitor.
While I would have loved if C= had released the AGA motherboard upgrade for the A3000, other than AGA, the stock A3000 generally was much better than the stock A4000. It had a flicker fixer built-in, which made all the difference for hires BBS and Word Processor use, larger WB screens, etc. It had SCSI hard drive controller, which meant I could have like eight hard drives not just two and with less CPU load (only good thing about IDE was it was cheaper). You could boot SCSI external even. I had the 030 25Mhz with 6882 (faster than standard A4000) with 18MB of RAM (upgraded) and 380MB of Quantum Fireball goodness. I added a HD floppy and eventually a Picasso 2 (tried Retina graphics first, which had a great paint program, but no retargetable graphics for web browsing and what not). Most games could be made to work (probably 80%, but using software to boot into 1.3 or even 1.2 was sometimes needed or to artificially slow it down which became available). For a machine from 1990, it was neat to have it on the WWW in 1998 (kept up for awhile before browser updates stopped). But I couldn't play Yahoo Euchre and other card games and Amiga games all but dried up by 1996. I got my first PC in 1999 and a used PowerMac Digital Audio (dual 500Mhz G4) in 2005 for a song ($180), which I upgraded to a single 1Ghz G4, dual SATA controller (dual 2TB hard drives in 2006) and the fastest graphics card that worked with it and 1.5GB of RAM for like $800. It actually ran my whole house audio/video system until 2012 (I got an Intel MacBook Pro in 2008 for Logic Pro recording). I could boot into OS9 (had several commercial games for it in OS9) along with OSX Tiger and Leopard. ITunes plus 1st Gen ATV ran my whole house audio video system (could synchronize whole house audio perfectly in 2008). Eventually browser support dried up and I got a Mac Mini Quad i7 Server, now upgraded to 2TB SSD, 16GB RAM and still runs the whole house server (SMB/NFS to Nvidia Shield and Zidoo players). I'm not particularly happy with the move to ARM and 64-bit only as it largely killed Mac gaming support just as external graphics cards were starting to get official support. OSX is the most Amiga like of all operating systems I've used.
@@VonMagXL The Amiga 3000 is a bit faster than an Amiga 4000/030 for raw processing. However, the standard Amiga 4000 was the 68040 model which was definitely faster than the Amiga 3000/68882 combination. I was also miffed when SCSI and the scan-doubler was left out of the Amiga 4000; more annoying cost-cutting. I'm not aware of any WB screen modes on the Amiga 3000 that are higher resolution than the highest productivity modes on the Amiga 4000 using the C= 1942 monitor or equivalent. I wasn't a fan of the Kickstart diskette on the A3000, but I can see how that could offer some flexibility. For me, the added colors that AGA offered were worth it to me. I didn't have it in my budget to spring for a Picasso card and wasn't sure how well 3rd party video cards would integrate. In hindsight, I guess they were a pretty good option.
Great stuff. I had a CoCo2 as a kid, so I never knew all of these other machines. Now, I pick them up on eBay if I can. I got a 1040STf, put a Gotek in it and played around with it a bit. These machines are great!
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.
One thing that I’ve found fun about playing some of these retro games is discovering some of the earliest examples of gameplay “standards” included in all games today. Then there’s also a lot of “what were they thinking when they came up with that mechanic”
@powerofvintage9442 with Pirates I remember the wind on the main map would only blow South West. You could get there fast then hit a wall. Going against the wind was painfully slow. Another standout game like Elite was Damocles: Mercenary 2. Incredible for the time.
The TT is for sure a beautiful machine, but *the* Pinnacle of Atari computing was the Atari Transputer Workstation ATW800, a.k.a. ABAQ. Back in 1989, I've seen it render a flight through a full-screen 3D fractal landscape in real-time. As CPU it used a 20MHz INMOS T800 Transputer, and up to 16 extra T800 processors could be added on "farm cards". It had a build-in MegaST as I/O processor. EDIT: Ah, it is mentioned during the wrap-up at the end. I'm looking forward to see your ATW video.
I knew if I didn't mention it someone would call me out on it :) Actually, there is video card project that is in the works is intended to replicate the video output of the transputer and potentially some of the other features as well. I did some work on an STE owned by a collector who lives about 30 minutes away from me who has a transputer. Who knows, there might be a video in the cards in the future. I just don't want to do a video on a computer that I can't show in person.
Indeed. Used the ATW800 in my years at Newcastle university and the console was a TT! My desktop was a Sun Sparkstation 1 and my home machine an STE 512 upgraded with extra ram and scsi had.
Thanks for the video! I was so drooling over TT 030 and 1280×960 19” Monitor back in ’90. - it would be perfect for Calamus 😂 BTW, IIfx didn’t had integrated video, so 640x480 wasn’t max, it depended on card installed - 8•24 GC which was released with IIfx supported 1152 x 870 in 256 colors with original 2MB DRAM (expandable to 10 MB). On the other hand, IIsi integrated video was a snaillike, slothful [beep]show.
The same is also possible with the TT and the Amiga 3000 using aftermarket video cards too. I should have made more clear I was trying to compare the baseline of what you would get for the listed pricing :)
@@powerofvintage9442 Yeah, I get what you are saying, but IIfx was an odd machine which didn’t have embedded video. To get only 640x480 one has to pair it with older and cheaper 630-0153, 630-4222 or 630-4230, but realistically for machine that expensive 630-0400 (4•8) with 1152x870/16 support was expected minimum.
The Atari TT030 and all of the STes have 2 sound chips. One is the YM (don't recall the number) that is the one in all STs. The PCM sound chip that does Stereo, etc is new to the STe, and sounds much like a Paula from the Amiga can sound...
@powerofvintage9442 No problem, I dug further, according to Wikipedia: The ST has a YM219 (pretty sure that was the Yamaha chip in the upper right) and the Falcon has a YM3439+SDMA+DSP. The STe and TT have an LMC1992 for the upgraded sound.
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 have had an Amiga 3000 since 1991, but I will admit the Atari TT was a decent machine. Not too bad at all, certainly better than most Macs and PC's of the time.
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
The Pinnacle of Atari would be the Falcon 030 (released in 1992).... Even if it did not last long. It had better gfx, DSP processor,... Correction : it was the Pinnacle in the ST line...
The TT should have been more expandable, has a faster bus, more memory capabilities, etc. Outside of the Falcon's Videl and the DSP, it is 100% an inferior machine to the TT. Even the keyboard on the TT is better. It is sad that Atari split themselves and tried to release the Jaguar. A big box Falcon would have made a lot of people very happy.
@@powerofvintage9442as you show in this video, it beats the Falcon only in terms of CPU. The TT has no blitter, no DSP, no advanced graphics, no 16bit audio, and the bus still runs at 16 Mhz.
I've never seen that one before. I have an Atari XE. I really enjoy playing the Atari computers. I also have a portable vintage MAC inside a carry bag, it's got to weigh about 80LBS.
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 should watch the whole video before commenting. Back in the day, the best reason I found to update the RAM in my Mega STe was to load all of Ultima VI into the RAM disk and then run it from that! You should absolutely do that on your TT030! Load times are nothing!
I sold my TT030 years ago because it just didn't make sense to me but after watching your videos, this Amiga fanboy has now reinvested in Atari with a MegaSTE and STFM, and I like them far more than I expected, at least the MegaSTE, less with the STFM, but now I need to watch and think if I should chose another TT or just enjoy the MegaSTE
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.
Great video. Is there an emulator that gives the same experience on a modern Mac or pc? I never tried Atari computers and I would like to. I’m trying to try amiga as well but you have to buy the kickstart files and I’d like to try it first, is Atari this way as well? Or can I just download and try it out? Also, is there any way to install the Atari operating system on x86 pc’s or Mac’s from any era?
Hatari is a great emulator and runs on PC's and Mac's (including PowerPC Mac's) from up to 20+ years ago. Look here: hatari.tuxfamily.org/ You will need ROM's and can use EmuTOS (free) or find various different TOS versions online (I would recommend TOS 1.04 for most compatibility). You cannot buy a license. For software and TOS ROM images, google Atari TOSEC and you'll find a large file on Archive.org Take a look at my Romulator video from a couple of months ago, this we a way to run an Atari emulator on an old Pentium-era PC.
@ I missed that video somehow but I’m going to find it now! I’m not sure what you mean about TOS but I’m assuming it’s something like the Kickstarter on Amiga? Not that I understand that either I understand that it’s some files but I’m supposed to pay for. I just don’t understand how I get them and where I put them. Hopefully your video will answer all those questions for me as I’m gonna go watch it and download right now! Thanks so much. I’m new to it but I love your channel! Have a happy new year.
Saying the IIsi was the lowest of the low is an understatement. It didn’t have an FPU or an L2 cache, and the single banked RAM which was also shared by the onboard memory made it very sluggish. A real oddball Mac.
Bro, some old dude used this computer to make the company newsletter and smal signs and so on. We stopt using it when the guy died due to a hart attack 😢
Nope that is for an external disk drive. The high resolution monitor uses the standard vga port but with a signal that tells the TT it can output the high res video.
What I find interesting are the results of the benchmarks. The falcon has a 16-bit bus and 16mhz CPU so it should be less than 50% as fast as a TT but it's much faster than that, at around 70% off the TT. If i combine that with 68000 results I womder if that's is an effect of the tests. If the tests are written for the 68000 then they might not give us a good picture of the 68030.
This is partly due to the differences in the video capabilities of the Falcon versus the TT. The tests are definitely written to take showcase some of the differing video capabilities of the systems. The weighting of each individual test places extra weight on some of these tests. If you want to just look at the raw CPU horsepower, the Integer calc is the comparison to use.
@powerofvintage9442 I am not looking at the gem comparisons because there even the tos version makes a difference and for the frontier test neither the TT nor the falcon are constraint since it's running on ST low and there's more than enough bandwidth plus I believe the blitter isn't used. on the falcon actually you can argue that the use cases where the blitter is a benefit are few and far between. I would be interested to see a few of the standard tests compiled for 020-040 (dhrystone , nbench) and see the results
Original BLiTTER run on 8MHz; TT bus was 16MHz (originally designed for 68020), but effective BLiTTER needed to be 32 MHz, but Atari deiced to ditch it and ramp up the cache.
People I knew with these did the following back in the day: Programming robots and embedded systems (Motorola chips were used heavily in those industries), operate a BBS, run OS-9, teach assembly language courses, and sequence music.
From the BlueSCSI documentation: The following instructions demonstrates the process using dd on a modern Mac: Open terminal. The following command will create a blank disk image. You can modify the command to suit your use. dd if=/dev/zero of=example.hda bs=1m count=500 NOTE: On Linux systems, if you receive the error dd: invalid number: '1m', you need to capitalize the ‘m’. Example: dd if=/dev/zero of=example.hda bs=1M count=500 The count field defines the number of megabytes (bs=1m) the total disk image should be. The output file from the command is “example.hda”. This can be changed in the of=example.hda field. Place the new blank disk image in the root directory of your SD card.
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!
@@powerofvintage9442 Very nice! I got my aerospace engineer (aircraft engines) degree back in 2000 but never worked as such, switched to IT too quickly. Avatar shows GE90 of American Airlines Boeing 777-300ER.
There's a homebrew port of Doom that runs on a stock Falcon with 4 MB of memory, at a good frame rate, called BadMooD. The creator has posted videos of it.
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
The ste was a late wannabe Amiga. Sadly since most owners had STs, most newer games did not use the advanced features such as the blitter or the STE sound chip. I am surprised that Doom ran so slow with the 030. I did not expect perfection, but a little quicker than that.
If Atari hadn't been so concerned with selling monitors, they could have made the TT more compatible with VGA/SVGA, made it a little more upgradable for being their prime workstation. Then the STe should have had higher color depths along with the palette extension over the ST. The problem though, had always been that developers would always target the lowest common denominator... somehow the PC and Amiga devs were the opposite. They tended to target 1mb Amigas or of course DOS was always trying to target an array of hardware. There were very little software to take advantage of the 030 / TT resolutions.
I bought a Mega STe. Very little used its expanded capabilities. Worst of all was games. They just gave you what you could get on an STf. You had to watch out for incompatible games. The one that broke my heart was Masterblazer, the 16-bit version of Ballblazer. It didn't work on the STe! So bummed. At least I got a CPU I could run up to 16 Mhz, and I could expand the RAM to 4 MB. I got some use out of that.
Pinnacle is tough to agree with, as it depends on what you are doing. The Mega, TT, and Falcon, could each have the case made for them. The Falcon lacks VME, but most software that is likely to use a VME card is almost certainly a non-game application that is worse than similar modern apps. If a falcon had VME it would be the best hands down. In terms of gaming the Mega is compatible with more games than the TT, but is in most ways inferior. The most common reason for using old computers is going to be to play games, so for that any of these is unlikely to be a better option than the common STEs.
Totally agree with your reasoning. It really depends on your definition of pinnacle. In my case, I went for top specs that were in line with or better than its contemporary competition. You could make an argument that the pinnacle was with the original 520 / 1040ST and it was all downhill relative to the competition from there as they caught up and quickly surpassed the relatively stagnant Atari's.
Pinnacle I'm not sure. It does not have the hardware graphical accelerations that the STE or Amiga provided (blitter and hardware scrolling). Anyhow, that's the one model which made me drop Atari after being a fan for 10 years - and switch to the PC. After so many promises from Atari, the TT was such a disappointment for me. And just like its predecessor the STE and its successor the Falcon, one of the things that sunk it was the lack of dedicated software at a time where the PC was getting better and cheaper every year.
@@powerofvintage9442 I got the Atari 800XL before its disk drive was available, and the 520 ST before it was even available in retail stores. For the TT, I was in a "tell me how good is this machine and why I should get it" mode, but the software (or lack thereof) killed my enthusiasm. In 1985, the GUI featured by the ST was a killer demo - when you had an 8-bit computer the ST looked like the future. But in 1990 the TT had no such thing. It had a TOS with some colors but nothing overwhelming, at a time where the PC was starting to have some very capable games.
you wrong, in fact the 32MHz 68030 is so much faster in every operation then Blitter... the TT can scroll way faster then Amiga. The TT came out 4 years after ST, not 10...and in fact was for four whopping months the fastest Motorola 68k based computer on planet. STE is not a TT030 predecessor, TT030 was introduced at same time as STE...the Falcon030 was not successor of TT030, that should have been the project "microbox", the Falcon was project "Sparrow" that started as upgrade to STE. The Falcon was a wonderful computer in 1993, should not have been dropped by Sam Trammel, way better then A1200.
blitter in A1200 is slower than 68EC020 14Mhz and much much slower than 68030 25MHz in A3000/A4000. It is just A500 blitter, not a bit faster. Using it in those machines is pointless. It was there just for game compatibility.
@@madigorfkgoogle9349 I never said the TT came out 10 years after the ST, I said my history with Atari lasted 10 years (a very long time when you're a teen) as I had other Atari systems before the ST which I kept for 6 years. As far as TT vs. Amiga, that's a valid point, I'd be curious to see some comparison between the two (e.g. performing the same action with as much optimization as possible on both sides).
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The first computer that i bought with my own money as a teen was an Atari TT. Here in germany the ST line was quite popular and there was good software available. I mainly used Calamus SL and i’m still in the layout business. My brother soldered up an adapter to use an ET4000 VGA card in the VME bus and NVDI ET4K as the driver. I had several HDs so i took a standard PC tower and implanted the TT into it. This machine still works and my father used it for a long time to run Score Perfect. Fond memories..
Can't wait to see more videos of this beast!! I remember seeing Calamus SL running beautifully on this, with the 19 inch monochrome monitor.
More on TT please!
Also let's upgrade it to the max 👌👌
Thank you 🙏
I should go back to what I was trying to do with mine and get Unix on it.
I have completed put the sceamatic of the tt computer into kicad software bút it is still full of errors in it that í am trying to fix . I have averege skilst in this.but thanks for this video onthe tt computer .the tt computer is always intresting and thanks for the video.
I have fond memories of owning my Atari ST Mega 4.
Always fun to see such a rare computer. I imagine I won't get my hands on anything above an STE in my lifetime. Great overview!
Man, I love your videos. They always come full of great info while managing to be entertaining at the same time.
A Merry Christmas to you and your Family...
Thank you very much!
Very nice review of the TT...! Atari probably built this machine to compete against fast-MACs on DTP and maybe even CAD applications... However, I think that the Falcon 030 is a better computer than TT for most users... not only because of the significantly better graphics & sound capabilities ... but also because of the monster chip inside, called DSP, which allows unique processes like playing MP3s and sound-recording on hard-disk... I would love a desktop Falcon 030, using the same TT case.. this would be the king!
Of course, the TT was two years earlier than the Falcon. Two years back in the 1990s was a long time. Just like Amiga 3000 users had no idea that the Amiga 4000 would be released a couple of years after the 3000. I don't disagree that the Falcon is the more powerful machine (it's a great computer). But people needing to get their work done (like a roboticist friend of mine) had to get to work back in 1990. Hence he went with the Atari TT.
Yeah, I agree that 2 years were a big deal back then.. as concerns the Amiga 3000, it was probably the best Amiga ever.. apart from the AGA graphics that it is missing
@@tradinglive The Amiga 3000 is a nice machine but I found the Amiga 4000 to be more useful for 3D rendering and 2D paint applications. That and the 3000's case was just a bit too small to fit a Video Toaster card (however, once LightWave was offered as a separate app, the Toaster was no longer an item I needed). AGA, while not perfect, did allow for some pretty good HAM8 render previews (and the 68040 was nice at the time). It's just a shame that the A4000 left out the scan-doubler of the A3000, forcing people to rely on the C= 1942 monitor.
While I would have loved if C= had released the AGA motherboard upgrade for the A3000, other than AGA, the stock A3000 generally was much better than the stock A4000. It had a flicker fixer built-in, which made all the difference for hires BBS and Word Processor use, larger WB screens, etc. It had SCSI hard drive controller, which meant I could have like eight hard drives not just two and with less CPU load (only good thing about IDE was it was cheaper). You could boot SCSI external even.
I had the 030 25Mhz with 6882 (faster than standard A4000) with 18MB of RAM (upgraded) and 380MB of Quantum Fireball goodness. I added a HD floppy and eventually a Picasso 2 (tried Retina graphics first, which had a great paint program, but no retargetable graphics for web browsing and what not). Most games could be made to work (probably 80%, but using software to boot into 1.3 or even 1.2 was sometimes needed or to artificially slow it down which became available).
For a machine from 1990, it was neat to have it on the WWW in 1998 (kept up for awhile before browser updates stopped). But I couldn't play Yahoo Euchre and other card games and Amiga games all but dried up by 1996.
I got my first PC in 1999 and a used PowerMac Digital Audio (dual 500Mhz G4) in 2005 for a song ($180), which I upgraded to a single 1Ghz G4, dual SATA controller (dual 2TB hard drives in 2006) and the fastest graphics card that worked with it and 1.5GB of RAM for like $800. It actually ran my whole house audio/video system until 2012 (I got an Intel MacBook Pro in 2008 for Logic Pro recording).
I could boot into OS9 (had several commercial games for it in OS9) along with OSX Tiger and Leopard. ITunes plus 1st Gen ATV ran my whole house audio video system (could synchronize whole house audio perfectly in 2008). Eventually browser support dried up and I got a Mac Mini Quad i7 Server, now upgraded to 2TB SSD, 16GB RAM and still runs the whole house server (SMB/NFS to Nvidia Shield and Zidoo players). I'm not particularly happy with the move to ARM and 64-bit only as it largely killed Mac gaming support just as external graphics cards were starting to get official support. OSX is the most Amiga like of all operating systems I've used.
@@VonMagXL The Amiga 3000 is a bit faster than an Amiga 4000/030 for raw processing. However, the standard Amiga 4000 was the 68040 model which was definitely faster than the Amiga 3000/68882 combination. I was also miffed when SCSI and the scan-doubler was left out of the Amiga 4000; more annoying cost-cutting. I'm not aware of any WB screen modes on the Amiga 3000 that are higher resolution than the highest productivity modes on the Amiga 4000 using the C= 1942 monitor or equivalent. I wasn't a fan of the Kickstart diskette on the A3000, but I can see how that could offer some flexibility. For me, the added colors that AGA offered were worth it to me. I didn't have it in my budget to spring for a Picasso card and wasn't sure how well 3rd party video cards would integrate. In hindsight, I guess they were a pretty good option.
Cool, I don't recall seeing one of these in person even back in the day. Interesting machine.
Great stuff. I had a CoCo2 as a kid, so I never knew all of these other machines. Now, I pick them up on eBay if I can. I got a 1040STf, put a Gotek in it and played around with it a bit. These machines are great!
It is fun to play around with them and see what they are capable of...the answer is: more than I ever used mine for growing up.
Thank you for this awesome look at the TT!
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.
One thing that I’ve found fun about playing some of these retro games is discovering some of the earliest examples of gameplay “standards” included in all games today.
Then there’s also a lot of “what were they thinking when they came up with that mechanic”
@powerofvintage9442 with Pirates I remember the wind on the main map would only blow South West. You could get there fast then hit a wall. Going against the wind was painfully slow.
Another standout game like Elite was Damocles: Mercenary 2. Incredible for the time.
The TT is for sure a beautiful machine, but *the* Pinnacle of Atari computing was the Atari Transputer Workstation ATW800, a.k.a. ABAQ.
Back in 1989, I've seen it render a flight through a full-screen 3D fractal landscape in real-time.
As CPU it used a 20MHz INMOS T800 Transputer, and up to 16 extra T800 processors could be added on "farm cards". It had a build-in MegaST as I/O processor.
EDIT: Ah, it is mentioned during the wrap-up at the end. I'm looking forward to see your ATW video.
I knew if I didn't mention it someone would call me out on it :)
Actually, there is video card project that is in the works is intended to replicate the video output of the transputer and potentially some of the other features as well.
I did some work on an STE owned by a collector who lives about 30 minutes away from me who has a transputer. Who knows, there might be a video in the cards in the future. I just don't want to do a video on a computer that I can't show in person.
Indeed. Used the ATW800 in my years at Newcastle university and the console was a TT! My desktop was a Sun Sparkstation 1 and my home machine an STE 512 upgraded with extra ram and scsi had.
Thanks for the video! I was so drooling over TT 030 and 1280×960 19” Monitor back in ’90. - it would be perfect for Calamus 😂
BTW, IIfx didn’t had integrated video, so 640x480 wasn’t max, it depended on card installed - 8•24 GC which was released with IIfx supported 1152 x 870 in 256 colors with original 2MB DRAM (expandable to 10 MB).
On the other hand, IIsi integrated video was a snaillike, slothful [beep]show.
The same is also possible with the TT and the Amiga 3000 using aftermarket video cards too. I should have made more clear I was trying to compare the baseline of what you would get for the listed pricing :)
@@powerofvintage9442 Yeah, I get what you are saying, but IIfx was an odd machine which didn’t have embedded video. To get only 640x480 one has to pair it with older and cheaper 630-0153, 630-4222 or 630-4230, but realistically for machine that expensive 630-0400 (4•8) with 1152x870/16 support was expected minimum.
The Atari TT030 and all of the STes have 2 sound chips. One is the YM (don't recall the number) that is the one in all STs. The PCM sound chip that does Stereo, etc is new to the STe, and sounds much like a Paula from the Amiga can sound...
thank you!
@powerofvintage9442 No problem, I dug further, according to Wikipedia: The ST has a YM219 (pretty sure that was the Yamaha chip in the upper right) and the Falcon has a YM3439+SDMA+DSP. The STe and TT have an LMC1992 for the upgraded sound.
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 have had an Amiga 3000 since 1991, but I will admit the Atari TT was a decent machine. Not too bad at all, certainly better than most Macs and PC's of the time.
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
The Pinnacle of Atari would be the Falcon 030 (released in 1992).... Even if it did not last long. It had better gfx, DSP processor,... Correction : it was the Pinnacle in the ST line...
My intent was in terms of raw horsepower, it beats out the Falcon, but I totally love both the Falcon and the TT.
The TT should have been more expandable, has a faster bus, more memory capabilities, etc. Outside of the Falcon's Videl and the DSP, it is 100% an inferior machine to the TT. Even the keyboard on the TT is better. It is sad that Atari split themselves and tried to release the Jaguar. A big box Falcon would have made a lot of people very happy.
Agreed, I bought it on day one here in Sweden for 1600$, 16mb version. Probably 3000$ in today's money.
@@powerofvintage9442as you show in this video, it beats the Falcon only in terms of CPU. The TT has no blitter, no DSP, no advanced graphics, no 16bit audio, and the bus still runs at 16 Mhz.
I've never seen that one before. I have an Atari XE. I really enjoy playing the Atari computers. I also have a portable vintage MAC inside a carry bag, it's got to weigh about 80LBS.
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 should watch the whole video before commenting. Back in the day, the best reason I found to update the RAM in my Mega STe was to load all of Ultima VI into the RAM disk and then run it from that! You should absolutely do that on your TT030! Load times are nothing!
I was wondering if there were any TT-specific games or ST games that would take advantage of TT video modes.
Such a nice machine.
I sold my TT030 years ago because it just didn't make sense to me but after watching your videos, this Amiga fanboy has now reinvested in Atari with a MegaSTE and STFM, and I like them far more than I expected, at least the MegaSTE, less with the STFM, but now I need to watch and think if I should chose another TT or just enjoy the MegaSTE
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 NeXTstation was way out of the Atari TT and pretty much everything else's league at that time.
In my country Atari TT moved to PC big towers were standard in DTP in '90 slowly replaced by Macs due to hardware unavailability.
Great video. Is there an emulator that gives the same experience on a modern Mac or pc? I never tried Atari computers and I would like to. I’m trying to try amiga as well but you have to buy the kickstart files and I’d like to try it first, is Atari this way as well? Or can I just download and try it out? Also, is there any way to install the Atari operating system on x86 pc’s or Mac’s from any era?
Hatari is a great emulator and runs on PC's and Mac's (including PowerPC Mac's) from up to 20+ years ago. Look here: hatari.tuxfamily.org/
You will need ROM's and can use EmuTOS (free) or find various different TOS versions online (I would recommend TOS 1.04 for most compatibility). You cannot buy a license.
For software and TOS ROM images, google Atari TOSEC and you'll find a large file on Archive.org
Take a look at my Romulator video from a couple of months ago, this we a way to run an Atari emulator on an old Pentium-era PC.
@ I missed that video somehow but I’m going to find it now! I’m not sure what you mean about TOS but I’m assuming it’s something like the Kickstarter on Amiga? Not that I understand that either I understand that it’s some files but I’m supposed to pay for. I just don’t understand how I get them and where I put them. Hopefully your video will answer all those questions for me as I’m gonna go watch it and download right now! Thanks so much. I’m new to it but I love your channel! Have a happy new year.
Saying the IIsi was the lowest of the low is an understatement. It didn’t have an FPU or an L2 cache, and the single banked RAM which was also shared by the onboard memory made it very sluggish.
A real oddball Mac.
I have one and enjoy using it, but agree it's a bit on the slow side.
Bro, some old dude used this computer to make the company newsletter and smal signs and so on. We stopt using it when the guy died due to a hart attack 😢
Isnt the big round connector on the back for the higher resolution B/W Monitor?
Nope that is for an external disk drive. The high resolution monitor uses the standard vga port but with a signal that tells the TT it can output the high res video.
What I find interesting are the results of the benchmarks. The falcon has a 16-bit bus and 16mhz CPU so it should be less than 50% as fast as a TT but it's much faster than that, at around 70% off the TT. If i combine that with 68000 results I womder if that's is an effect of the tests. If the tests are written for the 68000 then they might not give us a good picture of the 68030.
This is partly due to the differences in the video capabilities of the Falcon versus the TT. The tests are definitely written to take showcase some of the differing video capabilities of the systems. The weighting of each individual test places extra weight on some of these tests. If you want to just look at the raw CPU horsepower, the Integer calc is the comparison to use.
@powerofvintage9442 I am not looking at the gem comparisons because there even the tos version makes a difference and for the frontier test neither the TT nor the falcon are constraint since it's running on ST low and there's more than enough bandwidth plus I believe the blitter isn't used. on the falcon actually you can argue that the use cases where the blitter is a benefit are few and far between.
I would be interested to see a few of the standard tests compiled for 020-040 (dhrystone , nbench) and see the results
Looking into a dhrystone benchmark.
shame they did not include a blitter chip or at least a way to add one?
Original BLiTTER run on 8MHz; TT bus was 16MHz (originally designed for 68020), but effective BLiTTER needed to be 32 MHz, but Atari deiced to ditch it and ramp up the cache.
Would be cool to see what someone would get this for, what software to run on it.
People I knew with these did the following back in the day: Programming robots and embedded systems (Motorola chips were used heavily in those industries), operate a BBS, run OS-9, teach assembly language courses, and sequence music.
Off topic question: how to make hda image file to use with bluescsi and megaste?
From the BlueSCSI documentation:
The following instructions demonstrates the process using dd on a modern Mac:
Open terminal.
The following command will create a blank disk image. You can modify the command to suit your use.
dd if=/dev/zero of=example.hda bs=1m count=500
NOTE: On Linux systems, if you receive the error dd: invalid number: '1m', you need to capitalize the ‘m’.
Example: dd if=/dev/zero of=example.hda bs=1M count=500
The count field defines the number of megabytes (bs=1m) the total disk image should be.
The output file from the command is “example.hda”. This can be changed in the of=example.hda field.
Place the new blank disk image in the root directory of your SD card.
huh. never even heard of the tt before!
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!
Never seen it in real life! I was more like an Atari 1040ST guy ;-)
As a former jet engine guy (worked for both P&W GE) I love seeing what looks like a GTF in your profile image!!!
@@powerofvintage9442 Very nice! I got my aerospace engineer (aircraft engines) degree back in 2000 but never worked as such, switched to IT too quickly. Avatar shows GE90 of American Airlines Boeing 777-300ER.
Interesting I have the Same Mega TT with the same 27" Dell monitor (VGA+HDMI) AMD sync that does 15hz too ;)
A great match and I was able to pick up the Dell monitor NEW for only ~$100 US including shipping.
Amazing for these computers!
There's a homebrew port of Doom that runs on a stock Falcon with 4 MB of memory, at a good frame rate, called BadMooD. The creator has posted videos of it.
Got that one already on my Falcon and it works great! It leverages the Falcon's DSP, so no go on the TT.
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
The ste was a late wannabe Amiga. Sadly since most owners had STs, most newer games did not use the advanced features such as the blitter or the STE sound chip. I am surprised that Doom ran so slow with the 030. I did not expect perfection, but a little quicker than that.
If Atari hadn't been so concerned with selling monitors, they could have made the TT more compatible with VGA/SVGA, made it a little more upgradable for being their prime workstation. Then the STe should have had higher color depths along with the palette extension over the ST. The problem though, had always been that developers would always target the lowest common denominator... somehow the PC and Amiga devs were the opposite. They tended to target 1mb Amigas or of course DOS was always trying to target an array of hardware.
There were very little software to take advantage of the 030 / TT resolutions.
I bought a Mega STe. Very little used its expanded capabilities. Worst of all was games. They just gave you what you could get on an STf. You had to watch out for incompatible games. The one that broke my heart was Masterblazer, the 16-bit version of Ballblazer. It didn't work on the STe! So bummed. At least I got a CPU I could run up to 16 Mhz, and I could expand the RAM to 4 MB. I got some use out of that.
Pinnacle is tough to agree with, as it depends on what you are doing. The Mega, TT, and Falcon, could each have the case made for them. The Falcon lacks VME, but most software that is likely to use a VME card is almost certainly a non-game application that is worse than similar modern apps. If a falcon had VME it would be the best hands down. In terms of gaming the Mega is compatible with more games than the TT, but is in most ways inferior. The most common reason for using old computers is going to be to play games, so for that any of these is unlikely to be a better option than the common STEs.
Totally agree with your reasoning. It really depends on your definition of pinnacle. In my case, I went for top specs that were in line with or better than its contemporary competition. You could make an argument that the pinnacle was with the original 520 / 1040ST and it was all downhill relative to the competition from there as they caught up and quickly surpassed the relatively stagnant Atari's.
Ahh yes, as I call it “the Atari TT Boy”… those who know, know 😂
Hey, a G4 cube.
true, true. and it works too.
Pinnacle I'm not sure. It does not have the hardware graphical accelerations that the STE or Amiga provided (blitter and hardware scrolling). Anyhow, that's the one model which made me drop Atari after being a fan for 10 years - and switch to the PC. After so many promises from Atari, the TT was such a disappointment for me. And just like its predecessor the STE and its successor the Falcon, one of the things that sunk it was the lack of dedicated software at a time where the PC was getting better and cheaper every year.
I get it. It has been a fun beast to explore.
@@powerofvintage9442 I got the Atari 800XL before its disk drive was available, and the 520 ST before it was even available in retail stores. For the TT, I was in a "tell me how good is this machine and why I should get it" mode, but the software (or lack thereof) killed my enthusiasm.
In 1985, the GUI featured by the ST was a killer demo - when you had an 8-bit computer the ST looked like the future. But in 1990 the TT had no such thing. It had a TOS with some colors but nothing overwhelming, at a time where the PC was starting to have some very capable games.
you wrong, in fact the 32MHz 68030 is so much faster in every operation then Blitter... the TT can scroll way faster then Amiga. The TT came out 4 years after ST, not 10...and in fact was for four whopping months the fastest Motorola 68k based computer on planet.
STE is not a TT030 predecessor, TT030 was introduced at same time as STE...the Falcon030 was not successor of TT030, that should have been the project "microbox", the Falcon was project "Sparrow" that started as upgrade to STE. The Falcon was a wonderful computer in 1993, should not have been dropped by Sam Trammel, way better then A1200.
blitter in A1200 is slower than 68EC020 14Mhz and much much slower than 68030 25MHz in A3000/A4000. It is just A500 blitter, not a bit faster. Using it in those machines is pointless. It was there just for game compatibility.
@@madigorfkgoogle9349 I never said the TT came out 10 years after the ST, I said my history with Atari lasted 10 years (a very long time when you're a teen) as I had other Atari systems before the ST which I kept for 6 years. As far as TT vs. Amiga, that's a valid point, I'd be curious to see some comparison between the two (e.g. performing the same action with as much optimization as possible on both sides).