This is one of my top 5 dream computers. I never got to own any of them. As a long time Atari guy (800, 800XL, 520STFM) I saw the Falcon as the perfection of the ST line. It was just always outside affordability for me.
I had bailed on the Atari computers by the time the Falcon 030 came out, but I was always curious about it. Cool computer! I still have have a 1040 STe and a TT030 that I take out of the closet and play with from time to time. The 80s and early 90s were fun years for computers. Great video, thank you!
What a beaut! I had no idea. Owned many Amigas in my day but never was around the Atari crowd. Thanks for the show and tell. Loved seeing the internals.
I owned one briefly in early 1994. There was a dearth of software for it that took advantages of the special hardware and wound up selling it 6 months later to get a 386 PC.
Falcon 030 was 4 years too late. Atari's obsession with unix and the transputer doomed the TT. They squandered the Lynx, and then ruined the Jaguar. It's like after the ST, they simply couldn't do anything right. But neither amiga nor atari could stand up to the x86 juggernaut. Motorola simply wasn't able to scale 68k performance the way Intel did with x86.
Agreed. The market was moving so crazy fast back then that if you took a breath, the world would have moved on. Atari (and Amiga) had game changers in the mid-80's. If they had built on that they could have kept that lead. It's kind of amazing that Intel was able to stagnate as much as they did from 2010 to the late 20-teens recently.
@@turrican4d599 That might be true, but without software to take advantage of it, it's like the tree that fell in the forest. That in my mind is the saddest part of the story.
@@turrican4d599 the 68060 was released way too late, and it was way too expensive for what it was. motorola had already lost interest in the 68k line and had moved on to powerpc by then. x86 hardware was much cheaper and motorola based systems simply couldn't compete.
Atari and Commodore both got screwed by the so-called experts that unfairly criticized them even though they BOTH were better buys than any Wintel or Apple computer .
Had a pristine, early build low serial number Falcon030, with all original box and accessories. Used the heck out of it for years. Sold it 8 years ago on eBay to a European buyer, and used the proceeds towards a brand new house. Used it every year from 1992-2015 for my whole house Halloween displays for sound effects. I have videos of the Halloween sound effects and startup from my eBay posting.
This is the best video about the Atari Falcon. In our country it was available for a short time and in small numbers, but the Amiga and Atari community argued for a long time what was better - A1200 or Falcon. I'm not sure if it was today that this dispute was settled. In any case, the Atari Falcon is a great computer and I'm glad you have your own copy.
Thank you very much! I also have an A1200 which I love as well. Both are excellent and both are different. I would say that the A1200 has more software available that takes advantage of its enhancements. Even if the Falcon's video output could be better than the A1200 AGA...if the majority of software didn't use the Falcon video, then it really didn't matter in the end.
I only eva drooled over two computing items. I was younger back then. The Atari Falcon ( i owned an STe) and a 3DO (I owned a VCR and MegaDrive). Great vid. GG's.
17:13 a correction - those are not capacitors. Those are varistors and they are supposed to be solder like that , pretty common practice back in the day , and definitively not a bodge. Not trying to rain on Your parade , but most of the people look back on 80s and early 90s tech and think if there are solder trough components used on it than it is a bodge. It is not. Its just the thing that the process in the industry has yet not matured enough so we could have a whole computer done in wave soldering technique , sure it was more costly at the time (labor intensive) but to have a whole motherboard done in that way for relatively cheap home computer was decades away ( it is still not done even today). It would be nightmare to repair at that time, and something like 90% would be returned for service in 6 months. Remember this was a computer that was built in in to the keyboard - so abuse, bumps and constant movement would do horrific thing to a PC if it was built in to the case like that. Sure there were notebooks back then , but they were delicate beasts still clunky but way out of the reach of 10 year old to play games on it.
Thank you for the correction! I'm definitely looking backwards with a more modern set of "glasses" and would call it a bodge. A better description is a manual known fix. You do see on the higher volume, later versions of of these 80's computers in particular a lot less of that kind of manual additions. It's similar in other industries as well. Where on the early production units, you see manual fixes to address design flaws and salvage initial units. My point was that I don't think there was ever enough volume to get the Atari Falcon outside of that phase, and I probably didn't properly verbalize that.
@@powerofvintage9442 I understand it , just wanted mainly to point out that first thing , those varistors are pretty normal thing to do even nowadays , it was always considered cheaper as they were trough-hole components so manual soldering was required even if was added to a separate board - so it cost less not to add some small board just for them - but they were not an afterthought for sure. But anyways , Falcon 030 was one of the home computers i never had the chance of owning , but had a chance in early late 90's to get for almost nothing, and I've missed it. For last decade or more I still feel gutted by that , cause i didn't have the time to go and pick it up. Don't really have time to use all of the things i have , but You know hoarding stuff is fun :P.
The best computer ever made. Fortunately I was still an ST user in the US at the time the Falcon was announced and I ordered mine from a local Atari/musical instrument store. I still remember how excited I was when they called me to let me know I could pick up my new machine! I was very confused and disappointed when I found out the Falcon was discontinued... but I still used mine as my primary computer for many years before getting into Macs and SGIs. Unfortunately I don't own my original Falcon anymore but at one point I realized my horrible mistake in selling it, so I bought another one.
@@powerofvintage9442 and that is why the prices are so outrageous, because many of you didn't sell their old machine (because nobody wanted it, after all it was a commercial failure) but they ended up in the recycling plant and got trashed. So very few survived
If you we're into music production at the time you knew it existed , it was marketed foremost as a harddisk recorder but by that time the alesis adat allready cornered that market
@@DieselPLL adat had studiostandard just like akai and better ada convertors than early harddisk recorders plus smpte sync , HD recorders we're actually before adat ( PPG , synclavier ) but didn't catch on
@@cnfuzz I think the biggest issue in 1990 was HD price per Megabyte of storage, I've been playing with AudioTracker for Falcon 030 and ADAT 8ch input~output on Falcon DSP port. (see: Falcon 030 FDI+ Work In Progress), at ATARIAGE Forums.😁
I bought a Falcon 030. At the time I was running my own business (a roller skating rink) with a TT/030 and the 19" Atari Monochrome monitor (Moniterm) running Superbase and Pagestream primarily. I also had a payroll app and some other odds and ends of course, but mainly those two. I wanted the Falcon to be something more portable (I also had a Stacy with a 16mhz upgrade) and at this time I was working with a band, so I was going to use it for recording. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed. It was SO much slower than the TT/030, it wasn't even close really. There was also supposed to be 386 PC card for it, which of course never came out.
The 68030's and 40's were good chips. I don't have a lot of ST experience, but my college roommate showed me Doom and MP3s running on his Quadra 840... his computer with a 40 MHz 68040 blew the lid off my 486 DX2-66, which couldn't decode MP3s well even with a sound card upgrade.
In the case of the Atari Falcon, the 68030 only does part of the heavy lifting. The DSP (digital signal processor) a Motorola 56001 takes over a large chunk of the workload.
I was fortune enough to have 030 for a few months. It was my dream computer and such an huge upgrade from my 520ST. The Falcon I used had a 64MB HDD in four partitions, 16MB each. I remember copy some of my games from floppy to HDD. Games loaded instantly. Sadly I couldn't keep it. It was just for loan.
Good show for the 68030 running Doom. Nearly same performance as a 486 DX/25. I was using Mac in mid 90's and playing Doom on the folks PowerMac 6100/60.
Liked this review. I was an Atarian up until about 1997, when I went to a Windows PC. I was sort of excited about the Falcon leading up to its release. I was an Atari 8-bitter in the '80s, and got a Mega STe in 1992. Around the time the Falcon came out, I learned about MiNT by Eric Smith, and installed it on my STe. That was an involved process, because I had to compile it from source using GCC. I think that was the only way to get it. I ended up having to set up GCC as a cross-compiler on a Unix account I had through a university, and then compile the MiNT kernel (forget why I did it this way). Afterwards, I could compile future MiNT versions on my Atari. So, I got to experience a lite Unix environment, since I could install a pre-compiled set of GNU tools. I had slow multitasking inside TOSWin, sharing CPU with TOS on a 16 Mhz 68000. The way MiNT operated on STs was as an adjunct kernel, running alongside TOS. In today's terms, it would be similar to running a VM, running two OSes at once. TOS ran as it always did, as a single-tasking environment. MiNT ran a command-line shell, like Bourne shell, where you could multitask. It was supposed to be possible to install X/Windows on MiNT, but I never got around to that. Afterwards, I read about how Eric Smith was hired by Atari to make MiNT the kernel for the Falcon OS, called MultiTOS. They modified VDI and AES to multitask on top of MiNT. Smith said that MiNT originally stood for "MiNT is Not Tos" (recursive acronym, like "GNU"), and said, "Now it stands for 'MiNT is Now Tos'." I had the chance to try out a Falcon at the same local dealer where I got my STe. It seemed nice. Some of the pictures of its display I saw in Atari magazines, looking like photographs, and stories about it rendering color digital video in real time, were impressive. I read a story of Atari demo'ing the Falcon at a trade show, showing a Tina Turner music video playing on it, streamed off a hard drive, and people lifting a drape that hung over its table, looking for a VCR underneath, and not finding anything. :) So, yes, the DSP was impressive. The DSP was a selling point with the Falcon at the time, because it was the same co-processor that was used in the NeXTStation. Though, I don't know how many people went for that. I remember seeing a NeXT user spending some time with a Falcon, talking about it with the dealer rep., but ultimately passing on it. I think the main objection he had was there wasn't the software support he wanted. That's what I felt about it, too. I liked its potential, but how much worked with it? I had a little trouble with that with my STe. Some ST games wouldn't work on it. Many games only worked with the 1040STf, which was Atari's most popular model. As you said, the Atari market was dying out. Atari really limped along after its collapse in 1983. It made a brief splash in '85 with the ST, coming out ahead of the Amiga in sales for a year or two, but it lost ground after that. I was really struck listening to an interview with Bob Brodie, Atari's user group coordinator. He basically said Atari was asleep at the switch, completely blind to how they were being surpassed by PCs. By the time they realized it in the early '90s, it was too late to catch up. So, Sam Tramiel cancelled future development of the ST line, cancelled production of their existing line in 1993, and focused the company on their video game platforms.
@@powerofvintage9442- There's some more. :) David Small of Gadgets by Small was the guest of honor at a FRAUG (Front Range Atari User Group) meeting in Ft. Collins, CO, either in '92 or '93, and he demonstrated the Falcon for us. He showed us the GUI, and some things you could do on the Falcon, but the only thing I vividly remember of that demo was he set it up to play short sound effects when you pressed keys on the keyboard. We got a good laugh out of that, as they were funny sounds. I remember seeing this sort of thing again when Microsoft came out with Windows CE (you could assign sounds to GUI events; opening the Start menu, opening a window, etc.). He gave us some inside baseball on what was going on at Atari. He talked a bit about the dev. team that wrote MultiTOS, saying that rather than paying them in cash, Atari paid them in stock. 😱 We all let out a collective groan when we heard that, because we knew that Atari was a penny stock (selling for under $1 a share). So, surely the dev's sold theirs as soon as they could, rather than wait to see what would happen. Not a good sign. That was the feeling we had about Atari. We loved the computers, but the news we heard about the company didn't feel good. It was usually, "Atari is screwing up again," or in a few cases, "Atari screwed these people over." We kept imagining what their computers would be doing (how successful they would be) if Atari wasn't screwing up, and we kept hoping that somehow they'd get their head on straight, and produce a big hit. In a way, I think we were pleasantly surprised how long Atari computers stayed on the market, despite the company. From what I've heard from computer historians recently, the reason Atari computers lasted as long as they did, during the Tramiel years, was primarily because of their success in the UK and Europe, not the U.S., where they were a blip for market share. Atari's management in the UK/Europe seemed to have better ideas about how to market the machines in those markets than the U.S. management did about selling them anywhere. Though, it was the U.S. management that developed the technology that went into the computers. In terms of a market niche, the ST was very successful among professional musicians, due to its MIDI technology, which was seen as "best of breed." I even hear about musicians today who swear by it.
@@powerofvintage9442 and Lotharek (for the Vulture) unless that's part of Exxos, I'm not sure. It feels odd acquiring such an old machine that was nearly barebones during it's entire life. The one I got had no FPU, only 4MB RAM and the original but dead 80MB Connor HDD. (or whatever it was). Now I just need the 14MB upgrade board and the cable to connect it to a 1435 and I'm ready to rock like it's 1995.... (because that's when I learned about their existence in Toad Catalog).
I will never forget the day when a very nerdy kid came in to my store where I was selling PCs in 1994-5, took a look at my machines, sniffed like he smelt a fart and demanded: "Does this machine have a SCSI-2 interface?" I began to explain why IDE was more practical in a home PC unless you wanted a RAID array but he cut me off and asked if it had a dedicated DSP and certain other non-standard PC specs and then began launching into his main speech: "Because I know a machine that does. It's the Atari Falcon 030 and it's so much better then any of this" finally I cut him off, explained that I sympathized as an old Amiga guy but that this war was long over. The PC clones won. All the cool hardware in the world dosen't matter if there's no software for it. And your Falcon 030? - I waved to the wall of games and apps - It dosen't run any of that. 'you;re wrong' was all he could come up with as he left. I felt bad for the guy, and 5 years before I was just as big an Amiga elitist, except I didn't go to computer stores to pick nerd fights about it. 😂
@@powerofvintage9442 Oh wow! Are you an engineer at Lockheed Martin? Sorry for going of topic. Your videos are great, highly detailed and technical, and I love the Falcon (the one from Atari AND the one from General Dynamics 😉)
Thanks! As I've been collecting and tinkering with old computers, I'm constantly surprise at how capable these machines really were / are. The Commodore 64 with the GEOS desktop is kind of crazy as an example of what could be accomplished with just 64kb of RAM.
Are you looking for a Falcon you sold previously with a custom paint job? That would be awesome to find your original one again! Awesome that you still have all those other Atari's. I've been on the look out for a TT myself!
I was an official Atari developer at the launch of the Falcon at Dusseldorf with Tramiel. And yes, I customized my Falcon, granite paint, and some color shapes. When I switched to PC, I did lend my Falcon to my musician Brother. And it's gone, and he can't remember where. I'm sad, And now a Falcon is worth the price of your first born.@@powerofvintage9442
I may sell my TT, with its Canon scanner and Atari Laser printer. s Loved the TT, but it was a pure work machine (PAO); I have a different connection to it, less personal. @powerofvintage9442
@@enitalp shoot an email to the channel email if you decide to sell the TT. Depending on my financial situation at the time, I would definitely be interested!
There is an ability to add a graphics card capability either with a "Super Videl" upgrade or through a PCI bus through a CT60 accelerator card. Some folks have used a Radeon 9200 with their Falcons. In those cases, either the GPU is now external or they've towered the motherboard up.
I was always an Amiga guy back in the day (rather fanatically so, I'm embarrassed to admit now lol), but even then I couldn't avoid acknowledging - if only to myself - that the Ataris just were better designed and built, with their internal power supply and much better build quality. The A500 in particular was horrendous, cheaply built, and creaked all over the place when moved and even when typed on, and also its shielding which was largely held together with el cheapo metal tabs that would fall off if bent back and forth a few times. The Falcon was a very very impressive piece of kit for the day - compact, sturdy and well made (physically anyway - the fixes seen here on the mainboard aren't that pretty though), with tremendous capabilities for its time. PCs took years and years to reach a similar level of evolution - for quite a while they just brute-forced everything with a tremendously powerful CPU and not much else. So Atari really tossed in just about everything here except the kitchen sink. Its achilles heel, if you want to call it that, was no fastram I feel, so the CPU would slow down anytime the blitter worked, or when showing high-rez/high color graphics. Also, lack of software support of course, as with all of the more exotic Ataris, like the Lynx and the Jaguar and so on. (Transputer... Hah.) By the time the '90s rolled around, home computers with their custom OSes didn't stand much of a chance anymore as general purpose computers. Their market share was simply too small in comparison versus The Great Wintel Beast. :P But the Falcon is an amazing machine, for sure. I have a mate who has one of these, he bought it when the computer was brand new. He also has a 520ST or what it was called (the early version without internal floppy drive), a couple 1040STs and an STe as well, and even a Jaguar. Also, two full-size Gauntlet 4-player arcade machines. (!) He likes Atari stuff, did I mention that? lol Meanwhile, my old A500 is in pieces in a box, and I'm looking to get rid of it to someone who might have more use/room for it. I love the nostalgia of those days, but I don't have the patience for ancient computers anymore, sadly... :(
Both the Atari's and Amiga's did pick different elements to keep nice though. The Atari's had the internal PSU, Amiga's had more socketed IC's and better keyboards in general. I think that the Atari's had a more robust case structure....the Amiga's updated their cases. I personally prefer Atari's industrial design...
The Atari company in the Jack Tramiel era had many wasted opportunities and yet made such wonderful home computers. I think that was largely by accident since Jack's main goal was to one-up Gould at Commodore and show him who was the better mid-century businessman.
Crucial RAM that is PC RAM that won't work on an ST anyway too new. It has to be a stick of RAM from at the time which would have the DDR 1, 2, 3, 4 ect. from the time period of the actual computer doesn't it?
No need to remove the 030. You can bypass it by using the upgrade headers on the board. I walk through two of the new production accelerator boards that exist today that I own with upgraded 030's @ 50mhz and 060's. There were some 040 boards and even drop in 386 / 486 boards from back in the 1990's.
Agreed. With today's 60 fps minimum playable glasses we all wear, it's sometimes hard to remember what we would say was "playable" back in the 80's and 90's.
@@powerofvintage9442 I remember the 90s, cheering as demos off my PC-Gamer cover discs chugged to life at 4 frames per second on a grossly underpowered PC. It was a different time.
When released it was somewhat compatible with previous Atari ST/STe software. Compatibility was improved with various tools back then and today there have been a number of folks over time that have tweaked most popular software (and games) to make them compatible. Still not the best experience for the early adopters from what I've read.
@@powerofvintage9442 thanks. Does that mean that the software that a user had didn’t run however the developer could make some small changes and sell an updated copy?
@@michaelclement1337 The might have been possible. I didn't own one back in those days and have only read the experiences others had. (and what was in STFormat from the time)
@@michaelclement1337 Even if the 68030 is very similar with the 68000, there is difference, especially in the exceptions treatment, and it's a headache to make running certains 68000 compiled games on a 68030. You need to patch them or make code reverse engeneering. I've got a TT in the past and the problem was the same
The Falcon had better hardware than the Amiga 1200 but worse operating system than Amiga OS3.x. Also, the Amiga 1200 was slightly easier to upgrade thanks to its trapdoor slot where memory cards and cpu/fpu cards could be inserted. Imho :) In Europe Atari and especially the Amiga was quite popular as long as to around 1995-1996 and even later in the semiprofessional video studios. And I think Atari was used in music studios even in late 90's. The PC had power but really lousy interface - no plug'n'play, MS-Dos or win 3.x or win95 that always crashed.
I don't know what you're smoking the Amiga always had better hardware. The Amiga had a blitter in 1985. They had 030 and 040 and 060 and even power pc CPUs available. Its sound chip was light years ahead of Ataris. The graphics were superior too and the operating system was capable of true preemptive multitasking. Oh I'm sorry the Atari had built in midi. Towards the end the Atari did get upgraded hardware but because of the lack of installed base it was never taken advantage of. Look how long it took for the Atari to bet a blitter and it was never really used.
@@stephenkennedy6358 Hey, I'm an Amiga fanboy aswell, but Atari Falcon simply had better hardware than the A1200. 16 bit sound, a DSP, 030 CPU, 16 bit chunky mode. Atari ST had worse hardware than Amiga.
Your comparing apples to oranges the amiga had an 030 in the amiga 2500 and the 3000 before the falcon ever existed. the dsp while cool was never really used, the Amiga could play mp3's without a dsp. Most of the advancements with the falcon already existed on the Amiga. While not built in there was 16bit sound cards available. The original sound chip on the Atari WAS MORE AT HOME ON A 8BIT COMPUTER. right from the beginning the amiga could display 4096 colors at once. Don't even get me started on the Amiga's ability to use retargetable graphics. When the Falcon was released around the same time the Amiga 4000 was and it had an 040 with the ability to be upgraded to the power pc.Their was reason why Atari wanted the Amiga's chipset.@@d_vibe-swe
@@stephenkennedy6358 The Falcon WAS better on paper as shown by the stock machine being able to run Doom (eventually). Dave Haynie wanted a DSP in the Amiga 3000++ but management chopped it and the AGA chipset and the DSP idea never resurfaced!
You're pulling my leg about realtime mp3 playback on 030. You don't get realtime mp3 playback on a 100mhz 486, and that has ~7x the computational power. There are UA-cam videos testing exactly how much CPU you needed for realtime software mp3 decoding, and the conclusion is that you really need a Pentium for that.
It does have the power to do it, but not just with the 68030 it uses the 56000 DSP to share the workload. Don't take my word for it (random youtube guy) take the word of many random wikipedia folks en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Falcon
@@powerofvintage9442 That's a solid leg up on the Amiga, I'll take mp3 over tracker music. Though the rest of the chipset in the ST line is 16-bit, so that's a wash...
Back in 92/93 I was a staunch Amiga fan, however when I heard about the Falcon I kind felt like that was what the Amiga 1200 should have been, in terms of spec and capability... The Falcon was and still is a great computer, and yours is a fantastic example, thank you for the video.
an amiga 1200 with a dsp and aaa graphics ie i think it was 10 bit planes and 8 meg chip was supposed to be the machine commodore lauched but medi ali wanted the cheaper option think its called hombre ie aaa search your find the upgrade we all could have had.
Also I'm Amiga fan and its true, Atari Falcom030 was far better than 1200, but its important know the years to understand a few things: * 1992-> A1200 realeased (Motorola MC68EC020 a 14.32 MHz) * 1992-> Atari Falcom030 released (Motorola 68030 a 16 MHz + Motorola 56001 a 32 MHz) * 1993-> Atari Falcom030 stop production * 1994-> Commodore bankruptcy * 1994-> The CPU Motorola 68060 was realeased This CPU can be used in A4000 or an unoffial support in A1200 (thats why you see so many demos with this CPU) * 1996-> Amiga stop production * 2002-> The accelerator board CT60/CT63 from Atari was released, with a CPU Motorola 68060 a 100MHz... But as Amiga fan, I think the best Amigao was A2000, and Atari Falcom030 without any doubt, a really beast.
The 68030 wasn't cheap in 1992, and it wasn't as fast as PCs of same generation. The 68060 was super expensive and not widely available to consumers in the 90s. The 486DX2 wiped the floor with all of them on perf per dollar. The PC was the american muscle car of computers, it was rough and raw but it was cheap. Later they fixed the shortcomings like the OS, chipset, graphics and sound. The Archimedies spawned ARM. Many computer companies died, SGI, ICL, DEC, Sun, Cray, Spectrum, Acron, Commodore, Palm, Atari, too many to list. Others like IBM, Toshiba, HP, live on as shadows of their former glory.
Remember while I was lusting over a Falcon (couldn't afford one being just a teenager then) I ended up getting a 486DX4/100 chip that wasn't officially supported by the 386/486 motherboard I had at the time (it would flash red screen briefly upon bootup then go away) but it worked and that thing was insanely fast! Still, wish I could have had the Falcon during its prime with a ton of software and external CD.
Could Motorola and Atari have improved their lot by licensing cheaper clone chips and clone computers? Or would that have defeated the point of their ethos? 🙂 Unless I am mistaken, it was mostly *not* genuine IBM computers that made PCs widespread and some didn't even have genuine Intel x86 processors but rather AMD or others?
I know! I got lucky with the one I picked up. Too little too late, but with so much potential. While not perfect, it's pretty amazing what the team was able to pull together with the Falcon that we actually ended up with.
Atari truly did an injustice to the Falcon for pulling support it, not only for the machine but to those who actually purchased one. Most people would cringe at the idea but if they could have adapted a version of AOL, it easily could have made this an entry level internet surfing multi-media machine with just a few more polished software packages all-around and of course, creating one using the Jaguar GPU chipset as an updated model. Having a Jaguar, Lynx II and Falcon030 in the 90s was the dream! (sans the STBook, that I still lust for)...
One of the best Falcon presentation videos (plus upgrades) I've seen so far! 👌 Some of the mods I also have in my Falcon, like the Noctua fan and double-CF card accessable from outside. Interesting to see you got the additional ceramic caps near the audio section and the modified filters (the coils with green and red wires) at the audio connectors. I only saw these on C-Lab Falcons! Would be interesting to see the bottom side of the board, if the Audio mod (line-in and out, removed bass-boost) has been done by the former owner. I did the C-Lab mod on my Falcon last year! Hope you don't mind if I link a video to this (german): ua-cam.com/video/js68Dx4U0hw/v-deo.html 😉
As an Amigian back in the day this machine was like forbidden fruit. I would love to have owned one as I just thought the dark grey finish on em was just so attractive - and when the demos were coming through it was just next level!
56K DSP is capable of carrying out 16.5 Million Instructions Per Second (MIPS) for example: Intel i486DX, 8.7 MIPS at 25 MHz -- Intel i486DX 11.1 MIPS at 33 MHz -- Motorola 68030 9 MIPS at 25 MHz
The 56K was the Falcon's Achilles' Heel. It corrupted memory due to a bug in ROM that Atari wouldn't/couldn't fix and which led to the deserved demise of both computer and company. There were no proper development tools or information and no third party support from Germany like there was for the ST/TT so it died on the vine.
The Compaq Deskpro 386 in 1987 essentially sealed the fate of the non-PC ecosystem. It really legitimized the x86 approach and simultaneously preserved a ton of legacy apps and allowed newer better apps to be developed. And the timing was early enough to keep the non-PC guys from getting sufficient traction, including Apple whose Macs were still way beyond DOS/Windows. However I think Atari could have been big in the consumer space, but maybe they doubled down on it by interpreting "consumer" as "gamer". And since they were a game company at their core, it wasn't unsound to focus on core strengths, especially with Apple committed to bringing Macs to more people and wooing developers.
I used to own one. The problem at the time was that the Atari ST community was already dying off and moving to PC's, so the Falcon wasn't getting the attention needed to bring quality software and upgrades of existing well used software. There were software issues between the ST content and Falcon. Most things felt unfinished and custom, not commercial. There were little to no specific Falcon games. It was also pricy so people felt it was better to use the money to move into PC's rather than risk the Falcon. I sold mine to a local Musician and if he still has it today, he's got a special computer antique on his hands.
Exactly this. After having a tricked out Mega STe I was disappointed with the Falcon. It’s a better proposition these days as decent mods and software exists but the prices are ludicrous. Back then, as you say, there was almost no software and what there was was pretty poor. In many ways it felt like a backwards step to me. Great hardware but nothing contemporary software wise really used it. I sold it for next to nothing after Atari crashed as the future looked bleak for anything new at that point. I still miss the MSTe, I don’t miss the Falcon.
@@iainlaskey7285 Exactly. Looking at the video, they should have released the Falcon in that business casing, having default CD ROM, and separate keyboard, straight off. They could have had extra kits to suit musicians, artists, business. Example an entry level tablet, stylus, and software, for artists. Midi and software for musicians, and for business free professionally made office suite software. Obviously too late now, but bad deployment killed it.
Beautiful machine the Falcon 030. I remember exactly the first articles in 1992. When it was released in 1993 they had already decided to shutdown the ST/TT/Falcon line. Too little, too late and too expensive. They were on the right track in the beginning. There was an 68020 prototype in 1986 which could have been released with the Macintosh II. The Atari TT was planned for 1988 or 1989. Instead of custom graphics they should have made it ISA compatible and deliver it with VGA and Network card in a bigger case. Additionally, software investments were to low. They did the right think to license the fantastic Omikron Basic, they should have licensed NVDI and lots of other tools like Interface RCS and MagiC! They could have licensed NextStep in 1993 and maybe bought Acorn/ARM, using a similar tech-move strategy as Apple. But as Leonard Tramiel explained it was a family business based on Jacks negotiating skills and not intended to lose money on big risks.
Im guessiing it's the 030 because of the 68030 Cpu. That's still a powerful cpu depending on what you want to do. Atari would have done well if they had produced a computer that was designed for game development that focused on sound and video with the ability to manipulate sprites smoothly. An expansion box with the ability to accept rom cartridges would have been a plus. Instead they were more interested in getting high. The company lacked focus, drive and dedication. What a shame.
It definitely was powerful in the late 1980's and more than the Amiga 1200 had used, but versus the brute force available from PC's and mid-range Mac's it wasn't nearly enough. The Mac IIsi mid-range mac was released with a higher clocked 68030 two years earlier in 1990 for example.
I loved that era of computing. A lot of innovation back then. I remember thinking how the Falcon was finally the computer to defeat the Amiga. Thanks for showing it off, gotta get some upgrades for my STe!
The Falcon launch was so strange. They announced 2 models. Of course everyone wanted the second system. 040 processor, detachable keyboard, more expandability. The Falcon stuffed in an ST case felt like a stop gap measure to get the system out at all. Preorders were lower than expected. Then it was delayed. There was this rumor on usenet that they were sitting on a boat waiting to be cleared to be unloaded.
They didn’t that was the TT, which stood for 32 32 the way ST stood for 16 32 based on the 68040 CPU. It was basically just a Mega STE with a 32 bit CPU.
Not to mention production quality control issues they claimed to have had, which is entirely believable though. All of their systems started out stronger but then ended up weakened by the hand of Atari. Like the Jaguar was originally designed to use a 68030 with 4MBof RAM only to be crippled by their decision to cut costs and use a 68000 instead and 2MB.
It was a case of being too late with the Falcon - as by then the PC had caught up and even surpassed the both the Amiga and ST, what with VGA, soundcards, MS-DOS 6.2 being easier to use, analogue joysticks, the impressive games like Monkey Island 2(being able to install them on a hard disk and no disk swapping like on the ST and Amiga), X-Wing, etc. The Falcon was an impressive machine as Atari had made the right decisions on two fronts : going with '030 processor and having the 16 bit DSP soundchip - which gave it a technical advantage over the AGA Amigas. Sadly, Atari wasn't to be not long afterwards. I can kind of see their logic in going with Jaguar, as only a few years afterwards Sony made the Playstation and then we had Microsoft and the Xbox. Things might of been a bit crowed though, you have to remember that Sega stopped making hardware after the Dreamcast.
trust you discharged yourself or had a strap on when touching those board headers. I was a huge atari fantatic back in the early 90s. I think in Europe there was a lot more going on. Started off with an Atari 1040STE, added a Titan Designs Reflex Graphics board to it (not cheap!), external harddrives, then moved to a TT with a Matrox I think graphics card. Spent far too much at the time although the competition then was only an Apple Mac which was way too expensive. Eventually I had to give in to PCs but now I'm a Mac user. I still miss the Atari though, it had a personality and certain charm. I remember the Falcon coming out just as I was leaving the Atari scene behind. It felt like it was just too late to the party, and seemed to fade away as quickly as it arrived. I'm a music focused user so the DSP side of the Falcon seemed attractive, but already PCs were way ahead and more afforable. Lovely though to see this video and find out what the machine offered.
I agree that Atari and Amiga had more going on in Europe than the US. Love hearing about a graphics board on the 1040STe. How did it fit in? Did you have to put it in a desktop case?
@@powerofvintage9442 Titan Designs was a small UK company and clearly aiming at a very niche market. I bought their Reflex 1024 graphics card for the Atari STE. Believe it or not it actually fitted inside the STe case, although you did have to do a bit of modification. I recall it fitted on top of one of the chip sockets and there were a few cables that plugged elsewhere. Don't recall much about it though, except I think it did monochrome only up to 1024 pixels by 1024 pixels (which was pretty impressive at that time). I bought a Eizo Flexiscan paper white 21 inch monitor (weighed a ton) which they also sold to go with it. It was amazing for Logic on the Atari, although it was quite pricey. Some time after the release of the graphics card, I think they also released a Genlock for the Atari. I must have been one of the few customers that ordered it, it definitely felt like a prototype when it arrived and never worked properly. When I got the TT (2nd hand), I picked up the Matrox graphics card at a computer show. Seem to remember that cost something ridiculous like almost £1000, it gave you 256 colours at 1024 x 768 I think. However not many Atari programs supported it, so I found myself having a very selective and niche collection of software. My fave software though on the Atari was probably Calamus, followed by Notator Logic, Script (Signum systems?) wordprocessor, some awesome Font design software from a UK company and Ease/Magic desktop (an alternative to GEM). Wow memories!
I so adore the outer design of the late Atari Computers, starting with the redesigned 8-bit 65/130XE following the ST line up and finally ending with the 030. I wish the ST would have been a more successful machine and they would develop it faster towards a real competitor of the Commodore Amiga. And make a transition to a real competition for the Mac Users at that time. Today I would love someone taking that design language and doing sth similar with it on micro computers like Raspberry Pi and Linux on system Level. It would surely be a success, at least on the retro level
I had a falcon here in the UK on launch. Was in my teens and I had recently got insurance money for a broken arm, exactly what the falcon cost, £1000. I only ever used public domain demo's on it. Sold It after a few years to a musician. I had a STFM and a STE before it
Thanks for sharing! Great to see. Best computer I even bought! At the time I owned it, 386 and 486PC's when the norm and they just couldn't keep up. Sadly, the Pentium range ended all that easily outperfoming it (though clocked at 100MHZ, it kept up well running at only 16mzh for similar games). My only complaint was there was never a "Windows 95" style of operating system developed for it (there are some contenders, but nothing feeling quite as polished and good to use).
I think you have your rose colored glasses on, a 486DX2 already outperformed this machine easily . At best it could keep up with a 386-40 mhz (which is still pretty impressive)
@@Blackadder75 having owned both, your certainly wrong. At the time I couldn't hope to run background MP3 playing before my Pentium 100. I tried using WinAmp on a 486DX 25, it was jerky and frequently the OS itself crashed when running WinAmp. Now, if you had a specialist graphics card or a 3D accellerator card etc. Yes, the Falcon couldn't hold a candle to any of those machines, but as a raw machine with no special stuff. Falcon was WAY better and there's no Rose Tint at all. We had 486 DX 25's in the Computer labs and I I had a Falcon 030, 32mhz in my halls accomodation (I programmed for both and knew assembly language). I looked forward to getting back to use my Falcon. The one part that was initially poor on the Falcon was JPG decoding, then coders properly started using the DSP in software and even that was faster loading. Though, like I say, when the labs upgraded their graphics cards with onboard image processing support, your correct THAT configuration beats a Falcon hands down (e.g. Diamond cards or whatever). So NO I'm not talking with Rose Tinted glasses I'm recalling my experience in the day quite correctly When it comes to running Doom though, it took BadMood nearly 20 years to get goood performance for Doom. So if you use 3D software as the mark, even in software only availaible at the time a NON developer (e.g. someone who doesn't program both machines) might mistake the Atari Falcon as inferior. Also the Falcon is way harder to write good code for because it uses Plainar graphics. That was something I liked about the Lab PC's.
Nice Falcon! I took my 1040STe to college with me, and Wolf had just come out, which a friend had running on his 386. The STe was still more powerful at least in terms of sound capabilities, and multiplayer with games like MidiMaze, etc. My dorm room was filled with guys frequently, where we'd play games like Chaos til the wee hours of the night! Great times!
By the time the 030 came out in 1992, PC clones were taking over and both the Atari and Amiga machines were doomed (pun not intended) once sophisticated sound and graphics cards were developed for those PC clones by third parties. I knew of the 030 because I read all of the Atari magazines, owned a 1040Stf in 1992, but I saw the writing on the wall and knew the non-PC machines were doomed.
I know too little too late (failed gem). It is kind of ironic that in many ways the market has someone moved back to integrated graphics and sound at this point for many users especially on the lower end and with the Mac computers today.
Blimey! I was happily sitting here listening along to you narrate the Falcon's features, rather pleased UA-cam had recommended a new channel to subscribe to, when I nearly spilt my tea as you suddenly pulled out a DFB1. Not even the 1X, but a hobbiest-built original! Many thanks for the kind words & keep going with the videos. :)
Thank you for the comment and for watching, but most of all for all the development awesomeness! Seriously, I'm super grateful for all the folks that do the kind of work you do as passion projects to keep these bits of history running and able to be tinkered with...these are clearly not to make $$'s. I picked up one of DFB1's that Foft (Mark) built and am delighted that I was able to get the FPU running stable at 50mhz (silicon lottery it seems).
I grew up with an Atari ST in the late 80's/early 90's. I loved it and had allot of fun with it. It was particularly strong on strategy games such as Sim City, Populous, Megalomania to name a few. I was aware of the Falcon, but when it was time to upgrade I went for a PC. For me the killer app was actually Microsoft Word and a now affordable Cannon bubble jet printer. I suspect that is a unpopular thing to say as many people don't like Microsoft, but Word was very user friendly with lots True type fonts and a spell checker. It got me through University without spending all of my weekends in the library typing up essays.
I know there is a healthy Atari Computer Emulation Community out there; I am woundering if it is possible to create a modern version of the ST, Omega, etc, OS that runs nativly on modern hardware, and is able to be backwards compatible with these older systems. I'm thinking of similar to how Bootcamp can eun Windows natively on Intel based macs, so as ro not have the overhead and slowdown seen when using parallels. I have also seen a different technique now being explored with classic console games; which is overlaying a higher resolution graphics o wrlay onto the original graphics from rhe classic games. This could leed to a higher resolution version of Dungeon Master and other games, what do you think about this?
I don't think the soundchip was capable of the treble response of the PC though there was definitely some hi hats muted on there. But the thing is getting Doom to run on an AMIGA/ST like computer full stop. It doesn't matter if there was maybe a bit of framerate lag or maybe a bit of high hats not emulated fully over the soundchip.
similar like commodore, they also made shitty products as well and that shitty products dragged the whole company down. the good products usually where priced competitively and their profits where not high enough to pay for the crap developments. the story at commodore was a sad one as well. they always try to branch out with shitty products without any compatibility. like the plus4, c16,c116. instead of developing a new stereo-sid sound chip etc. and going forward while maintaining some sort of compatibility to the c64. atari made the crappy 5400 game console that was not compatible to the 2800. the 7800 was good, but a bit late.
Of course, I still dabble in vintage computers, but some of that is now using emulation, including the C 64 Mini. Nice little system. I should do a video, but there's plenty of those, for now. Great look into a past I almost joined ... :)
I think Atari and Amega/Comodore were their own worst enemies; much the same way Colleco and Sega did the same. With all of the nockoff/pirate game consoles in Brazil, and the knockoffs from China and other places, it's a shame we don't see more inovation.
What killed amiga's, atari's and nearly killed macintoshes: the pc clones. In fact the ibm pc was nearly dead, because clones where cheaper (not better: cheaper). That's the reason for the pc victory, despite it's really ugly industrial conception. Would have been java already here, with software for it, it could have be different
Atari spent too many years making very small incremental advances to their ST line, which came out in 1985. Instead of repackaging the same computer for 5 years, they should have immediately started working on an ST replacement like the falcon. If the falcon or something similar had come out no later than 1988, they would have had a shot of being relevant.
1/ Everything depends on CPU cost. Selling a 68030 computer in these years was not for children target 2/ With a rom based system, multipling TOS version is a headache for developpers who want to address the main part of the market. So games are often build for first mb version and not the last
@@Fred-jh5we true, but that's a big part of the reason the PC's won out in the market. It was a computer for the adults first and then rather than buy a second computer, the children would use the "family" PC to also play games on even if it was inferior to the Amiga's and Atari's. That and it was also more "flexible" due to the expandability. This is how I switched to PC's, my Dad had his high-end IBM PS/2 computer in the house with VGA, hard drive etc. It played Wing Commander, X-Wing, and Ultima VII...so I switched.
One of the many computers with potential, doomed by the PC storm. Isn't funny, considering the PC used to suck compared to all those, and took several years to become a decent competitor... This one especially was doomed to die because admittedly it was too late.
Nah it works mostly and to be 100% fair ALL of these accelerators are really just enthusiasts and hobbyists building them. I'm actually on the waiting list for another. I love supporting people who help the community in this way.
Hey hey! Thanks for your comment. Love your forum and shop (the RAM card is one of yours too). I am an avid customer and forum commenter / reader. Really appreciate you helping keep these computers running!
@@powerofvintage9442 Thanks for your kind words :) oh I did not notice the RAM card sorry, I think you mentioned wiztronics near the beginning, did not notice it was changed later on , D'oh. Thanks for your purchases, indeed every purchase helps fund & motivate future projects and developments :) forgot to say I built my first PC around 1995, mostly second-hand and used parts, primarily just to play doom ;)
What if Motorala could have kept up with Intel. I also think Atari was about at least a year late too late with this computer. And as you say the pc keept getting faster and faster, at the same time.
Thought about it too much in the past. But if Atari made the best E-ST in 1988 with only off the shelf parts, a 020, a generic MCGA / VGA clone, a FIFO based DAC, for a rock-bottom price, just like the ST.. they would have had a fighting chance. They also should have held software developers closer. The TT was a great machine, but the pro market was too small, and they had no pro name. The STe was already too late, and going after Amiga's custom chips was silly. Atari didn't have the engineering power. Tramiel's strength was arranging one time deals. The only safe way to make that work is get everything off the shelf. The ST was off the shelf, the other models had too much custom work.
Blitter chips this is like some ST/AMIGA Hybrid. More an AMIGA with the 030 already in it with the Atari name and design on it. If it had ripoff AGA/VGA on it without the need of an upgrade as well that could have survived the line.
The STE and the Mega ST/STE had blitter chips as well, so it was just in the Falcon to be compatible with existing ST software. The problem for the STE was that all the games were written to be compatible with the older ST/STF/STFM machines, so the blitter (and over STE enhancements) didn't get much support.
Falcon 030 was to late. Also its very close to what the A1200 was going to be, the A1200 was going to come with 030 chip and chunky planner mode but the 60020EC did not support this mode.
The writing was on the wall for both Commodore and Atari long before 1992. I've been digging into Commodore, Atari, and Apple's corporate annual financial reports from 1985-1993 (for an upcoming video). Both Atari and Commodore especially had major issues as companies. In Atari's 1991 annual report they highlight that their products are technologically outdated.
Falcon had too much child issues, was released was a bit too late, unfortunately. Market quickly went quite tough, survivors being basically Pentium PCs, Sony Playstation and Nintendo. In order to succeed, Atari should have brought Falcon earlier, with more solid quality and flush millions of dollars to sell it for price low enough. Even Sony had to struggle for a couple of years. Almost impossible, unfortunately.
Cool. Until this video, the lowest clock speed I saw reproduce 128kbps mp3 files was 30Mhz on an SGI Indigo ELAN workstation. An '030 doing it at 16Mhz is impressive!
Forget playing Doom. I bought my 2 Atari Falcons because you could perform 8 tracks of HDR (Hard Disc Recording). I did home made music CDs with these machines in 1998
Amazing machine - technically it beats my A1200 Amiga, no doubt. But my Amiga had Workbench 3.1, and the Atari had TOS - the Commodore wins hands down on that point, TOS is horrible. In any case, neither machine was long of this world! Great video - nice to see one of these machines in detail.
I love the Falcon and Mint is really quite nice as well as EMUTos. That said, Workbench 3.1+ and other software designed for the later Amiga's really take more advantage of the hardware capability that the Falcon never really got.
Requires an awful lot of money to play a game that runs on pretty much any generic 486 PC. It's a PC game at heart. The high end ST and Amigas can do their own thing very well. I know I'm in the minority here, but I also think Doom is overrated anyway. Gaming entered a very dark period with the rise of Doom. 2d games had been brought to a height with beautiful 256 color hand drawn graphics that compared well with almost any animated media. We moved from that height of beauty and in some cases, cuteness where the art was beautifully rendered into the ugliness and pixelated mess of 3d games. The period of Saturn and PSX well into the new millennium was a long period of ugliness and ugly rendition of the art. The art was simply way out in front of the hardware's capability. It really wasn't until the ps3 and WI when the hardware started catching up with the art again.
I can totally see what you're saying. There is definitely a timelessness with the beautiful 2d games. That said, as a kid I was blown away as much by the newness and especially the ability to blow away my friends in multiplayer.
I always wounder what could have been had Atari, Comodore, and many other companies not gone out of business. Imagine Amega and Atari operating systems if they had continued, and had as much development as windows, likewise on the hardware side. It would be interesting to see modern versions of these OS' runing on modern hardware, be it ARM, Intel, or Apple silicon.
Pimega, Amithlon are both great adaptations for Amiga for Raspberry Pi or PC hardware. Rastari is a bootable Atari package for Hatari (Atari ST emulator) that makes it seem like your Raspberry Pi boots directly as an Atari ST. Hatari is a great emulator for PC, Mac, or Raspberry Pi.
Quand je pense que le miens est en train de pourrir dans le grenier... Tout ça à cause de la foudre qui s'est propagée de la ligne téléphonique, à travers le modem, quelle époque les BBS, si j'avais débranché ce soir là, il serait encore en vie 😭. Enfin il me reste des bons souvenirs de 92-93, comme les copies de mes premiers CDs, j'avais un lecteur de provenance Apple, un graveur, copier des CDs avec un Atari en 1993, ce n'était vraiment pas courant. Je me souviens de mon premier jeu en CD-ROM : "Robinson's Requiem", il y avait des séquences vidéo, pour un Atari ! Seuls les 486 pouvaient faire tourner aussi bien leur version. j'avais l'impression que cette machine deviendrait un Hit, mais trop peu de jeux et de logiciels spécialement créés pour lui ont eu raison de sa courte vie, seuls les musiciens Midi, les amateurs de l'enregistrement en Direct To Disk, ont pu exploiter un bon moment la machine, pour un prix bien inférieur au NeXTstation ou à l'Archimedes d'Acorn. Moi j'avais une version trafiquée, le disque 2.5" IDE de 60Mo avait été remplacé par un 3.5" IDE de 420 ou 540 Mo, le revendeur avait charcuté le blindage interne pour le faire rentrer entre l'alimentation et le floppy... Rien de visible de l'extérieur, mais ça faisait étrange d'avoir une telle puissance dans une machine si proche physiquement de la gamme STf/ST-E, se passer des disquettes pour jouer, enregistrer de la musique en qualité supérieure au CD Audio, c'était une claque pour beaucoup... Après 1 an à attendre des bons jeux, je me suis résigné à jouer à mes anciens jeux ST, surtout ceux en 3d grâce un programme améliorant plus ou moins bien la compatibilité ST , car il n'y avait vraiment très peu de Jeux exclusifs, je me souviens de "MoonSpeeder" un jeu de course style course d'overcrafts utilisant un effet de mode 7 "Super NES". Pour info ta carte mémoire est une version améliorée, non officielle ; le Falcon 030 avait des Rams soudées sur cette carte fille, il n'y a jamais eu de barrettes SIM ou SIP dans un F030. Bon assez de nostalgie, merci pour tous ces souvenirs et bonne continuation. Salutations.
Nostalgia is the main reason why I do this hobby myself. It's what really makes working on these old computers fun along with the tinkering. Also thank you for the information on the RAM boards. Now I know it was an aftermarket upgrade.
I had switched to Commodore by the time the Falcon came out, but had it been released just a few years before, it could have been such a gamechanger for Atari.
Agreed. I don't think either Commodore or Atari realized the pace of advancement they needed in order to stay relevant long-term. No one did really...but at the same time, it's easy to look backwards.
It seems so. I initially thought that HDriver is all that was needed and at boot up it was clear that the CD rom was recognized but couldn't set it up in the desktop. Works great with Extendos.
the main problem was 68000 line motorolla did not compete or improve speeds x86 went from say 16mhz 286 to 133 mhz 486 in same time it took 68000 8mhz to 68030 50 mhz and then it slowed further,if 68k line scaled like intel amd we wouls have had 10000mhz 68060 not 75mhz
shame it didnt happen 68k was so much better.a 68k chip at 7 micron think they were over1000 on even later models,lot of power wasted,if there had been more rivals making 68k it would have happened@@powerofvintage9442
This is one of my top 5 dream computers. I never got to own any of them. As a long time Atari guy (800, 800XL, 520STFM) I saw the Falcon as the perfection of the ST line. It was just always outside affordability for me.
I totally understand!
I picked onw of these up cheap back in the late 90s. I kick myself everyday for selling it to get a stupid Mac.
@@Nibb31 That is the all-to-common story we've all been through in one way or another.
I had bailed on the Atari computers by the time the Falcon 030 came out, but I was always curious about it. Cool computer! I still have have a 1040 STe and a TT030 that I take out of the closet and play with from time to time. The 80s and early 90s were fun years for computers. Great video, thank you!
Thank you for watching!
What a beaut! I had no idea. Owned many Amigas in my day but never was around the Atari crowd. Thanks for the show and tell. Loved seeing the internals.
I owned one briefly in early 1994. There was a dearth of software for it that took advantages of the special hardware and wound up selling it 6 months later to get a 386 PC.
That was a big part of its demise.
Falcon 030 was 4 years too late. Atari's obsession with unix and the transputer doomed the TT. They squandered the Lynx, and then ruined the Jaguar. It's like after the ST, they simply couldn't do anything right. But neither amiga nor atari could stand up to the x86 juggernaut. Motorola simply wasn't able to scale 68k performance the way Intel did with x86.
Agreed. The market was moving so crazy fast back then that if you took a breath, the world would have moved on. Atari (and Amiga) had game changers in the mid-80's. If they had built on that they could have kept that lead. It's kind of amazing that Intel was able to stagnate as much as they did from 2010 to the late 20-teens recently.
The 68060 was mighty fast! Couple that with AAA custom chips and it would have taken a Pentium 100 for Intel to come close.
@@turrican4d599 That might be true, but without software to take advantage of it, it's like the tree that fell in the forest. That in my mind is the saddest part of the story.
@@turrican4d599 the 68060 was released way too late, and it was way too expensive for what it was. motorola had already lost interest in the 68k line and had moved on to powerpc by then. x86 hardware was much cheaper and motorola based systems simply couldn't compete.
Atari and Commodore both got screwed by the so-called experts that unfairly criticized them even though they BOTH were better buys than any Wintel or Apple computer .
Had a pristine, early build low serial number Falcon030, with all original box and accessories. Used the heck out of it for years. Sold it 8 years ago on eBay to a European buyer, and used the proceeds towards a brand new house. Used it every year from 1992-2015 for my whole house Halloween displays for sound effects. I have videos of the Halloween sound effects and startup from my eBay posting.
That's so cool!
This is the best video about the Atari Falcon. In our country it was available for a short time and in small numbers, but the Amiga and Atari community argued for a long time what was better - A1200 or Falcon. I'm not sure if it was today that this dispute was settled. In any case, the Atari Falcon is a great computer and I'm glad you have your own copy.
Thank you very much! I also have an A1200 which I love as well. Both are excellent and both are different. I would say that the A1200 has more software available that takes advantage of its enhancements. Even if the Falcon's video output could be better than the A1200 AGA...if the majority of software didn't use the Falcon video, then it really didn't matter in the end.
I only eva drooled over two computing items. I was younger back then. The Atari Falcon ( i owned an STe) and a 3DO (I owned a VCR and MegaDrive).
Great vid.
GG's.
Thank you!
17:13 a correction - those are not capacitors. Those are varistors and they are supposed to be solder like that , pretty common practice back in the day , and definitively not a bodge.
Not trying to rain on Your parade , but most of the people look back on 80s and early 90s tech and think if there are solder trough components used on it than it is a bodge. It is not. Its just the thing that the process in the industry has yet not matured enough so we could have a whole computer done in wave soldering technique , sure it was more costly at the time (labor intensive) but to have a whole motherboard done in that way for relatively cheap home computer was decades away ( it is still not done even today). It would be nightmare to repair at that time, and something like 90% would be returned for service in 6 months. Remember this was a computer that was built in in to the keyboard - so abuse, bumps and constant movement would do horrific thing to a PC if it was built in to the case like that. Sure there were notebooks back then , but they were delicate beasts still clunky but way out of the reach of 10 year old to play games on it.
Thank you for the correction! I'm definitely looking backwards with a more modern set of "glasses" and would call it a bodge. A better description is a manual known fix.
You do see on the higher volume, later versions of of these 80's computers in particular a lot less of that kind of manual additions.
It's similar in other industries as well. Where on the early production units, you see manual fixes to address design flaws and salvage initial units. My point was that I don't think there was ever enough volume to get the Atari Falcon outside of that phase, and I probably didn't properly verbalize that.
@@powerofvintage9442 I understand it , just wanted mainly to point out that first thing , those varistors are pretty normal thing to do even nowadays , it was always considered cheaper as they were trough-hole components so manual soldering was required even if was added to a separate board - so it cost less not to add some small board just for them - but they were not an afterthought for sure. But anyways , Falcon 030 was one of the home computers i never had the chance of owning , but had a chance in early late 90's to get for almost nothing, and I've missed it. For last decade or more I still feel gutted by that , cause i didn't have the time to go and pick it up. Don't really have time to use all of the things i have , but You know hoarding stuff is fun :P.
The best computer ever made. Fortunately I was still an ST user in the US at the time the Falcon was announced and I ordered mine from a local Atari/musical instrument store. I still remember how excited I was when they called me to let me know I could pick up my new machine! I was very confused and disappointed when I found out the Falcon was discontinued... but I still used mine as my primary computer for many years before getting into Macs and SGIs. Unfortunately I don't own my original Falcon anymore but at one point I realized my horrible mistake in selling it, so I bought another one.
Many of us realize the mistake of selling or throwing out these bits of history too late and end up buying them all over again :)
@@powerofvintage9442 and that is why the prices are so outrageous, because many of you didn't sell their old machine (because nobody wanted it, after all it was a commercial failure) but they ended up in the recycling plant and got trashed. So very few survived
If you we're into music production at the time you knew it existed , it was marketed foremost as a harddisk recorder but by that time the alesis adat allready cornered that market
Well harddisk recording was faster then Alesis Digital Audio Tape (ADAT) Alesis came out later with ADAT HD24 recorder.
@@DieselPLL adat had studiostandard just like akai and better ada convertors than early harddisk recorders plus smpte sync , HD recorders we're actually before adat ( PPG , synclavier ) but didn't catch on
@@cnfuzz I think the biggest issue in 1990 was HD price per Megabyte of storage, I've been playing with AudioTracker for Falcon 030 and ADAT 8ch input~output on Falcon DSP port. (see: Falcon 030 FDI+ Work In Progress), at ATARIAGE Forums.😁
I bought a Falcon 030. At the time I was running my own business (a roller skating rink) with a TT/030 and the 19" Atari Monochrome monitor (Moniterm) running Superbase and Pagestream primarily. I also had a payroll app and some other odds and ends of course, but mainly those two. I wanted the Falcon to be something more portable (I also had a Stacy with a 16mhz upgrade) and at this time I was working with a band, so I was going to use it for recording. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed. It was SO much slower than the TT/030, it wasn't even close really. There was also supposed to be 386 PC card for it, which of course never came out.
Yeah, I saw some "advertisements" for both a 386 and I also think a 486 card in one of my ST Format magazines.
The 68030's and 40's were good chips. I don't have a lot of ST experience, but my college roommate showed me Doom and MP3s running on his Quadra 840... his computer with a 40 MHz 68040 blew the lid off my 486 DX2-66, which couldn't decode MP3s well even with a sound card upgrade.
In the case of the Atari Falcon, the 68030 only does part of the heavy lifting. The DSP (digital signal processor) a Motorola 56001 takes over a large chunk of the workload.
I was fortune enough to have 030 for a few months. It was my dream computer and such an huge upgrade from my 520ST.
The Falcon I used had a 64MB HDD in four partitions, 16MB each.
I remember copy some of my games from floppy to HDD. Games loaded instantly. Sadly I couldn't keep it. It was just for loan.
Nice machine! The Falcon was a sweet little computer.
Thank you! I’m a big fan of your channel!!
Good show for the 68030 running Doom. Nearly same performance as a 486 DX/25. I was using Mac in mid 90's and playing Doom on the folks PowerMac 6100/60.
Liked this review. I was an Atarian up until about 1997, when I went to a Windows PC. I was sort of excited about the Falcon leading up to its release. I was an Atari 8-bitter in the '80s, and got a Mega STe in 1992. Around the time the Falcon came out, I learned about MiNT by Eric Smith, and installed it on my STe. That was an involved process, because I had to compile it from source using GCC. I think that was the only way to get it. I ended up having to set up GCC as a cross-compiler on a Unix account I had through a university, and then compile the MiNT kernel (forget why I did it this way). Afterwards, I could compile future MiNT versions on my Atari. So, I got to experience a lite Unix environment, since I could install a pre-compiled set of GNU tools. I had slow multitasking inside TOSWin, sharing CPU with TOS on a 16 Mhz 68000.
The way MiNT operated on STs was as an adjunct kernel, running alongside TOS. In today's terms, it would be similar to running a VM, running two OSes at once. TOS ran as it always did, as a single-tasking environment. MiNT ran a command-line shell, like Bourne shell, where you could multitask.
It was supposed to be possible to install X/Windows on MiNT, but I never got around to that.
Afterwards, I read about how Eric Smith was hired by Atari to make MiNT the kernel for the Falcon OS, called MultiTOS. They modified VDI and AES to multitask on top of MiNT. Smith said that MiNT originally stood for "MiNT is Not Tos" (recursive acronym, like "GNU"), and said, "Now it stands for 'MiNT is Now Tos'."
I had the chance to try out a Falcon at the same local dealer where I got my STe. It seemed nice. Some of the pictures of its display I saw in Atari magazines, looking like photographs, and stories about it rendering color digital video in real time, were impressive. I read a story of Atari demo'ing the Falcon at a trade show, showing a Tina Turner music video playing on it, streamed off a hard drive, and people lifting a drape that hung over its table, looking for a VCR underneath, and not finding anything. :) So, yes, the DSP was impressive.
The DSP was a selling point with the Falcon at the time, because it was the same co-processor that was used in the NeXTStation. Though, I don't know how many people went for that. I remember seeing a NeXT user spending some time with a Falcon, talking about it with the dealer rep., but ultimately passing on it. I think the main objection he had was there wasn't the software support he wanted. That's what I felt about it, too. I liked its potential, but how much worked with it? I had a little trouble with that with my STe. Some ST games wouldn't work on it. Many games only worked with the 1040STf, which was Atari's most popular model.
As you said, the Atari market was dying out. Atari really limped along after its collapse in 1983. It made a brief splash in '85 with the ST, coming out ahead of the Amiga in sales for a year or two, but it lost ground after that.
I was really struck listening to an interview with Bob Brodie, Atari's user group coordinator. He basically said Atari was asleep at the switch, completely blind to how they were being surpassed by PCs. By the time they realized it in the early '90s, it was too late to catch up. So, Sam Tramiel cancelled future development of the ST line, cancelled production of their existing line in 1993, and focused the company on their video game platforms.
Yes this. Love reading about your experience at the time it launched and what you were thinking.
@@powerofvintage9442- There's some more. :)
David Small of Gadgets by Small was the guest of honor at a FRAUG (Front Range Atari User Group) meeting in Ft. Collins, CO, either in '92 or '93, and he demonstrated the Falcon for us. He showed us the GUI, and some things you could do on the Falcon, but the only thing I vividly remember of that demo was he set it up to play short sound effects when you pressed keys on the keyboard. We got a good laugh out of that, as they were funny sounds.
I remember seeing this sort of thing again when Microsoft came out with Windows CE (you could assign sounds to GUI events; opening the Start menu, opening a window, etc.).
He gave us some inside baseball on what was going on at Atari. He talked a bit about the dev. team that wrote MultiTOS, saying that rather than paying them in cash, Atari paid them in stock. 😱 We all let out a collective groan when we heard that, because we knew that Atari was a penny stock (selling for under $1 a share). So, surely the dev's sold theirs as soon as they could, rather than wait to see what would happen. Not a good sign.
That was the feeling we had about Atari. We loved the computers, but the news we heard about the company didn't feel good. It was usually, "Atari is screwing up again," or in a few cases, "Atari screwed these people over." We kept imagining what their computers would be doing (how successful they would be) if Atari wasn't screwing up, and we kept hoping that somehow they'd get their head on straight, and produce a big hit.
In a way, I think we were pleasantly surprised how long Atari computers stayed on the market, despite the company.
From what I've heard from computer historians recently, the reason Atari computers lasted as long as they did, during the Tramiel years, was primarily because of their success in the UK and Europe, not the U.S., where they were a blip for market share. Atari's management in the UK/Europe seemed to have better ideas about how to market the machines in those markets than the U.S. management did about selling them anywhere. Though, it was the U.S. management that developed the technology that went into the computers.
In terms of a market niche, the ST was very successful among professional musicians, due to its MIDI technology, which was seen as "best of breed." I even hear about musicians today who swear by it.
i have one of these, I should probably get the 16mb (14 useable) upgrade before I can't anymore
They aren't that expensive. Both Exxos and Centuriontech have them in their online stores.
@@powerofvintage9442 and Lotharek (for the Vulture) unless that's part of Exxos, I'm not sure. It feels odd acquiring such an old machine that was nearly barebones during it's entire life. The one I got had no FPU, only 4MB RAM and the original but dead 80MB Connor HDD. (or whatever it was). Now I just need the 14MB upgrade board and the cable to connect it to a 1435 and I'm ready to rock like it's 1995.... (because that's when I learned about their existence in Toad Catalog).
Very similar story to the Amiga 1200 then: too late, too little. In 89/90 these two would have been one last major hit.
I will never forget the day when a very nerdy kid came in to my store where I was selling PCs in 1994-5, took a look at my machines, sniffed like he smelt a fart and demanded: "Does this machine have a SCSI-2 interface?" I began to explain why IDE was more practical in a home PC unless you wanted a RAID array but he cut me off and asked if it had a dedicated DSP and certain other non-standard PC specs and then began launching into his main speech: "Because I know a machine that does. It's the Atari Falcon 030 and it's so much better then any of this" finally I cut him off, explained that I sympathized as an old Amiga guy but that this war was long over. The PC clones won. All the cool hardware in the world dosen't matter if there's no software for it. And your Falcon 030? - I waved to the wall of games and apps - It dosen't run any of that. 'you;re wrong' was all he could come up with as he left. I felt bad for the guy, and 5 years before I was just as big an Amiga elitist, except I didn't go to computer stores to pick nerd fights about it. 😂
Amazing video. Also love the cap 😉
Designed cooling for the turbine hardware in the engine in the early 00's
@@powerofvintage9442 Oh wow! Are you an engineer at Lockheed Martin? Sorry for going of topic. Your videos are great, highly detailed and technical, and I love the Falcon (the one from Atari AND the one from General Dynamics 😉)
@@AtariLegend started my career at Pratt & Whitney (jet engines)
great video ....i really like the falcon..would love to be a lucky proud owner of this great machine•!
Thank you! It is a fun little piece of history...really a footnote and as I like to call it a "failed GEM"
Dude!I love your channel name
Thanks! As I've been collecting and tinkering with old computers, I'm constantly surprise at how capable these machines really were / are. The Commodore 64 with the GEOS desktop is kind of crazy as an example of what could be accomplished with just 64kb of RAM.
I’m still searching for my Falcon (custom paint), still owning my, 130xe, 600, 800, st, mega st, Ste, tt, portfolio, slm605.
Are you looking for a Falcon you sold previously with a custom paint job? That would be awesome to find your original one again! Awesome that you still have all those other Atari's. I've been on the look out for a TT myself!
I was an official Atari developer at the launch of the Falcon at Dusseldorf with Tramiel.
And yes, I customized my Falcon, granite paint, and some color shapes. When I switched to PC, I did lend my Falcon to my musician Brother. And it's gone, and he can't remember where. I'm sad, And now a Falcon is worth the price of your first born.@@powerofvintage9442
I may sell my TT, with its Canon scanner and Atari Laser printer. s
Loved the TT, but it was a pure work machine (PAO); I have a different connection to it, less personal. @powerofvintage9442
@@enitalp shoot an email to the channel email if you decide to sell the TT. Depending on my financial situation at the time, I would definitely be interested!
DIDNT THEY DO A TURBO GFX BOARD FOR THIS ON THE ADAPTOR MB SOCKET AND WAS THE JAGUAR A FOLLOW UP BASED ON THIS SAME BOARD
There is an ability to add a graphics card capability either with a "Super Videl" upgrade or through a PCI bus through a CT60 accelerator card. Some folks have used a Radeon 9200 with their Falcons. In those cases, either the GPU is now external or they've towered the motherboard up.
I was always an Amiga guy back in the day (rather fanatically so, I'm embarrassed to admit now lol), but even then I couldn't avoid acknowledging - if only to myself - that the Ataris just were better designed and built, with their internal power supply and much better build quality. The A500 in particular was horrendous, cheaply built, and creaked all over the place when moved and even when typed on, and also its shielding which was largely held together with el cheapo metal tabs that would fall off if bent back and forth a few times.
The Falcon was a very very impressive piece of kit for the day - compact, sturdy and well made (physically anyway - the fixes seen here on the mainboard aren't that pretty though), with tremendous capabilities for its time. PCs took years and years to reach a similar level of evolution - for quite a while they just brute-forced everything with a tremendously powerful CPU and not much else. So Atari really tossed in just about everything here except the kitchen sink.
Its achilles heel, if you want to call it that, was no fastram I feel, so the CPU would slow down anytime the blitter worked, or when showing high-rez/high color graphics. Also, lack of software support of course, as with all of the more exotic Ataris, like the Lynx and the Jaguar and so on. (Transputer... Hah.) By the time the '90s rolled around, home computers with their custom OSes didn't stand much of a chance anymore as general purpose computers. Their market share was simply too small in comparison versus The Great Wintel Beast. :P
But the Falcon is an amazing machine, for sure. I have a mate who has one of these, he bought it when the computer was brand new. He also has a 520ST or what it was called (the early version without internal floppy drive), a couple 1040STs and an STe as well, and even a Jaguar. Also, two full-size Gauntlet 4-player arcade machines. (!) He likes Atari stuff, did I mention that? lol Meanwhile, my old A500 is in pieces in a box, and I'm looking to get rid of it to someone who might have more use/room for it. I love the nostalgia of those days, but I don't have the patience for ancient computers anymore, sadly... :(
Both the Atari's and Amiga's did pick different elements to keep nice though. The Atari's had the internal PSU, Amiga's had more socketed IC's and better keyboards in general. I think that the Atari's had a more robust case structure....the Amiga's updated their cases. I personally prefer Atari's industrial design...
The Atari company in the Jack Tramiel era had many wasted opportunities and yet made such wonderful home computers. I think that was largely by accident since Jack's main goal was to one-up Gould at Commodore and show him who was the better mid-century businessman.
I wouldn't be surprised if that was a big driver behind Jack at Atari
Damn, was this a trip down memory lane...
Glad I could be of service!
I still have my Atari Falcon
Hehe me 2
Crucial RAM that is PC RAM that won't work on an ST anyway too new. It has to be a stick of RAM from at the time which would have the DDR 1, 2, 3, 4 ect. from the time period of the actual computer doesn't it?
This card was designed for a 68060 in the early 2000’s to use RAM commonly available then. It uses PC100 or PC133.
is it possible to remove the 030 cpu and install a 040 or 060 cpu on the falcon.
No need to remove the 030. You can bypass it by using the upgrade headers on the board. I walk through two of the new production accelerator boards that exist today that I own with upgraded 030's @ 50mhz and 060's. There were some 040 boards and even drop in 386 / 486 boards from back in the 1990's.
The reason it can't use all sixteen MB is that MINT/TOS at the time could only address 16 MB, and remaining 2 MB was Video RAM.
Thank you!
29:53 little "choppy" but I think it is playable.
Agreed. With today's 60 fps minimum playable glasses we all wear, it's sometimes hard to remember what we would say was "playable" back in the 80's and 90's.
@@powerofvintage9442 I remember the 90s, cheering as demos off my PC-Gamer cover discs chugged to life at 4 frames per second on a grossly underpowered PC. It was a different time.
@@NoobixCube Exactly this!
Definitely, it looks good.
Did the Falcon run software from a previous Atari platform?
When released it was somewhat compatible with previous Atari ST/STe software. Compatibility was improved with various tools back then and today there have been a number of folks over time that have tweaked most popular software (and games) to make them compatible. Still not the best experience for the early adopters from what I've read.
@@powerofvintage9442 thanks. Does that mean that the software that a user had didn’t run however the developer could make some small changes and sell an updated copy?
@@michaelclement1337 The might have been possible. I didn't own one back in those days and have only read the experiences others had. (and what was in STFormat from the time)
@@michaelclement1337 Even if the 68030 is very similar with the 68000, there is difference, especially in the exceptions treatment, and it's a headache to make running certains 68000 compiled games on a 68030. You need to patch them or make code reverse engeneering. I've got a TT in the past and the problem was the same
@@Fred-jh5we thanks, I didn’t know about the cpu compatibility issue, must of been the same for the other platforms of the day
Компьютер Мечты.
Where can I get a DFB1 50Mhz card?
Check for the link in the description to the Exxos store!
@@powerofvintage9442 well it’s only 40Mhz. Can these be upgraded?
Then sony bought the rights to atari falcon swapped the cpu for modern risc, added ram, and upgraded gpu
And u got a ps1 and ps2
From a high end pc from 10 years prior
The Falcon had better hardware than the Amiga 1200 but worse operating system than Amiga OS3.x. Also, the Amiga 1200 was slightly easier to upgrade thanks to its trapdoor slot where memory cards and cpu/fpu cards could be inserted.
Imho :)
In Europe Atari and especially the Amiga was quite popular as long as to around 1995-1996 and even later in the semiprofessional video studios. And I think Atari was used in music studios even in late 90's.
The PC had power but really lousy interface - no plug'n'play, MS-Dos or win 3.x or win95 that always crashed.
In addition to the upgrade ability of the 1200, there was also more software developed and available that took full advantage of it’s hardware.
I don't know what you're smoking the Amiga always had better hardware. The Amiga had a blitter in 1985. They had 030 and 040 and 060 and even power pc CPUs available. Its sound chip was light years ahead of Ataris. The graphics were superior too and the operating system was capable of true preemptive multitasking. Oh I'm sorry the Atari had built in midi. Towards the end the Atari did get upgraded hardware but because of the lack of installed base it was never taken advantage of. Look how long it took for the Atari to bet a blitter and it was never really used.
@@stephenkennedy6358 Hey, I'm an Amiga fanboy aswell, but Atari Falcon simply had better hardware than the A1200. 16 bit sound, a DSP, 030 CPU, 16 bit chunky mode.
Atari ST had worse hardware than Amiga.
Your comparing apples to oranges the amiga had an 030 in the amiga 2500 and the 3000 before the falcon ever existed. the dsp while cool was never really used, the Amiga could play mp3's without a dsp. Most of the advancements with the falcon already existed on the Amiga. While not built in there was 16bit sound cards available. The original sound chip on the Atari WAS MORE AT HOME ON A 8BIT COMPUTER. right from the beginning the amiga could display 4096 colors at once. Don't even get me started on the Amiga's ability to use retargetable graphics. When the Falcon was released around the same time the Amiga 4000 was and it had an 040 with the ability to be upgraded to the power pc.Their was reason why Atari wanted the Amiga's chipset.@@d_vibe-swe
@@stephenkennedy6358 The Falcon WAS better on paper as shown by the stock machine being able to run Doom (eventually). Dave Haynie wanted a DSP in the Amiga 3000++ but management chopped it and the AGA chipset and the DSP idea never resurfaced!
You're pulling my leg about realtime mp3 playback on 030. You don't get realtime mp3 playback on a 100mhz 486, and that has ~7x the computational power. There are UA-cam videos testing exactly how much CPU you needed for realtime software mp3 decoding, and the conclusion is that you really need a Pentium for that.
The Falcon has a 56000 DSP on board.
It does have the power to do it, but not just with the 68030 it uses the 56000 DSP to share the workload. Don't take my word for it (random youtube guy) take the word of many random wikipedia folks en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Falcon
@@powerofvintage9442 Ah, right, the DSP. I think Next computers had this same part too. That's pretty cool, actually. I stand corrected. 😉
@@rootbeer666 It's not a bad thing to be skeptical of random youtubers :)
@@powerofvintage9442 That's a solid leg up on the Amiga, I'll take mp3 over tracker music. Though the rest of the chipset in the ST line is 16-bit, so that's a wash...
Back in 92/93 I was a staunch Amiga fan, however when I heard about the Falcon I kind felt like that was what the Amiga 1200 should have been, in terms of spec and capability... The Falcon was and still is a great computer, and yours is a fantastic example, thank you for the video.
Thank you for the kind words!
an amiga 1200 with a dsp and aaa graphics ie i think it was 10 bit planes and 8 meg chip was supposed to be the machine commodore lauched but medi ali wanted the cheaper option think its called hombre ie aaa search your find the upgrade we all could have had.
Linux Slackware came out in 1993. I abandoned my Amiga for what was basically a $700 Unix workstation. Never went back.
Also I'm Amiga fan and its true, Atari Falcom030 was far better than 1200, but its important know the years to understand a few things:
* 1992-> A1200 realeased (Motorola MC68EC020 a 14.32 MHz)
* 1992-> Atari Falcom030 released (Motorola 68030 a 16 MHz + Motorola 56001 a 32 MHz)
* 1993-> Atari Falcom030 stop production
* 1994-> Commodore bankruptcy
* 1994-> The CPU Motorola 68060 was realeased
This CPU can be used in A4000 or an unoffial support in A1200 (thats why you see so many demos with this CPU)
* 1996-> Amiga stop production
* 2002-> The accelerator board CT60/CT63 from Atari was released, with a CPU Motorola 68060 a 100MHz...
But as Amiga fan, I think the best Amigao was A2000, and Atari Falcom030 without any doubt, a really beast.
The 68030 wasn't cheap in 1992, and it wasn't as fast as PCs of same generation. The 68060 was super expensive and not widely available to consumers in the 90s. The 486DX2 wiped the floor with all of them on perf per dollar. The PC was the american muscle car of computers, it was rough and raw but it was cheap. Later they fixed the shortcomings like the OS, chipset, graphics and sound. The Archimedies spawned ARM. Many computer companies died, SGI, ICL, DEC, Sun, Cray, Spectrum, Acron, Commodore, Palm, Atari, too many to list. Others like IBM, Toshiba, HP, live on as shadows of their former glory.
Remember while I was lusting over a Falcon (couldn't afford one being just a teenager then) I ended up getting a 486DX4/100 chip that wasn't officially supported by the 386/486 motherboard I had at the time (it would flash red screen briefly upon bootup then go away) but it worked and that thing was insanely fast! Still, wish I could have had the Falcon during its prime with a ton of software and external CD.
Could Motorola and Atari have improved their lot by licensing cheaper clone chips and clone computers? Or would that have defeated the point of their ethos? 🙂 Unless I am mistaken, it was mostly *not* genuine IBM computers that made PCs widespread and some didn't even have genuine Intel x86 processors but rather AMD or others?
Wish I owned one. I always wanted one. I always hoped they would have updated with the 040 and released the upgrade to the TT.
I know! I got lucky with the one I picked up. Too little too late, but with so much potential. While not perfect, it's pretty amazing what the team was able to pull together with the Falcon that we actually ended up with.
Atari truly did an injustice to the Falcon for pulling support it, not only for the machine but to those who actually purchased one. Most people would cringe at the idea but if they could have adapted a version of AOL, it easily could have made this an entry level internet surfing multi-media machine with just a few more polished software packages all-around and of course, creating one using the Jaguar GPU chipset as an updated model. Having a Jaguar, Lynx II and Falcon030 in the 90s was the dream! (sans the STBook, that I still lust for)...
One of the best Falcon presentation videos (plus upgrades) I've seen so far! 👌
Some of the mods I also have in my Falcon, like the Noctua fan and double-CF card accessable from outside. Interesting to see you got the additional ceramic caps near the audio section and the modified filters (the coils with green and red wires) at the audio connectors. I only saw these on C-Lab Falcons! Would be interesting to see the bottom side of the board, if the Audio mod (line-in and out, removed bass-boost) has been done by the former owner. I did the C-Lab mod on my Falcon last year! Hope you don't mind if I link a video to this (german): ua-cam.com/video/js68Dx4U0hw/v-deo.html 😉
Thank you for sharing your video! I have opened up the bottom when I replaced the "bios" chip and clock battery and there is some work there.
As an Amigian back in the day this machine was like forbidden fruit. I would love to have owned one as I just thought the dark grey finish on em was just so attractive - and when the demos were coming through it was just next level!
I remember the DSP chip being discussed in a German TV program back in the day.
It seemed to be very powerful
I seems to be the source of much of the capability the Falcon had back then!
56K DSP is capable of carrying out 16.5 Million Instructions Per Second (MIPS) for example: Intel i486DX, 8.7 MIPS at 25 MHz -- Intel i486DX 11.1 MIPS at 33 MHz -- Motorola 68030 9 MIPS at 25 MHz
@@DieselPLL It was the same family of DSPs used in Pro Tools TDM cards costing potentially 1000s in early 90s money.
The 56K was the Falcon's Achilles' Heel. It corrupted memory due to a bug in ROM that Atari wouldn't/couldn't fix and which led to the deserved demise of both computer and company. There were no proper development tools or information and no third party support from Germany like there was for the ST/TT so it died on the vine.
The Compaq Deskpro 386 in 1987 essentially sealed the fate of the non-PC ecosystem. It really legitimized the x86 approach and simultaneously preserved a ton of legacy apps and allowed newer better apps to be developed. And the timing was early enough to keep the non-PC guys from getting sufficient traction, including Apple whose Macs were still way beyond DOS/Windows. However I think Atari could have been big in the consumer space, but maybe they doubled down on it by interpreting "consumer" as "gamer". And since they were a game company at their core, it wasn't unsound to focus on core strengths, especially with Apple committed to bringing Macs to more people and wooing developers.
I used to own one. The problem at the time was that the Atari ST community was already dying off and moving to PC's, so the Falcon wasn't getting the attention needed to bring quality software and upgrades of existing well used software. There were software issues between the ST content and Falcon. Most things felt unfinished and custom, not commercial. There were little to no specific Falcon games. It was also pricy so people felt it was better to use the money to move into PC's rather than risk the Falcon. I sold mine to a local Musician and if he still has it today, he's got a special computer antique on his hands.
This is exactly the problem.
I bought mine from a musician! He said he knew what he had but he was ok with letting it go to someone who would preserve it
Exactly this. After having a tricked out Mega STe I was disappointed with the Falcon. It’s a better proposition these days as decent mods and software exists but the prices are ludicrous. Back then, as you say, there was almost no software and what there was was pretty poor. In many ways it felt like a backwards step to me. Great hardware but nothing contemporary software wise really used it. I sold it for next to nothing after Atari crashed as the future looked bleak for anything new at that point. I still miss the MSTe, I don’t miss the Falcon.
@@s3vR3x That's was a nice gesture
@@iainlaskey7285 Exactly. Looking at the video, they should have released the Falcon in that business casing, having default CD ROM, and separate keyboard, straight off. They could have had extra kits to suit musicians, artists, business. Example an entry level tablet, stylus, and software, for artists. Midi and software for musicians, and for business free professionally made office suite software. Obviously too late now, but bad deployment killed it.
Beautiful machine the Falcon 030. I remember exactly the first articles in 1992. When it was released in 1993 they had already decided to shutdown the ST/TT/Falcon line. Too little, too late and too expensive.
They were on the right track in the beginning. There was an 68020 prototype in 1986 which could have been released with the Macintosh II. The Atari TT was planned for 1988 or 1989.
Instead of custom graphics they should have made it ISA compatible and deliver it with VGA and Network card in a bigger case. Additionally, software investments were to low. They did the right think to license the fantastic Omikron Basic, they should have licensed NVDI and lots of other tools like Interface RCS and MagiC! They could have licensed NextStep in 1993 and maybe bought Acorn/ARM, using a similar tech-move strategy as Apple. But as Leonard Tramiel explained it was a family business based on Jacks negotiating skills and not intended to lose money on big risks.
Im guessiing it's the 030 because of the 68030 Cpu. That's still a powerful cpu depending on what you want to do. Atari would have done well if they had produced a computer that was designed for game development that focused on sound and video with the ability to manipulate sprites smoothly. An expansion box with the ability to accept rom cartridges would have been a plus. Instead they were more interested in getting high. The company lacked focus, drive and dedication. What a shame.
It definitely was powerful in the late 1980's and more than the Amiga 1200 had used, but versus the brute force available from PC's and mid-range Mac's it wasn't nearly enough. The Mac IIsi mid-range mac was released with a higher clocked 68030 two years earlier in 1990 for example.
I loved that era of computing. A lot of innovation back then. I remember thinking how the Falcon was finally the computer to defeat the Amiga. Thanks for showing it off, gotta get some upgrades for my STe!
Thanks! I wish I had been aware of this time and hadn't already moved to my Dad's PC.
The Falcon launch was so strange. They announced 2 models. Of course everyone wanted the second system. 040 processor, detachable keyboard, more expandability. The Falcon stuffed in an ST case felt like a stop gap measure to get the system out at all. Preorders were lower than expected. Then it was delayed. There was this rumor on usenet that they were sitting on a boat waiting to be cleared to be unloaded.
They didn’t that was the TT, which stood for 32 32 the way ST stood for 16 32 based on the 68040 CPU. It was basically just a Mega STE with a 32 bit CPU.
Not to mention production quality control issues they claimed to have had, which is entirely believable though. All of their systems started out stronger but then ended up weakened by the hand of Atari. Like the Jaguar was originally designed to use a 68030 with 4MBof RAM only to be crippled by their decision to cut costs and use a 68000 instead and 2MB.
It was a case of being too late with the Falcon - as by then the PC had caught up and even surpassed the both the Amiga and ST, what with VGA, soundcards, MS-DOS 6.2 being easier to use, analogue joysticks, the impressive games like Monkey Island 2(being able to install them on a hard disk and no disk swapping like on the ST and Amiga), X-Wing, etc.
The Falcon was an impressive machine as Atari had made the right decisions on two fronts : going with '030 processor and having the 16 bit DSP soundchip - which gave it a technical advantage over the AGA Amigas.
Sadly, Atari wasn't to be not long afterwards. I can kind of see their logic in going with Jaguar, as only a few years afterwards Sony made the Playstation and then we had Microsoft and the Xbox. Things might of been a bit crowed though, you have to remember that Sega stopped making hardware after the Dreamcast.
trust you discharged yourself or had a strap on when touching those board headers. I was a huge atari fantatic back in the early 90s. I think in Europe there was a lot more going on. Started off with an Atari 1040STE, added a Titan Designs Reflex Graphics board to it (not cheap!), external harddrives, then moved to a TT with a Matrox I think graphics card. Spent far too much at the time although the competition then was only an Apple Mac which was way too expensive. Eventually I had to give in to PCs but now I'm a Mac user. I still miss the Atari though, it had a personality and certain charm. I remember the Falcon coming out just as I was leaving the Atari scene behind. It felt like it was just too late to the party, and seemed to fade away as quickly as it arrived. I'm a music focused user so the DSP side of the Falcon seemed attractive, but already PCs were way ahead and more afforable. Lovely though to see this video and find out what the machine offered.
I agree that Atari and Amiga had more going on in Europe than the US. Love hearing about a graphics board on the 1040STe. How did it fit in? Did you have to put it in a desktop case?
@@powerofvintage9442 Titan Designs was a small UK company and clearly aiming at a very niche market. I bought their Reflex 1024 graphics card for the Atari STE. Believe it or not it actually fitted inside the STe case, although you did have to do a bit of modification. I recall it fitted on top of one of the chip sockets and there were a few cables that plugged elsewhere. Don't recall much about it though, except I think it did monochrome only up to 1024 pixels by 1024 pixels (which was pretty impressive at that time). I bought a Eizo Flexiscan paper white 21 inch monitor (weighed a ton) which they also sold to go with it. It was amazing for Logic on the Atari, although it was quite pricey. Some time after the release of the graphics card, I think they also released a Genlock for the Atari. I must have been one of the few customers that ordered it, it definitely felt like a prototype when it arrived and never worked properly. When I got the TT (2nd hand), I picked up the Matrox graphics card at a computer show. Seem to remember that cost something ridiculous like almost £1000, it gave you 256 colours at 1024 x 768 I think. However not many Atari programs supported it, so I found myself having a very selective and niche collection of software. My fave software though on the Atari was probably Calamus, followed by Notator Logic, Script (Signum systems?) wordprocessor, some awesome Font design software from a UK company and Ease/Magic desktop (an alternative to GEM). Wow memories!
I so adore the outer design of the late Atari Computers, starting with the redesigned 8-bit 65/130XE following the ST line up and finally ending with the 030.
I wish the ST would have been a more successful machine and they would develop it faster towards a real competitor of the Commodore Amiga.
And make a transition to a real competition for the Mac Users at that time.
Today I would love someone taking that design language and doing sth similar with it on micro computers like Raspberry Pi and Linux on system
Level. It would surely be a success, at least on the retro level
I do really like the industrial design of the Atari line, especially the Mega STe and TT
I had a falcon here in the UK on launch. Was in my teens and I had recently got insurance money for a broken arm, exactly what the falcon cost, £1000. I only ever used public domain demo's on it. Sold It after a few years to a musician. I had a STFM and a STE before it
Thanks for sharing! Great to see.
Best computer I even bought! At the time I owned it, 386 and 486PC's when the norm and they just couldn't keep up. Sadly, the Pentium range ended all that easily outperfoming it (though clocked at 100MHZ, it kept up well running at only 16mzh for similar games). My only complaint was there was never a "Windows 95" style of operating system developed for it (there are some contenders, but nothing feeling quite as polished and good to use).
The Jinnee desktop was/is pretty nice. But you're right, it just couldn't keep up without all the hardware and software development over time.
I think you have your rose colored glasses on, a 486DX2 already outperformed this machine easily . At best it could keep up with a 386-40 mhz (which is still pretty impressive)
@@Blackadder75 having owned both, your certainly wrong. At the time I couldn't hope to run background MP3 playing before my Pentium 100. I tried using WinAmp on a 486DX 25, it was jerky and frequently the OS itself crashed when running WinAmp. Now, if you had a specialist graphics card or a 3D accellerator card etc. Yes, the Falcon couldn't hold a candle to any of those machines, but as a raw machine with no special stuff. Falcon was WAY better and there's no Rose Tint at all. We had 486 DX 25's in the Computer labs and I I had a Falcon 030, 32mhz in my halls accomodation (I programmed for both and knew assembly language). I looked forward to getting back to use my Falcon. The one part that was initially poor on the Falcon was JPG decoding, then coders properly started using the DSP in software and even that was faster loading. Though, like I say, when the labs upgraded their graphics cards with onboard image processing support, your correct THAT configuration beats a Falcon hands down (e.g. Diamond cards or whatever).
So NO I'm not talking with Rose Tinted glasses I'm recalling my experience in the day quite correctly
When it comes to running Doom though, it took BadMood nearly 20 years to get goood performance for Doom. So if you use 3D software as the mark, even in software only availaible at the time a NON developer (e.g. someone who doesn't program both machines) might mistake the Atari Falcon as inferior.
Also the Falcon is way harder to write good code for because it uses Plainar graphics. That was something I liked about the Lab PC's.
Nice Falcon! I took my 1040STe to college with me, and Wolf had just come out, which a friend had running on his 386. The STe was still more powerful at least in terms of sound capabilities, and multiplayer with games like MidiMaze, etc. My dorm room was filled with guys frequently, where we'd play games like Chaos til the wee hours of the night! Great times!
Love the memories!
By the time the 030 came out in 1992, PC clones were taking over and both the Atari and Amiga machines were doomed (pun not intended) once sophisticated sound and graphics cards were developed for those PC clones by third parties. I knew of the 030 because I read all of the Atari magazines, owned a 1040Stf in 1992, but I saw the writing on the wall and knew the non-PC machines were doomed.
I know too little too late (failed gem). It is kind of ironic that in many ways the market has someone moved back to integrated graphics and sound at this point for many users especially on the lower end and with the Mac computers today.
I guess the good thing of buying it instead of a PC back in the day, that this machine is now worth a lot more then an old PC
@@FuZZbaLLbee Hah! true, if you'd held on to it long enough and didn't pitch it too soon.
Blimey! I was happily sitting here listening along to you narrate the Falcon's features, rather pleased UA-cam had recommended a new channel to subscribe to, when I nearly spilt my tea as you suddenly pulled out a DFB1. Not even the 1X, but a hobbiest-built original! Many thanks for the kind words & keep going with the videos. :)
Thank you for the comment and for watching, but most of all for all the development awesomeness! Seriously, I'm super grateful for all the folks that do the kind of work you do as passion projects to keep these bits of history running and able to be tinkered with...these are clearly not to make $$'s. I picked up one of DFB1's that Foft (Mark) built and am delighted that I was able to get the FPU running stable at 50mhz (silicon lottery it seems).
Wasn't the FPU half clocked on the original DFB1 though ?
@@exxosuk You're right! For some reason (I'm sure it was my misunderstanding Foft's sale post )
Love these late era micro computers. Would have been so interesting to see what Atari and Amiga could have done if they'd kept going.
I grew up with an Atari ST in the late 80's/early 90's. I loved it and had allot of fun with it. It was particularly strong on strategy games such as Sim City, Populous, Megalomania to name a few. I was aware of the Falcon, but when it was time to upgrade I went for a PC. For me the killer app was actually Microsoft Word and a now affordable Cannon bubble jet printer. I suspect that is a unpopular thing to say as many people don't like Microsoft, but Word was very user friendly with lots True type fonts and a spell checker. It got me through University without spending all of my weekends in the library typing up essays.
I know there is a healthy Atari Computer Emulation Community out there; I am woundering if it is possible to create a modern version of the ST, Omega, etc, OS that runs nativly on modern hardware, and is able to be backwards compatible with these older systems. I'm thinking of similar to how Bootcamp can eun Windows natively on Intel based macs, so as ro not have the overhead and slowdown seen when using parallels. I have also seen a different technique now being explored with classic console games; which is overlaying a higher resolution graphics o wrlay onto the original graphics from rhe classic games. This could leed to a higher resolution version of Dungeon Master and other games, what do you think about this?
I don't think the soundchip was capable of the treble response of the PC though there was definitely some hi hats muted on there. But the thing is getting Doom to run on an AMIGA/ST like computer full stop. It doesn't matter if there was maybe a bit of framerate lag or maybe a bit of high hats not emulated fully over the soundchip.
Auto Focus is not your friend, please turn it off.
Thanks for the feedback!
No, you can't play doom - it's slide show
To each his own, I guess we have different definitions of a slide show.
similar like commodore, they also made shitty products as well and that shitty products dragged the whole company down. the good products usually where priced competitively and their profits where not high enough to pay for the crap developments.
the story at commodore was a sad one as well. they always try to branch out with shitty products without any compatibility. like the plus4, c16,c116. instead of developing a new stereo-sid sound chip etc. and going forward while maintaining some sort of compatibility to the c64.
atari made the crappy 5400 game console that was not compatible to the 2800.
the 7800 was good, but a bit late.
Of course, I still dabble in vintage computers, but some of that is now using emulation, including
the C 64 Mini. Nice little system. I should do a video, but there's plenty of those, for now.
Great look into a past I almost joined ... :)
I think Atari and Amega/Comodore were their own worst enemies; much the same way Colleco and Sega did the same. With all of the nockoff/pirate game consoles in Brazil, and the knockoffs from China and other places, it's a shame we don't see more inovation.
What killed amiga's, atari's and nearly killed macintoshes: the pc clones. In fact the ibm pc was nearly dead, because clones where cheaper (not better: cheaper). That's the reason for the pc victory, despite it's really ugly industrial conception. Would have been java already here, with software for it, it could have be different
Atari spent too many years making very small incremental advances to their ST line, which came out in 1985. Instead of repackaging the same computer for 5 years, they should have immediately started working on an ST replacement like the falcon. If the falcon or something similar had come out no later than 1988, they would have had a shot of being relevant.
Agreed.
1/ Everything depends on CPU cost. Selling a 68030 computer in these years was not for children target
2/ With a rom based system, multipling TOS version is a headache for developpers who want to address the main part of the market. So games are often build for first mb version and not the last
@@Fred-jh5we true, but that's a big part of the reason the PC's won out in the market. It was a computer for the adults first and then rather than buy a second computer, the children would use the "family" PC to also play games on even if it was inferior to the Amiga's and Atari's. That and it was also more "flexible" due to the expandability.
This is how I switched to PC's, my Dad had his high-end IBM PS/2 computer in the house with VGA, hard drive etc. It played Wing Commander, X-Wing, and Ultima VII...so I switched.
Yo That Doom Port is Wikid!
One of the many computers with potential, doomed by the PC storm. Isn't funny, considering the PC used to suck compared to all those, and took several years to become a decent competitor...
This one especially was doomed to die because admittedly it was too late.
I never had Atari but appreciate its aesthetic especially angled function keys
Agreed, I do like the look of the computer.
Always admired the graphical output of this thing for games... I was an Amiga kid though. Cheers.
Man... guy sold you that expansion board and it didn't work? Couldn't have been cheap... did he let you swap it out and try a different one?
Nah it works mostly and to be 100% fair ALL of these accelerators are really just enthusiasts and hobbyists building them. I'm actually on the waiting list for another. I love supporting people who help the community in this way.
@@powerofvintage9442 Buying a second one when the first one "mostly works"... hey, it's your cash, friend.
Good to see another Atari channel :) I purchase my falcon new back around in the 90s, still have it even today :) I also recognise the RTC ;)
Hey hey! Thanks for your comment. Love your forum and shop (the RAM card is one of yours too). I am an avid customer and forum commenter / reader. Really appreciate you helping keep these computers running!
@@powerofvintage9442 Thanks for your kind words :) oh I did not notice the RAM card sorry, I think you mentioned wiztronics near the beginning, did not notice it was changed later on , D'oh. Thanks for your purchases, indeed every purchase helps fund & motivate future projects and developments :) forgot to say I built my first PC around 1995, mostly second-hand and used parts, primarily just to play doom ;)
What if Motorala could have kept up with Intel.
I also think Atari was about at least a year late too late with this computer.
And as you say the pc keept getting faster and faster, at the same time.
Thought about it too much in the past. But if Atari made the best E-ST in 1988 with only off the shelf parts, a 020, a generic MCGA / VGA clone, a FIFO based DAC, for a rock-bottom price, just like the ST.. they would have had a fighting chance. They also should have held software developers closer. The TT was a great machine, but the pro market was too small, and they had no pro name. The STe was already too late, and going after Amiga's custom chips was silly. Atari didn't have the engineering power. Tramiel's strength was arranging one time deals. The only safe way to make that work is get everything off the shelf. The ST was off the shelf, the other models had too much custom work.
I know what you mean. A lot of “what if’s”
"one more screw." There is *always* one more screw.
I know! Don't tell anyone, but I have unfortunately broken a few things in the past (I'm much better now) due to that "last screw" I forgot to remove.
Blitter chips this is like some ST/AMIGA Hybrid. More an AMIGA with the 030 already in it with the Atari name and design on it. If it had ripoff AGA/VGA on it without the need of an upgrade as well that could have survived the line.
The STE and the Mega ST/STE had blitter chips as well, so it was just in the Falcon to be compatible with existing ST software. The problem for the STE was that all the games were written to be compatible with the older ST/STF/STFM machines, so the blitter (and over STE enhancements) didn't get much support.
Falcon 030 was to late. Also its very close to what the A1200 was going to be, the A1200 was going to come with 030 chip and chunky planner mode but the 60020EC did not support this mode.
The writing was on the wall for both Commodore and Atari long before 1992. I've been digging into Commodore, Atari, and Apple's corporate annual financial reports from 1985-1993 (for an upcoming video). Both Atari and Commodore especially had major issues as companies.
In Atari's 1991 annual report they highlight that their products are technologically outdated.
Falcon had too much child issues, was released was a bit too late, unfortunately. Market quickly went quite tough, survivors being basically Pentium PCs, Sony Playstation and Nintendo. In order to succeed, Atari should have brought Falcon earlier, with more solid quality and flush millions of dollars to sell it for price low enough. Even Sony had to struggle for a couple of years. Almost impossible, unfortunately.
Agreed
Cool. Until this video, the lowest clock speed I saw reproduce 128kbps mp3 files was 30Mhz on an SGI Indigo ELAN workstation. An '030 doing it at 16Mhz is impressive!
Yeah I was surprised myself originally as well.
Forget playing Doom. I bought my 2 Atari Falcons because you could perform 8 tracks of HDR (Hard Disc Recording). I did home made music CDs with these machines in 1998
That's a real working Falcon!
Amazing machine - technically it beats my A1200 Amiga, no doubt. But my Amiga had Workbench 3.1, and the Atari had TOS - the Commodore wins hands down on that point, TOS is horrible. In any case, neither machine was long of this world! Great video - nice to see one of these machines in detail.
I love the Falcon and Mint is really quite nice as well as EMUTos. That said, Workbench 3.1+ and other software designed for the later Amiga's really take more advantage of the hardware capability that the Falcon never really got.
Requires an awful lot of money to play a game that runs on pretty much any generic 486 PC.
It's a PC game at heart. The high end ST and Amigas can do their own thing very well.
I know I'm in the minority here, but I also think Doom is overrated anyway. Gaming entered a very dark period with the rise of Doom. 2d games had been brought to a height with beautiful 256 color hand drawn graphics that compared well with almost any animated media.
We moved from that height of beauty and in some cases, cuteness where the art was beautifully rendered into the ugliness and pixelated mess of 3d games. The period of Saturn and PSX well into the new millennium was a long period of ugliness and ugly rendition of the art. The art was simply way out in front of the hardware's capability. It really wasn't until the ps3 and WI when the hardware started catching up with the art again.
I can totally see what you're saying. There is definitely a timelessness with the beautiful 2d games. That said, as a kid I was blown away as much by the newness and especially the ability to blow away my friends in multiplayer.
I always wounder what could have been had Atari, Comodore, and many other companies not gone out of business. Imagine Amega and Atari operating systems if they had continued, and had as much development as windows, likewise on the hardware side. It would be interesting to see modern versions of these OS' runing on modern hardware, be it ARM, Intel, or Apple silicon.
Pimega, Amithlon are both great adaptations for Amiga for Raspberry Pi or PC hardware. Rastari is a bootable Atari package for Hatari (Atari ST emulator) that makes it seem like your Raspberry Pi boots directly as an Atari ST. Hatari is a great emulator for PC, Mac, or Raspberry Pi.
Quand je pense que le miens est en train de pourrir dans le grenier...
Tout ça à cause de la foudre qui s'est propagée de la ligne téléphonique, à travers le modem, quelle époque les BBS, si j'avais débranché ce soir là, il serait encore en vie 😭. Enfin il me reste des bons souvenirs de 92-93, comme les copies de mes premiers CDs, j'avais un lecteur de provenance Apple, un graveur, copier des CDs avec un Atari en 1993, ce n'était vraiment pas courant. Je me souviens de mon premier jeu en CD-ROM : "Robinson's Requiem", il y avait des séquences vidéo, pour un Atari !
Seuls les 486 pouvaient faire tourner aussi bien leur version. j'avais l'impression que cette machine deviendrait un Hit, mais trop peu de jeux et de logiciels spécialement créés pour lui ont eu raison de sa courte vie, seuls les musiciens Midi, les amateurs de l'enregistrement en Direct To Disk, ont pu exploiter un bon moment la machine, pour un prix bien inférieur au NeXTstation ou à l'Archimedes d'Acorn.
Moi j'avais une version trafiquée, le disque 2.5" IDE de 60Mo avait été remplacé par un 3.5" IDE de 420 ou 540 Mo, le revendeur avait charcuté le blindage interne pour le faire rentrer entre l'alimentation et le floppy... Rien de visible de l'extérieur, mais ça faisait étrange d'avoir une telle puissance dans une machine si proche physiquement de la gamme STf/ST-E, se passer des disquettes pour jouer, enregistrer de la musique en qualité supérieure au CD Audio, c'était une claque pour beaucoup...
Après 1 an à attendre des bons jeux, je me suis résigné à jouer à mes anciens jeux ST, surtout ceux en 3d grâce un programme améliorant plus ou moins bien la compatibilité ST , car il n'y avait vraiment très peu de Jeux exclusifs, je me souviens de "MoonSpeeder" un jeu de course style course d'overcrafts utilisant un effet de mode 7 "Super NES".
Pour info ta carte mémoire est une version améliorée, non officielle ; le Falcon 030 avait des Rams soudées sur cette carte fille, il n'y a jamais eu de barrettes SIM ou SIP dans un F030.
Bon assez de nostalgie, merci pour tous ces souvenirs et bonne continuation.
Salutations.
Nostalgia is the main reason why I do this hobby myself. It's what really makes working on these old computers fun along with the tinkering. Also thank you for the information on the RAM boards. Now I know it was an aftermarket upgrade.
the cpu was in fact 32 mhz. so it could run faster if you just change the quarz
That overclocks the entire board too, correct? I'm aware of some board-wide mods that exist. Have you done that mod yourself before?
...and the intro music by Coma-Media got muted, probably due to copyright reasons :(
Working on that part.
Loving thst Doom has Turrican music 😂😂
I had switched to Commodore by the time the Falcon came out, but had it been released just a few years before, it could have been such a gamechanger for Atari.
Agreed. I don't think either Commodore or Atari realized the pace of advancement they needed in order to stay relevant long-term. No one did really...but at the same time, it's easy to look backwards.
This should have been the diy professional home music recording studio system . It should have been selling like hotcakes .
As it was, it was used in the pro environment. My guess is that the home recording studio environment was still not fully digital for most folks.
Do you still need Extendos with HDDRIVER 11 to use a CD-ROM?
It seems so. I initially thought that HDriver is all that was needed and at boot up it was clear that the CD rom was recognized but couldn't set it up in the desktop. Works great with Extendos.
Lots of musicians used this machine.
That was definitely Atari's market niche.
I understand the Raspberry Pi is the most popular computer since the Commodore 64?
That sounds right. This Atari Falcon was probably much more on the less popular side
Atari finally gave up on those strange DIN connectors.
The were definitely strange by the 90's, but in the early - mid 80's they were less strange.
Yeah great video dude.. awesome insight into machine and your upgrades :)
LInk to those modern boards??
DFB1 by Exxos and Badwolf: www.exxosforum.co.uk/atari/store2/
CT63 by Centuriontech: centuriontech.eu/product/ct63-rev-2022/
Still use Winamp 2.78 :)
the main problem was 68000 line motorolla did not compete or improve speeds x86 went from say 16mhz 286 to 133 mhz 486 in same time it took 68000 8mhz to 68030 50 mhz and then it slowed further,if 68k line scaled like intel amd we wouls have had 10000mhz 68060 not 75mhz
Agreed and then Amiga and Atari (and perhaps Apple if they hadn't gone PowerPC) would have needed to incorporate those improved chips.
shame it didnt happen 68k was so much better.a 68k chip at 7 micron think they were over1000 on even later models,lot of power wasted,if there had been more rivals making 68k it would have happened@@powerofvintage9442