🎵 Only Atari ST makes it possible 🎵 This was great fun to explore and I'm looking forward to your suggestions on what upgrades to install. What should I order and where do you recommend I get the parts from? Thank you to ua-cam.com/users/markfixesstuff for joining us on this episode, he's always a huge help, and why not consider giving his channel a sub for more repair vids Neil - RMC
I would like you to try the floppy Emulators. I see some online but don't know Whitch to buy or if it matters at all. Is one better then the other or does only one type work.
@@TBL_stevennelson Yes, and they work with all Ataris. But for more serious tinkering I recommend everything he already said. RAM Upgrade t0 4MB is still interesting but 1MB is a must for this machine. With this should go a TOS upgrade you can buy. For convenience, a HD Floppy kit or an UltraSatan would make it fun too.
Long time ST veteran here : i would advise a Gotek (to replace the floppy disk), RAM upgrade to at least 1Mb up to 4mb . For HDD you can try to get a ultrasatan (sd card reader as HDD partitions), Also nice is the ROM replacement from TOS 1.x to the (eprom to burn an improved version found here emutos.sourceforge.io ) .
I remember owning an Atari ST 520 STFM as a kid and wanted to upgrade the internal single sided disk drive. The new drive arrived but was disappointed to find that the drive bay slot on the Atari case would need modification to allow disk insertion into the new drive. My father, hacksaw in hand and a glint in his eye, said 'Don't worry son, I will resolve this for you, do not fear'! Before I could protest my Atari was whisked away to his shed and after much banging and crashing and horrific zip, zip, zip sounds my father returned proudly holding a case that looked as though it had been inserted into an industrial threshing machine. The drive worked just fine but you could have driven a bus into that insertion slot. Bless you dad, love you loads! 😘
I just donated a 520ST to Adrian from Adrian's Digital Basement because it was something I can't get running again as I don't have the equipment, and it was completely borked. He fixed it! Maybe one day I can take a trip to the cave and finally play one.
@@JohnTannerinDerbyshire same here, STs were the more popular of the two, which led to a great playground swapping culture :) which led to enjoying the cracktros more than the sames which led to the demoscene :)
The YM2149 was used because it had additional IO Ports. The parallel (printer) port is driven over these IOs. The ST was cheap because of its reduced chip count. It was not only the MIDI-ports but also the ability to "shut down" nearly all hardware to create an real-time environment that made the ST the MIDI-machine we know. The MegaST1 was the first ST with a Blitter chip. They omitted the Blitter because of supply problems. Early versions of the Blitter weren't stable and had a lot of dead chips in production. The first Blitter you could buy where the version 5 or 6. (You could buy the Bitter as an "upgrade" for the ST together with TOS 1.04 directly from Atari at some point) You can add 512k on the second bank. On some models the needed additional resitors are already installed, not on others. If some Resistors between the MCU and RAM are missing add some with 47-Ohm. The MCU is overloaded when the RAM is selected if the resitors are missing (bridged). To expand the RAM to 4Mb (max possible) needs some additional Resistors and RAM-select Line from the MCU. 520 ST you have is a very late model. The Custom ICs aren't socked as in early revisions of the board. The floppy is also the later model with the small eject button. The early floppies are less reliable, create the "known" noisy floppy sound and are receptive to the "headcrash visus" ( A boot sector virus that would drive the floppy head so far back that i got stuck and possibly disalign the floppy ) The SM124 Monitor is a must to use. With 72Hz it was a joy to work with. You can run onto problems with the ACSI port. It uses internal "inverter delay timer" to create the communication timings with the hardware. Because of the age the timings can get somewhat distorted (shortened) As a result some hardware didn't work. Lowering the voltage of the IC with a diode can help.
Also, the ST used more off the shelf parts than the Amiga which used custom ICs for everything (it did Commodore that they had their own chip fab in MOS/CSG) The ST was a quickly made up machine invented specifically to compete with the Amiga after Amiga decided to drop the deal with Atari and went to Commodore. They did make a good machine and I see this as an Amiga man... wasn't as good as the Amiga (though to be honest, the Archimedes beat them both)
@@GeoNeilUK I like the ST because it's so easy to hack. The off the shelf ICs have good documentation, the Layout of the system is simple. The board is robust and can handle additions. The OS is minimalistic and don't restrict the hardware access. You can easily add chips to the bus (especially in the last 1MB of address space) Especially the Mega ST is a really nice board+case to do mods because of the space. I build a measuring station with a friend out of an Mega ST 25 years ago. (He was working in an university. A lot of measurements over al long time with special analog equipment)
@@GeoNeilUK both theories (the ST built from off shelf parts and made quickly to compete with Amiga) are just an urban legend. Both computers have custom chips (Atari: Shifter, MMU, Glue, DMA, BLiTTER; Amiga: Gary, Denise, Agnus, Paula) and both have off shelf parts (Atari: ACIAs, MFP, YM, WD1772, 68000, ROM, RAM, TTLs; Amiga: CIAs, 68000, ROM, RAM, TTLs). The Atari ST was born as RBP (rock bottom price) before Tramiel and Shivji left the Commodore. It was based on the Commodore 900 (Shivji was working on it since 1983). According to Minter, Lorraine (Amiga) was born as a gaming console. Tramiel and Shivji well knew how to build a great game console (C64) but they decided that the Atari ST will be a real computer for productive tasks. As you see - different concept, different target group.
@@blast4722 The Amiga was never intended to be a console by its creators, although they allowed their initial financiers to believe that because that's what the financiers thought would sell well. And as Neil says, the C64 was a computer too (the keyboard should have given that away...).
I started with an Atari 800 and then went to the 520ST. Atari was a foundational part of my childhood. It is where I learned to program and set me fourth on my lifelong career. The ST was an absolute amazing computer.
Thanks for taking the ST on it own merits. It's not An Amiga, it's an ST. It was a low cost, general purpose computer that many of us used as a games machine (well a few of us here in the USA, but many more in the UK, etc) right as the 8bits were getting long in the tooth. It provided a bridge between the 8bit gaming systems and the 1991-1994 Amiga years, but hardly ever gets the recognition it deserves. The winners write the history books, but for some reason the ST years are never talked about...except on podcasts and channels like ours (and now yours of course). Upgrades: You can add the Blitter, and the Ultra Satan hard drive as well as a VGA out. You can replace the floppy with a USB one also. The Blitter will allow you to have better scrolling / animation in a number of games that are specifically Blitter enhanced.
Read "Faster Than Light: The Atari ST and the 16-Bit Revolution" by Jamie Lendino. People knock the Atari...but you can still buy a new Atari today...I don't know of any console from 70s and 80s that are still around.
Does anything *besides* TOS use the MegaST blitter? As I understand it, it's not 1:1 compatible with the STe blitter and almost nothing uses it. (Hell, barely anything uses the STe blitter -- I think more stuff made modern day by enthusiasts uses it than commercial stuff back in the day) From what I know, you can only add the MegaST blitter to the 520/1040 boards that have a spot for it. You can't add the STe blitter. (Though even if you could you would still be missing the other STe features, notably the sound, scrolling, and wider palette)
@@godslayer1415 Maybe in the US, but in Europe first series of Mega ST1 came without the Blitter chip, and actually they are not that uncommon here. Mega ST2 and Mega ST4 had Blitter, but there are reports of Mega ST4s without the Blitter.
I miss my Atari 520ST. I had one kick ass system back in 1987, with both the RGB and Monochrome monitors with a switcher to allow me to boot either depending on which one I wanted. I had 2 Hard Drives mounted in an XT case, LOADS of software, peripherals, an Epson 24 pin printer, and so on. In 1990 I sold all of that to get a.....well, 286 PC clone that I built. I went on to become a huge PC enthusiast, but I still would absolutely LOVE to have my old ST system back today, sitting along side my PC. (sigh)......oh the good ole days! The late 80's and early 90's were a lot of fun! I grew up with computers through the late 70's, and had a computer of some kind since 1982. But the ST is still my most beloved and missed computer of all-time!
My first 16 bit computer was the same Atari STFM purchased in 1988 here in Canada, after migrating from the 8 bit Atari computers. Obliterator was one of the first games purchased for this machine. Obliterator lagged so much and was so hard to control, but it was the best thing since sliced bread at the time. Zenon 1 though, was simply jaw dropping regarding soundtrack and how amazingly smooth it played...super sweet memories!
My first PC in December (Christmas) 1985 was an Atari 130XE. But I never had a floppy disk, I had a tape deck that went with it. The ST was the stuff of dreams! I was 13 years old! I have been gaming on PC ever since. I still hark after coding in basic, loading up on tapes. Twas an excellent machine, much better than the C64, Spectrum ZX. I had the upgrades over time as well. I used this well into the mid 1990s. It's possible that it's still in my mother's loft somewhere!
This was my second computer as a kid, after the Spectrum +2B and before the Amiga 1200. All of them were second hand and I was always about 4 or 5 years behind everyone else as a kid, computer-wise (the benefit being cheap games at car boot sales!) I saved up pocket money for months to buy a 1meg upgrade for my Atari STFM. Unfortunately my motherboard revision required patch cables and soldering when the upgrade arrived. I was just a kid and didn't really know what I was doing, but my youthful hubris led to me pushing ahead anyway. Sadly, that was the death of my machine! I'm sure you'll be much more successful! Soon after I got my A1200, and left upgrading until I was a teen, adding a CD drive, which blew my mind - going from disks to CDs was amazing, and this was when Amiga Format was still around and doing cover CDs - heaven :)
I owned one of these back in the day. i had it for about a year until my cousin brought his computer over to my house, and the games looked and sounded so much better on his machine. I then realised I had bought the wrong computer, so I sold it at a ridiculously low price and bought one of those instead (and never looked back). The computer my cousin had...yes it was an Amiga.
I had an Amiga, when I was shown the Atari I was surprised at the standard of productivity programs. It had Mac like productivity with standard ports on it (except for video). The two monitors bit , I never really understood.The Amiga was lumbered with "isn't it a games machine?" and it was never taken seriously. The Ham video and flicker in the Amiga was another quirk. The Amiga had 'Ports of Call' my first game, never seen it - if it were ever made to ST.
As someone who had an Amiga & only knew people with Amiga's I didn't have any access to the ST, I have to admit that all these years later I really like the aesthetics of the ST.
I always preferred the look of the ST (main unit) over the A500 and the STFM having the integrated PSU, modulator and FDD (I'll ignore that the 1st ST had an external single sided drive and thus incompatible with later software) was such a neat package. But the keyboard was spongy ugh!. It wasn't until the A1200 that I preferred an Amiga look.
I have commented many times about my fandom for the Amiga. But I have a soft spot for the ST, as before I ever owned my first A500 my first sight of 16-bit gaming was on a friend's STFM... and it blew my 8-bit world away! A lot of folk fondly remember the Amiga these days, but we should remember how accessible the ST was in the late 80s. Not least it was considerably easier to afford and in 1987/88 it generally got more games than the A1000 or 500. Early on it was a no-brainer which to pick...
Good to see you covering what I grew up with. I’ve till for a Mega STE and a Falcon. Wrote programs and gamed on the ST, and it’s responsible for my career in IT.
I'm a mature adult these days and can appreciate this look back at what was a decent comput... NO KILL IT WITH FIRE! AMIGA FOREVER!!!!!1 (he says writing this on custom built pc)
I love the Atari ST family of computers! My brother used to have a 1040 STE back in the day that he sold a few years later. I bought another one again in 2009 or 2010 off of Ebay and upgraded the RAM to 4MB (no soldering, just a nice slot). I have so many memories with this machine; desktop publishing, drawing, music composition, and of course, games and "the demo scene". I cannot count the hours of enjoyment I got out of it, it's now back home in a closet and I haven't seen it since 2011. This video made me miss it so much. I also own an Amiga 500 Plus so I had the joy of having two of the most iconic gaming PCs of the late 80's and early 90's. What a great time it was!
My first job after school was repairing computers and printers for a retailer. We handled both the Atari ST range and the Amiga Range, and it was interesting comparing their construction. As I remember it the Amiga was built following all the design rules of the time. A lot of circuits was socketed and they used pull down resistor nets like it was a religion. Capacitators were used everywhere you were told they should be, every port had buffer chips to preserve signal integrity and so on. The Atari on the other hand was obviously built to a price point. Pulldown resistor nets were used if they were necessary, capacitors were sparingly used, the ports were directly wired to the logic chips without any buffers and there were very few socketed chips. Given the differences you would have thought that the Amiga would be the more robust design, but our experience was that it was the other way around. Now a lot of that had to do with the large socketed chips that tended to creep as the computer chassis flexed when it was moved. But we also had some problems with ports that got burned out even though on paper they should be way more resilient than those on the Atari ST machines. OK, so I've done my part and gotten that old story typed out. It's been a long time since I opened one of those machines. The fun thing was that back then there were no problem to get the circuit diagrams for machines like this. Today I don't think it would be as easy...
Started off with a 2nd-hand 520STM & external drive bought from One Step Beyond in Norwich when I first started college there. Problem with that machine was that I had to load TOS from disk up front, which left bugger all ram to do anything. And PSU's everywhere as the STM & drive had external PSUs. So, after working the summer I got a Philips 14" colour TV, an Atari SM124 mono monitor and... a 520STE :) Four months later, a Third Coast Technology 20mb (yes meg) Hard Disk - for £600!!! - and an NEC P2200 24 pin printer. And Calligrapher word processor on cartridge. Designed a 200 page software manual on that, and printed it on the NEC! Neighbours weren't happy with the noise! I did pass the course :)
I had an STFM back in the day and loved it. Yes whilst not technically has good as the Amiga it did have some great games for it some of which were exclusive to the format. Great to see one finally enter the cave.
I have that Halifax money box too, although I painted over it with Humbrol Airfix paint when I got bored one day, so now it has a silver roof, matte black walls and an olive drab foundation.
I still got mine it's not been used for 20yrs but its still tidy never got the 1040 upgrade as never could afford it back in the day. Would donate to the cave as long as its not stored in the special space for STs. Still have so many games to. Ah nostalgia.
Looking forward to part 2. As a former Amiga 500 owner, I've always been curious about the Atari ST line of computers to see how the competition did things.
Yes, the Atari ST. I love the ST (yes and the Amiga) For me ST was my music system and the Amiga my game system. I had a Apple Macintosh hardware emulator in it, and later a 8080 TX hardware emulator build in my Atari ST. And I made a cap’s-lock LED in the ST.
The Atari ST and the Amiga were the stuff of legends for me as a mere C64 owner. I had very little money at my disposal for entertaining my computerneeds back in the day. I was faced with buying a 1541 diskdrive for my C64 and being able to afford blank disks or buying an Amiga 500 or Atari ST with me being only able to afford blank disks very sparingly. 3.5" floppies - ones that worked in the ST or the Amiga were very expensive. The MSX 3.5" worked well with the much cheaper 720Kb SD disks. I ended up playing the ST and the Amiga over at friend's places and stuck with the C64 well into university (early 90s), then I got my paws on a MSX2 machine and was emulating that on my Philips PC XT NMS9100. Then the 486SX-25 for my thesis; upgrading that - the onset of UAE, Fellow - and finally buying an Amiga 500 and later a 1200 as an early retrogamer starting to collect systems very early on.
Amiga 500 kicks this puppy to the curb when it comes to sound and graphics! It kicked every computer of the day to the curb as well. Including the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh.
One of my favourites. A Great home computer. I had my ram upgraded at a local computer shop. I wrote one game for the STFM. It wasn't great but it did get published and is out there still. It was called 'the Secret of Steel'. Only got a few hundred quid for it.
Atari 520 STFM - My entry into the world of 16-Bit. I have such strong memories of my Nan buying it for me from a second-hand computer hardware shop in about 1993. I spent so many hours on my ST playing games (naturally): Lotus III: The Ultimate Challenge, OutRun, Chase HQ, Elite, Xenon 2, RoboCop, RoboCop 2,... So many hours creating imagery using Hyperpaint 2.
An ST in the cave! About time. One really interesting thing about the ST was because the earlier models came with a single sided 360k 3.5 inch floppy a lot of games accounted for that. So when the cracking crews came along and ST's were shipping with 720k drives we had CDs (not the optical kind). Our CDs were 720k disks with flashy demoesque menus where you could select from multiple cracked games on a single disk. Common on the ST.....not so on the Amiga as i understand.
I had a 520STFM in the late 80s and really enjoyed the machine. I regret selling it to this day (to buy a VHS player of all things!). Picked up a 1040STF recently that needs some TLC so will certainly be doing a full restore on it in the coming months.
Great to see an ST 😁 1MB RAM, blitter. Gotek. Satan disk. And try the few games that supported midi, connecting your Mt32, or SC 55 in Mt 32 mode. Games like the ones from Sierra and Cruse for a Corpse sound great in midi. Via the rgb scart, it looks really sharp and crisp on a Sony PVM.
I always lusted after that Atari ST512. Such a gorgeous design. Its still looks like a Million bucks. However, I was working as a computer technician at Boeing of Canada, and I ended up building an IBM AT compatible with a math co-processor, to run AutoCad back in 1985. I should've bought the damn thing back then. Regrets, I have many...
Got my 520STFM from Silica Shop for £299 in 1987. Used my Hitachi 12" TV and a second floppy. Dungeon Master was my favourite game. Traded it in a couple of years later for an Amiga A500... 😁
Great having my favorite retro system (after the commodore plus/4) on your show. I am still creative on this plattform and i love it and the community involved with it. Edit: Congrats to the 2:0 from Germany@
I understand the ST was popular in Germany and even used by many businesses there. In 1990 when I wanted a new computer here in the UK, the two in my price range were the ST or a Victor Vicky MSDOS compatible. I chose the ST because of the MIDI ports.
@@MrDuncl My history with the ST is a little different: I am a commdore plus/4 user who jumped to the 386dx40 in the 90's. Never lived throught the 16-bit era. About 10 years ago i found my ST in the my trash bin. Because i didnt have a monitor to test it remained a few years in my basement. I bought a monitor and ported my plus/4 3d render project to the ST for performance reasons. Since then i love it. Its a very good computer for its price.
I saved and saved to buy an STFM in 1988 from the Atari computer shop in Broad Street in Birmingham (UK) - I loved to play AH64 Gunship, Barbarian, Hostages, Captain Blood, Silkworm, Outrun and some programming with SToS and much much more. I also bought a Star LC10 dot matrix printer too! - in terms of Midi I understood that the 1988 album Optical Race from Tangerine Dream was composed on an ST but cannot confirm this.
I had an Atari STe from 91 to 93. Had an amzing time with it. great gaming moments were made for me from this machine. I eventually upgraded to an Amiga1200, had that from 93 to 96.
Get a copy of the B.I.G. Demo, you'll see what the ST is capable of, without expansion!, I have an ST ;I did have all the games you guys had on your tabel, and even taught myself to program in Assembly on this machine, this was my life! This is how over the years I got into IT because of this small beginning!
My most enjoyable experience of the atari ST was playing "MIDI maze" with multiple St's where the MIDI ports would make up the network! You must try it!
@@JohnSweevo I remember an early Mac emulator hardware called something like MacInSac. Can't vouch for the name as I can't find a single mention of it using google, but that could just be because it never really got a chance to take off as Apple dumped hard on it, or at least that's what I think I remember. It was basically a dongle that could take a Mac ROM and then you could boot up a virtual Mac on your machine. Now the other problem is that I can't remember if it was for the Atari ST or the "competing product from the company that kicked Jack Tramiel". Sometimes I don't like my aging brain...
@@JohnSweevo Ah Spectre GCR able to boot on mac floppy disks ! Crazy at the time and still now. Dave Small shall be remembered as the top dog hacker for Atari St me thinks.
@@JohnSweevo Might also have had something to do with the fact that GEM shares more design features with the first Mac system versions than any other GUI I'm aware of. C64/C128 GEOS was close second though.
@@Ragnar8504 The hardware was also very similar, and remember the first Macs didn't use any custom chips (unless you count the very small off the shelf PALs).
Nice to see one on the channel. I got myself an Atari ST a couple of months back to add to my collection, never owned 1 back in the day. Though I went for a 520STE (badged 4160STE). As well as the bonus of the Enhanced features, they're also easier to upgrade to 4MB RAM, thanks to the standard 30-pin SIMM slots. I'd definitely recommend a Gotek with FlashFloppy firmware + HXC Selector software, that's what I'm running on mine with a 3D printed bracket purchased from eBay and it's ideal. There's the UltraSatan HDD option available too. On that STFM, definitely consider installing the extra RAM, especially if you're considering the HDD option.
I had the original Atari ST , with the separate PSU and disc drive, it was marketed as a business machine and you could get it with the business software, i sold mine to a custom motorcycle shop to help with his business. Would love to have the original version today. I’ve still got my boxed Atari 1040 STE FM with everything included inside the box. Must have a look 👀 for it. Really loved 🥰 my Atari.
Thanks for the 'blast from the past'. This was my university computer until Linux came along and made an x86 PC worthwhile. I upgraded it with a double-sided floppy, a memory upgrade to 1 Mb as far as I remember I just added the chips and it all worked. When I got to Uni I found i needed more space so I bought an 80 Mb hard drive which seemed HUGE at the time. My next big expenditure was a mono monitor and a Star LC10 printer which I used along with the 'Protext' word processor to produce my final year project report.
Loved the Atari ST, was the first computer I had as a young lad. It was the Amiga's equal but they both had their strengths and weaknesses. Both magical machines when played to their strengths. I still regret not rescuing my 1040 STFM when I had the chance from my parents house before it was thrown away in a major spring clean.
I love my ST. Mine powered a set of midi keyboards using Cubase and a monochrome monitor in a music studio for decades. It is a 1040stf and sometime along it’s lifespan had the blitter installed. It lives out it’s retirement playing games on a correct sc1224 color monitor. I’m so glad you’re getting into the ST it’s my all-time favorite 80s computer
I had the original 520ST with an OS on Floppy disk, later getting the ROM chips to install myself. My final upgrade was to build my one 20MB HDD for it. MFM drive, MFM to SCSI adapter board daisy chained to a SCSI to Atari adapter board. I was amazed when it all worked first time!!
So I am a bit ahead of you on my own STE journey. I dug the machine out a few weeks ago and fitted an OpenFlops drive. I then dug a little deeper in the garage and found a 20MB Megafile HD in original box complete with price tag which when I plugged it in not only worked but booted up my old custom desktop. It uses an old style RLL Drive which I don’t think are manufactured any more. I also found 2 cardboard boxes full of original big box games complete with manuals and all the gubbins that came in the boxes. I now have a GreaseWeazle ready to try and image all these original disks plus a storage box of random floppies I found in the shed. I have a memory upgrade from Exxos ready to install when time permits. I also have the original Atari Mouse. Machine needs a thorough clean and a retrobrite at some point plus some tlc for the power supply caps
About time! I love my 1040 STFM (same as 520, just 1MB RAM). Had my same machine since 1987 and it still works well, albeit the floppy drive got worse and worse but I've replaced it with a Gotek now. So many great memories of the machine. Played my way through Dungeon Master, Space Quest, Llamatron and much much more. As Australian shops abandoned the platform around 1992, I had to grit my teeth through Amiga and PC owner jabs and make my own fun with the ST. I cut my programming teeth on STOS and GFA Basic, making everything from sprite based games to a database to calaogue my MAD Magazines at age 10. As for your exhibition, you will be able to share your Amiga joysticks with the machine but not the mouse. Find a decent mouse for it. Get a Gotek for USB loadable floppy disc images and an Ultra Satan for a hard disc replacement (because ST hard drives were the difficult to use ASCI format rather than SCSI). I'd also suggest upgrade it to 1MB to open up some enhanced gaming options.
I have the Ste version and enjoyed it. Years of abuse and it's still working but the extras have all disappeared including mouse. I do have the monitor. It's one of the best I've seen. I was very young when we got it. Lucky to still have it. I want to upgrade it but found it hard to get good info.
I'm so glad to see this series. I remember seeing adverts for the Atari ST and I had an Amiga friend who rubbished them but I've never seen one working.
The first computer I experienced was the BBC Basic at school but the first computer that was MINE was The Atari ST and it has a huge place in my heart. I loved playing on my mate’s Amiga, but always had more love for the ‘underdog’ ST! I’ve ended up with 2 now, still love it!!
This was awesome. Brought back some memories. My Dad had an Atari 520ST. Not sure which version but I remember hooking up my Casio CZ101 and creating music with it. Best electronic music composing machine on the market back then.
Great video guys, Mark even survived the experience of touching the evil enemy of the big 'A' ;) After coveting an Amiga 1000 from afar (there was no way I was ever going to be able afford one), I bought an Amiga 500 on launch. But, like a large number of other early Amiga owners, both my floppy drive and mouse soon stopped working. This happened to so many people in fact, that there were not enough spares available, so I had to wait a month or so before I could get my machine up and running. Having put forward my entire life savings at the time to get this machine, I lost faith and instead, took my machine back for a full refund and bought an Atari 520 STFM with a high resolution monochrome monitor at a discount (from the shop I worked at previously). Games were played via the RF interface to a TV and later a Colour monitor with a switch was added. This machine introduced me to the power of full screen desk top publishing, which I used to take my magazine (Micro's Gazette) to the next level. It was my workhorse, my equivalent of the IBM PCs I used at work. I also got into programming the Gem window environment and put together some business applications (having moved on from writing games for the 8-bits). I did slowly upgrade, replacing the 520 with a 1040 and then that with a 1040STE, and then that with a Mega STE. Another great thing about the machine is the disc format is perfectly readable on a IBM PC, using the same sector and track layout, along with the same FAT as PC Jr machines. I recovered the text of my first book from my Atari ST discs, that I had written using Microsoft Write. And just so Mark doesn't get too unhappy, I did come back to the Amiga machines, starting with a 2nd hand 500, then a gifted 1000, a 1200 and my most recent machine is a very nice 2000. Definitely Ram (and I think you can install up to 4MB) and a floppy emulator as a minimum. Hard Disks will depend on what you can get hold of, I have one of the removeable cartridge hard drives that works quite well (extremely short DMA cable aside).
Nice one! You absolutly have to find (and probably fix🙂) the SM124 hi-res monitor. Back then it was very nice for office and musician work, a good argument to get an ST over the competition.
I had one of these back in the day (my then brother-in-law had an Amiga too), it replaced my Atari 800XL, I even bought myself a colour dot matrix printer! Brings back fond memories :)
🎵 Only Atari ST makes it possible 🎵
This was great fun to explore and I'm looking forward to your suggestions on what upgrades to install. What should I order and where do you recommend I get the parts from?
Thank you to ua-cam.com/users/markfixesstuff for joining us on this episode, he's always a huge help, and why not consider giving his channel a sub for more repair vids
Neil - RMC
I actually have quite a few Atari 260ST and 520ST from 1985/1986. What are the chances on you having an Amiga from these years? :D Cheers!
Also, GOOD JOB on the Keyboard. These nasty stiff original cables break off easily.
I would like you to try the floppy Emulators. I see some online but don't know Whitch to buy or if it matters at all. Is one better then the other or does only one type work.
@@TBL_stevennelson Yes, and they work with all Ataris. But for more serious tinkering I recommend everything he already said. RAM Upgrade t0 4MB is still interesting but 1MB is a must for this machine. With this should go a TOS upgrade you can buy. For convenience, a HD Floppy kit or an UltraSatan would make it fun too.
Long time ST veteran here : i would advise a Gotek (to replace the floppy disk), RAM upgrade to at least 1Mb up to 4mb . For HDD you can try to get a ultrasatan (sd card reader as HDD partitions), Also nice is the ROM replacement from TOS 1.x to the (eprom to burn an improved version found here emutos.sourceforge.io ) .
List of things i love about the ST:
1. Jaunty function keys.
2. ..... that is all.
I remember owning an Atari ST 520 STFM as a kid and wanted to upgrade the internal single sided disk drive. The new drive arrived but was disappointed to find that the drive bay slot on the Atari case would need modification to allow disk insertion into the new drive. My father, hacksaw in hand and a glint in his eye, said 'Don't worry son, I will resolve this for you, do not fear'! Before I could protest my Atari was whisked away to his shed and after much banging and crashing and horrific zip, zip, zip sounds my father returned proudly holding a case that looked as though it had been inserted into an industrial threshing machine. The drive worked just fine but you could have driven a bus into that insertion slot. Bless you dad, love you loads! 😘
I couldn't be happier to see the Atari ST finally make it to a series. I love my ST!
I just donated a 520ST to Adrian from Adrian's Digital Basement because it was something I can't get running again as I don't have the equipment, and it was completely borked. He fixed it! Maybe one day I can take a trip to the cave and finally play one.
More ST content please, there are tens of us out here :D
Yes!
These members now go to 11!
It was bizarre in my school...everyone had an ST rather than an Amiga...
@@grex9101 Maybe I just don't remember the Amiga users...aka the dark side 🤣🤣🤣
@@JohnTannerinDerbyshire same here, STs were the more popular of the two, which led to a great playground swapping culture :) which led to enjoying the cracktros more than the sames which led to the demoscene :)
The YM2149 was used because it had additional IO Ports. The parallel (printer) port is driven over these IOs. The ST was cheap because of its reduced chip count.
It was not only the MIDI-ports but also the ability to "shut down" nearly all hardware to create an real-time environment that made the ST the MIDI-machine we know.
The MegaST1 was the first ST with a Blitter chip. They omitted the Blitter because of supply problems. Early versions of the Blitter weren't stable and had a lot of dead chips in production. The first Blitter you could buy where the version 5 or 6. (You could buy the Bitter as an "upgrade" for the ST together with TOS 1.04 directly from Atari at some point)
You can add 512k on the second bank. On some models the needed additional resitors are already installed, not on others. If some Resistors between the MCU and RAM are missing add some with 47-Ohm. The MCU is overloaded when the RAM is selected if the resitors are missing (bridged). To expand the RAM to 4Mb (max possible) needs some additional Resistors and RAM-select Line from the MCU.
520 ST you have is a very late model. The Custom ICs aren't socked as in early revisions of the board. The floppy is also the later model with the small eject button. The early floppies are less reliable, create the "known" noisy floppy sound and are receptive to the "headcrash visus" ( A boot sector virus that would drive the floppy head so far back that i got stuck and possibly disalign the floppy )
The SM124 Monitor is a must to use. With 72Hz it was a joy to work with.
You can run onto problems with the ACSI port. It uses internal "inverter delay timer" to create the communication timings with the hardware. Because of the age the timings can get somewhat distorted (shortened) As a result some hardware didn't work. Lowering the voltage of the IC with a diode can help.
Also, the ST used more off the shelf parts than the Amiga which used custom ICs for everything (it did Commodore that they had their own chip fab in MOS/CSG)
The ST was a quickly made up machine invented specifically to compete with the Amiga after Amiga decided to drop the deal with Atari and went to Commodore. They did make a good machine and I see this as an Amiga man... wasn't as good as the Amiga (though to be honest, the Archimedes beat them both)
@@GeoNeilUK I like the ST because it's so easy to hack. The off the shelf ICs have good documentation, the Layout of the system is simple. The board is robust and can handle additions. The OS is minimalistic and don't restrict the hardware access. You can easily add chips to the bus (especially in the last 1MB of address space) Especially the Mega ST is a really nice board+case to do mods because of the space. I build a measuring station with a friend out of an Mega ST 25 years ago. (He was working in an university. A lot of measurements over al long time with special analog equipment)
@@GeoNeilUK both theories (the ST built from off shelf parts and made quickly to compete with Amiga) are just an urban legend.
Both computers have custom chips (Atari: Shifter, MMU, Glue, DMA, BLiTTER; Amiga: Gary, Denise, Agnus, Paula) and both have off shelf parts (Atari: ACIAs, MFP, YM, WD1772, 68000, ROM, RAM, TTLs; Amiga: CIAs, 68000, ROM, RAM, TTLs).
The Atari ST was born as RBP (rock bottom price) before Tramiel and Shivji left the Commodore. It was based on the Commodore 900 (Shivji was working on it since 1983).
According to Minter, Lorraine (Amiga) was born as a gaming console. Tramiel and Shivji well knew how to build a great game console (C64) but they decided that the Atari ST will be a real computer for productive tasks. As you see - different concept, different target group.
@@blast4722 The Commodore 64 isn't a console.
@@blast4722 The Amiga was never intended to be a console by its creators, although they allowed their initial financiers to believe that because that's what the financiers thought would sell well. And as Neil says, the C64 was a computer too (the keyboard should have given that away...).
I started with an Atari 800 and then went to the 520ST. Atari was a foundational part of my childhood. It is where I learned to program and set me fourth on my lifelong career. The ST was an absolute amazing computer.
rmc is the warm cardy, cup of tea, and a biscuit of the internet
Thanks for taking the ST on it own merits. It's not An Amiga, it's an ST. It was a low cost, general purpose computer that many of us used as a games machine (well a few of us here in the USA, but many more in the UK, etc) right as the 8bits were getting long in the tooth. It provided a bridge between the 8bit gaming systems and the 1991-1994 Amiga years, but hardly ever gets the recognition it deserves. The winners write the history books, but for some reason the ST years are never talked about...except on podcasts and channels like ours (and now yours of course).
Upgrades:
You can add the Blitter, and the Ultra Satan hard drive as well as a VGA out. You can replace the floppy with a USB one also.
The Blitter will allow you to have better scrolling / animation in a number of games that are specifically Blitter enhanced.
Read "Faster Than Light: The Atari ST and the 16-Bit Revolution" by Jamie Lendino. People knock the Atari...but you can still buy a new Atari today...I don't know of any console from 70s and 80s that are still around.
@@anthonybarbati9969 Oh I have that great book. Jamie and I are friends. We interviewed him the podcast.
The Blitter chip actually can be fitted to that ST, and will be used by TOS 1.04. Blitter was also present in some later Mega STs.
Does anything *besides* TOS use the MegaST blitter? As I understand it, it's not 1:1 compatible with the STe blitter and almost nothing uses it. (Hell, barely anything uses the STe blitter -- I think more stuff made modern day by enthusiasts uses it than commercial stuff back in the day)
From what I know, you can only add the MegaST blitter to the 520/1040 boards that have a spot for it. You can't add the STe blitter. (Though even if you could you would still be missing the other STe features, notably the sound, scrolling, and wider palette)
I was just sat wondering whether you could backport the blitter. Neat!
Well the blitter was built into the Atari STE, from about 89 or so.
@@godslayer1415 Maybe in the US, but in Europe first series of Mega ST1 came without the Blitter chip, and actually they are not that uncommon here. Mega ST2 and Mega ST4 had Blitter, but there are reports of Mega ST4s without the Blitter.
I miss my Atari 520ST. I had one kick ass system back in 1987, with both the RGB and Monochrome monitors with a switcher to allow me to boot either depending on which one I wanted. I had 2 Hard Drives mounted in an XT case, LOADS of software, peripherals, an Epson 24 pin printer, and so on. In 1990 I sold all of that to get a.....well, 286 PC clone that I built. I went on to become a huge PC enthusiast, but I still would absolutely LOVE to have my old ST system back today, sitting along side my PC. (sigh)......oh the good ole days! The late 80's and early 90's were a lot of fun! I grew up with computers through the late 70's, and had a computer of some kind since 1982. But the ST is still my most beloved and missed computer of all-time!
Finally, my favorite computer on my favorite youtube show! ;-)
My favourite computer too. I have an Atari 1040 STe that I got from a charity shop for £2, it works too
@@HuntersMoon78 Fantastic machine. Best of luck with it!
@@HuntersMoon78 👏... £15 with colour monitor.
All the Amiga's in the cave start to mysteriously emit strange, eery sounds, Lost Ark Of The Covenant style....
I developed tourettes at the sight of an an ST!
The blitter actually came with the Mega ST, a couple of years before the STe came out.
My STE has one
Yeah, you can even add it to a regular ST if you can find the correct socket to solder it in!
@@godslayer1415 who said it would work
@@AmstradExin
Really?! That's interesting! I'd love to upgrade my old 520STFM with one... because!
@@godslayer1415
Ahh did you try fitting it?
Damn!
It's nice to have a video on Tramiel's Revenge.
Oh jeez, I had one of those Halifax little xtra club money boxes. That brings back some long forgotten memories!
My first 16 bit computer was the same Atari STFM purchased in 1988 here in Canada, after migrating from the 8 bit Atari computers. Obliterator was one of the first games purchased for this machine. Obliterator lagged so much and was so hard to control, but it was the best thing since sliced bread at the time. Zenon 1 though, was simply jaw dropping regarding soundtrack and how amazingly smooth it played...super sweet memories!
About bloody time!
My first PC in December (Christmas) 1985 was an Atari 130XE. But I never had a floppy disk, I had a tape deck that went with it. The ST was the stuff of dreams! I was 13 years old! I have been gaming on PC ever since. I still hark after coding in basic, loading up on tapes. Twas an excellent machine, much better than the C64, Spectrum ZX. I had the upgrades over time as well. I used this well into the mid 1990s. It's possible that it's still in my mother's loft somewhere!
This was my second computer as a kid, after the Spectrum +2B and before the Amiga 1200. All of them were second hand and I was always about 4 or 5 years behind everyone else as a kid, computer-wise (the benefit being cheap games at car boot sales!) I saved up pocket money for months to buy a 1meg upgrade for my Atari STFM. Unfortunately my motherboard revision required patch cables and soldering when the upgrade arrived. I was just a kid and didn't really know what I was doing, but my youthful hubris led to me pushing ahead anyway. Sadly, that was the death of my machine! I'm sure you'll be much more successful! Soon after I got my A1200, and left upgrading until I was a teen, adding a CD drive, which blew my mind - going from disks to CDs was amazing, and this was when Amiga Format was still around and doing cover CDs - heaven :)
Finally, a video that's not about the bloody Amiga!
I often wish the Atari 8-bits would make it into more C64 episodes😋
Aww come on man!
Loved my ST, great to see some love here for it 🙌🏼 BitMap brothers games… happy days
An ST 😍 Now we're talking!
seriously guys your work is awesome, could watch these all day
I owned one of these back in the day. i had it for about a year until my cousin brought his computer over to my house, and the games looked and sounded so much better on his machine. I then realised I had bought the wrong computer, so I sold it at a ridiculously low price and bought one of those instead (and never looked back).
The computer my cousin had...yes it was an Amiga.
I had an Amiga, when I was shown the Atari I was surprised at the standard of productivity programs. It had Mac like productivity with standard ports on it (except for video). The two monitors bit , I never really understood.The Amiga was lumbered with "isn't it a games machine?" and it was never taken seriously. The Ham video and flicker in the Amiga was another quirk. The Amiga had 'Ports of Call' my first game, never seen it - if it were ever made to ST.
You backed the right horse.
As someone who had an Amiga & only knew people with Amiga's I didn't have any access to the ST, I have to admit that all these years later I really like the aesthetics of the ST.
I always preferred the look of the ST (main unit) over the A500 and the STFM having the integrated PSU, modulator and FDD (I'll ignore that the 1st ST had an external single sided drive and thus incompatible with later software) was such a neat package. But the keyboard was spongy ugh!. It wasn't until the A1200 that I preferred an Amiga look.
I have commented many times about my fandom for the Amiga. But I have a soft spot for the ST, as before I ever owned my first A500 my first sight of 16-bit gaming was on a friend's STFM... and it blew my 8-bit world away!
A lot of folk fondly remember the Amiga these days, but we should remember how accessible the ST was in the late 80s. Not least it was considerably easier to afford and in 1987/88 it generally got more games than the A1000 or 500. Early on it was a no-brainer which to pick...
Good to see you covering what I grew up with. I’ve till for a Mega STE and a Falcon. Wrote programs and gamed on the ST, and it’s responsible for my career in IT.
I had a 1040 STFM at first, then I sold it to get a Mega STE. The Mega STE is actually still in my basement. 40MB internal HD. Yes!
Thanks for this video. Great fun to see the two of you cooperate!
Agreed, you two are a great team.
As a former french demomaker (Secotr One), I'm very happy to see both ST enthusiasts like you guys. Keep it up !
Awesome! thanks for your work on the demos
I'm a mature adult these days and can appreciate this look back at what was a decent comput... NO KILL IT WITH FIRE! AMIGA FOREVER!!!!!1 (he says writing this on custom built pc)
I love the Atari ST family of computers! My brother used to have a 1040 STE back in the day that he sold a few years later. I bought another one again in 2009 or 2010 off of Ebay and upgraded the RAM to 4MB (no soldering, just a nice slot). I have so many memories with this machine; desktop publishing, drawing, music composition, and of course, games and "the demo scene". I cannot count the hours of enjoyment I got out of it, it's now back home in a closet and I haven't seen it since 2011. This video made me miss it so much. I also own an Amiga 500 Plus so I had the joy of having two of the most iconic gaming PCs of the late 80's and early 90's. What a great time it was!
Heavy old things the ST. Loved mine.
My first job after school was repairing computers and printers for a retailer. We handled both the Atari ST range and the Amiga Range, and it was interesting comparing their construction. As I remember it the Amiga was built following all the design rules of the time. A lot of circuits was socketed and they used pull down resistor nets like it was a religion. Capacitators were used everywhere you were told they should be, every port had buffer chips to preserve signal integrity and so on. The Atari on the other hand was obviously built to a price point. Pulldown resistor nets were used if they were necessary, capacitors were sparingly used, the ports were directly wired to the logic chips without any buffers and there were very few socketed chips.
Given the differences you would have thought that the Amiga would be the more robust design, but our experience was that it was the other way around. Now a lot of that had to do with the large socketed chips that tended to creep as the computer chassis flexed when it was moved. But we also had some problems with ports that got burned out even though on paper they should be way more resilient than those on the Atari ST machines.
OK, so I've done my part and gotten that old story typed out. It's been a long time since I opened one of those machines. The fun thing was that back then there were no problem to get the circuit diagrams for machines like this. Today I don't think it would be as easy...
Nothing wrong with adding a good old atari to the collection!
Started off with a 2nd-hand 520STM & external drive bought from One Step Beyond in Norwich when I first started college there. Problem with that machine was that I had to load TOS from disk up front, which left bugger all ram to do anything. And PSU's everywhere as the STM & drive had external PSUs. So, after working the summer I got a Philips 14" colour TV, an Atari SM124 mono monitor and... a 520STE :) Four months later, a Third Coast Technology 20mb (yes meg) Hard Disk - for £600!!! - and an NEC P2200 24 pin printer. And Calligrapher word processor on cartridge. Designed a 200 page software manual on that, and printed it on the NEC! Neighbours weren't happy with the noise! I did pass the course :)
I had an STFM once. The cream helped a lot with the itching.
Amiga swear jar ! Brilliant 👏
I had an STFM back in the day and loved it. Yes whilst not technically has good as the Amiga it did have some great games for it some of which were exclusive to the format.
Great to see one finally enter the cave.
Great. I have my own Atari now!
I have that Halifax money box too, although I painted over it with Humbrol Airfix paint when I got bored one day, so now it has a silver roof, matte black walls and an olive drab foundation.
My first home computer 😊
I missed out on the amiga/st era i was 18 at the time and had found the joys of illegal raves (warehouse party's) and pubs.
Rave on brother
Same. Wouldn't have missed it for the world.
90% of that music would have been Atari and Amiga music though, so you didn't miss out!
I still got mine it's not been used for 20yrs but its still tidy never got the 1040 upgrade as never could afford it back in the day. Would donate to the cave as long as its not stored in the special space for STs. Still have so many games to. Ah nostalgia.
Looking forward to part 2. As a former Amiga 500 owner, I've always been curious about the Atari ST line of computers to see how the competition did things.
Cor blimey! I watched that previous STFM episode. I can't believe it was that long ago! I had that exact pack, back in the day. Happy days
Finest home computer ever made!!
...always nice to see my first personal computer.
Yes, the Atari ST. I love the ST (yes and the Amiga) For me ST was my music system and the Amiga my game system. I had a Apple Macintosh hardware emulator in it, and later a 8080 TX hardware emulator build in my Atari ST. And I made a cap’s-lock LED in the ST.
The Atari ST and the Amiga were the stuff of legends for me as a mere C64 owner. I had very little money at my disposal for entertaining my computerneeds back in the day. I was faced with buying a 1541 diskdrive for my C64 and being able to afford blank disks or buying an Amiga 500 or Atari ST with me being only able to afford blank disks very sparingly. 3.5" floppies - ones that worked in the ST or the Amiga were very expensive. The MSX 3.5" worked well with the much cheaper 720Kb SD disks.
I ended up playing the ST and the Amiga over at friend's places and stuck with the C64 well into university (early 90s), then I got my paws on a MSX2 machine and was emulating that on my Philips PC XT NMS9100. Then the 486SX-25 for my thesis; upgrading that - the onset of UAE, Fellow - and finally buying an Amiga 500 and later a 1200 as an early retrogamer starting to collect systems very early on.
Amiga 500 kicks this puppy to the curb when it comes to sound and graphics!
It kicked every computer of the day to the curb as well. Including the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh.
I loved Corporation on the ST.
One of my favourites. A Great home computer. I had my ram upgraded at a local computer shop. I wrote one game for the STFM. It wasn't great but it did get published and is out there still. It was called 'the Secret of Steel'. Only got a few hundred quid for it.
Atari 520 STFM - My entry into the world of 16-Bit. I have such strong memories of my Nan buying it for me from a second-hand computer hardware shop in about 1993. I spent so many hours on my ST playing games (naturally): Lotus III: The Ultimate Challenge, OutRun, Chase HQ, Elite, Xenon 2, RoboCop, RoboCop 2,... So many hours creating imagery using Hyperpaint 2.
The ST was great for the 3 years I owned it...before I traded it in for an Amiga.
An ST in the cave! About time. One really interesting thing about the ST was because the earlier models came with a single sided 360k 3.5 inch floppy a lot of games accounted for that. So when the cracking crews came along and ST's were shipping with 720k drives we had CDs (not the optical kind). Our CDs were 720k disks with flashy demoesque menus where you could select from multiple cracked games on a single disk. Common on the ST.....not so on the Amiga as i understand.
I had a 520STFM in the late 80s and really enjoyed the machine. I regret selling it to this day (to buy a VHS player of all things!). Picked up a 1040STF recently that needs some TLC so will certainly be doing a full restore on it in the coming months.
Great to see an ST 😁
1MB RAM, blitter. Gotek. Satan disk. And try the few games that supported midi, connecting your Mt32, or SC 55 in Mt 32 mode. Games like the ones from Sierra and Cruse for a Corpse sound great in midi.
Via the rgb scart, it looks really sharp and crisp on a Sony PVM.
I always lusted after that Atari ST512. Such a gorgeous design. Its still looks like a Million bucks.
However, I was working as a computer technician at Boeing of Canada, and I ended up building an IBM AT compatible with a math co-processor, to run AutoCad back in 1985.
I should've bought the damn thing back then. Regrets, I have many...
My Dad bought a 1040ST when I was a kid and I loved playing a Star Trek game (can't remember what it was called) on it. Good old days!
I just popped in to say "Dungeon Master FTW!"
Another fascinating video. I love the interaction between the two presenters!
Got my 520STFM from Silica Shop for £299 in 1987. Used my Hitachi 12" TV and a second floppy. Dungeon Master was my favourite game. Traded it in a couple of years later for an Amiga A500... 😁
Great having my favorite retro system (after the commodore plus/4) on your show. I am still creative on this plattform and i love it and the community involved with it. Edit: Congrats to the 2:0 from Germany@
I understand the ST was popular in Germany and even used by many businesses there. In 1990 when I wanted a new computer here in the UK, the two in my price range were the ST or a Victor Vicky MSDOS compatible. I chose the ST because of the MIDI ports.
@@MrDuncl My history with the ST is a little different: I am a commdore plus/4 user who jumped to the 386dx40 in the 90's. Never lived throught the 16-bit era. About 10 years ago i found my ST in the my trash bin. Because i didnt have a monitor to test it remained a few years in my basement. I bought a monitor and ported my plus/4 3d render project to the ST for performance reasons. Since then i love it. Its a very good computer for its price.
I saved and saved to buy an STFM in 1988 from the Atari computer shop in Broad Street in Birmingham (UK) - I loved to play AH64 Gunship, Barbarian, Hostages, Captain Blood, Silkworm, Outrun and some programming with SToS and much much more. I also bought a Star LC10 dot matrix printer too! - in terms of Midi I understood that the 1988 album Optical Race from Tangerine Dream was composed on an ST but cannot confirm this.
I remember that shop, it was a regular haunt of mine. I took my ST there to be repaired after I ballsed up a ram upgrade.
Hilarious how Mark just takes the disk and slides it in and out. Never fails to fit in the innuendo....lmao! I love it!
I remember hearing Madonna's 'Get Into The Groove' for the first time on a friend's Atari ST.
The Excellence in Art demo? That has some lovely use of typography.
I had an Atari STe from 91 to 93. Had an amzing time with it. great gaming moments were made for me from this machine. I eventually upgraded to an Amiga1200, had that from 93 to 96.
Get a copy of the B.I.G. Demo, you'll see what the ST is capable of, without expansion!, I have an ST ;I did have all the games you guys had on your tabel, and even taught myself to program in Assembly on this machine, this was my life! This is how over the years I got into IT because of this small beginning!
How fortunate to get hold on this. I had one of these in the same pack. Luckily it wasn't the ST-E!
Little Extra Club! Memories flooding back.
Great collab guys, nice to see some ST action in the cave!
All the cool kids had Amiga's!
My most enjoyable experience of the atari ST was playing "MIDI maze" with multiple St's where the MIDI ports would make up the network! You must try it!
+1 for that if you can get any more STs together for the next vid :-)
Loved the ST we had 3 of them over the years. Used to learn C, assembler. Great machine apart from PSU overheating
In the states, some publications referred to the ST as the "Jacintosh".
That's because the was an Apple emulator for it
@@JohnSweevo I remember an early Mac emulator hardware called something like MacInSac. Can't vouch for the name as I can't find a single mention of it using google, but that could just be because it never really got a chance to take off as Apple dumped hard on it, or at least that's what I think I remember. It was basically a dongle that could take a Mac ROM and then you could boot up a virtual Mac on your machine. Now the other problem is that I can't remember if it was for the Atari ST or the "competing product from the company that kicked Jack Tramiel".
Sometimes I don't like my aging brain...
@@JohnSweevo Ah Spectre GCR able to boot on mac floppy disks ! Crazy at the time and still now. Dave Small shall be remembered as the top dog hacker for Atari St me thinks.
@@JohnSweevo Might also have had something to do with the fact that GEM shares more design features with the first Mac system versions than any other GUI I'm aware of. C64/C128 GEOS was close second though.
@@Ragnar8504 The hardware was also very similar, and remember the first Macs didn't use any custom chips (unless you count the very small off the shelf PALs).
I'm a Concorde guy, but Concordski was quite stylish.
Nice to see one on the channel. I got myself an Atari ST a couple of months back to add to my collection, never owned 1 back in the day. Though I went for a 520STE (badged 4160STE). As well as the bonus of the Enhanced features, they're also easier to upgrade to 4MB RAM, thanks to the standard 30-pin SIMM slots. I'd definitely recommend a Gotek with FlashFloppy firmware + HXC Selector software, that's what I'm running on mine with a 3D printed bracket purchased from eBay and it's ideal. There's the UltraSatan HDD option available too. On that STFM, definitely consider installing the extra RAM, especially if you're considering the HDD option.
Good job reviving and giving some love to this ST. Thank you for sharing.
I had the original Atari ST , with the separate PSU and disc drive, it was marketed as a business machine and you could get it with the business software, i sold mine to a custom motorcycle shop to help with his business.
Would love to have the original version today. I’ve still got my boxed Atari 1040 STE FM with everything included inside the box. Must have a look 👀 for it. Really loved 🥰 my Atari.
Thanks for the 'blast from the past'.
This was my university computer until Linux came along and made an x86 PC worthwhile.
I upgraded it with a double-sided floppy, a memory upgrade to 1 Mb as far as I remember I just added the chips and it all worked.
When I got to Uni I found i needed more space so I bought an 80 Mb hard drive which seemed HUGE at the time.
My next big expenditure was a mono monitor and a Star LC10 printer which I used along with the 'Protext' word processor to produce my final year project report.
Loved the Atari ST, was the first computer I had as a young lad. It was the Amiga's equal but they both had their strengths and weaknesses. Both magical machines when played to their strengths. I still regret not rescuing my 1040 STFM when I had the chance from my parents house before it was thrown away in a major spring clean.
Lots of love for the Atari ST from me. Thanks for putting it on the channel.
I love my ST. Mine powered a set of midi keyboards using Cubase and a monochrome monitor in a music studio for decades. It is a 1040stf and sometime along it’s lifespan had the blitter installed. It lives out it’s retirement playing games on a correct sc1224 color monitor. I’m so glad you’re getting into the ST it’s my all-time favorite 80s computer
I had the original 520ST with an OS on Floppy disk, later getting the ROM chips to install myself.
My final upgrade was to build my one 20MB HDD for it. MFM drive, MFM to SCSI adapter board daisy chained to a SCSI to Atari adapter board. I was amazed when it all worked first time!!
So I am a bit ahead of you on my own STE journey. I dug the machine out a few weeks ago and fitted an OpenFlops drive.
I then dug a little deeper in the garage and found a 20MB Megafile HD in original box complete with price tag which when I plugged it in not only worked but booted up my old custom desktop. It uses an old style RLL Drive which I don’t think are manufactured any more.
I also found 2 cardboard boxes full of original big box games complete with manuals and all the gubbins that came in the boxes.
I now have a GreaseWeazle ready to try and image all these original disks plus a storage box of random floppies I found in the shed.
I have a memory upgrade from Exxos ready to install when time permits. I also have the original Atari Mouse.
Machine needs a thorough clean and a retrobrite at some point plus some tlc for the power supply caps
On the one megabyte upgrade. You only need to add the RAM chips. I actually did that back in the day
I have seen so many 1MB upgraded Atari 260/520ST with the chips just soldered on piggyback style.
Same here! Time to dig mine out of the garage!
@@AmstradExin my dad did that with my 520ST :) I still have that machine.
The joint history from Atari and Commodore is pretty mind boggling.
About time! I love my 1040 STFM (same as 520, just 1MB RAM). Had my same machine since 1987 and it still works well, albeit the floppy drive got worse and worse but I've replaced it with a Gotek now. So many great memories of the machine. Played my way through Dungeon Master, Space Quest, Llamatron and much much more. As Australian shops abandoned the platform around 1992, I had to grit my teeth through Amiga and PC owner jabs and make my own fun with the ST. I cut my programming teeth on STOS and GFA Basic, making everything from sprite based games to a database to calaogue my MAD Magazines at age 10.
As for your exhibition, you will be able to share your Amiga joysticks with the machine but not the mouse. Find a decent mouse for it. Get a Gotek for USB loadable floppy disc images and an Ultra Satan for a hard disc replacement (because ST hard drives were the difficult to use ASCI format rather than SCSI). I'd also suggest upgrade it to 1MB to open up some enhanced gaming options.
I have the Ste version and enjoyed it. Years of abuse and it's still working but the extras have all disappeared including mouse. I do have the monitor. It's one of the best I've seen. I was very young when we got it. Lucky to still have it. I want to upgrade it but found it hard to get good info.
I had the 1040STE. Served me well.
I'm so glad to see this series. I remember seeing adverts for the Atari ST and I had an Amiga friend who rubbished them but I've never seen one working.
The first computer I experienced was the BBC Basic at school but the first computer that was MINE was The Atari ST and it has a huge place in my heart. I loved playing on my mate’s Amiga, but always had more love for the ‘underdog’ ST! I’ve ended up with 2 now, still love it!!
This was awesome. Brought back some memories. My Dad had an Atari 520ST. Not sure which version but I remember hooking up my Casio CZ101 and creating music with it. Best electronic music composing machine on the market back then.
Great video guys, Mark even survived the experience of touching the evil enemy of the big 'A' ;)
After coveting an Amiga 1000 from afar (there was no way I was ever going to be able afford one), I bought an Amiga 500 on launch. But, like a large number of other early Amiga owners, both my floppy drive and mouse soon stopped working. This happened to so many people in fact, that there were not enough spares available, so I had to wait a month or so before I could get my machine up and running. Having put forward my entire life savings at the time to get this machine, I lost faith and instead, took my machine back for a full refund and bought an Atari 520 STFM with a high resolution monochrome monitor at a discount (from the shop I worked at previously). Games were played via the RF interface to a TV and later a Colour monitor with a switch was added.
This machine introduced me to the power of full screen desk top publishing, which I used to take my magazine (Micro's Gazette) to the next level. It was my workhorse, my equivalent of the IBM PCs I used at work. I also got into programming the Gem window environment and put together some business applications (having moved on from writing games for the 8-bits). I did slowly upgrade, replacing the 520 with a 1040 and then that with a 1040STE, and then that with a Mega STE.
Another great thing about the machine is the disc format is perfectly readable on a IBM PC, using the same sector and track layout, along with the same FAT as PC Jr machines.
I recovered the text of my first book from my Atari ST discs, that I had written using Microsoft Write.
And just so Mark doesn't get too unhappy, I did come back to the Amiga machines, starting with a 2nd hand 500, then a gifted 1000, a 1200 and my most recent machine is a very nice 2000.
Definitely Ram (and I think you can install up to 4MB) and a floppy emulator as a minimum. Hard Disks will depend on what you can get hold of, I have one of the removeable cartridge hard drives that works quite well (extremely short DMA cable aside).
I remember the days when computer magazines included a coverdisk that could be read by both the Amiga and ST. How was that possible, I wonder?
Nice one! You absolutly have to find (and probably fix🙂) the SM124 hi-res monitor. Back then it was very nice for office and musician work, a good argument to get an ST over the competition.
I had one of these back in the day (my then brother-in-law had an Amiga too), it replaced my Atari 800XL, I even bought myself a colour dot matrix printer! Brings back fond memories :)