Talk:Atari ST

message: In response to points raised on this page (i have done a bit of editing on the main article page but have both got tired, and think the following thoughts are too informal/inappropriate/unfounded to go on there):
* The upper right image is definately an ST, but a very early one without internal disc drive, hence the mouse connecting in the upper right corner instead of the difficult underneath-the-keyboard position. Further evidence for this - the Falcon having a darker grey case, with keys that were darker than the main casing, almost charcoal coloured (the reverse of the ST, which had lighter keys than the case), also the "early" Falcons (the only ones that made it to market) pretty much aping the STE bodyplan, with internal floppy drive in the upper right position, etc. Plus it's doubtful anyone with enough cash to throw around to buy a Falcon would have run it plugged into an ancient SM124 (proper code? the original atari colour monitor, anyway) or screenshotted it that way, loading a bare desktop in ST-low with the classic ugly green background (as graphics were supposed to be it's forte). If I remember right it loaded as a pale blue background, too.
* Oh yes, it had custom chips alright. Just not anything of the calibre of the Amiga, even after the STE came along (it's sound and graphics hardware still being slightly outclassed, merely not in the same laughable manner). However, what it did have tended to be a bit more solid than the Amiga... especially in the memory, serial port and disc drive departments.
* Wow, desk accessories, I forgot all about them :D something that you wouldn't see outside of the Mac until Windows 95 came along (with the system tray). Does it really count as multitasking though? It's similar to the MultiTOS of the MegaSTE and Falcon - holding one application completely frozen in memory while you work on another, then reanimating it and putting the currently active one to sleep when you want to switch, about as multitasking as most people still currently get with Word and Excel but not truly deserving of the title - but not even as sophisticated. It's just a maximum of six very simple programs, e.g. a palette control —panel, that you can pull up over your current (GEM only) program... and deactivate it at the same time. However, it's arguable that some other accessory programs achieved a degree of time-sharing multitasking; background music applications (argh!), time-delay screensavers, etc, as well as a plethora of viruses (most notably Cookie Monster and Slow)
* The Atari - Amiga - Commodore - Tramiel origins hullabaloo as reported on the page as it stands correlates closely from what was reported of the origins in magazines of the time when I first owned an ST (1990 onwards), and so, although it's likely only anecdotal in remit, I feel a little more inclined to believe it.
* Also these were the sources for "ST" meaning Sam Tramiel and "TOS" being the Tramiel O.S... make of that what you will! :)
* It did do better "overseas" than in the US, in Germany in particular... they loved it, and the TT too. No good reason why as far as I know, perhaps Microsoft and Apple were very slow on the draw to make versions of DOS, Windows and MacOS that could spiele Deutsch. Even in the UK, which seemed to be a pretty good market for the machine (various big names in the software biz both coming from here and cutting their teeth on the 16/32), Germany was notorious as having a passion for all things TOS, and was the venue for several of the biggest/best computer expos featuring a decent proportion of Atari stuff.
* The bee thing, personally I think it's just to show that the computer is "busy" in an easily understood fashion for newbies. Probably just to be different, and to be cute (particularly if you got one of the hack programs that animated the cursor with interrupts, so the wings flapped)... everyone else and their mother with a WiMP OS used an hourglass, after all, and it's probably a lot less annoying to stare at during a long-winded operation. It's a busy bee, that M68k.
::contemporary Mac OS' used a wristwatch icon or a black & white beachball. only windows and OS/2 used an hourglass.
* Regarding it's place in education, I don't know if it really did that well. Several educational packages were available for it, but they did seem more home-oriented than focussed at schools. I only ever saw it used once, in a music/computing department (both hooked up with MIDI leads AND showing an animation - early multimedia?) when doing the visiting rounds of potential secondary schools around '91 or '92. Mainly through primary school and early secondary it was BBCs, 80186 (!) PCs, and the ever-present Acorn Archimedes. By the time I was doing sequencing in higher-year music classes (mid 90s), the focus was mainly on Acorns (did you know they came with MIDI, too? and some really, really horrible software even compared to 5-years-older ST freeware... Acorn Sibelius... yuck) and already shifting onto rather underspecced-but-catching-up PCs with MIDI adapter joystick-port plug-ins (really had to wait until the quicker 486s, they just couldn't keep pace with Windows and Sequencing at the same time, unlike the 68000... very odd). I persevered and did mine on the trusty 1040 STFM and a cheap Roland E15 synth, though :) Shame really, as it could do some great things education-wise, and not only in music - anyone remember The Magic Storybook, as featured on Rolf Harris' Cartoon Time? Or Talespin, or a hundred other creativity packages that would stil be fantastic today with a bit of an update?
* I remember Magic Storybook well, as I wrote it and appeared on Rolf Harris's Cartoon club with my daughter Rebecca. I agree that if updated to a modern PC it would still offer excellent creativity beyond anything available today. However the whole program was written by myself including coding, most graphics, sound effects and music. This was only possible due to the inbuilt capabilities of the Atari ST and the Amiga and the excellent software basic programmes of STOS and AMOS. Given time and an equivalent PC based package it could be rewritten but the graphical and audiovisual demands of todays sophisticated user would probably mean a team of people and a large budget. RMWD 12:19, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Oh wow, dude, you're a legend! I'm kind of shamed to admit we never stumped up the money to register any of our shareware to full versions (I was pretty young at the time, so somewhat out of my hands...) but that would have been one of them if the family had more funds. Certainly great fun to play with and pulled its weight in later years when the ST had been relegated to our 486's (!) poor cousin in keeping OUR cousins occupied (MSB, Thomas the Tank engine, Noddy... Buggy Boy :) and away from the PC. Never mind that it also kept us away from it as it was still fun :D Are you still coding? 82.46.180.56 23:55, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: response to points raised on this page

message: Need more info on the ST overseas, especially Europe, as they did way better than in the U.S. Pelladon 22:11, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: ... As it turns out: http://www.atarileaks.org/ 24.23.210.81 (talk) 11:03, 19 April 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  Would a tariff on DRAM per se also affect devices containing it? My ST appears to have been "Made in Taiwan", which it probably somewhere that also had a memory factory... or would have been able to import from Japan fairly cheaply and easily. After which you just transport the finished computers, already boxed, to the US for sale... 193.63.174.115 (talk) 15:49, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overseas Market 

message: The article is currently worded to suggest that Tramiel seriously considered using the Amiga technology, and was upset when they couldn't. I can't say for sure, but I don't believe this is the case.
I believe Tramiel bought Atari largely for its name, distribution and manufacturing. When he took over he fired practially everyone in the engineering and programming teams, ending development of all the Warner-era products. One of these was the advanced 68k-based workstation project.
I also believe that he basically saw Atari as a shell that he could dump his surviving Commodore people and recreate the company as Commodore II. "That'll show Gould!!". I'm not sure he even knew what projects Atari had on the go at the time.
Consider: if he really wanted to use an existing design for his 32-bit entry, he could have used the other workstation being developed. Alternately he could have just not pissed off the Amiga team. Does anyone have any reason to suggest that he could not have used the Amiga for his next machine, if he had wanted to?
No, I think he sued Commodore over the Amiga because he could. If you follow the logic above he was still furious over being ousted from Commodore, and this was simply one more way to piss them off.
Maury 12:39, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: But how do you know any of this? The only proof is the contract signed by Atari and Amiga. When Commodore bought Amiga, they broke Atari's contract, hence the lawsuit. I read an interview with RJ Mical (co-designer of the Amiga) where he stated Amiga ran out of money, which is why they went to Commodore. Maury, you're putting your own opinions and analysis in all this, and that is NOT what Wikipedia is about. --Pelladon 01:16, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Let me see, bottom falling out of the home gaming market, the cash cow. Atari Games (arcades) still with Warner. No cash flow. Tons of debt. So how is Tramiel supposed to not fire people? Wall Street loaned Tramiel lots of money, and they wanted results. You're not making any sense at all. --Pelladon 05:25, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Amiga, early history, etc. 

message: The sentence in brackets wondering why the ST didn't recieve many megadrive ports seeing as the systems were so similar, specifically mentioning them having the same Yamaha soundchip is erroneous and misleading.
Whilst The systems share the same 68000 CPU, thats about where the similarities end. The megadrive had relatively advanced 2d sprite, playfield and scrolling hardware, as well as a far higher on screen colour palatte (64 colours, although as this was made up from 4 16 colour palattes, each having to share one transparant colour, the practical total was 61 colours) 
Regarding the soundchip, whilst both system have chips of yamaha design, they are totally different models with vastly different specifications. The Megadrive soundchip is a 6 channel FM synth of the sort commonly used in arcade machines and synthesisers in the 80s, where as the ST has a 3 channel PSG, of vastly inferior specifications (infact it's the same soundchip used in the 128k spectrums, and the amstrad CPC series) 
The ST would be no more capable of running 'megadrive ports' with little coding effort than it would a port from any late 80's arcade hardware. Everything the megadrive does in hardware, the ST developer would have to kludge in software, and still require cpu time left to run the 68000 code of the megadrive original. 
When you go beyond the fact the cpu is the same, and the soundchip was designed by the same company, there is little wonder that the ST was incapable of running megadrive or even amiga games towards the end of it's life, it simply was an inferior design when it came to running games. The amiga ended up being a more robust gaming platform and survived a few years more, although it too struggled to quite match the megadrive perfomance in certain types of 2d game, where the megadrive had the advantage of arcade style sprite/playfield handling. 
As such i've removed that comment, as it directly contradicts the previous statement, and incorrectly suggests the megadrive and ST were relatively comparible in 2d game performance, so as to make a megadrive port a trivial thing.
: It would have required some creative recoding for more complex games (maybe not that many as a lot of MD/Genesis titles were fairly simple platformers or shooters), a little graphical sacrifice and a complete musical overhaul, but I reckon it would have been largely up to the task for a lot of them. Sonic the Hedgehog made it to the Master System and Game Gear in mechanically very similar form, even if the level design was altered and graphical/audio quality reduced - an ST version would have been in-between and quite a bit closer to the MD original, given it's processing and graphical power was much more similar to the 16 bit machine than the 8 bits; it wouldn't have been lacking for scroll speed or sprites if the programmers had been canny, there's enough very fast ST shooters (eg Stargoose, Goldrunner; or even the example games with STOS working nicely in an interpreted BASIC environment!) that prove this point. Similar for a huge number of other titles, including e.g. Desert/Jungle Strike, Streets of Rage. I also note with interest that excepting the Sonic series, all the games available in currently marketed mini-Genesis consoles (of which I and my brother have a couple; Street Fighter II/Ghouls and Ghosts, and Sensible Soccer/Mega-Lo-Mania/Cannon Fodder) received wide cross-platform release including the Atari and (the animation-heavy SF2 excepted) didn't have much to compare between them on these two machines. I suspect it's more of a licensing issue and available media storage size compared to ~800kb floppy (later MD cartridges pushing 1mb thru to a "massive" 3mb of ROM, just short of the SNES 4mb monsters - however a lot of this may have been "wasted" on richer graphics and sound, and could have been worked around by splitting levels across discs) than one of pure processing grunt.
:: The reason there were no ports is simple ; the St was realeased in 1985, the Megadrive had it's best years from 1989-1994, they were not contemporaries.
:: As it happens, the ST had better performance in 3D than the Megadrive.203.26.122.12 (talk) 07:23, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  Absolute tosh, and I can prove it to you with a simple photo if you like: My "mini megadrive" plug'n'play console that has Mega Lo Mania, Sensible Soccer, and Cannon Fodder available to play, sitting next to the floppy discs of the ST versions of said games, which came out around '91~92. And it's not particularly unexpected for a fully bitmapped display computer with lower colour fidelity (and thus less data to move) to be better at rendering 3D environments than a sprite-and-tile based one. Though the latter's architecture did mean it eventually got a rather iffy port of Duke Nukem 3D, whereas the best the ST could come up with was a Wolfenstein knock-off. 193.63.174.211 (talk) 13:01, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

text: (my game examples are maybe a little dodgy, but they're the best I can come up with given the late hour, poor memory, and a games collection that thanks to a tight budget didn't often expand much beyond the discs supplied with the machine bought 2nd hand, a few pirate menudiscs from a friend, and magazine covers) 82.46.180.56 23:51, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

text: Please do, but it would be better served in the Jack Tramiel article. —Pixel8 16:15, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  comparisons with megadrive 

message: where?
also... NEOchrome RULES!!!
I loved that program... its far superior to any (affordable) pc equivalent.
Umm, yeah. WookMuff 08:43, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  neutrality dispute? 

message: Personally, I believe that listing examples of the ST memory as 512 kilobytes but 1 mebibyte (rather than 1 megabyte) to be confusing. Although Italic texttechnicallyItalic text 1024kb is a mebibyte (that's 1024 kibibytes, not 1024 kilobytes), this is a naming convention that's not used as often as megabyte. Certainly in the original days of the ST, it was marketed with memory listed in megabytes, and to me it's rather pedantic to list memory in mebibytes here (especially as the kilobytes here are still kilobytes, and not kibibytes).
Will anyone be offended it the "MiB's" are changed to "MB's"?
:Does anyone other than wikipedia use those bizarre terms??? --Pelladon 04:43, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No. Some loser put those terms there and they should go back to using their SpeaknSpell. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.167.57.21 (talk) 22:33, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  I saw them in other places before Wikis were actually invented, but I still find the terminology absolutely ridiculous and some kind of strange modern politically correct thing as to not alienate those who are incapable of remembering that computer memory and storage units run in powers of 2 rather than 10... I was au fait with kilobytes being 1024 and megabytes being 1024 x 1024 whilst still in primary school (even if i couldn't remember the exact size of a meg without using a calculator). It's probably necessary I guess for the sake of encyclopaedic clarity, but still annoying as all hell and I refuse to RetCon my units in daily life as I've never heard the kibi/mebi/gibi/etc terms vocalised (the memory chips in my laptop are still staunchly five-twelve-meg). Maybe when we're more acclimatised to terabytes (tebibytes?) it'll be more widespread as the difference between the two systems will be practically 10% (1TiB = 1099511627776 bytes) - far more significant than the difference between 512000 and 524288 bytes for 512k... 82.46.180.56 23:32, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Megabytes and Mebibytes 

message: I've done some minor cleanup, but I'd like comments on something a little more major.
As the article was before my edits, the "debut" section of the history included not only the debut, but a sort of rambling description of some of the follow-on models. Much worse, the Description section switched back and forth between historical details of the machine's introductions, as well as a description of the systems themselves.
I propose this should all be collected into the history section. That is, following Debut, there would be sections for the STfm's, the Megas, the STE's, and finally the Falcon. The description section would then discuss the "baseline" ST, with much-reduced subsections for the differences in the STE's and Falcon.
What say you all?
Maury 20:18, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Feel free to improve the article, but check your facts and leave your Tramiel bashing out of it. Thanks. Pelladon 02:07, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re-arrange? 

message: Atari had originally intended to include GEM's GDOS (Graphical Device Operating System), which allowed programs to send GEM VDI (Virtual Device Interface) commands to drivers loaded by GDOS. This allowed developers to send VDI instructions to other devices simply by pointing to it.
What are the 'other devices'? What is this the main/preferred device? This section has been modified and now it is unclear. In a previous version the last sentence was actually this:
:Devices can be hardware or software, so it's not limited to just printers. What's not clear about that? --Pelladon 17:55, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: GDOS was device driver support, the sentence implies that it was a printer/plotter extension, which isn't wrong but you didn't need GDOS for printing high res to printer/plotters (some CAD programs had their own drivers for plotters). GDOS was important for vector graphics which were then extended to desktop publishing using outline fonts. GDOS really needs to go in the Atari TOS section. --Pelladon 16:59, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

text: The early versions did had bugs, but I've not heard of any issues with the newer GDOS versions. --Pelladon 16:55, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

text: No the Blitter was only for Line-A graphics. --Pelladon 16:55, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  GEM stuff 

message: :It was during this time in late July/early August that Tramiel representatives discovered the original Amiga contract. Seeing a chance to gain some leverage Jack immediately used the contract to countersue Commodore through its new subsidiary, Amiga, which was done on August 13th.
Hmm, kinda difficult to countersue when Commodore didn't own Amiga at the time (Tramiel discovered the contract before the Amiga/Commodore deal). Citation needed. Also, parts of this section reads like original research. —Pelladon 05:48, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: All the more reason to have citations. This is interesting stuff, but you have to be careful of NOT putting your analysis into this. Wikipedia wants facts and verifiable sources. If you have a sourceable quote from Leonard (that can be used to explain the countersue), that would be great because right now, that's your analysis. BTW: how come the info from the Wall Street Journal was discarded? The part where Commodore settled in favor of Atari? —Pelladon 02:19, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

text: I'm reading over articles from the WSJ, and a lot of what you're saying isn't substatiated. I strongly suggest you find references and citations to back up your story. more to follow...—Pelladon 07:56, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Strongly suggests? There you go again, you need to put a sourceable reference, no ORIGINAL RESEARCH. Hey if you want to write a book on this, great, but Wikipedia is about sourced facts, not analysis. BTW: I never saw anything from Atari stating they were to use Amiga tech (other than the contract, that was the first and only reference). —Pelladon 16:52, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Amiga contract 

message: It was also the first home computer with integral MIDI support.
What about the Yamaha CX5M - this had a midi port and I am sure was launched in 1984. It was an MSX compatible.
CX5M Info
Peter 81.99.41.208 21:50, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't agree. At least here in Norway, the Yamaha MSX computer was marketed as a home computer, although it probably sold mostly in music stores since that was where Yamaha's distribution channel was. You could make a similar claim about the ST being a "Music Computer", since running sequencer software was the one niche it actually managed to carve for itself. 84.48.79.209 00:20, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  MIDI 

message: Most of these seem to have been deleted with the like subsequently taken out by some autobot. They are mirrored here and the page looks much better with them. Anyway they can be restored?
212.159.69.172 (talk) 21:31, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: They were deleted because of image policy at Wikipedia. Non-free images (including screen shots) are to be kept to a minimum, and if possible replaced with free images. --Marty Goldberg (talk) 23:40, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  How the heck do you replace an illustrative screenshot with a "free" equivalent? It's a picture that shows what the program looks like when it's running. Surely it comes under "Free Use", unless you're suggesting they're all verboten? (Are you Nintendo?) 193.63.174.211 (talk) 13:15, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Screenshots

message: In the 7th paragraph of "Amiga contract".
Could that be right? Surely "Amiga" should be "Atari" DHR (talk) 17:46, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Tramiel's desire to replace nearly everyone at Amiga" 

message: In the last paragraph of "Amiga contract".
The supporting reference says "may very [sic] have been systems far superior to the ST's and the Amiga's were already completed". That hardly justifies the definite statement of superiority in the Wikipedia article.
My feeling is that the Atari ST was a very good design ("superior") because it was so minimal and yet powerful. Anecdotal evidence: when I bought one early on (1985 or 1986) it was perhaps half the price of an Amiga and actually superior for my applications (due to the mono monitor).
Changing the claim to "technically more advanced" is more plausible but there is precious little support for even that claim.
Since the team or teams that designed these prototypes were apparently dissolved, the chances of actually producing them quickly would seem low. DHR (talk) 18:02, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Atari got through more advanced prototype designs than I've had hot dinners. There's a very good chance that it's true, but it ultimately means nothing as they never followed through on any of them, probably because, at the time, their final development and manufacturing cost - and therefore sale price - would have been prohibitively astronomical. 193.63.174.211 (talk) 13:17, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Atari already had several prototypes of computers which were superior to both the Amiga and ST" 

message: This is clearly not true, unless you somehow exclude the Macintosh Plus which was released before the 1040ST (on January 16, 1986).
The cited BYTE article doesn't make this claim, but does support the $1/kB claim
---
Agree, the cited BYTE article is from March, and touts it as "upcoming". Not to mention, hadn't IBM made 1 MB standard in the PC-AT 5170 by then? This has been an unsourced claim for over 2 years, I'm removing it. 2601:1C2:1200:2E16:4862:4154:8A6E:E263 (talk) 07:57, 22 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  1040ST - First PC with 1Mb RAM? 

message: Hello
I would like to bring to the attention of the author/s of the Atari ST article that the statement obtained from reference 19 is incorrect.
The source referenced (Infoworld) actually states the complete opposite of what is written in the Wikipedia article - the Atari ST is NOT a Tramiel corner cutting product.
Thank you 217.65.57.154 (talk) 03:23, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference # 19 mistake 

message: Hi, sorry but the Atari ST sales of 2.1 million units is wrong. There's an article from ST Format magazine issue 20 (March 1991), page 7 where Atari announced it has sold 2.5 million ST-computers worldwide by the end of the year 1990, and 500 000 of them were in the UK at the time.
Also an article from ST Format issue 49 from 1993 writes that there are over 3 million Atari ST -computers in Europe. Also in issue 48 is mentioned that of those over 3 million, there are 950 000 ST machines sold in the UK.
https://www.atarimania.com/mags/hi_res/atari-st-format-issue-020_7.jpg 84.231.221.42 (talk) 07:43, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Atari ST Sales