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The ST for it's time was a good computer. It didn't gain the popularity that the Amiga and Mac did but it was a decent machine. Also the history of GEM could ha

The ST for it's time was a good computer. It didn't gain the popularity that the Amiga and Mac did but it was a decent machine. Also the history of GEM could have its own article.

richardw 2y ago
Good times. Remember these? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes
- TacticalCoder 2y ago
  Yes but they were nowhere near as successful as the Atari ST or Amiga. They arrived kinda late to the party compared to the Amiga 1000 (1985) or Atari ST. You'd occasionally see one but the personal computers scene in Europe was clearly dominated by the Atari ST and the Amiga. You'd also see a few Macintosh. The Archimedes has always been a rare sighting.
  - richardw 2y ago
    Yup, why I mentioned it. I first saw a mouse on an ST, triggering much desire compared to my Amstrad CPC-464. The Amiga arrived and that was gorgeous. I would try draw the Porsche pic pixel by pixel (https://imgur.com/gallery/jim-sachs-porsche-on-amiga-OMc99EB https://imgur.com/gallery/jim-sachs-porsche-on-amiga-OMc99EB) on my own hand-crafted drawing program but the Amstrad has a tough time of it. Finally later got an Amiga 500. Never saw an Archimedes outside of magazines but the talk of RISC was intriguing.
    - rbanffy 2y ago
      > Amstrad CPC-464. This is another jewel few people in the Americas have experienced.
      - cycomanic 2y ago
        Called Schneider in Germany. I never could afford the disk drive unfortunately. That used 3" CF2 disks a format that nobody knows about any longer (arguably superior to the 5 1/4 disks used by the C64 which was the main competitor).
- lproven 2y ago
  Still got one. :-) And unlike the ST or Mac or Amiga, its OS is still around, still FOSS, still actively maintained, and runs on modern bare-metal hardware, without emulation. https://www.riscosopen.org/content/ https://www.riscosopen.org/content/ That says a lot about success and longevity.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    It has the advantage of running on ARM, which is still easy to obtain. I also think there are OSs for the Atari ST that are open-source and still maintained, but unfortunately, no 68K processors are easy to come by.
    - lproven 2y ago
      That is true. Several ST OSes have FOSS recreations. DR's layered, cleanly-layered design lent itself to piecemeal re-implementations. Aranym runs AFROS, with multitasking thanks to MINT, which is a compilation of FOSS bits: https://aranym.github.io/afros.html https://aranym.github.io/afros.html Aranym needed a ROM and the devs wrote a skeleton with most stuff stubbed out. This has led to a full scale ST TOS recreation, with the original's limitations: it's single-tasking and so on: https://emutos.sourceforge.io/ https://emutos.sourceforge.io/ The FreeMINT OS is also FOSS: https://freemint.github.io/ https://freemint.github.io/ MagiC was a 3rd party commercial re-implementation: https://gitlab.com/AndreasK/Atari-Mac-MagiC-Sources https://gitlab.com/AndreasK/Atari-Mac-MagiC-Sources https://gitlab.com/AndreasK/AtariX https://gitlab.com/AndreasK/AtariX But there's no new 68k hardware. Emu68 is working on a JIT runtime for the Raspberry Pi: https://github.com/michalsc/Emu68 https://github.com/michalsc/Emu68
andrewstuart 2y ago
Yes a solid machine. It might have been impressive but it had to stand next to the dazzlingly attractive Amiga.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  Only for Amiga fans with a complex of some kind. I was a member of a local Atari users group and none of us were comparing to the Amiga? Mac and PC were the competitors because most of us were interested in productivity software and the like. Many were running Mac emulation on the ST and the biggest uses were MIDI sequencers and DTP. Amiga was just something else. Impressive achievement, certainly. But for what it was I had no need to pay that kind of extra $$ just to play games better.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  > dazzlingly attractive Amiga. dazzlingly expensive as well.
benou 2y ago
Atari ST serie was very popular in Europe, more popular than Mac or Amiga at the time I believe.

The ST for it's time was a good computer. It didn't gain the popularity that the Amiga and Mac did but it was a decent machine. Also the history of GEM could have its own article.

richardw 2y ago

Good times. Remember these? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes

TacticalCoder 2y ago
Yes but they were nowhere near as successful as the Atari ST or Amiga. They arrived kinda late to the party compared to the Amiga 1000 (1985) or Atari ST. You'd occasionally see one but the personal computers scene in Europe was clearly dominated by the Atari ST and the Amiga. You'd also see a few Macintosh. The Archimedes has always been a rare sighting.
- richardw 2y ago
  Yup, why I mentioned it. I first saw a mouse on an ST, triggering much desire compared to my Amstrad CPC-464. The Amiga arrived and that was gorgeous. I would try draw the Porsche pic pixel by pixel (https://imgur.com/gallery/jim-sachs-porsche-on-amiga-OMc99EB https://imgur.com/gallery/jim-sachs-porsche-on-amiga-OMc99EB) on my own hand-crafted drawing program but the Amstrad has a tough time of it. Finally later got an Amiga 500. Never saw an Archimedes outside of magazines but the talk of RISC was intriguing.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    > Amstrad CPC-464. This is another jewel few people in the Americas have experienced.
    - cycomanic 2y ago
      Called Schneider in Germany. I never could afford the disk drive unfortunately. That used 3" CF2 disks a format that nobody knows about any longer (arguably superior to the 5 1/4 disks used by the C64 which was the main competitor).
lproven 2y ago
Still got one. :-) And unlike the ST or Mac or Amiga, its OS is still around, still FOSS, still actively maintained, and runs on modern bare-metal hardware, without emulation. https://www.riscosopen.org/content/ https://www.riscosopen.org/content/ That says a lot about success and longevity.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  It has the advantage of running on ARM, which is still easy to obtain. I also think there are OSs for the Atari ST that are open-source and still maintained, but unfortunately, no 68K processors are easy to come by.
  - lproven 2y ago
    That is true. Several ST OSes have FOSS recreations. DR's layered, cleanly-layered design lent itself to piecemeal re-implementations. Aranym runs AFROS, with multitasking thanks to MINT, which is a compilation of FOSS bits: https://aranym.github.io/afros.html https://aranym.github.io/afros.html Aranym needed a ROM and the devs wrote a skeleton with most stuff stubbed out. This has led to a full scale ST TOS recreation, with the original's limitations: it's single-tasking and so on: https://emutos.sourceforge.io/ https://emutos.sourceforge.io/ The FreeMINT OS is also FOSS: https://freemint.github.io/ https://freemint.github.io/ MagiC was a 3rd party commercial re-implementation: https://gitlab.com/AndreasK/Atari-Mac-MagiC-Sources https://gitlab.com/AndreasK/Atari-Mac-MagiC-Sources https://gitlab.com/AndreasK/AtariX https://gitlab.com/AndreasK/AtariX But there's no new 68k hardware. Emu68 is working on a JIT runtime for the Raspberry Pi: https://github.com/michalsc/Emu68 https://github.com/michalsc/Emu68

andrewstuart 2y ago

Yes a solid machine. It might have been impressive but it had to stand next to the dazzlingly attractive Amiga.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago
Only for Amiga fans with a complex of some kind. I was a member of a local Atari users group and none of us were comparing to the Amiga? Mac and PC were the competitors because most of us were interested in productivity software and the like. Many were running Mac emulation on the ST and the biggest uses were MIDI sequencers and DTP. Amiga was just something else. Impressive achievement, certainly. But for what it was I had no need to pay that kind of extra $$ just to play games better.
rbanffy 2y ago
> dazzlingly attractive Amiga. dazzlingly expensive as well.

benou 2y ago

Atari ST serie was very popular in Europe, more popular than Mac or Amiga at the time I believe.