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Absolutely. Other things the ST was better at: • single-floppy operation (because the OS was in ROM) • being useful for productivity with only 1/2MB RAM (ROM

Absolutely. Other things the ST was better at: • single-floppy operation (because the OS was in ROM) • being useful for productivity with only 1/2MB RAM (ROM again) • being more affordable until a price war that killed both companies Me, I owned an Acorn Archimedes. But I used them all. A single-floppy Mac or Amiga was a massive PITA to use. More RAM helped but didn't cure it. Until adding a hard disk didn't triple the price (end of the 1980s, early 1990s) you needed dual floppies for Mac or Amiga. ST was... OK with one.

lproven 2y ago
I'd also add a footnote that Amiga stability was awful, and the Mac not much better.
- icedchai 2y ago
  I had Amigas from around 1989 (starting with an A500) through 1994 (A3000.) The system stability improved incredibly with OS 2.0. However, fundamentally, there were problems that could not be fixed. The entire OS was based on shared memory and message passing based on pointers. Tasks (processes) would read/write each others memory all the time. There was basically no way to implement memory protection without breaking all compatibility.
  - cmrdporcupine 2y ago
    Exactly this. As much derided as the ST's OS is by Amiga fans, in actuality its fundamental architecture had more potential for future improvement than the Amiga's, though that never happened (in the mainstream, there's now FreeMiNT and friends). Why? Because it implemented syscalls through proper TRAPs, for one. While the actual implementation of the core OS wasn't multitasking or even have re-entrant syscalls, others came along and made it so (MiNT, etc) while retaining syscall compatibility. And the thing can be made to use memory protection, etc. even. The problem with the whole Amiga package is that it was brilliant for 1985, but extremely dated for the mid-90s and the reliance on the custom chips arch there just really couldn't evolve well.
    - rjsw 2y ago
      You could do cooperative multitasking on the ST by compiling apps as GEM desk accessories, I modified MicroGNU Emacs so that I could have it running alongside other things.
weebull 2y ago
One thing in the STs favour was that it's core processor was clocked slightly faster. It needed to be because it didn't have the coprocessors for memory copies and sound that the Amiga had. However, if those processors weren't useful for the task, the ST would be a little quicker. This manifested in 3D games where the processor did all the rasterisation. If the Amiga could bring it's blitter to bare, it won every time. If not, the ST would squeak it.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  The approach the ST took with the original "Shifter" chip of just doing video as memory mapped raw bitmap barely squeaked out for games. Frame rates were pretty bad. 8mhz 68000 and that bus speed wasn't responsive enough to really kick it. That era still really needed dedicated blit HW support. (As the Amiga showed). But that approach only really mattered until clock speeds went up and memory became slower than CPU speed. It's a shame the Blitter chip that came with the STe never shipped with the original ST (wasn't ready in time) and just never really got large market penetration after that. It was actually a decent design. The STe feature-wise is quite competitive with the Amiga overall, while keeping the simplicity of the ST's architecture. There just wasn't enough of them shipped for software houses to bother making games that used it. That, and I have a couple Atari Falcon 030s here, and they're really amazing. They really nailed it with that machine, before packing it in. Better (and very good) video modes, amazing sound, onboard 56k DSP chip & S/PDIF audio, both IDE & SCSI drive support, 68030 processor, up to 14MB RAM.
mitjam 2y ago
Oh yes, I sat in front of a small Grundig TV, with a Data Becker book full of bug ridden code trying to learn C. I needed to swap disks three times for each compilation on an Amiga 500.

lproven 2y ago

I'd also add a footnote that Amiga stability was awful, and the Mac not much better.

icedchai 2y ago
I had Amigas from around 1989 (starting with an A500) through 1994 (A3000.) The system stability improved incredibly with OS 2.0. However, fundamentally, there were problems that could not be fixed. The entire OS was based on shared memory and message passing based on pointers. Tasks (processes) would read/write each others memory all the time. There was basically no way to implement memory protection without breaking all compatibility.
- cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  Exactly this. As much derided as the ST's OS is by Amiga fans, in actuality its fundamental architecture had more potential for future improvement than the Amiga's, though that never happened (in the mainstream, there's now FreeMiNT and friends). Why? Because it implemented syscalls through proper TRAPs, for one. While the actual implementation of the core OS wasn't multitasking or even have re-entrant syscalls, others came along and made it so (MiNT, etc) while retaining syscall compatibility. And the thing can be made to use memory protection, etc. even. The problem with the whole Amiga package is that it was brilliant for 1985, but extremely dated for the mid-90s and the reliance on the custom chips arch there just really couldn't evolve well.
  - rjsw 2y ago
    You could do cooperative multitasking on the ST by compiling apps as GEM desk accessories, I modified MicroGNU Emacs so that I could have it running alongside other things.

weebull 2y ago

One thing in the STs favour was that it's core processor was clocked slightly faster. It needed to be because it didn't have the coprocessors for memory copies and sound that the Amiga had. However, if those processors weren't useful for the task, the ST would be a little quicker. This manifested in 3D games where the processor did all the rasterisation. If the Amiga could bring it's blitter to bare, it won every time. If not, the ST would squeak it.

cmrdporcupine 2y ago
The approach the ST took with the original "Shifter" chip of just doing video as memory mapped raw bitmap barely squeaked out for games. Frame rates were pretty bad. 8mhz 68000 and that bus speed wasn't responsive enough to really kick it. That era still really needed dedicated blit HW support. (As the Amiga showed). But that approach only really mattered until clock speeds went up and memory became slower than CPU speed. It's a shame the Blitter chip that came with the STe never shipped with the original ST (wasn't ready in time) and just never really got large market penetration after that. It was actually a decent design. The STe feature-wise is quite competitive with the Amiga overall, while keeping the simplicity of the ST's architecture. There just wasn't enough of them shipped for software houses to bother making games that used it. That, and I have a couple Atari Falcon 030s here, and they're really amazing. They really nailed it with that machine, before packing it in. Better (and very good) video modes, amazing sound, onboard 56k DSP chip & S/PDIF audio, both IDE & SCSI drive support, 68030 processor, up to 14MB RAM.

mitjam 2y ago

Oh yes, I sat in front of a small Grundig TV, with a Data Becker book full of bug ridden code trying to learn C. I needed to swap disks three times for each compilation on an Amiga 500.