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I'm a Commodore guy, but there is one thing I've always envied about Atari ST owners. No, not the MIDI interface. The ST just looks so damn good. To me, it's st

I'm a Commodore guy, but there is one thing I've always envied about Atari ST owners. No, not the MIDI interface. The ST just looks so damn good. To me, it's still a high point in industrial design.

WillAdams 2y ago
The irony is that Jack Tramiel (of Commodore) fired all of his developers over a disagreement, and Atari stopped development of a successor to the Atari 400/800, letting all of their developers go --- guess who Tramiel hired? When Atari decided to stay in the computer business, guess who they hired?
vardump 2y ago
Agreed, it looks pretty nice. I remember admiring it in a computer store. ST is also a bit faster. Although I take my blitter, copper, hardware display overscan and flexible per scanline resolution & color depth, sprites and 4 channel PCM audio any day over an ST. Sadly many early games were direct ports from ST, not utilizing Amiga's hardware.
EvanAnderson 2y ago
While I know this is common knowledge for people who were around back then I think it's worth pointing out because it's so wild. The Atari ST was designed by ex-Commodore people. The Commodore Amiga, arguably the biggest direct rival of the ST, was designed by ex-Atari people. (Both lost to the IBM PC in the end.) The backstory of Atari, Commodore, and Amiga, Inc. is a great one and almost feels like fiction made real.
Findecanor 2y ago
One simple but genius detail about the Atari ST's case design is that the case screws on the bottom have square holes while other screws have round holes. You don't have to learn beforehand which screws are which, or risk loosening things inside that you didn't intend to.
gramie 2y ago
Aside from the function keys, which were angled to make it as easy as possible to hit the wrong one! I loved my monochrome 520ST. First C programming (Megamax C, IIRC), first online communications (BBS). How did I afford it when I was an engineering student living on about $7,000 a year, including $1,700 tuition?
glimshe 2y ago
One of the images in TFA shows the Atari being called a "Supercomputer". Interestingly, NVIDIA announced a few days ago they were releasing an "AI Supercomputer". One thing I will say... The Supercomputers of old were a lot prettier (and let's not even mention actual Supercomputers such as the Cray and the Connection Machine)!
rbanffy 2y ago
I really appreciate the ST's simplicity. The Amiga is insanely powerful, and the various specialized accelerators do a great job in making it a unique machine, but the ST, in comparison, does a lot with almost nothing - RAM, a CPU, a frame buffer (in that same RAM), a couple peripherals for things like sound, floppy, and hard disks (and MIDI, of course) and that's about it.

I'm a Commodore guy, but there is one thing I've always envied about Atari ST owners. No, not the MIDI interface. The ST just looks so damn good. To me, it's still a high point in industrial design.

WillAdams 2y ago

The irony is that Jack Tramiel (of Commodore) fired all of his developers over a disagreement, and Atari stopped development of a successor to the Atari 400/800, letting all of their developers go --- guess who Tramiel hired? When Atari decided to stay in the computer business, guess who they hired?

vardump 2y ago

Agreed, it looks pretty nice. I remember admiring it in a computer store. ST is also a bit faster. Although I take my blitter, copper, hardware display overscan and flexible per scanline resolution & color depth, sprites and 4 channel PCM audio any day over an ST. Sadly many early games were direct ports from ST, not utilizing Amiga's hardware.

EvanAnderson 2y ago

While I know this is common knowledge for people who were around back then I think it's worth pointing out because it's so wild. The Atari ST was designed by ex-Commodore people. The Commodore Amiga, arguably the biggest direct rival of the ST, was designed by ex-Atari people. (Both lost to the IBM PC in the end.) The backstory of Atari, Commodore, and Amiga, Inc. is a great one and almost feels like fiction made real.

Findecanor 2y ago

One simple but genius detail about the Atari ST's case design is that the case screws on the bottom have square holes while other screws have round holes. You don't have to learn beforehand which screws are which, or risk loosening things inside that you didn't intend to.

gramie 2y ago

Aside from the function keys, which were angled to make it as easy as possible to hit the wrong one! I loved my monochrome 520ST. First C programming (Megamax C, IIRC), first online communications (BBS). How did I afford it when I was an engineering student living on about $7,000 a year, including $1,700 tuition?

glimshe 2y ago

One of the images in TFA shows the Atari being called a "Supercomputer". Interestingly, NVIDIA announced a few days ago they were releasing an "AI Supercomputer". One thing I will say... The Supercomputers of old were a lot prettier (and let's not even mention actual Supercomputers such as the Cray and the Connection Machine)!

rbanffy 2y ago

I really appreciate the ST's simplicity. The Amiga is insanely powerful, and the various specialized accelerators do a great job in making it a unique machine, but the ST, in comparison, does a lot with almost nothing - RAM, a CPU, a frame buffer (in that same RAM), a couple peripherals for things like sound, floppy, and hard disks (and MIDI, of course) and that's about it.