Atari ST+. What am I missing?

[Sykobee (Briggsy)]

It was and especially is. Others can confirm that for sure. The Amiga used a format which overdid it with 3.5" discs, so after a couple of weeks the discs usually got errors. The format writes data too dense.

I never had that problem with my Amigas. Nobody else I knew had that problem either. I've never seen this issue ever talked about before, and I've been on Amiga forums since the 90s. I think this is another myth generated in the ST vs Amiga "wars" tbh.

[Sykobee (Briggsy)]

Those were german magazines, english ones were much too expensive if you could grab hold of them at all.

We were often reminded of the flickering modes that you had to "endure" when working with the Amiga. So consequently serious work was out of the question, buy a PC or ST for that.

Well, the flickering only occurred in interlace modes, such as 640x512. But the Amiga chipset (the original one anyway, not the enhancements that followed) didn't have the flexibility to program its own modes due to fixed vertical and horizontal frequencies. Hence you got high resolution monitors such as the A2024 - 1024x1024 from a PAL signal, but only at 10-15Hz image update frequency (the monitor still scanned at 60Hz).


The Atari ST's monochrome monitor (SM124) synced at a higher rate to gets its 640x400 72Hz black and white image. So this was a good way, if you had the monitor, to get a stable higher resolution image with no flickering.  Most people used the ST or the Amiga on a TV however, and probably had a lower quality high resolution image than a CPC owner on a green screen.

[Bryce]

It was and especially is. Others can confirm that for sure. The Amiga used a format which overdid it with 3.5" discs, so after a couple of weeks the discs usually got errors. The format writes data too dense.

?? Never heard of this either. I have hundreds of Amiga disks, both self-written and commercial and I don't think I've ever had one fail on me.

Bryce.

[arnoldemu]

It was and especially is. Others can confirm that for sure. The Amiga used a format which overdid it with 3.5" discs, so after a couple of weeks the discs usually got errors. The format writes data too dense.

The bit density of the format is the same as on the ST.

It did have more sectors per track, and the structure of the headers was different compared to ST. Perhaps that was the issue?

The problem was cheap discs, especially HD ones with stickers over the holes to make them DD.

[joska]

The problem was cheap discs, especially HD ones with stickers over the holes to make them DD.

Me and my friends bought disks in bulk so we all used the same disks. The Amiga-owners (myself included when I had one) were the only ones to experience problems. "Not a DOS disk", "Disk not validated" or garbled data. Quite often the disk could be repaired ("disk validation?" It's been a long time!) but it took literally hours. Regular backups were much more efficient.

[joska]

We were often reminded of the flickering modes that you had to "endure" when working with the Amiga. So consequently serious work was out of the question, buy a PC or ST for that.

I have experience from both and I can assure you that you didn't want to do any word processing on an Amiga in interlaced modes. Headache guaranteed. In non-interlaced modes it was just like the ST in colour modes, no flickering but less usable screenmodes. 200-250 lines doesn't cut it when working with a WYSIWYG wordprocessor or DTP package. I always preferred the monochrome (and cheap!) SM124 on my ST. I even used it when programming demos and (simple) games, I had both the SM124 and my colour TV connected via a switch-box, so I only used the TV when playing games or testing stuff I'd coded.

[remax]

The Ark of Captain Blood was developped and released at first on Atari. So to try the real thing, you have to use an ST.

If i remember well the version is a bit superior on a few aspects.

I had a friend that had one, i remember playing Kick Off, Bubble Bobble, Cruise for a Corpse...

[TFM]

The Ark of Captain Blood was developped and released at first on Atari. So to try the real thing, you have to use an ST.

Ha! And therefore the CPC version is very well too, because..... it's not a damn speccy port. 

[joska]

Stunt Car Racer is also one of those games that are better on the ST than the Amiga. It's also one of the first popular games that allowed multiplayer gaming via a nullmodem cable. Highly recommended.

No Second Price is also a favourite, Super Sprint is great, Magic Pockets too. And Rick Dangerous of course, which is great on every platform I've tried it on. I also liked Zool on the STE. I have never tried it on the ST. Oids was fun, and Midi Maze fantastic if you had a friend (or 31) with ST and a midi-cable. Vroom was a good racing game. And don't forget Nebulus!

[redbox]

I think the ST was (/is) viewed as the underdog but in my book that just makes it all the more satisfying and intriguing when the most is squeezed out of it (much like the CPC).

Take the YM for example - in my view it sounds sweet and that's because it's a "real" soundchip.  The Amiga just played a bunch of samples, which is no different to today's music.  But through clever programming and musical ability, the ST sounds unique.  There's a reason chip music fanboys love it so much

[ralferoo]

Take the YM for example - in my view it sounds sweet and that's because it's a "real" soundchip.  The Amiga just played a bunch of samples, which is no different to today's music. But through clever programming and musical ability, the ST sounds unique.  There's a reason chip music fanboys love it so much

The flipside is that the soundchip in the ST was already retro when the ST came out...

[joska]

The flipside is that the soundchip in the ST was already retro when the ST came out...

It looks like the Atari engineers didn't pick the YM because of it's audio qualities, but because it was a cheap and easy way to drive the printerport Atari wanted to create a "professional" computer for the masses and didn't really care about gaming. And it shows.

I like the YM. It's even better on the STE, where you can combine it with DMA PCM stereo sound. But there's no question about it, Paula is a much more capable soundchip.

[Bryce]

It was most likely a cost compromise. The YM was dirt cheap at the time compared to higher end ICs.

Bryce.

[Gryzor]

Wow, that Ultrasyd track several posts back is awesome!


Why is STunt (heh, a typo but I'm leaving it in ) Car Racer better on the ST? Speed, probably, like with most vector games?

[joska]

Speed, probably, like with most vector games?

Yes, it was a little bit faster and more responsive on the ST. You always won when you played against an Amiga 

[Gryzor]

Heh, me and a friend similarly found Bomber to be much easier on his Amiga than on my 1040...

[MacDeath]

The Ark of Captain Blood was developped and released at first on Atari. So to try the real thing, you have to use an ST.

yeah, Philip Ulrich the creator (ERE informatique the EXXOS the CRYO, did Dune too), came to computers from music,
he started on Speccy (yeah I know) then went into Atari ST. because he was first an electronic musician.

Philippe Ulrich - Wikipédia

He was one of the rare to prefer ST over Amiga.
Be cause he like MIDI and professional interface and mega RAM...

J-M Jarre did the music on captainBlood's Ark because they were friend (french electronic music pionneers and Atari ST fans)

Ha! And therefore the CPC version is very well too, because..... it's not a damn speccy port.

mostly because it is a french game to begin with, and so an atari ST port indeed.

[TFM]

mostly because it is a french game to begin with, and so an atari ST port indeed.

Well, glad it was no Thompson port then.

[Gryzor]

First played Captain Blood on the CPC, and was blown away. When I got my ST I got it on it too, and was promptly blown away anew.

[MacDeath]

Well, glad it was no Thompson port then.

Sapiens was a Thomson TO7/MO5 port.
5th Axis too.

To be fair, if the TO8 had an AY soundchip it would really be an 8 bit Atari ST...

CPU : 6809 (1mhz though, almost equivalent to a 4mhz Z80...somewhat... can run OS-9 and still a great CPU)
RAM : 256K
Video Modes : same as CPC but 4096 palette...

just its sound is a simple beeper... ouch...


BTW go for the STe, it has much more unexploited potential.
But overall ST is inferior to Amiga as ST wasn't meant to do games but serious bizness... badass MIDI machine, and great work environment.

[ralferoo]

Yeah, it's strange that the ST got this reputation as the de-facto MIDI machine. I remember buying a MIDI adapter for my Amiga for about £5 back in the day. Thanks to the custom chips, the Amiga serial port was easily able to do 31250 baud unlike the serial port on almost every other computer, so the MIDI adapter was just a line driver and an opto-isolator for the input.

I guess they figured the low end machines would be just used to games and the high end ones would have more use for a serial port than a MIDI port, but it's strange there was never an official option as it would have been so easy to have matched that feature.

[MacDeath]

Atari ST Top 100 Games Hits (past week)

There are good ST games, just choose them.







As for the Amstrad, you don't go for a shitty game, you choose only the very best.
All those french games that were good on CPC are better on ST.


Games using mouse are good as well.

Dungeon master is the very best typical ST game.
Lot's of simulators too.

Not that those games aren't always better on Amiga, sometimes the Amiga version is a plain ST port, or they are simply Good on ST.


Concerning the green OS... yeah. that's a really lite version of GEM and it is bettero n PC1512 (640x200x16...yeah !)

But you can find some alternatives here and there or updated versions.
The ROMs are on socket so you may change the ROM, or use he cartridge port for some moddings...
You can change the colours used, perhaps then some little circuit bendings to édit some decent saves with GEM.
Mais get a version of OS-9 for 68000 computer too.

Nice thing with ST compaired to amiga : you can write disk on you PC with inbuilt Floppy, just like an amstrad CPC.

Saddly I found out many programms or cracked versions used specific formats and just wouldn't fit on normal format... I should check how to do that, lol... couldn't play any demo yet because of that.

Atari TOS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[ralferoo]

Nice thing with ST compaired to amiga : you can write disk on you PC with inbuilt Floppy, just like an amstrad CPC.

You can use PC formatted disks on the Amiga too, although people did so only for file exchange purposes because of the much lower capacity (720KB compared to 880KB - 9 sectors per track instead of 11). There are several options, Messydos was probably the most well known.

[MacDeath]

Anyway this reminds me of the badassness of my first PC.


AT286 à 8-12mhz (always 12 with turbo button...)
EGA + colour monitor
640K
3"1/2  HD (1.44megs)
5"1/4 HD (1.2 megs)
HDD 80megs
Mouse (yes it was optionnal...)


Only missing thing was a soundcard (soundblaster or even jsut an AdLib actually) and IBM not screwing the EGA from the beginning...




Those big DMAs and HD disk drives were really top notch at the time.
STe could have used such HD floppies..

[TFM]

You can use PC formatted disks on the Amiga too, although people did so only for file exchange purposes because of the much lower capacity (720KB compared to 880KB - 9 sectors per track instead of 11). There are several options, Messydos was probably the most well known.

Well 720 KB is 82% of 880 KB. That's just a bit less. But the 880 KB format is highly unstable. All Amiga guys I know constantly complain that they have to re-write their discs after a couple of days. 3.5" discs were not made for 880 KB, and I think it was a very silly idea to use that format. With 720 KB or similar formats discs hold data for decades, my oldest one is from 1987 and still works like a charm.