520ST

[nd2003grad]

Oh wise and good Atariage community:

 

I am sure this has been asked and answered but I can't really find said answer. I have an opportunity to buy a complete "plain Jane" Atari 520 ST. I'm a (gulp) Amiga guy and I'm wondering if there is any comparable value in this to a 500? My understanding is that the original machines weren't anywhere near what you get out of a later model or the prohibitively expensive 1040STE if I want a one-stop for my ST needs? Is this correct?

 

Many thanks.

[mattsoft]

Oh wise and good Atariage community:

 

I am sure this has been asked and answered but I can't really find said answer. I have an opportunity to buy a complete "plain Jane" Atari 520 ST. I'm a (gulp) Amiga guy and I'm wondering if there is any comparable value in this to a 500? My understanding is that the original machines weren't anywhere near what you get out of a later model or the prohibitively expensive 1040STE if I want a one-stop for my ST needs? Is this correct?

 

Many thanks.

 

I'm more of an Amiga guy myself but do have a few ST (and STe) computers. The 520STe is much closer to an Amiga 500 (and arguably better) in terms of technical specifications than the 520ST as it has the enhanced audio and graphics that put it on par with the ECS of the Amiga. The STe also has a built-in PSU, external ACSI bus for HDD support, and is easily upgraded to 4MB of RAM. Even though there were not a lot games made for the STe specifically, if you were to have 1 ST computer, I would go STe because the few enhanced games are pretty good: Alien Blast and Stardust are 2 of my faves.

[Justin Payne]

If you're just wanting to get your hands on an ST, go for it, but the original ST, which is what I still have from back in the day, is going to be a little underwhelming to a Amiga owner. The OS (AKA: TOS 1.0) is a bit buggy so you'd want to upgrade that (1.2 or 1.4. Can't remember which works in the original 520st). Also, no internal floppy drive but this is fine because you'll probably end up getting a SD solution. Also, I was able to get mine upgrade to 2 megs by a guy that use to fix them for a living but I'm not sure how difficult that was to do since I didn't watch him, only saw the "after". I think he piggybacked the RAM chips.

Anyway, I think you might be more happy with a later system, something like a Mega or STE (or Falcon if you want to empty your bank account). The problem is that these are more desired so you're going to pay for one.

There might be some upgrades that that enhance the ST experience for these older versions but I haven't spent too much time looking into them because I don't intend to upgrade my 520st.

 

The problem with the Amiga and the ST is a lot of the games were made for both and the Amiga was just a little more media capable than the ST but it's a great little system to have in a collection and I had years of fun with the thing.
The one thing I loved about the ST was that the high res was in monochrome (Yes, to use all of the resolutions you had to have a color and monochrome monitor). The monochrome was so sharp that I would use it anytime I was coding or even tried to find games for it. Of course, unless you have one today you'll have to use a more modern display but it won't come close to the monochrome image.

 

Hope that helps

[nd2003grad]

These really did help a lot. Thank you!

[zzip]

Oh wise and good Atariage community:

 

I am sure this has been asked and answered but I can't really find said answer. I have an opportunity to buy a complete "plain Jane" Atari 520 ST. I'm a (gulp) Amiga guy and I'm wondering if there is any comparable value in this to a 500? My understanding is that the original machines weren't anywhere near what you get out of a later model or the prohibitively expensive 1040STE if I want a one-stop for my ST needs? Is this correct?

 

Many thanks.

 

If you are talking about the original 1985 Atari ST with TOS on disk, it is the worst of the ST, after loading TOS, there's barely any memory left to do anything useful.

[atarian1]

 

If you are talking about the original 1985 Atari ST with TOS on disk, it is the worst of the ST, after loading TOS, there's barely any memory left to do anything useful.

 

True, but nowadays, TOS ROMs are pretty cheap and that would address the RAM issue.

 

[tjlazer]

Most 520ST's have TOS in ROM, it's pretty rare to find one with TOS on disk. TOS 1.4 is the latest ROM that will work and recommended. Also make sure you get a SF314 drive as i t's DSDD (720k). The SF 354 is SSDD (360k) and hard to transfer software from the PC to ST.

 

On an older PC with built in floppy, you can easily transfer disk images to a real disk. Otherwise you can format the disks to 720k and transfer files to disk on a newer USB floppy drive. But they have to be files and not images. I have a collection of PRG singe filed games if you want, send me a PM.