Atari ST vs. Amiga

[frank1974]

 

Maybe people didn't like the look of Workbench 1.x but end of the day it was a very sweet multitasking GUI...something unique in 1986 for a home computer. And the LINE-A hardware system calls for the GEM graphics on the ST were really badly coded (hence a software blitter for GEM is as fast as using a real STE) so GEM wasn't perfect at all and painfully slow to use without either TurboST.prg or a real blitter.

 

The STE blitter is nowhere near as integrated as that of the Amiga in the chipset either....ditto the DACs in the STE are nowhere near as flexible or integrated.

 

 

The reason software blitters like Turbo ST *seem* fast is that most GEM software forces 8 pixel alignment for window placement for performance reasons. The GEM desktop ain't doing a generic bit blit at all.

Throw something that requires a bit shift as part of a bit blit and the STE blitter will murder a software implementation. There seems to be a misconception amongst Amiga fans that the ST blitter is slow and/or useless.

That is not the case. It's fast, much faster than software blitting on the 68k. You can chuck the whole screen around at an arbitrary bit position in a pal frame and still have CPU time left. You cannot do that in software on a 68k.

 

Frank

[stirrell]

One thing that I remember about using an Amiga 500 with a single floppy drive was that I had to swap floppies an awful lot. My memory is that it crashed more frequently than my STe. But, yes, I know I should have gotten another drive :-). But I seem to remember that being another advantage of having TOS on ROM - not having to swap the Workbench disk in all the time. To me, TOS seemed easier to use at the time (high school-age). That, along with the price difference, caused me to choose the ST over the Amiga. I also have memories of the 500 crashing a fair amount more than the STe. That said, my Falcon crashed an awful lot and MultiTOS was extremely slow (as were the redraw rates on the Falcon in 640 x 480 x 256). I think of the ST being a cheap, easy-to-use and powerful system - it was a much better deal than a Macintosh in the 80s and much easier to use than Windows 3.1/DOS. The Amiga was definitely more powerful but between the stock models at the time, I chose a 1040 STe. But I think they were both great machines.

[FastRobPlus]

One thing that I remember about using an Amiga 500 with a single floppy drive was that I had to swap floppies an awful lot. My memory is that it crashed more frequently than my STe.

 

The (early) Amiga gave a Guru error whenever software didn't load properly for whatever reason. You looked up the code to get a clue where the compatibility problem might be. The ST either bombed (and you could look these up) or just folded up and went back to the desktop with no error. The would likely have given the appearance of the Amiga "crashing" more frequently, when they were likely equal.

 

Funny, reading the other threads, it appears that there are a lot more people than I would have thought who liked the ST becuse it was so primitive. It worked when it worked, and it simply stopped workig or dropped out to the desktop when it failed. No errors, no opportinities to self-remedy of any kind.

[+DarkLord]

Atari ST (not STE!) has no

 

- 4 channel 8bit Digi DMA sound

- no softscrolling by hardware

- interleaved bitplanes

- no copper list

- no custom gfx modes

- no 4096 colors

- no HAM mode

- .................

 

but i loved my 1040STE but i love my A1200 more...

 

hve/tqa

 

I thought the STE had 4096 colors? I know the FM doesn't.

 

Of course what good is 4096 colors if you don't use it.

 

You can't compare the A1200 to an STe...try comparing the Atari Falcon to the A1200!

 

Also, the STe does have 4096 colors. Look at Photochrome and Spectrum pictures, even

on a bog standard 1/2 meg 520ST.

[FastRobPlus]

Atari ST (not STE!) has no

 

- 4 channel 8bit Digi DMA sound

- no softscrolling by hardware

- interleaved bitplanes

- no copper list

- no custom gfx modes

- no 4096 colors

- no HAM mode

- .................

 

but i loved my 1040STE but i love my A1200 more...

 

hve/tqa

 

I thought the STE had 4096 colors? I know the FM doesn't.

 

Of course what good is 4096 colors if you don't use it.

 

You can't compare the A1200 to an STe...try comparing the Atari Falcon to the A1200!

 

Also, the STe does have 4096 colors. Look at Photochrome and Spectrum pictures, even

on a bog standard 1/2 meg 520ST.

 

That's a descripiton of an A1000 in the text above.

[Zogging Hell]

Far be it from me to stick up for the ST here, there really are too many Amiga fanboys on this forum!

 

I've had and use(d) both machines in my time, so I thought I'd my two pennys worth. I still go with the ST being the better machine. Why?

1. Out of the box in the early days GEM was the better operating system. Sure it only had a primitive effort at multitasking, but it was clean simple and did what you needed to do. Yep the Amiga broke new ground with its multitasking and (garish) colour icons, but you needed two disk drives to make it work, the icons looked like they had been drawn by a child and gave me a migraine within three seconds (especially if you stuck the thing on a tv). Multitasking was a nice idea but it was badly implemented on the early machines (really, pulling down the whole window to change apps?!??) You also needed to have plenty of ram to run anything decent at the same time and the processor simply wasn't up to the job. I find the comparisons between late GEM and the later versions of Workbench a bit off, mainly because any ST user worth his salt would have switched to Magic or Geneva by the time any decent version of Workbench had come out and they are light years ahead.

2. High res. No comment needed here

3. The graphics issue. Er I can barely tell the difference these days (bar the odd bit of smoother scrolling) and certainly can't see the justification for half the price again. The extra colours really don't make that much difference to my older eyes. Guess with hindsight the extra power in those chips isn't really that obvious... And I won't mention 3D...

4. Sound. Yep the Amiga without doubt wins this, although the chip music is sometimes (rarely) better, thanks to its haunting qualities, the Amiga really does win out here. Still MIDI here we go

5. Apps. If you count out the games, the ST hammers the Amiga for serious apps. Cubase, Calamus, Papyrus, 3D programs, they all poop all over the Amiga's best offerings. And let's face it programs make a system, not hardware.

6. Early games (i.e. the ones that don't over push the system) are generally better on the ST. Ditto 3D games. So what we're left with are a load of games which are trying to compete with the SNES and Megadrive. And erm no they don't very well. Streetfighter being a prime example. Or virtually any late platform game. When my ST began to fall down as a games machine I brought a SNES (which handily came out at that point) and carried on using the ST for the serious stuff. I didn't even consider getting an Amiga, which I viewed as old hat.

7. Less cables. Er yep I don't really want a hotbox to toast my feet on. Or a big box sticking out the back just so I can plug it into a tv.

8. Price. In the UK, at their peek, the ST was £299 and the Amiga £399. An extra £100 for a few tracker tunes and some nicer scrolling... no chance!

 

I know this is based on the entry level units i.e. STFM/E and Amiga 500 but lets face it only a few of us fan boys (myself included in that) bought the other models. Otherwise the world would be a different, altogether better place. Now maybe I should turn this on the PC and Mac (which really do deserve a kicking, unlike the ST)...

 

So how's that for a bit of Amiga fan baiting No offence intended, just felt I had to stick up for the ST a bit!

[+save2600]

 

Multitasking was a nice idea but it was badly implemented on the early machines (really, pulling down the whole window to change apps?!??)

 

 

You can re-size a window, move it around the screen and/or switch front to back between window(s) and the Workbench. BTW: Multi-tasking is a term used to define what the processors are capable of doing - not a term used to describe user limitations lol

 

 

5. Apps. If you count out the games, the ST hammers the Amiga for serious apps. Cubase, Calamus, Papyrus, 3D programs, they all poop all over the Amiga's best offerings. And let's face it programs make a system, not hardware.

 

 

WTF?!? The Amiga was all about 3D, raytracing and rendering especially. Ever hear of the NewTek Video Toaster and accompanying software all of the television shows, Hollywood motion pictures and cartoonists used to produce broadcast quality scenes with? Pro Paint, 3D Paint, Digi-Paint, Brilliance, TV Paint, Real3D, Sculpt 4D, Caligari, Tornado3D, Lightwave, Aladdin4D, Cinema4D, Imagine and oodles more excellent paint/drawing programs that totally stretched the limits of the Amiga's built in video.

 

Re: MIDI, I always hear ST users only ever bringing up Cubase, but on the Amiga, there are about a dozen different MIDI friendly programs. I use Sonix, Bars 'N Pipes and Miditracker with great results. Always seems to just boil down to what someone is used to.

 

...a bunch of other inaccurate observations about the Miggy was edited not just for content, but because there are only so many hours in a day :-)

Edited December 7, 2009 by save2600

[FastRobPlus]

Far be it from me to stick up for the ST here, there really are too many Amiga fanboys on this forum!

 

I've had and use(d) both machines in my time, so I thought I'd my two pennys worth. I still go with the ST being the better machine. Why?

1. Out of the box in the early days GEM was the better operating system. Sure it only had a primitive effort at multitasking, but it was clean simple and did what you needed to do.

 

It had no multitasking.

 

2. High res. No comment needed here

The Amiga reached 768x482, the The Atari ST had 640x400 mono.

 

3. The graphics issue. Er I can barely tell the difference these days (bar the odd bit of smoother scrolling) and certainly can't see the justification for half the price again. The extra colours really don't make that much difference to my older eyes.

 

Okay for you I guess.

 

4. Sound. Yep the Amiga without doubt wins this, although the chip music is sometimes (rarely) better, thanks to its haunting qualities, the Amiga really does win out here. Still MIDI here we go

 

MIDI was a FUD tactic to help blunt the impact of the Amiga and the impending IIGS. A good marketing ploy.

 

5. Apps. If you count out the games, the ST hammers the Amiga for serious apps. Cubase, Calamus, Papyrus, 3D programs, they all poop all over the Amiga's best offerings. And let's face it programs make a system, not hardware.

 

You don't even know you are joking here do you? ST had good MIDI and DTP. Amiga had better everything else, but got better DTP in the end. I think it got better MIDI too. Modern DirectSound as based on Amiga audio software.

 

6. Early games (i.e. the ones that don't over push the system) are generally better on the ST.

 

Mindwalker.

 

Wow! Nice when one can extinguish an entire argument with a single word (or was that two?)

 

7. Less cables. Er yep I don't really want a hotbox to toast my feet on. Or a big box sticking out the back just so I can plug it into a tv.

 

I'm confused... So you DONT want an ST then? The AMIGA had the composite video out from day 1, the ST did not...

That said, Amiga dropped color output a year later as monitor ownership among real computer users began to rise, and the ST GAINED composite video out as they realised thier target market was too poor to afford a monitor (let alone the 2 monitors the system needed!) That kind of thing tends to happen when your entire marketing platform is based upon targeting the cheapest consumers.

-edit-

this is just too funny! You were ragging on the Amiga's external PSU too weren't you? You know the ST had an external PSU right? The Amiga had an INTERNAL PSU! And the original STs needed an external disk drive and that external disk drive ALSO needed an external PSU, right? And the Amiga could power it's external drives without the need for another PSU right?

You didn't know? Why am I not surprised? You could (and perhaps you will?) fill another 10 posts with your bizzare assumptions about the Amiga.

 

8. Price. In the UK, at their peek, the ST was £299 and the Amiga £399. An extra £100 for a few tracker tunes and some nicer scrolling... no chance!

 

And the Amstrad was cheaper still...

 

But - ah - UK. That explains some of the odd comments above. You think the A500 was the earliest (or only?) Amiga. It also explains why you don't seem to be aware that Amiga productivity software was somehting like 2:1 or 3:1 what ST software was. I don't think in the UK they used the serious Amigas.

 

 

 

So how's that for a bit of Amiga fan baiting No offence intended, just felt I had to stick up for the ST a bit!

 

I have to go back to my original point - why do ST users want to compare the two? The Amiga was a different level of computer entirely. Only Atari in Jack's FUD marketing policy ever tried to convince people the ST was at the same level.

Edited December 8, 2009 by FastRobPlus

[frank1974]

GEM has a form of co-operative multitasking via desk accessories.

The high res mode on the ST was 72hz and rock solid.

 

The Amiga didn't have anything like that till ECS came along and interlace doesn't compare.

 

Frank

 

PS They're both amazingly cool machines for different reasons. If you're an ST fan IMHO you should check out the Amiga and vice versa.

[FastRobPlus]

 

The Amiga didn't have anything like that till ECS came along and interlace doesn't compare.

 

 

Hmm... Color. Black and white... Yeah - no comparison!

[+save2600]

 

Hmm... Color. Black and white... Yeah - no comparison!

 

I think he was talking about the 72hz refresh rate of the b/w screen. That *was* a cool feature of the ST, no doubt. We had Double-NTSC/PAL modes with high resolution and the Productivity mode, but yeah - they were color and still not as soft on the eyes until we got hardware Flicker Fixers/Scan Doublers for Denise or the video slot. Still... the tradoffs were that the ST needed that special grayscale monitor and we needed a true multi-sync to take advantage of our super hi-res modes. In those days, for the prices we are talking about, didn't make sense to go b/w to me - but I can understand it for certain business applications.

Edited December 8, 2009 by save2600

[FastRobPlus]

 

Hmm... Color. Black and white... Yeah - no comparison!

 

I think he was talking about the 72khz refresh rate of the b/w screen. That *was* a cool feature of the ST, no doubt. We had Double-NTSC/PAL modes with high resolution and the Productivity mode, but yeah - they were color and still not as soft on the eyes until we got hardware Flicker Fixers/Scan Doublers for Denise or the video slot. Still... the tradoffs were that the ST needed that special grayscale monitor and we needed a true multi-sync to take advantage of our super hi-res modes. In those days, for the prices we are talking about, didn't make sense to go b/w to me - but I can understand it for certain business applications.

 

You know what was really cool? Running Euro 36 an an NTSC Amiga with a 1080 monitor and then running lacer in the startup sequence. After that, load a game like Legend of Kyrandia, Might and Magic 3 or Eye of the Beholder and marvel at how crytal clear everything looked. It was like a free VGA upgrade in software.

[desiv]

It's all a matter or perception really.

 

My first Amiga had only 1 drive, and there was swapping, but my roommate had a Mac 128k with only the 1 drive..

 

I used that briefly....

 

<shuddering and screaming ensues... "NOOOoo! Again.. and Aahhh!!!" Breathe.. breathe.. Oohhhmmmm.. Ooohhhmmm..>

 

Ok.. flashback over...

 

I never complained or worried about the Amiga disk swapping again...

 

Of course, I did eventually get a second floppy...

 

desiv

Edited December 8, 2009 by desiv

[Zogging Hell]

See it worked then..

 

Easy, I actually quite like the Amiga (and yes I do own one) but I don't have to agree with you that it was a better machine (in terms of overall package for the price). Free country (planet) after all.

 

Er I have to compare the Amiga 500 with the STFM as they were contemporary and around the same price point. I do not think the STFM is the earliest ST or the 500 the earliest Amiga. They did however shift the most units.

As far as I'm aware the 500 does have an external power box. The STFM i.e. the one that most people brought does not. I'm sure the later and the more expensive earlier models had internal power supplies.

I also wouldn't be entirely suprised if the Amiga eventually did get some better software, after all in time frame terms you are talking years later.. That's hardly fair is it. It's like comparing a 32bit PC running Windows XP to a 486 running Windows 3.1. I also don't even remember mentioning Cubase. I do enjoy the way Amiga owners always seem compare the Atari ST to the whole family! Things could get a bit more interesting with the others.. Falcon anyone.. TT. ST laptops..

And yes it does have multitasking, of sorts in GEM and all the replacement operating systems have proper multitasking.

Amstrads ha, now that is funny!

As far as the Amiga 500's high res goes, well yes if you can handle premature blindness then yes it does win.

As for monitors. Er multisync anyone. And the ST with a monitor was still only about as expensive as a Amiga 500 with a black and white TV.

Anyway, I'm only teasing you Amiga boys a bit, the idea was to pull out some classic arguments, which I doubt either of us can really say we'll win on this one. Not really dissing your box. Much

Anyway that Sharp 68000 kicked both our arses..

[+save2600]

 

You know what was really cool? Running Euro 36 an an NTSC Amiga with a 1080 monitor and then running lacer in the startup sequence. After that, load a game like Legend of Kyrandia, Might and Magic 3 or Eye of the Beholder and marvel at how crytal clear everything looked. It was like a free VGA upgrade in software.

 

LOL! Really? I'm going to try that right now (happen to have an Amiga setup right here). If I fry my monitor although it sounds like it should work mathematically), you owe me man... you owe me.. lol

 

I wonder if this trick would work under the Workbench running WHDLoad. Those games always seem to want to default to the 15khz mode...

 

And yeah desiv... unless you had a bunch of RAM where you could assign and copy Workbench to, 2nd drive was totally necessary.

[FastRobPlus]

From a historical perspective, Jack Tramiel’s Atari really taught the industry some critical mistake NOT to make.

The original ST had 512MB and a 360KB SS floppy disk drive. It sold pretty well but as prices dropped they naturally increased the RAM size and the floppy size. Within a year or two the ST gained a 720KB floppy as standard.

The issue for developers was as their games grew in size and scope they needed more disks to hold them, and more RAM. Because Amiga made upgrading RAM so trivial (no opening the case) and because the smallest floppy disk drive was 880KB, they know that the entire installed base of Amiga users had 1MB of RAM and most had that second disk drive.

 

For the ST, they know if they wanted to hit the entire installed user base, they needed to target 512MB RAM and 360KB of floppy disk space. This pushed US developers away from the ST far quicker than they would have left had Jack’s team just made the RAM upgradable and the floppy drive 720KB.

 

Today you see modern consoles learning from that mistake and trying to amortize the cost of the platform over the life of the unit in an attempt to keep the technology for getting outdated too soon as was the case with the ST.

 

It’s not all Jack’s fault. The ST came out at a time when the hardware developer did not get royalties from game sales.

[FastRobPlus]

 

You know what was really cool? Running Euro 36 an an NTSC Amiga with a 1080 monitor and then running lacer in the startup sequence. After that, load a game like Legend of Kyrandia, Might and Magic 3 or Eye of the Beholder and marvel at how crytal clear everything looked. It was like a free VGA upgrade in software.

 

LOL! Really? I'm going to try that right now (happen to have an Amiga setup right here). If I fry my monitor although it sounds like it should work mathematically), you owe me man... you owe me.. lol

 

I wonder if this trick would work under the Workbench running WHDLoad. Those games always seem to want to default to the 15khz mode...

 

And yeah desiv... unless you had a bunch of RAM where you could assign and copy Workbench to, 2nd drive was totally necessary.

 

Reading what I wrote, I make me want to try it again! It's been years. I have to haul my 1080 out (I have a FFV II in the denise socket now days) so I use a VGA monitor.

Edited December 8, 2009 by FastRobPlus

[+save2600]

Reading what I wrote, I make me want to try it again! It's been years. I have to haul my 1080 out (I have a FFV II in the denise socket now days) so I use a VGA monitor.

 

Okay - so I won't hit save then. lol I hate it when I accidentally choose an unusable screenmode, have to boot without startup-sequence, go into prefs, delete that file and re-boot.

 

And yes indeed - totally forgot about the lack of built in DD in the original ST and the fact that the early drives were only 360kb. What a joke!! We had 800+kb standard from the get go lol

Edited December 8, 2009 by save2600

[FastRobPlus]

 

Er I have to compare the Amiga 500 with the STFM as they were contemporary and around the same price point. I do not think the STFM is the earliest ST or the 500 the earliest Amiga. They did however shift the most units.

 

Fair points. If you read the Atari vs C64 thread (and I don't blame you if you didn't.) You will find that lots of folks have assumptions about sales figures, common price points, common configurations etc. that turned out to be very specific to thier region or the specific time they got into that computer. For example, I had though that the 1200 ended up selling the most (I just assumed) But for me, the A1000 and 520 ST were what has available when I was computer shopping.

I bought the 520ST.

I later sold it and got an Amiga.

So I guess my reality was different than yours, and when I think about things like the PSU or cables, my observations were 180 degrees apart.

[FastRobPlus]

Reading what I wrote, I make me want to try it again! It's been years. I have to haul my 1080 out (I have a FFV II in the denise socket now days) so I use a VGA monitor.

 

Okay - so I won't hit save then. lol I hate it when I accidentally choose an unusable screenmode, have to boot without startup-sequence, go into prefs, delete that file and re-boot.

It should work. It did for me, but these old monitors are getting tired. I would not blame you for not trying. Just "use" and don't "save" and try it out!

 

 

And yes indeed - totally forgot about the lack of built in DD in the original ST and the fact that the early drives were only 360kb. What a joke!! We had 800+kb standard from the get go lol

 

I lived it...

[stirrell]

 

The (early) Amiga gave a Guru error whenever software didn't load properly for whatever reason. You looked up the code to get a clue where the compatibility problem might be. The ST either bombed (and you could look these up) or just folded up and went back to the desktop with no error. The would likely have given the appearance of the Amiga "crashing" more frequently, when they were likely equal.

 

Funny, reading the other threads, it appears that there are a lot more people than I would have thought who liked the ST becuse it was so primitive. It worked when it worked, and it simply stopped workig or dropped out to the desktop when it failed. No errors, no opportinities to self-remedy of any kind.

 

I have to be honest that, at the time, I didn't know about how to troubleshoot compatibility problems on the Amiga. This was pre-internet, of course, and I didn't know any other Amiga users (this was in Maine). I knew two other Atari users so that was also an advantage for the Atari for me personally. I still remember the STe being very stable. Again, I'll admit that the Falcon used to be fairly crash-happy for me, even in single TOS. If I were a more experienced user back then, with a bit more cash, I am sure I would have enjoyed the Amiga more.

[frogstar_robot]

 

I think he was talking about the 72hz refresh rate of the b/w screen. That *was* a cool feature of the ST, no doubt. We had Double-NTSC/PAL modes with high resolution and the Productivity mode, but yeah - they were color and still not as soft on the eyes until we got hardware Flicker Fixers/Scan Doublers for Denise or the video slot. Still... the tradoffs were that the ST needed that special grayscale monitor and we needed a true multi-sync to take advantage of our super hi-res modes. In those days, for the prices we are talking about, didn't make sense to go b/w to me - but I can understand it for certain business applications.

 

As a 15 going on 16 year old I was barely able to scrape up the bucks to get a 520STFM and a monochrome monitor. Though I envied a buddy's color monitor my saving grace was having a TV in my room. My ST was RF modulator equipped so I played color games and messed with color productivity apps on that. I just got used to doing the cable dance to switch between the two displays. The TV was a bummer with Medium resolution but I definitely couldn't have everything in those days.

 

I'll relate another price-related memory from those days. A year after I got my 520 I was interested in upgrading it to 1M and priced various expansions. I could afford the expansion boards all right but could not find a bargain on the memory chips no matter how many catalogs and Computer Shoppers I scoured. I was looking at $300 to $400 to do that and couldn't manage it. This was in 87 and was a real lesson on how the market works for certain parts. I also didn't seriously consider a blitter upgrade either (probably wise as it was a solder in affair). I didn't get out of the 512K ghetto until my first PC which was a 486 with 8M. It still boggles my mind how frightfully expensive computing could be then.

 

I did adore that monochrome for BBSing and doing school work. I also had an Epson 24 pin printer and could get some really nice output from it. It made quite the metallic shriek but 24 pins coupled with the various overstrike tricks common to using such printers did create very presentable papers. I even did papers with graphics and graphs included. That monitor was VERY easy on the eyes and quite the nice introduction to WYSIWYG.

 

Though I was quite the little Atari loyalist then, I did have considerable envy of that Tutankhamen picture and various other bits of famous Amiga imagery. At the time, I only saw an Amiga or two in the stores. But being able to barely afford a 520 w/monochrome definitely put me out of the market for any Amiga setup so I thought of them as highly desirable but unaffordable exotica. Later on I made some friends with people who had Amigas and have some fond memories of those too.

[FastRobPlus]

As a 15 going on 16 year old I was barely able to scrape up the bucks to get a 520STFM and a monochrome monitor. Though I envied a buddy's color monitor my saving grace was having a TV in my room. My ST was RF modulator equipped so I played color games and messed with color productivity apps on that. I just got used to doing the cable dance to switch between the two displays. The TV was a bummer with Medium resolution but I definitely couldn't have everything in those days.

 

The computer store I worked for (Software Centre) serviced Atari so I got a break on upgrades. In '86 I think I was able to upgrade the 520ST to 1MB using the piggyback method and a lot of soldering. It worked, but did make one part of the system bulge (can't rememebr where.) I remember if you unplugged all the cables form the back, you could make the system spin on a hard surface.

[atarian63]

One thing that I remember about using an Amiga 500 with a single floppy drive was that I had to swap floppies an awful lot. My memory is that it crashed more frequently than my STe.

 

The (early) Amiga gave a Guru error whenever software didn't load properly for whatever reason. You looked up the code to get a clue where the compatibility problem might be. The ST either bombed (and you could look these up) or just folded up and went back to the desktop with no error. The would likely have given the appearance of the Amiga "crashing" more frequently, when they were likely equal.

 

Funny, reading the other threads, it appears that there are a lot more people than I would have thought who liked the ST becuse it was so primitive. It worked when it worked, and it simply stopped workig or dropped out to the desktop when it failed. No errors, no opportinities to self-remedy of any kind.

Nope, that is really a misleading statement. Sold thousands of both through the years. Amiga in the 1st two years bombed with lots of regularity, especially when trying to multitask. Even simple workbench thinks like the "dots" or "lines" app.

 

With St it was very rare and just reboot if it did, usually bad software or damaged disk if it did at all.

[atarian63]

Reading what I wrote, I make me want to try it again! It's been years. I have to haul my 1080 out (I have a FFV II in the denise socket now days) so I use a VGA monitor.

 

Okay - so I won't hit save then. lol I hate it when I accidentally choose an unusable screenmode, have to boot without startup-sequence, go into prefs, delete that file and re-boot.

 

And yes indeed - totally forgot about the lack of built in DD in the original ST and the fact that the early drives were only 360kb. What a joke!! We had 800+kb standard from the get go lol

Uhh, no. You could buy either drive single or double sided. Your choice. Not to mention pc cpmpatible right from the start on disk format. Amiga.. not pc readable