Buying a Falcon.... Back in 1992

[Tempest]

Just out of curiosity, did anyone buy a Falcon from Atari when they first came out? I heard they were almost impossible to find in the US.

 

I'm just curious about the people who actually went through the trouble of tracking one down (I think most people had to get them directly from Atari) despite all the signs that Atari was going to stop computer support. Was the Falcon that good back then? Was it the "killer" machine? I think back in 92 I was using my new 486 (or possibly still using my Apple IIe, it was right around the time I got my first PC).

 

Tempest

[Mendon]

I got my Falcon not too long after they were released; within the first year. Bought it from that B*I*G Atari store in Detroit (again, I'm senile and can't recall names). Someone had ordered it and never came in to pick it up. I happened upon it when shopping there one time, asked about it, and the salesguy said it was mine if I bought it in the next 60seconds. I was forced to live in the garage for a month after the wife found out what I had done.

 

We didn't really have any Atari retailers in Lansing so a monthly trip to Detroit was always a fun day and always looked forward to the Windsor Atari show (but never looked forward to crossing the border back into the U.S. after the show )

 

Mendon

[Tempest]

Yeah that's the feeling I got. That stores got ONE in and even then you probably had to preorder it. What was the price on it?

 

Big Atari store in Detroit eh? I wonder if there's a warehouse full of Atari stuff around here?

 

BTW anyone know the production numbers on the Falcon?

 

Tempest

[Mendon]

After giving it some thought, the possible name of the store was BuyRite or something like that?? Can't recall the exact price I paid but in the neighborhood of $1,000 (give or take a dollar ).

 

Had a blast learning and exploring that machine. Was my main computer for many a year and had no desire for a PC. Even today, I still use the Falcon/STe for gaming, word processing, keeping track of household finances, etc. Wife still has all her receipes and Christmas card address list on the STe.

 

The only real thing I use the PC for (at home) is for the Internet; I could never get either the Falcon or STe configured and running a stable 'net browser. Others did but not me

 

Mendon

[felicemaggie]

Here in UK back then, buying a Falcon was generally quite difficult if you were looking in the High Street. However, we were fortunate enough to have plenty of Atari shows held during that period with retailers such as System Solutions, Gasteiner and (possibly) 16/32 also selling Falcons at varying prices. I bought my Falcon from Gasteiner and was generally pleased with it, in fact it has only just stopped working after 10+ years or so of constant use. Nevertheless, I will get it fixed ....

 

Those were the days with the computer shows. Best Electronics also had stands there over the years, it was good to meet up with Brad Koda, Mike Goodman and the guys from Atari Computing magazine.

 

Rich.

[Tempest]

Wow. Sounds like you guys are dedicated Falcon users. Must be something good about it. I'll have to look into getting one...

 

How well does the GUI on the Falcon work? The pics I've seen make it almost look like Windows 3.1. The one I have on my TT (TOS 3.?) I find hard to navigate through.

 

Tempest

[Albert]

I know I never saw any Falcons here at US dealers. Heck, they had a hard enough time getting other ST hardware from Atari--I remember spending some time tracking down the few Mega STs that were in the entire state of Connecticut one time. I think we ended up driving to some place in or near New Haven to pick one up. Atari definitely did not make it easy to purchase the later ST models.

 

..Al

[Gregory DG]

How well does the GUI on the Falcon work?  The pics I've seen make it almost look like Windows 3.1.

 

Boy, what an insult!

[Albert]

How well does the GUI on the Falcon work?  The pics I've seen make it almost look like Windows 3.1.

 

Boy, what an insult!

 

I've never been a big fan of GEM. it feels like a very rushed graphical OS, which it probably was in order to get done in time for the ST to be released. I have not used a Falcon, though, so I have no idea what improvements were made for it.

 

..Al

[Atari_Owl]

I got my first Falcon very early on. Not '92 but early '93.

 

First TOS 4 version, 4MB, 64MB HD, etc.

 

I got it at 1st Computers in Leeds so it was only a 30 mile drive for me, but there it was on display.

 

In those days it still WAS something special. A 386 i got to use for my research at work was more expensive than the Falcon and still not as powerful.

 

It was a darn sight more than $1000 in those days though (unless the pound and dollar were approx equal.).

 

Anyway, now it has 14MB ST RAM, CT60@100MHz, 256MB TT-RAM, 2GB HD space, Flatbed Scanner, Modem, etc.

 

It gets FAR more use than my PC, except for surfing.

I wrote my Thesis using it.

Every line of my Jag code has been written and tested using it.

 

And last sunday i finally got my second (as backup)

 

Regarding GEM, its just SO STABLE, compared to the terrible mess of Workbench on the Amiga, or Windows.

 

It may have been simple or hurried but it WORKED and still does and thats got to be worth something.

 

Cheers

[Albert]

Regarding GEM, its just SO STABLE, compared to the terrible mess of Workbench on the Amiga, or Windows.

 

It may have been simple or hurried but it WORKED and still does and thats got to be worth something.

 

This may have been true with the version of TOS/GEM on the Falcon, but with earlier STs I remember the wonderful sight of multiple bombs on the machine and it then rebooting (or having to fumble for the reset switch). This was with 520, 1040, and Mega STs, not STE or Falcon models, which I have no personal experience with.

 

It's good to hear you are still using your Falcon for serious work. I used to do desktop publishing on the ST and that was always fun. Did a lot of programming as well with Mark Williams C and I probably still have some of those Abacus reference books somewhere.

 

..Al

[Atari_Owl]

I don't think i ever really felt too bad about stability on the old STs (which i first got in '86)

 

I think this is mainly because the alternatives were also unstable (ugh early versions of Workbench )

 

Plus if it did bomb out i could reboot and be back where i was in a few seconds instead of going through a massive and lengthy rebooting procedure and then load windows etc again.

 

I think my PC takes longer to boot up now than ever.

 

Plus i NEVER even in my '86 STM ever saw as many bombs as i did blue screens in the early Win95.

 

To be fair my WIn2000 only blue screens every couple of days now, but thats still nearly 20 years on.

[+Sauron]

I have never had any serious stability issues with any version of TOS. It wasn't uncommon to see the bombs occur, but that was mostly due to "hacks" or PD software that most of the time would warn you in advance that it wasn't a pillar of stability. Generally though, the later the TOS version, the more stable it was, at least in my experience.

 

I never thought of GEM as a beautiful or elegant interface either, but it was quite functional and very easy to use. Later TOS revisions with "NewDesk" looked downright gorgeous, and were quite nice in comparison to Atari's competitors' desktops (Amiga, Windows, even Mac System 7). TOS 4.0x looks quite nice when run in high resolution (640x480 16+ colors), and would be far easier to compare to Windows 95 or Mac OS 7.6 and up than with Windows 3.1, at least in the looks department. One thing to add too is that every revision of TOS has always been far easier to use than it's equivalent version of AmigaOS or Windows. I still believe to this day that TOS was one of the best desktop OSes in terms of ease of use and stability.

[felicemaggie]

I know I never saw any Falcons here at US dealers.  Heck, they had a hard enough time getting other ST hardware from Atari--I remember spending some time tracking down the few Mega STs that were in the entire state of Connecticut one time.  I think we ended up driving to some place in or near New Haven to pick one up.  Atari definitely did not make it easy to purchase the later ST models.  

 

..Al

 

Albert,

 

and all this time I thought it was just me with this issue !

 

Whilst I wasn't in Cambridge at that time, it was very difficult if not impossible for any of the Atari-selling stores at that time to get hold of Mega ST's. I do recall from one of the stores a package arriving consisting of a 1040STF and a Mega 1 ST, however, that was only the once. I personally picked up a Mega STe (4mg/80mb) a couple of months ago through an excellent deal with a guy in my trade who was based in London. Basically he let the Mega go for a fiver, plus another tenner for postage The machine itself is a good worker though, for the time I've used it. It originally was purchased from System Solutions, a company who are still trading, despite rumours of this not being the case.

 

Go for a Mega ST or Mega STe if you can get one, they are worthwhile. I think possibly the reason for the bad distribution when they first came out was due to the price they were originally sold at, around £1200+ .

 

cheers,

 

Rich.

[belboz]

Someone in our local Atari group bought a Falcon when they first came out. He supposedly got it from a Music Store.

 

Another got one a little later from Sheldon at Computer Studio (think that was the name of the store). I think they were in South Carolina.

 

I remember fondly a three-four year stretch where the wife and I went to the WAACE show in Reston Virginia. Fun times. We also went to the MIST show in Indianapolis IN, for a bit also.

[Paolo]

To be fair my WIn2000 only blue screens every couple of days now, but thats still nearly 20 years on.

 

You see guys: Owl is an educated computer user and so he knows that it is not normal to have blue screens, but just think about the millions of people that just think it is normal to reboot every now and then ...

 

Stick to your ataris, and sooner or later we will be able to surf better than any other (BTW, CAB commercial version has been very friendly if you exclude Flash, Javascript and Java )

 

Ciao!

[Gregory DG]

You see guys: Owl is an educated computer user and so he knows that it is not normal to have blue screens, but just think about the millions of people that just think it is normal to reboot every now and then ...

 

Shoot, since I switched to Windows 2000, I never get the BSOD. The only time I ever have a problem is when I use some memory-hogging software that screws things up. Then I just kill the process and go back to doing something else.

[+Sauron]

Shoot, since I switched to Windows 2000, I never get the BSOD. The only time I ever have a problem is when I use some memory-hogging software that screws things up. Then I just kill the process and go back to doing something else.  

 

What's sad is that it took MS this long to get to that point. Even then, it's only that stable as long as you take very good care of your system, which most people don't.

[Albert]

Go for a Mega ST or Mega STe if you can get one, they are worthwhile. I think possibly the reason for the bad distribution when they first came out was due to the price they were originally sold at, around £1200+ .

 

I do have a Mega ST right now, although I don't remember if it's a Mega ST2 or Mega ST4 (it's in a box, in my garage. Must be retrieved so I can set it up!) I'd love to get a Mega STe, as I really love the case design for those.

 

..Al

[atarian1]

I remember dealers got the first batch of Falcons as an instore demo unit. I tested a bunch of software and played around with it, but I didn't think I would ever afford one.

 

Retail Falcons finally became available about 1-2 months after the demo units, but there were still not much - just enough to fill pre-orders. One local dealer, ATY Computer, had 6, yes SIX, people waiting in line outside his store for him to open the day the retail Falcons became available. (I wonder if they camped out..."I gotta have my Falcon...NOW!" He still says to this day that that was his best day in sales in his 14 years of his retail store ) Of course, all the Falcons that he could get were gone. He was sure more sales were coming, so instead of waiting for Atari to ship the Falcons to him, he drove down to the Sunnyvale warehouse and filled his minivan with Falcons. He managed to shove 20-30 Falcons in his minivan. I remember visiting the store that weekend and seeing all the boxed Falcons in two neat stacks on each side of the store. It was quite a sight.

 

After the initial rush, Falcons were plentiful until Atari became entrenched with the Jaguar. Once the Jaguar was introduced though, Atari just sold what they had left in stock. I remember dealers were starting to report having a hard time getting Falcons about mid-1995 when the Jaguar was in full swing. I guess when people saw Atari abandoning the Falcon, they stopped buying Falcons. Or Atari could have kept whatever they

had left for Jaguar CD development.

 

I remember hearing about how scarce Falcons were becoming, and wanting one from the day that I saw it, I frantickly tried to find a Falcon for sale at the local Atari dealers. I originally wanted to buy it from ATY, but he couldn't get any from Atari. No one else had anymore either. Good luck finally hit me at B&C, and I ended up buying the last Falcon that B&C Computervisions had. That was such a sigh of relief! I ended up using it as my main machine in school, wrote my senior thesis on it and was in everyday use until about 1999. GEnie died, the Web was really taking off and the Falcon just couldn't handle it.

 

Now I use it as big MP3 player.

[+Sauron]

You west coast guys seemed to have an easy time of getting all of the good Atari hardware. By the early 90's, there was ONE store here in Austin (MusicMakers) who sold Atari systems. I remember them getting in the demo Falcon, which was the only one they received. They sold it off to a guy who was part of the Austin user group, and never got any more in. The only software they carried was the music software like Dr. T's, Cubase, and Notator. The next nearest Atari dealer was about 100 miles away, in San Antonio, and they closed down before the launch of the Falcon. I think most of the people here who ended up getting Falcons bought them through mail order from the few Atari dealers who didn't give a crap about their dealer agreements with Atari.

[JB]

Shoot, since I switched to Windows 2000, I never get the BSOD. The only time I ever have a problem is when I use some memory-hogging software that screws things up. Then I just kill the process and go back to doing something else.  

 

What's sad is that it took MS this long to get to that point. Even then, it's only that stable as long as you take very good care of your system, which most people don't.

To be fair, I think the typical defense that it's actually other garbage and not the OS is pretty accurate.

 

I have a Win98 machine that I can have running for a week at a time, possibly longer(I usually shut it down for a while at around a week). I take good care of it, though.

 

Every crash my Win2K machine has EVER had is directly traceable to bad drivers for a Gravis Gamepad Pro. And that one's shared with other people, so all sorts of garbage gets put on it.

 

I've never used NT4, so I can't judge it.

 

 

Win95 and ME...

95 really needed some more polish. The later revisions are a lot better.

I think ME was actually meant to force more people to buy XP. I really can't explain the major step backwards there.

 

Win3.1 was so long ago I can't really recall.

[Major Havoc 2049]

I always remember seeing Falcons at Toad Computers back in the day. They were $799 of for the 1MB version and $999 for the 4MB versions. The price really went up when you started to include internal hard drives, math coprocessors and 14MB. You were looking at $2,000+ for a fully decked out Falcon. Toad also started to sell the C-Lab Falcons in the mid 90's as well. Toad also had the cool TT030's as well, but they were in the $1000-$2000+ range as well. They were cool to play around with in the store, but I would just grab my Jaguar, Lynx or regular Atari ST game(imported from Europe) and walk out of the store wishing I had more money.

[V.R]

I remeber back in the early 90's when the Falcon appeared. There was a big article (well one page) in an Australian computer magazine (IBM PC mind you). The reviewer was amazed ats its 32,000 colour potential, stating that this computer had amazing graphics potential, even over current IBM compatibles.

As we all know IBM's only ever had 256 colours back in the day. That article made me proud to be an Atari supporter. To bad I lived in Australia, because Falcons were almost non-existant. It took over 10 years later for me to get any kind of 16-32bit Atari computer, let alone a Falcon. Glad I did, best computers in my opinion. I use mine everyday! Which is more than I can say for my grumpy windows machine!

[Gregory DG]

I remeber back in the early 90's when the Falcon appeared. There was a big article (well one page) in an Australian computer magazine (IBM PC mind you). The reviewer was amazed ats its 32,000 colour potential, stating that this computer had amazing graphics potential, even over current IBM compatibles.

 

Did it look anything like this?

 

This is from Byte magazine, which was PC (naturally.)