oky2000

I was looking through ST format and I noticed that in the May 1993 issue (no. 46) this was the scoop story. There was a new 520STFM that had motherboard revisions making 1mb a near impossibility BUT to be sold for £159.99 in the UK. (STE remains at 250 in the UK) It effectively replaces the spot held by the C64 and Sinclair sales of 1991ish (my friend's girlfriend had got a C64 in 1991 I remember being told once which for me was odd with my A1200 and Megadrive and SNES) and I know some people will sneer (although not in this forum) but a PC doesn't really make sense for a kid at school in 1993 yet and there were plenty of Word Processors and Spreadsheets capable of small business/home use levels. I think the Amiga 600 was still £299 at this point but not sure if it had been dropped by then and only the 1200,/4000 and CD32 were being sold then by Commodore. Apparently it was meant to go up against the SNES and Megadrive but as a "proper computer" for the parents to buy their kid, which is a LOT cheaper than a VGA 386 from even el cheapo Amstrad brand I guess. Apart from the removal of SIMM slots does anybody know what other features were dropped/lowered in specification to get it down to this price? Did it still have a 720k drive too? Personally I think it is an amazing price, I bet Atari didn't make much profit but it can't be stock dumping a la 800XL if the motherboard etc were specifically changed to get it down to that price right?

Thanks for the link/write up # I am using it with STeem emulator (SSE 3.0 I think) so having two joystick settings active should simulate two joysticks plugged in right? Any way I can't even change from the warrior character using cursor keys, only key that does anything is [iNSERT] Maybe I should try older versions of TOS ROMs in STeem

Amiga is designed to control the electron beam on a CRT and control the movement of the magnet in a speaker It's a refinement of all of Jay's work really. I did have a really nice Supra 48mb hard card inside my Amiga 2000 and that was fast but not for the low end machines and really expensive (think PC XT Compatible type price) on the side expansion slot...especially Commodore's cheese wedge stuck on the side of the melted Commodore 128 (Amiga 500 lol). Still I was just a teen then and wages=credits to buy more top end non Apple/PC tech so who cares it cost as much as my first half decent car too haha

The ST seemed to load in pictures faster from the hard drive (well the ones at the Middlesex Atari ST user group did) and with a software 'blitter' like Turbo ST the GEM apps were nice and fast too so it was a nice machine to work with. I also wrote quite a few business style apps for college work using the FAST BASIC cart which could do nice GEM apps easily which looked a lot nicer than 80s PC business software in the mid-late 80s. The earlier games for the ST that didn't come out on Amiga were sometimes real nice ones too, like Road Runner and Gauntlet 1. Also with my copy of Elite for the ST I made a new ship instrument/view overlay in Neochrome and changed the palette....I hope I still have that somewhere. Just a white disk with Elite in pencil written on it I wish Jack had chosen a nicer sound chip but to be honest 90% of Amiga games use the same god awful mid 80s samples from Soundtracker instrument disks anyway so most of the time you either hear CPC music (ST) or naff sampler like music (Amiga) lol they really screwed us with games prices vs effort put into it! For your A1200 you purchased may I suggest you find the Amiga 1200 version of Lotus III. It's still the same graphics as the A500/1000/2000 release as is the CD32 version but unlike the A500 version the framerate is lightning fast just like Lotus II was on the A500 etc so you can really enjoy the track creation element with it and not give up the frame rate or get a mortgage to get the CD32 disc.

Need a bit of help, I do have this but it is in storage with all my retro gear while I am moving house but fancied a quick blast on STeem with this. I can't get the player selection keys detailed on the title page to do bugger all except [insert] key which conjures up the warrior player with joystick 1 (default start option when you load the game). The title screen says cursor controls and F1-F2 and F9-F10 to select character but they don't do anything and "joystick 1" stays firmly under the warrior character. The only key that doesn't do nothing is the insert key but I can't get a second player into the game at all or change the start character. Help please

There is nothing much wrong with Gauntlet 1 on ST if you had a 16mhz 68000 fitted Honestly they had sold bugger all blitter equipped machines and there was no guarantee any meaningful numbers of 1040STFs would ever be sold let alone ones with a blitter so what do you expect them to do. Be greatful it is not as god awful as the SMS/NES/ZX/CPC/A8/C64/MSX versions and it is better than Garrison and Gauntlet 2 on an Amiga.

Whoaaa spoler! lol Yeah I saw it too, it seems to just be on the desk she is using not actually connecting to it but you probably could still use one as a terminal to a network the same way CITRIX did for IBM But hey it would never be an Amiga 500 which is one of the ugliest computer case designs ever haha

Not really sure on how the STE works but the Amiga's memory was rated at double the speed that the CPU and trio of customs chips worked at so the whole thing is clock doubled because in each tick of the 7.1mhz cycle both the CPU and custom chips can access the memory (which is why you get Fast/Chip RAM ratios), and as I understand it Agnus (the one that contains the blitter) essentially controls the Copper and DACs as far as flowing the data around the bus goes. So if you get everything timed just right you are using a true clock doubled system (which means 14mhz computer and blitter) 2 decades before Intel Centrino laptops. You can play back 56khz samples if you have an A500plus/A600 but only when using 32khz line mode (ie PC style flicker free hi-res modes) like non-interlaced PAL modes or 800x600. You can't process the sound much on either but as you say the Amiga can play any channel at any speed up to 28khz and apply 6 bit volume control to each DAC. Overlaying the 2 left and 2 right channels and setting the volumes correctly for the two stereo pairs and supply the correct waveforms in perfect sync to all 4 chanels you can even play 14bit samples on an Amiga 1200 (not sure if the DMA bus speed is high enough for the A500/600).

I am being harsh, but Enchanted Land shows with some clever design even a 512kb ST can do better arcade type game engines (with some limitations sure). 2Mb!!! Glad I have a couple of Mega STs I bought decades ago to try it out with health trainer option from a hard disk, I had forgotten about that site, thanks for reminding me

I think we all know how awful Shadow of the Beast turned out on the Atari ST, and we also know why! (terrible underwhelming technical ability of conversion team). But sometimes it is nice to see somebody doing it correctly and to the best of the ability of the machine (as much as we can reasonably expect from a commercial time limited development in the era of ST/Amiga). OK enough of the build up...but is it me or does everyone else instantly look at/play Wrath of the Demon and then think this proves that Shadow of the Beast on the ST could have been so much better and it would be a little bit like this in technical quality? It's a really high end piece of software. The horizontal scrolling, the animation, the speed and the graphics (note the colour palette selection is not to my preference but 2 minutes with a paint app using an actual 16 colour image shows it can be made too look much more like the Amiga version just by changing the palette registers from the screenshot). In fact it made the Amiga version a little underwhelming to me...an Amiga 1000 all time fan! Or maybe I just have too much free time on my hands?

Worth getting an STE to be able to play Stardust if you are going to get an Atari machine.

The XEGS has Rescue on Fractalus, which IMO is more ground breaking AND fun than any Mario or Zelda 8bit game but the ST doesn't have that game either. Still there is a superior version of Commando and Gauntlet (pick your flavour with G1 or G2 one disk hacks), Cannon Fodder is great, Sensi or Kick-off soccer games, enchanted is a nice platformer, Lotus II is a great 2.5D racing game. I like International Karate too (not IK+ which looks like a C64 game!). Ghosts n Goblins is great too, there are loads of good games for it and that's before you look at really advanced games not usually possible on 8 bits like Another World, Future Wars, Rocket Ranger, DotC etc etc. Manic Miner on it is shit though, best off playing that on an 8 bit micro of choice. The ST in the EU pioneered 16bit home computer gaming (well before Sega and Nintendo 16bit consoles came along) so it was really popular for gaming as we didn't buy PCs in the EU and the Amiga 1000 didn't even come out until 11 months later for the PAL models in the UK (Germany a little earlier than UK).

I suspect the STacy will have a bespoke video controller for the LCD so swapping it for a colour one would probably require soldering wires internally to the motherboard to obtain the RGB analogue signals to wire up to the SCART input of a consumer LCD panel to fit internally. If it has a monitor out port on the STacy it is quite doable though. I wish I had bought an STbook back in the early 00s before they fell off the earth, nice to have a portable machine.

Loads of awesome games never made it.... Skyfox, along with Rescue on Fractalus, was one of the best early 3D games in retro gaming history. As it is was released on 65xx based CPUs of Apple II and C64 the source must be possibly useful, it is even on Z80 machines too but not very nice to play on them as it is too slow. The A8 is much better suited to this game than the C64 and the C64 version uses primitive universal 4 colours only on screen of 160x200 multicolour mode so I would imagine the A8 version would be better. Exploding Fist, this was THE fighting game to have, would be lovely to have a version on the A8 with sampled effects just as the C64 version. Again the graphics are not exactly 3rd generation C64 coding but the use of samples is noteworthy. Most importantly it plays better than IK. Although Gauntlet exists for A8 it is by far the most pathetic version and I bet you wish it didn't, the A8 could do so much better but as usual US GOLD shit in your face whilst taking your £15 lol Would be lovely if a remake was done without that stupid 16 shades of one colour screen mode used and some samples to go with authentic POKEY arcade sfx. The C64 version doesn't use that much colour at once on screen and is still better than the NES pile of wank version. Time Pilot, it is amazing that this game is on everything except A8 and Amstrad (officially or otherwise). I think the A8 could do a fantastic version, possibly the rip-off Space Pilot from Anirog/Kingsoft on C64 source code could be used although it may be better to write it around Antic/GTIA of A8 from scratch as it is not exactly the most complex game design.

Hi, I did try to find a conversation I had with someone expert on this exact machine on Lemon64 subforum a long long time ago who explained to me the exact method of doing it, couple of Pokes to some formula IIRC, after reading it mentioned in the VIC programmers reference guide. There was also a downside I can't remember. Don't suppose you know the mechanics of it, from memory the guide doesn't detail the memory locations. The speccy version, and all pixel perfect ports including the C64 etc, use just 256x192 pixels.and 16 pixels wide is wasted for a left and right column of brick wall characters which are unnecessary, so that makes it just 1 character wide short.

I saved up for something like 6 months to be able to get a VCS in the fall of 1980 in the UK, no crisps/sweets/chocolates/toys and also money for birthday that year. It was my first proper system as before that I only had a Pong console from Radiofin. So for me the 2600 is one of the most iconic systems and I will always love those awesome games like Space Invaders, Enduro, Phoenix or Vanguard etc that I played to death. About 2 years later, mostly due to the £30 cartridge prices and because my Dad was a big fan of Sci-Fi he decided I should get a computer 2 years later. At the time thanks to mostly purchasing shitty UK programmed cassette games I thought the VIC was a bit crap to be honest but also at the same time just like the VCS a true arcade gamers machine that was loud and the games were hard but fair like Gridrunner. As my VIC failed in only 3 months the shop let us part exchange it for full purchase price against a shiny new C64 so I never really got to see the full potential of the machine. Today with games like Punchy (Mr Micro) Skramble (Anirog) and Star Battle (Commodore Japan's left over code from converting Galaxian before seeking a licence from Namco) in my software library to play I can see that ultimately it is the better machine I think. But we are talking about such basic technology the games library is more important than the chipset inside the case really. So in summary I would not trade my gaming memories with the VCS but I do wish I had purchased games like the 3 above for my VIC before getting a C64 too. Of course the Commodore joystick is PANTS! Speaking of the VIC I have been toying with the idea of doing Manic Miner for it as even the ZX81 (original monochrome silent TIMEX computer to USA folks) has a version but then again even the ZX81 has 256x192 resolution which is about 25% more than the VICs 176x184 weird resolution so it would be the hardest version to do. I don't know if there has ever been a homebrew of Manic Miner for the 2600 which would be interesting.

Yeah but have you ever used rival machines of the era for it? Music X etc was quite late in the Amigas life and by then Cubase and Steinberg were on their much refined sequel releases. Also it means it's the only computer they used for everything, not a PC in sight. If you wanted to build a bedroom studio today I think you could make world class music using just a Mega 4 and said MIDI packages, could you say the same about desktop video and an Amiga 3000?

I voted for C64 (Ocean Software disk/tape release not Atarisoft) but technically the only version that looks, sounds AND plays like the arcade with all levels intact is the Amstrad CPC 8 bit disk/tape version also by Ocean Software (especially when played with a proper joystick like the ZipStick) A big thank you to NIAD who uploaded his disk images, they are still hard to find after a fair bit of googling even in 2016. The only thing is I am using Adamem emulator but the sound is atrocious due to the way Soundblaster is delivered to old programs in Windows XP. Does anybody have a solution, I have set the maximum quality available as 5 and also even downloaded SoundFX Soundblaster card emulators but this does not work properly for me (says it has expired even though I also installed the registry key the developers put on their website on the same page) Any ideas how to get this to work nicely on a Windows XP or newer system without having to buy an old Pentium II PC with an AWE32 card inside it and putting Win 95 on it?

Wow a lot more responses than I thought. Thanks to everyone who participated in my topic lamenting the lack of coverage of a revolutionary machine being covered in the real history of retro world wide (ie not just NES PC DOS combination of the USA or Famicom/NES of Japan in the 80s) Of course for those in the USA it was probably off the radar for the general public that much I understand but it's not like it flopped (and the NES flopped in the EU badly and still is mentioned everywhere as if it took off all around the world....Harrier Attack a horrible game on CPC/ZX/C64 outsold all sales of Zelda and Mario 3 on NES in the EU lol so don't believe the hype) For those outside the UK I can tell you the ST was absolutely huge and for at least a year it was 8 bits and ST only (due to the clusterfudge that was Commodore not even promoting the Amiga 1000 and taking nearly a year to release a PAL version in the EU!!!!!) Like I said the ST was a real upgrade to traditional home computers that did EVERYTHING, not just games like the C64/ZX, like the Amstrad CPC or Acorn BBC Micro series of home computers. I owned one in summer 1986 (520STM) and apart from games I spent ages writing programs on FAST ST BASIC and also months of hard work drawing many pictures in Neochrome (which was light years ahead of what any CPC or C64 could do for pixel art). I even bought the original sampler for it from Microdeal and it was a real revolution. No PC or 8 bit could do anything like it and for the record Neochrome is a nicer package than the first two releases of Dpaint because the mouse cursor control feels right. The original STM is also one of the most beautiful case designs in my opinion for an all in one, the Amiga 500 looked like a melted Commodore 128 and came with already slightly pre-yellowed colour vs the cool blue/grey colour of the ST and it's funky rhomboid function keys. So what if in the wrong hands it couldn't do horizontal scrolling, it still hosts the best home conversion of Gauntlet 1 for me and as that is my favourite arcade game it was the right machine for the right time (mid 80s). It's really sad after 7-8 million units sold it is not mentioned anywhere, although I accept most documentaries are US centric and the ones for UK concentrate on Sinclair rubbish or the totally redundant £800 Acorn BBC Model B (a fine machine for 1982 but it really limited sales outside the school funded computer rooms) And to add insult to injury nobody ever asked Jack about the ST it's always about the C64 (which of course in the EU was a massive part of retro gaming as we abandoned £30 cart based systems in early 1983 so there was no video games crash at all and the C64 was a big part of the ZX/CPC/C64 fuelled UK/EU retrogaming scene of course and consoles ALL failed after the 2600 era) I borrowed a 80186 PC for programming project at school in the summer of 1987 and I had an STM and believe me when I tell you this £2500 PC was worse than a C64 in every way for business use (8 char filenames only FFS) let alone an ST running GEM and the coding I had to do was absolutely horrible compared to the port of the same project for FAST ST BASIC. Why it never sold outside the EU I will neven know, IIRC in 1988 it was down to £299 vs £580 for Amiga 500. I have a lot of catching up to do

I think the ST was fine as it was, the Amiga 1000 was indeed a ludicrously powerful machine (as decided by PCW and Byte magazines of the time of launch so don't be hating) BUT what you have to realise is the Amiga (all of them) is a hideous and horrible design to extract the maximum performance from, worse than the Sega Saturn (which essentially why the Playstation 1 did so much better, it was as powerful and very easy to code for so most of the games looked fantastic not just the in house coded ones). The ST was a colour Mac with a better OS within 12 months of the 128k Mac launch and at 70% lower cost (as well as that prick's favourite the PC XT), how much else could you ask for. So putting the elephant in the room, the Amiga, aside I think the ST only really needed a register to provide pixel scroll by redefining start of screen memory on the fly. If you didn't have to scroll 4 bitplanes with the 68000 whilst doing everything else the Gauntlet arcade motherboard does in hardware it would have made all the difference. The sound perhaps is a sore point for some people but I don't think the YM chip is actually that bad, go and listen to the Amstrad CPC's AY rendition of something like Uridium title tune and for me it sounds better than the C64 version. Also the 68000 is a massively capable CPU at 8mhz and the blitter of the Amiga 1000 may be 200% the speed of the 68000 it also causes a lot of contention on the system bus for access to the first 512kb of RAM unless you time your blits with pico second accuracy and with the overhead of scrolling removed it is fine for software sprites or game logic of any kind.

We've all seen a million poor US shows claiming we went from 2600 to NES and Windows PC (sometimes mentioning the single tasking classic Mac) when this is just for one country and even then not even true. I was surprised because the ST sold not that much less than the Amiga 500 (remember the Falcon and Mega made up a tiny percentage vs Amiga 1200/2000/3000/4000 machines making a significant proportion of the 11 million total). For a long time Amstrad distributed their PCs with GEM and not that crap Windows (and this is correct because Windows was coded by talentless clowns) There are EU based programs that do acknowledge 8 bit computers like Sinclair/Amstrad/Commodore efforts, as is correct as they were massive over here in the EU where the NES crashed and burned spectacularly, BUT maybe if you are lucky you will find a reference to the Amiga but never the ST despite 6-7 million sold! And yet when you actually look back at the mid 80s the ST was not only quite a big seller in the EU from the get go especially 520STM/STFM but it was very important in terms of the dawn of 16 bit computer software (OK PC 8086 may be 16 bit technically but let's face it with CGA or EGA they look 2 bit and never sold in the EU), I think it's time someone covered the machine that gave people a taste of sampling, pixel art, complex programming and adventure games with a parser so sophisticated you can almost have a conversation with it as Alan Turing predicted....and of course sometimes the best versions of arcade conversions available on any system like Gauntlet 1 (OK this is rare lol as usually all conversions were crap including Amiga 1000). Anybody else noticed that the ST is not getting its deserved limelight despite being one of the most capable home computers, in the traditional way imagined they would evolve on from the time of the TI99/VIC20/BBC Micro at the dawn of the computer revolution?

There is no Lynx screenshot to the 101 website linked

It's really amazing that this game surfaced, I saw the post on that piss poor Lemon64 forum (don't go there man, full of antisocial scum and also racists,,,,oh and moderators who don't moderate) I always wondered why what was released was called Star Raiders II because it didn't feel like a sequel (don't get me wrong though, the released game is one of my all time favourite 8 bit games on any system!)

Yeah pretty much this, or just use the 800 if you don't want to upgrade your 400. There is no technical difference as far as pretty much all games go except for the memory. IME if there are two different versions in the TOSEC they will be marked as 16k. 32k or 48k in the title of the disk image file inside the archive.

.....I want one that will play Rescue on Fractalus as well as the C64 SuperCPU fixed version (look it up on youtube), now I have a choice between slow but beautiful or silky smooth AND fast but muddy looking.....sometimes life is PURE HELL!!!!