Xebec

For me, the Wow! I love the ST, software was (after coming from the Atari 8bit): Little Color Demo - Robb says "Wow!" (enjoyed the music and the sound bars) Arkanoid (use the mouse) Risk (this game just works well on the ST) Sundog Frozen Legacy (perhaps my favorite overall ST game) Millennium 2.2 (simple but very atmospheric intro, love the whole game) Dungeon Master Bard's Tale The Union Demo (it's interactive, not just 'watch and exit') Gold Runner* Speedball Stunt Car Racer Captain Blood Carrier Command (btw the modern remake - CC2 is awesome) Civilization I played tons of other RPGs (Phantasie Series, Ultima V, etc. on the ST, but they wouldn't be quite on my "core" ST list). *I really wish that Yamaha ST soundchip had a 4th channel.. I wouldn't necessarily recommend others play all of these but these were my favs..

Good Morning! IIRC - Alley Cat supports multiplayer; does it support up to 4 players on the Atari 800 or 2 max? Thanks!

Agreed I think it was ST Xformer.. I was also messing with PC Ditto - back then it was extremely interesting to run software from 3 machines on one.. XL-It! sounds familiar .. I *think* I was just using PC Xformer initially.. and then later Atari800Win when I moved to a version of Windows that didn't support DOS dual booting..

I think it certainly depended on the workload and emulator. Some *very basic* (pun) benchmarks showed a 486DX-33 able to emulate the Atari 8bit at full speed in a BASIC speed test, and a 486DX2-66 able to handle (simple) CPU and GEM tasks at full speed for the ST: http://www.emulators.com/benchmrk.htm#OLDBENCH You're probably right though - I personally remember running an Atari 8bit decently under PC Xformer back in the day, on an extremely fast 486's (5x86-133 @ 160 MHz), but I don't remember doing serious ST emulation until hitting the website for "Little Green Desktop", which probably meant Pentium II era devices.. I do remember running PaCifiST under DOS though for a while.. P.S. FWIW, Acifist recommended a Pentium 133 for ST emulation (486DX4 minimum). https://www.atari.st/pacifist/download.html

Agreed. I was just curious if it would have been possible back in the day. I do remember original Pentiums did a reasonable job of emulating the ST and Amiga in the mid 1990s... I was mainly curious if 68030s would have finally allowed you to run Atari 8bit software decently.. on an actual Atari.

Lol no I just mean pedigree VCS - A8 - Amiga. C64 - ST.

Thanks! And cool video! This is kind of what I figured ( and it's technically more appropriate for the Amiga to emulate the A8 anyway )

Just curious if any of the official ST-based machines from Atari were ever fast enough to fully emulate the Atari 8bit. I remember being surprised as a kid that the Atari ST couldn't emulate the 8bit, though it could run some software. Years later I figured out all of the reasons why.. I'm curious now if the ST platform ever got fast enough, assuming there was a decent emulator to run. It would have been an amazing trick to be able to run A8 software on ST or C64 on the Amiga back in the day.

Yes, but it is those 8-bit flight sims that led to interest in making 16-bit flight sims

Hi folks! Most sources seem to indicate the Atari VCS/2600 sold 25 or 30 million units through it's lifecycle.. But I also found a 2004 video of Joe Decuir where he says 50 million units were sold "as of the middle 80s, the last time I looked". (Forward to about 22:03, specific comment about 15 seconds later). I'm curious which number is more likely? (P.S. Just to be clear - I'm a big Decuir fan -- it's really awesome he's still involved in the community, and appreciate his amazing engineering contributions over the years.. +POKEY sound / SIO are just awesome.. so I'm not trying to say he misspoke - just trying to figure out how many units actually were sold).

Hi folks! Most sources seem to indicate the Atari VCS/2600 sold 25 or 30 million units through it's lifecycle.. But I also found a 2004 video of Joe Decuir where he says 50 million units were sold "as of the middle 80s, the last time I looked". (Forward to about 22:03, specific comment about 15 seconds later). I'm curious which number is more likely? (P.S. Just to be clear - I'm a big Decuir fan -- it's really awesome he's still involved in the community, and appreciate his amazing engineering contributions over the years.. +POKEY sound / SIO are just awesome.. so I'm not trying to say he misspoke - just trying to figure out how many units actually were sold).

Hi All! I'm just curious -- the Atari 8-bit computers have a few 'bad' power supply models, and C= Amiga PSUs also don't age very well. What's the situation with ST power supplies? I have a 520STm, 1040STfm, and a Mega STE -- should I consider recapping or replacing any PSUs for these models? (I may also some day collect a regular STE so I can use my Jaguar gamepads on the 'enhanced' ports...) Thanks!

I'm going a little off topic from my original ask - but it sounds like 38400 bps is stable even with the stock ST ([email protected] MHz), with the updated port? For faster you need both the updated port and an accelerator? Any chance you can link me to a 'preferred' serial port mod? I'd like to study and learn. Thanks!

Definitely and thanks DarkLord! You're fortunate the Mega ST4 also already had the blitter. TOS was very (relatively - it was OK at the time) slow on a TOS 1.02 / 520STf, stock speeds and without blitter . BBS sounds like a good (but expensive?) use of the accelerator. I guess for faster modems in the 1990s that would probably end up being a requirement. I see your other posts on the RSVE mod; I'm being a little lazy here - but a few questions - Did you end up getting it to work pretty well? Did it require an accelerated ST to work at higher baud rates? Did RSVE basically add additional buffer to allow more bytes to be received to allow the CPU more time to 'come back' and get the data? (like faster UART chips on PC). Thanks!

This is pretty cool! I did use PCDitto back in the day on my STf to run a few DOS applications in parallel that my Dad was using on his PC.. while retaining the other advantages of the ST :). I bet that helped with emulation a lot.. thanks for sharing!