kimchipenguin

I do have the PDFs, but I guess it makes more sense to put OCR'ed versions on stcarchiv.de. That way you can use Google Translate or something. I'm no hardware expert, but it looks very complicated - hence the offer to order the preassembled board back in the day. The same magazine also published DIY solutions for a graphics card adapter, Autoswitch Overscan and Mega Bus interface for non-Mega STs.

The absolute fastest non-Falcon accelerator is the Medusa. Before it became a full TT clone, Fredi released a 040 accelerator card for the ST as a DIY project in German ST-Magazin.

Never seen one personally, but here are two photos taken from ST-Computer's May 93 issue (more articles from German Atari magazines: http://www.stcarchiv.de). It shows the large and the medium model. The photos were taken at Frankfurt's music trade show. According to the article, an Austrian company was the distributor at that time - for German-speaking countries at least... Prices in Deutsche Mark: MIDI-Translator light Version: DM 590 MIDI-Translator full Version : DM 890 Hotz-Box Touchboard large : DM 15000 Hotz-Box Touchboard medium : DM 7000

I had some fun with the included Mazewar game and the XFormer emulator, but I never found more disk images. I was very excited about the ZX81 and later ZX Spectrum emulator though, the ST is an excellent Sinclair emulation machine Of course, neither of those machines had fancy custom chips.

Bumping this thread - mine is #394. I bought it in the mid-90's in Germany when various retailers were selling Atari NOS. It wasn't sold as "rare", but more of an oddity. Supplies were significantly less than the 7800 joypad. A specific controller for the advanced joystick ports was announced during the STE's life span. The Falcon titles that were developed for Atari (Steel Talons, Llamazap etc.), all require this controller.

Seems more bad inventory management on Atari's part - lots of products that didn't sell, while products that were in demand (TT, Falcon) were in short supply. German press frequently made fun of the "banana ship" that was supposed to deliver new stock to Europe. I bought my 2600jr at a department store in '91 or '92. They didn't sell any Atari games, but the console came with the 32-in-1 game cartridge. Basically the NES Classic of its day, but actually available in stores.

Nice! I have attached another ad, this time from mid 1997 (ST-Computer 06/97). It seems that Germany received *a lot* of Atari joysticks: You could buy five CX24, CX40 or CX78 for 20 DM, or 36(!) CX24 for 49 DM.

Atari's were quite commonly used for science. ST-Computer magazine ran a series of articles about the ST being used by scientists, federal agencies and corporations. Here's one where the ST was used at an observatory: http://stcarchiv.de/stc1990/11/spiegelteleskop

Here is another scan of a Falke Verlag advert for various Atari items. All prices are in Deutsche Mark, divide it by 2 to get the Euro price. The XL was no longer advertised as being compatible to the VCS. They did seem to receive lots of 7800 games, Portfolio stuff. 59 DM for an Atari XL with cassette recorder and a "surprise" (like Light Gun or Touch Pad"). When I bought my XL at a small trade fair in Elmshorn, the surprise was the Light Gun. I'm also glad I picked up the grey Jag-Pad for 19 DM. I don't recall Seidel or Falke selling Jaguar games, so presumably they didn't buy that palette. They had the whole calculator product line though, the small solar one was given to new subscribers.

How are these games going to be released on cartridge then? That is (understandably) the dream of many developers - to see it released as cartridge, just like the games during the Lynx's lifespan. I don't see sound or reduced content as a problem. You won't get arcade perfect ports anyway due to the low resolution. As editor of a magazine that also happens to cover Lynx games, I'm happy for any game that gets completed no matter in which shape or form. I don't think having more space is helping any of the games currently stuck in "development hell".

If you'd like to know more about the magazine the ad appeared in, there's an article about the Atari Inside in the only English issue of ST-Computer magazine (free download): http://st-computer.atariuptodate.de/index.php?content=magazine&issue=08&year=2014 It's funny that buyers didn't know what they were buying. It was quite unusual for German Atari dealers to sell Atari consoles other than the Lynx or Jaguar, but Seidel would've probably been shocked if he ended up with 750 8-bit game cartridges Obviously, German dealers were more interested in 16/32 bit stuff. Maybe I should try to locate Seidel for a short interview...

Atari did move most of their inventory (centralised) to the Netherlands in 1993. Germany was managed and supplied with hardware from Atari's Dutch HQ. I know that German retailers Digital Data Deicke and Softwareservice Seidel bought some of Atari's inventory. Suddenly you would start to see hardware they usually didn't sell, including VCS consoles, 8 bit computers and Atari calculators. The ad is from Falke Verlag, publisher of the Atari Inside (online article archive at stcarchiv.de). They probably got their stock from Seidel. They sold a VCS7800 with three games for 39 DM, and an Atari 800XL ("compatible with VCS2600 und 7800 games") for 45 DM. I only picked up stuff I was interested anyway - a big Portfolio package including the drive, an Atari XL with light gun to play Bug Hunt and a Lynx II.

I did actually - received the floppy drive a few weeks later. I think it was usable, but you can't do much with it other than opening a few dialog boxes and switching the resolution.

Disguised to the point that the customer didn't know that it was an Atari inside. Here are some examples: http://stcarchiv.de/stm1988/10/profi-st There was also a business card printing machine with a 1040ST inside, but I haven't put that article online, yet. IBP's 190ST series is far more common: http://stcarchiv.de/stc1988/11/ibp-190-st ST-Computer magazines are printed in batches of ten based on preorders, so I don't have a pile of magazines to sell, unfortunately. I'm still planning to make back issues available through print-on-demand, which would be more expensive obviously. You can however pre-order the next two issues. The next one is focussed on GFA-Basic and an obscure German disk magazine (Atari Joy) that hasn't been archived yet and the one after that takes a look at "high-end stuff" - hardware and software that goes beyond the standard Atari ST/TT/Falcon. The latter issue is still open for article submissions.

The ST was anything but a games machine in Germany and lots of companies used Ataris, sometimes way into the 90's. Even the European equivalent of the NASA (the ESA) used Ataris. Still, some companies regarded Atari as a toy (or: anything non-PC) and there various Atari companies that made a business out of "disguising" Atari STs to make them more appealing to customers in the industry. I did most of my word processing with Atari Works and my computer science homework with Pure Pascal. Signum! was very popular among linguistics students. The point where I switched was the Internet. The Atari web browsers just couldn't compete with Netscape and Internet Explorer and web browsing on a Falcon in 256 colour mode was just too slow.

Atari was already in disarray well before Jack Tramiel bought parts of the company. Warner did the layoffs, Tramiel re-hired a few people. Remember that the home division lost money and Tramiel had to get the company back on track as soon as possible. He didn't have the financial resources to lose money for a couple of years. The 2600 was ageing, the 7800 didn't have a good game library and the 8-bit computers were losing market share to the C64. Plus, Tramiel's company was already working on the ST before buying Atari. Also, Atari under Warner was hardly cutting edge. The 7800 should've been released instead of the 5200, they treated their internal developers badly and the XL series appeared too late. There isn't one version of the story and another. The first one is a myth that has been spread by too many people. Tramiel did sell video games (with a profit) and sold the ST as a games machine in a few markets (mostly UK). They also developed new games for both the 2600 and 7800. Unfortunately, Tramiel-Atari didn't have an arcade unit or large internal game development teams like Sega had or the support by Japanese game developers. Read the book. Vendel and Goldmann talked with many people who worked at Atari.

I went from a C64 to an Atari 520STM - at that time, Amiga was just too expensive Ultimately, it was a good move, since I later started writing for a German Atari magazine for over eight years. I sold the STM later for a 1040STE and then switched to the Falcon which I still own.

German only: http://st-computer.atariuptodate.de/ English/German: http://www.atariuptodate.de As for forums - yes, atari-forum.com and atari-home.de are probably the most active ones for their respective language.

No, you are just confused. They didn't "make" MagiC for OS 9. MagiC Mac is the version that runs on Mac OS Classic, while MagiC Mac X is the one for OS X. The former uses the 68k emulation provided by the OS (if it's not a 68k Mac), while MMX includes a 68k emulator. Mag!X is the previous name of MagiC, the name was changed sometime after ASH became the distributor. MagiC Mac X should work fine on a G4 Cube with OS X 10.4.

Interesting - because in 1986 Hawkins told a similar story a journalist from German computer magazine Happy Computer (http://stcarchiv.de/hc1986/12/trip-hawkins-im-interview). Some Atari owner called and asked why EA doesn't publish more (8 bit) Atari games. So he named all the Atari games EA published recently but the guy already had them. So Hawkins asked how he got so many games - turned out the guy had all of them as illegal copies.

Please count me in for one as well.

First, the ST probably did not sell 6-7 million units. The ST is mentioned and shown in music documentaries and I've also seen Midi Maze mentioned in a documentary about first person shooters. Most retro documentaries are about games and the ST was never the most popular games machine, nor the computer with very distinctive games, other than Midi Maze. Most games were ported to the Amiga or later developed for the Commodore as the lead platform. So, in a book or documentary with limited space/length, it makes sense to include only references and concentrate on the Amiga instead. Lol, N64, seriously? A console that was - by Nintendo standards - a relative failure? I think you'd find more people remembering PS One, Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive than N64.

I don't know where you got that impression, but the Amiga scene is more active than the Atari ST one, including software and hardware. New software projects for the ST are rare, with the exception of demos. You're also mistaken about the hardware projects I believe, various accelerators, memory upgrades and flash drives exist or are in development for the Amiga, as are projects such as a new Amiga board (Amiga Reloaded) and new A1200 cases. Same with magazines, books, websites etc. - the Amiga scene is just bigger. Anyway, back on topic: I think regardless what Atari did with the ST, they would have eventually been defeated by the PC. Even a STE with a 256 color mode wouldn't have helped in 1990 - developers already switched to the Amiga or video game consoles. I liked the ST and the Falcon, but the STE not so much. Atari did very little to help the STE and those enhanced joystick ports were useless until the arrival of the Jaguar pads.

In a way they did by licensing TOS to clone manufacturers like Medusa (Medusa, Hades) and GE-Soft (Eagle). Obviously, those machines weren't price competitive with PCs or Macs and with MagiC Mac out, the Mac was a much better choice as the new "Atari" hardware for those who wanted to run applications. No, I think going after the consumer market made more sense for their business. But it's not like all of Europe was waiting for a cheap game entertainment machine from Atari.

The Portfolio wasn't developed by Atari though and the company that developed it had a successor ready which was eventually licensed to Sharp and released as the PC3100. The problem with the pocket PCs was that adding new features increased the price and the novelty factor of having a PC in a small format was already worn off. Also, Europe wasn't a just a single market for Atari. Customers in Germany were expecting a professional machine from Atari (most business applications were developed in Germany), that's why magazines at that time were disappointed with the Falcon having the same case as the 1040ST and Atari was asked when a professional version of the Falcon would be released ("soon").