atarian1

Hey, this is pretty cool! I guess it's a mini-ITX board in a 1040ST case. About time. Someone already did one for the Atari 800. What's really cool is the mouse! I wonder what type of mouse they used? I'd also like to know how this was constructed. Still, it's a $3500 PC.

Easy for you, but not all PCs and Macs are the same. Windows XP and Mac OS are finicky when it comes to floppy disks. Some like you have success while others do not. It would be better for everyone just to get rid of the floppy drive and replace it with a USB virtual one.

I like the vest too! It got my vote on what I would have bought. Cheers, FB You mean "life preserve".... (Back to the Future joke... )

Piano Wizard is the closest that I can think of to a videogame using a keyboard. There's also the old Miracle Keyboard Learning System on the NES and PC. Hated that thing because they falsely advertise "full-sized" keys when in fact, they were mid-sized keys. I wonder if anyone actually learned with that thing, only to get a rude awakening when they use a real piano, they end up hitting the wrong keys.

Being in Germany, I can't help but think that this is a CX80 trak-ball modified to work with an Atari ST.

Umm... No he won't. I don't know if he really did molest kids, but if evidence ever comes out that he did then he'll just be 'that dead pedophile' in my book. A wonderful music career can't make up for doing something like that. Tempest not to derail the thread but how many people that tried suing him for molestation did he pay off? that says it all. I dont need proof. one kid even described his privates in great detail. paying them off simply means your guilty and you dont want to go through the burden of the court system. if he was innocent, he would have tried it in court had he thought he could win. some guy tried suing me for smashing his truck up when I didnt. a friend of mine did but he wanted to see me do time. the state offered me a deal: pay the damages and everything is dropped or go to trial and prove my innocence. I chose trial and got off because the proof was against the plaintiff. I then turned around and sued him and the state for wrongful prosecution. sweet victory. I'm not going into whether MJ is guilty or not, but paying a settlement is not always a sign of guilt. Many times, the lawyers fees for the length of the trial is not worth the expense, time and stress of a trial for BOTH sides, and a compromise is reached. Not to say MJ is innocent or guilty, but there are also many innocent people (like me ) who are sued many times and end up forking over $$$ to settle a claim. I HATE IT , but looking at the overall picture, it's the best decision. (even if I have plenty of solid evidence to back me up) Maybe it was the same for MJ, who knows? You must have gone to small claims court or have a lucky lawyer who decided to take this case pro-bono, and the amount of cash was small enough to warrant fighting the case. Thousands of $$ is much different from millions of $$$. I will remember MJ for his significant contributions to the music world. Having lived through his Thriller days, I don't recall ever seeing another pop star as huge as he was since that time. It's unfortunate that he had his demons that brought him down and overshadowed his talent, but his music, videos, dancing, influence, etc will live on...

I just looked up the Roland MT32 on eBay and found one available in the UK. It looks like there aren't many available right now. It was a popular unit from an international company like Roland so I'm sure it was released worldwide. I started out with a Casio CZ-101 and I would NOT use it to play Sierra games unless it's all you can afford or obtain. It's like listening to the ST soundchip except with synthesized samples. No sampled drums, percussion, decent instrument samples, sound effects, multitimbral (more than one instrument playing at the same time) features. The difference is like night and day. In other words, get the Roland MT-32. See my previous post here for a list of games.

I'm pretty sure it was TOS14FX2.PRG or something like that. I do remember it was written by one of the Codehead guys.

Because SCSI-ACSI hard disk interfaces are impossible to find. And when they are found, they cost $$$. Then you have to take a chance and hope they still work. Hard disks don't last forever. Have you ever worked from a floppy based system? It may be tolerable if you're used to it, but I remember once I got my hard drive (way back in 1991?), I could not go back. I remember all the stupid copy protection was hideous when you are constantly swapping 4 disks. The few games that were hard drive installable was a godsend. Now that some of these awesome hackers are back making copy protected / hacked games hard disk installable, programs load up much faster, and you don't need to swap disks all the time or keep boxes of floppies around. I guess you have plenty of time on your hands watching the screen display "LOADING"...

It looks like the original SatanDisk to me without the case. I wonder why this person is calling it a different name.

I'm with nathanallen. Please DON'T do the drop test! It's an old myth that should not be done today. Instead, open it up and push down on all the chips. You'll hear some creaking which means the chip is being reseated. Even better, you might want to take out each chip (clean it if you can) and push it back in.

I could never do that to my magazines. I'm doing the same thing with my ST magazine collection, but I'm not chopping the binding off, so all the scans have the binding shown. This is one case where magazines like Atari Explorer (which are held together by staples instead of a glued binding) are better since they are easier to place on the scanning bed. I scan 11x17 (2 pages at a time) since it's less scanning work. One road bump in my scans is that they are all in JPEG because the high-speed scanner I use only saves color scans to JPEG. Black and white scans are saved in TIFF. I guess it's to not overload the network. I don't have every issue though so my library is full of missing issues. However, I still feel these articles, ads and everything should be archived for safekeeping. I mean, we can still buy computers and stuff from Best, B&C, eBay, etc, but not magazines which have a lot of great info.

I still pass by there once in a while to go to a surplus store called Weird Stuff Warehouse which occupies one of Atari's old warehouses. Living in the Bay Area has its rewards. I'm still kicking myself for not having a camera way back then to take pictures of the buildings when it was still occupied by Atari. I was lucky enough to go into the building for the stockholders meetings. Unfortunately, I don't remember what the hallways were like! ARGH! <insert emoticon of me banging my head against a wall> I only remember the empty room that was used for the meeting, but not much else. Old age is creeping up on me I guess...

:thumbsdown: Typical diluted Amiga fanboy troll talk... :thumbsdown: your mom's a "fanboy"... I'll smash a rare amiga too, if I get my hands on one cheap.. Ive already owned all this crap in the past, and sold it off... And that goes for most AMIGA, ST, C=64, and ATARI 8-bit models, including the falcon.. But heres a few facts for you.. First, the stuff is next to useless in this day & age when you compare it to modern PCs.. Second, the bulk of the useful/cool software out there will run on the less "rare & collectable" models, and lastly, I have next to nothing invested in this falcon.. Id love to see it smashed just for the sake of smashing it.. And if someone wants to donate an A3000T or whatever else to be smashed, I'm all for it.. Please go away until you have something better to contribute to the world. Moderator, please lock this thread. Thanks.

:thumbsdown: Typical diluted Amiga fanboy troll talk... :thumbsdown:

Again, not if you compare how many ST (and Mac and even PC) users out there. If the Amiga MIDI market was so "huge", then where is the software? All I see are trackers, and a few MIDI software packages here and there. Where are all the advertisements and reviews in Keyboard, Electronic Musician, Musician, Mix, <insert your favorite music magazine>, etc.? Where are all the musician interviews/profiles saying "I use an Amiga!"? I already know your rebuttal..." all those magazines are biased against the Amiga!" Bull. They covered everything. A market survey by Keyboard magazine in the late 80s showed the Amiga had a low, single digit market share, while the Mac and ST were neck-to-neck. Thats a total farce... And having never heard that claim before, I find it UTTERLY HILARIOUS.. Midi iis a 31.25Kbps ring-topography SERIAL transmission standard. Timing for things like disk interfaces, arbitration of various high speed data buses, DRAM control circuits, etc. are literally THOUSANDS of times more timing-critical than MIDI and all of these machines employ these features quite well. The "MIDI timing" would be 100% software dependant on any personal computer. You sir have allowed ATARI ST worshipers to absolutely "blow smoke up your ass" if you actually believe that the ATARI hardware was more precisely "timed" than any other computer platform. I can in fact SHOW you on a logic analyzer that this is not the case, but even if it was, it wouldnt matter. Digital circuits in microcomputers are timed in terms of nanoseconds (billionths of a second), and the smallest relevant timing interval in MIDI is in terms of miliseconds (thousandths of seconds) and amounts to an eternity in terms of machine cycles for even the slowest processors. Like I said.. I didnt use the software.. So its quite possible that CUBASE(or whatever you used) shits all over BARS&PIPES on the Amiga.. I dont know.. But I do know there was a TON of people using AMIGAs and MACS for MIDI, and alot of the ones I knew had tried STs, or even OWNED STs and preferred the other platform. And some of these people make their living in the music industry to this day.. No, YOU need to stop blowing smoke up your ass. This has been mentioned IN PRINT numerous times in music magazines like the ones I listed above. I'm not going into the techie talk which doesn't matter if it doesn't show in the hardware/software use. Musicians/producers/etc have stated numerous times that the MIDI timing was better on the ST. If the Amiga has such perfect timing, it sure didn't show it. By the 90s, the Amiga should have been mature enough for software programmers to work around the timing issues. Then the Amiga would have outsold the ST in the music market, lots of music retailers would be selling the Amiga, and magazines would be full of ads and glowing reviews of how the Amiga is better at music sequencing than the ST. DIDN'T HAPPEN Speaking of Computer Chronicles, I remember the MIDI episode that showed the Mimetics sequencer on the Amiga. What I thought was hilarious was when the guy moved a window, EVERYTHING grinded to a halt. How can anyone record music when a simple move of a window grinds your system to a halt? Maybe some people could tolerate it, but most people found it horrible as the market/sales reflect this. Once again, this has been mentioned and verified so many times already, but you can't seem to get a grip with reality that the Amiga is NOT a perfect machine. Even as late as 1995, some of the biggest names in music were still using STs. Big time music producer Tim Simenon (Seal, Neneh Cherry, Annie Lennox, Depeche Mode, Bomb the Bass, etc) explained how he refused to use Macs (even after purchasing a large amount of Macs for his pro studio) because of timing issues on the Mac. Fatboy Slim used an ST (even featured it on the Moulin Rouge DVD) until 2005? (something like that). These (and MANY others - Fleetwood Mac, etc) are still going strong today. Try reading some of today's music magazines like Future Music (or was it Sound on Sound?). They have a "Looking Back" section of popular musicians/producers etc back in the days (including the late 80s-early 90s) explaining how they made music back then. Whenever a computer was mentioned, almost always it was the Atari ST. Macs and PCs were mentioned once in a while (mostly 90s people), but I NEVER read anyone using an Amiga yet. So where are these "TON of people" using Amigas? Again, it sure didn't show it in the music market. You are WAY exaggerating your claims of this "huge" Amiga music market and people abandoning Atari STs in favor of Amigas and Mac. If this were true, again, the market, magazines, even the trade shows like NAMM (largest US music retailers show) and Frankfurt MusicMesse (largest music show in the world), didn't show it. These shows were dominated by the Atari ST. I know..."they are all are biased against the Amiga!" :roll:

What I was saying was that while the ST sound chip was not as good as the Amiga's, Atari allowed an easy way to get around it by including a built-in MIDI interface to hook up professional gear to it. Get it? Having the MIDI port built-in WAS a big deal. You didn't have to go through the hassle of building/buying an interface, or having it share the same port as your modem or whatever serial device. Not to mention the fact that some software required a certain MIDI interface. Lies. Full 32-bit Atari? It's called the TT030. Yes, there was a 50MHz accelerators, graphics cards, ethernet, etc, etc, just like the Amigas and Macs. As Atarian63 said, the Falcon030 was intended to be the "low-end" machine. The engineers had to weight price/performance/price in the design. At $2500, it's not so "low-end" anymore. It's too bad Atari never got around to a Falcon040 which would have really kick ass...

Hmm. I knew quite a few more musicians using AMIGAs than STs. The school I attended used Macs for the electronic music class, but the Teacher owned an ST. He alwayse said he wiished he could afford one of the macs the school used for MIDI.. But then again, he couldnt afford the keyboards they used either. All of the MIDI musicians I knew personally preferred the AMIGA because not only could they compose music that sounded awesome on their keyboard, but they could then sample the relevant instruments into the amiga and use a tracker to make a 4 or 8 voice digital version to distribute via floppy or over BBSes. And it would work on peoples machines who werent musicians and therefor did not own any musical instruments/equipment. electronic music is not my area so I cant comment on who had better software.. ive heard some pretty amazing midi sequences that were done on the AMIGA though. Like I said, from the hardware standpoint, MIDI takes next to nothing to do... Just like I know quite a few people using STs for Desktop Video. I'm sure there were a few Amiga MIDI musicians too, but they were far and few in between. That must have been painstaking to convert a MIDI file to a tracker. They must have had tons of samples to sample each chord. They must have been very simple songs in order to make it worthwhile. The ST always had the rock solid timing that the Amiga, Mac, PCs never had at the time. That and the built-in MIDI ports is what made it THE music machine at the time.

Atarian63 got most of it, but I'd like to point out a few things. According to whom? lowendmac.com says the Mac Plus ran at 8MHz. Wikipedia says the Mac Plus ran at 8MHz. I realize that you don't trust Wikipedia or Lowendmac so I went straight to the horse's mouth for its word. Apple's technical specifications for the Macintosh Plus says 8MHz. http://support.apple.com/kb/SP190 Just look up ads and articles at the time. If they were not true, they would have been pulled. I think the sources you mentioned were lazy and just rounded up. Yes, there were direct-to-disk recording systems for the ST. Hybrid Arts ADAP, Digidesign's Sound Tools (sound familiar?), plus one or two more from Europe. The Mac and ST were neck-to-neck in the US music market with a slight edge to the Mac. However, the ST totally dominated Europe (90%+ market share). Mice and keyboards are subjective, but you make it sound like no one liked the Atari keyboards. Not true. The MegaST keyboard is still the best keyboard I've used - much better than the Apple Mac keyboards (even today). I like the feel of hitting bottom as do many other people. BTW, I like Atari mice - just need to load a mouse accelerator to make it faster. No, YOU have got to be kidding me. I simply CANNOT see how anyone can say the Mac Plus/IIs were a strikingly attractive design. The ST case was strikingly different from any computer out there at the time. As I said, the Mac case is the same old boring beige case like all the rest of the computers during the era. Character and Class? HA! More like BORING! People walk right by it and not notice it because it looks like the computer next to it whether it's a PET, Tandy, Amiga, etc. I remember waiting for a computer store in a mall to open up which had set up the Mac, Amiga and ST in front of the store. None of them were turned on yet as the store was just opening. I noticed more people stopped to look at the ST than the other machines, probably because of its unique design. People were copying the ST design in their own products such as nametags and even cakes. Oh, industrial design awards? Only after the iMac came out. Why do you think Apple was dying in the 1990s? Because Macs were the same old boring beige case like PCs. Apple needed to do something different to distinguish itself from the boring beige case PCs. The result was the colorful iMacs which I hate, but people thought they were cool and different - just like the ST case.

The Mac Plus ran at 8MHz, the same as the 520 and 1040ST. The Mac Plus also had 800K floppy disks compared to the ST's 720K floppies. The Macintosh II was released almost a year later and featured a 16MHz 68020 with a 68882 FPU chip. The Mac II was more expandable than anything that Atari ever released. So the Mac was either comparable in speed or faster, depending on whether you're comparing 1986 machines from both companies, 1987 machines from both companies, and beyond. Yeah, I know the ST was released in 1985. Uh, let's get some facts straight. The Mac Plus ran at 7.83 MHz, not the full 8 MHz that the ST ran. (Yes, you CAN tell. Spectre GCR was 20% faster than a real Mac!) True, Mac floppies can store 800K, but "Twisted" floppies can store 807K on the ST. The ST had a 640x400 vs 512x342 display in mono, and the ST could do color, unlike the Mac. Macs were not expandable just like the ST. Yes, Macs had better sound, but the MIDI ports made up for it. Networking can be done via MIDI, but it was slow. The separate keyboards were the BEST I ever felt. The mice were about the same, but two buttons really made things easier. I disagree about industrial design. The dove gray ST case was beautiful , especially the original 520ST and Mega/TT cases. The Mac looked like a plain old boring beige box. The all-in-one monitor and CPU design with a separate keyboard is the WORST industrial design ever. (Yes, I still think the iMac is the WORST industrial design ever) Combining the CPU and keyboard with a separate monitor is much more flexible and easier to upgrade. Comparing the Mac II with the ST is very unfair! At $10,000, it better have more features than the ST and Amiga! The low end 68030 Macs were NOT better than the Falcon. For the same price, you got a lot more features like a DSP, 16-bit stereo sound, etc. Sure, you can get those features in an AV Mac, but they cost $5,000! Again, at that price, it better be faster! I disagree about the STacy. It was a portable ST just like the original Macintosh Portable was a portable Mac. No real tech innovations in each. However, the STacy was lighter than the Mac Portable, can run Mac software, and cost much less. As for GEM, I would say the Mac OS was a bit more mature by the time the ST came out. GEM did its job, but I always wished GEM became something like NeoDesk. That would have been awesome.

Master of the Lamps on the Atari 8-bits from Activision. Every level had a cool tune.

I actually agree with President here. I hate it when greedy people do this. I can remember twice when this happened to me. Once was a disk drive at a surplus store and the other was a GarageBand loops at the CompUSA closing out sale. Both times, the greedy people filled up a shopping cart with the stuff (we're talking about at least a hundred of each item). What the hell are you going to do with 100 disk drives or 100 copies of a GarageBand JamPack? Sell it on eBay of course! I asked if I could have ONE item, and both refused. I should have just snatched one from the cart anyway. Screw them! This is what is wrong with America.... greed. So you don't collect, or sell anything yourself? Wow. I support a family of six (four children) with a used media business. If you think there is something wrong with buying items for resale, don't purchase anything. Every single store in the world buys from some source to sell at a profit. Other than in the case of a thrift store where they get it free (but they do turn a profit... into their income). Don't judge people just because you didn't think to get up at 6am, to go down to that discount sale, and stand in line for two hours in the freezing rain just to be the first person when they opened, so you could support your kids. Maybe we could be like China instead. Let our government provide everything, be slave labor, tell us what we can and can't do, and kill our babies if we have more than one. Do you prefer that world? Oh, yeah, then you couldn't go buy that disc drive in the first place. Don't hate on me because someone was a jerk to you once or twice. You don't know me. AX I do collect and play. I rarely sell because I only buy what I need. If I somehow end up with duplicates, then I sell them. Well, duh, you have to buy something to sell to make a living. I never said that was wrong. As for the rest of your rant...whatever.

I actually agree with President here. I hate it when greedy people do this. I can remember twice when this happened to me. Once was a disk drive at a surplus store and the other was a GarageBand loops at the CompUSA closing out sale. Both times, the greedy people filled up a shopping cart with the stuff (we're talking about at least a hundred of each item). What the hell are you going to do with 100 disk drives or 100 copies of a GarageBand JamPack? Sell it on eBay of course! I asked if I could have ONE item, and both refused. I should have just snatched one from the cart anyway. Screw them! This is what is wrong with America.... greed.

That's some expensive cardboard, styrafoam, disks and adapters! You could get the same thing at Best Electronics for a little more than half the price AND it comes with a warranty.

One of the thing my company does is computer recycling, we chuck the commodore stuff all the time. Didn't know anyone wanted it.A few years ago we tried selling C64's and 16541's tested, couldnt get $9 each so we started parting them for recycling. Guess I need to check again. Well, yeah, the average person on the street isn't interested, but the collectors are... but the collectors aren't around your recycling place. Do you think everyone is interested in Atari stuff? Of course not... same with C= stuff. Grab it all, put it all on Lemon64.com forums, or here, or if nothing else eBay. Tried ebay, nothing C64 went.We scapped 20-25 machine and drives. The Atari stuff however sold almost every time. I assume because it was produced in smaller numbers. As I said earlier I guess I need to check the market now. Hate to throw away $$$ I also think it's name recognition. Many more people know Atari than Commodore. If you didn't live through the 80s, you probably would not remember Commodore. Atari has been around the media since its inception, though it has come in time blocks at a time. After 1984, even though not many people knew about the ST computers, the Atari Games arcade division kept the name in the spotlight. Arcades were still popular, so the common folk who want some arcade fun still saw that Atari makes video games. After Atari folded in 1996, Activision released compilations of Atari games. Hasbro then did the same, but also tagged some of their family-orientated games with the Atari label. Infogrames revived the name again by changing their name to Atari and selling more software for all platforms under the Atari label. The Flashback and Jakks Pacific systems helped keep the Atari name visible in the hardware business. These were sold in mass merchandising stores (Target, WalMart, etc) which again, helped keep the Atari name exposed. I don't recall ever seeing Commodore compilations sold in these stores. If they were, they were not very well displayed like the Atari stuff. So it doesn't surprise me that some of the more adventurous, nostalgic or curious video game/computer users want to check out what the real systems were like again or for the first time. When they discover that Atari wasn't just video games, but computers also, that creates more interest. I bet if you ask someone off the street in their 20s what a Commodore is, they won't have a clue. Ask about Atari, they will probably at least have a faint idea.