atarian1

Um. If all this is true, then I would be angry too. I always use tracking for international purchases because they tend to get lost if it is not tracked. It sounds like you chose to not use tracking even though you had the option to do so at your own risk. Well, it looks like it got lost so you should be responsible for your decision not to use tracking. Blaming him for your choice to save money by not using tracking is not right. Now the racist stuff is uncalled for, but I wouldn't be surprised if this happened to him before. That's probably why he blew his gasket. In the end, I think both of you were wrong, so I would just drop it. (and make sure you use tracking for future international purchases! )

ST Monitor switchboxes were quite popular back in the days. The most popular (in the US at least) was Practical Solutions' Monitor Master. There were a bunch of others like the Astra, Talon, etc, and I am sure looking through old ST Formats and such, you'll find major ST retailers selling this and other switch boxes. However, as for today...I don't know anyone who sells them. Seems like these days, everyone is using old VGA monitors that can sync down to 15KHz for color stuff. If you're handy with the soldering iron, you could make your own. Plans should be easily found on the web as I remember seeing it.

That's why I hate the 3200 announcement. Drop the 3200 crap and finish the book first.

Looks like a copy protection key for the old Protezoa software program. I can't remember who made it though. Protezoa was an old patch editor/librarian program for the E-Mu Proteus series of synthesizer modules.

Maybe I would have said 'yes' 10-20 years ago when STs were more plentiful. However, no one has extra ST cases anymore. Best Electronics is out of all ST/STe/Mega/Falcon cases. They're pretty much all parts now in terms of 16-bit Atari stuff. So, once you drill that hole, that's it.

I am surprised there is so much speculation when this was already explained a long time ago...somewhere. I think it was in one of the Atari magazines, bulletin boards, Usenet...I can't remember where though. I seem to remember it was Bob Brodie (Atari's spokesperson) who spilled the beans on why EGM was giving Atari such bad press. The gist is the EGM and Atari Entertainment (where most of the Lynx programmers were) offices were close to each other in Lombard, IL. Since they were close to each other, EGM got the scoop on the latest Lynx news and games that were coming out. At one point, Atari even loaned EGM a Lynx development system so that Atari can show EGM the latest games they were working on. Anyone who knows development systems know they can be a pain to lug back and forth, so since they were on good terms with each other, Atari decided to leave a development system at the EGM office. EGM used this advantage over other video game magazines to get the early screenshots and reviews of beta/test versions of games. They even created a Lynx supplement with tons of previews of pre-release games that was alluded to above. Well, Atari wanted their development system back. EGM balked and said Atari "gave" them the development system. Atari said it was a loan and eventually wrestled it back. Note that these development systems were NOT cheap. If I recall, they were about $8,000 each which would be almost $16,000 today. That's a lot of $$$! Development systems were made in small quantities, so one couldn't just buy one off the shelf. Atari had to make use of limited resources, so it they wanted their development system back to make more games, they had every right to do so. Of course, that made EGM mad, so they used the power of their press to bash the Lynx any way they can. And so the childish Lynx bashing began...

The Mega ST sounds like a dead power supply. No fan movement is a good sign of that. Replacing it with a working one depends on how comfortable you are with disassembling the ST and soldering skills. The easiest way is swapping the broken power supply with a new one but that will set you back about $80.

Great to see another ST saved from death! It doesn't look familiar to me though. I am guessing it's some type of digitizer since it has an A/D converter in there. That one chip with no identifying marks is the key to figuring out what it is.

Yes you are ignorant. The MIDI ports are built in already. What is this "expensive secondary hardware add-on" that you are talking about? I know you certainly need an expensive MIDI interface for the Amiga, but not the ST. You certainly can use professional (i.e. expensive) keyboards reliably with the built in MIDI ports. That's why it was so popular with professional and amateur musicians.

Black letters on white background like the Atari ST. I like the bigger screen and higher refresh rate compared to the Mac. After using a color monitor for years, moving to the monochrome was a game changer. I don't recall ever straining my eyes like I did when I used a color monitor. On a color monitor, I find it easier on my eyes with white letters on a black background.

For me, it was the Atari ST because I was not a good graphic artist, did not have time for games, and needed a computer that had good productivity software. I was also interested in music. I was a big gamer on the 8-bit but as I got older, I had less time to spend on games and spent more time on homework, reports and other school stuff. I still had a color monitor for games, but didn't spend as much time or money on them. I also went into piracy rehab and went clean on the ST. I didn't want to see it die like how piracy was a big factor in destroying the 8-bits. I loved collecting and playing AMS music files on the 8-bit, but when I tried to make my own, it was hopeless. I read standard music notation, but AMS used this archaic DOS-like command input interface that I never understood. I tried, but everything turned out sounding like garbage because it wouldn't do things like tying or slurring the correct notes. The ST version of The Music Studio was the answer. I didn't have to spend money on a MIDI interface. I used that money to buy a quality synthesizer that was better than both sound chips in the ST and Amiga. There was lots of quality music software to choose from if I needed to upgrade.

I call BS on this. Jean Michel Jarre switching to the Amiga? I find that very hard to believe since he was always a big supporter of the ST. Hmm. Now that I read it again more closely, I notice you said he was "keen" on Bars and Pipes, but did not end up buying or switching to it. Looks like as he delved more into it, Bars and Pipes was not as good as his first impression. Yeah, the ST was better...

In general, I tell anyone wanting to use a hard drive with the ST to stick with hard drives under 1GB. By the time 1GB hard drives were coming out, the market was starting to be dominated by Macs and PCs, so hard drive manufacturers started cutting corners on the SCSI standard. One feature that >1GB hard drives tend to have is SCSI arbitration that not all ACSI-SCSI adapters support - including the Atari-built ones. Apple SCSI hard drives are optimized for Macs. They could work with other computers, but they can be finicky too with non-Mac computers. I remember some people having hard times with Apple drives back in the day too. As recommended by others, best use a modern SD card drive for hard drive needs.

Hmm. I don't remember this. My recollection was that WordPerfect was aggressively expanding outside the PC market at the time. They ported WordPerfect to almost every platform that was capable of handling it. That meant there were versions for the ST, Amiga, Apple IIGS, Mac, Unix, etc. They had a great ad in various magazines showing all the platforms/OSes that had a version of WordPerfect. It was quite a list.

Yeah, that was around 1990 when Thexder and King's Quest 5 came out. VGA graphics and Soundblaster/Roland sound plus faster and cheaper Intel processors were gaining marketshare. I remember now that it was around this time where even diehard Atari supporters in the user group I was in started talking about PCs.

I have to disagree with that. In the late 80s, many of the US software houses were making ST versions of their games. You name it...(off the top of my head)...Activision, Accolade, Broderbund, Epyx, Sierra, Microprose, Mindscape, Origin, Sublogic...These are all big multi-platform game publishers in the US that published ST versions of their games. The only major US software house that didn't enthusiastically supported the ST was Electronic Arts. Just because they didn't embrace the ST doesn't mean they make up the US software market. Look in Compute!, or any other Atari magazine back in the day and you will see advertisements listing an Atari ST version. I don't know what Atari magazine you were reading, but I don't recall any campaign to write to software houses to port their games to the ST. I just did a spot check of the Atari magazine archives and found nothing of this. Mostly because most software houses were releasing ST versions of their games. I do agree this started to change around 1990 or so when the PCs (even Amigas) started to chip away at the ST market share. However, 1985-89 were the golden years of quantity of ST software.

Buying Federated was one of the reasons why Neil Harris left Atari even though he worked well with the Tramiels back at Commodore and then at Atari. He didn't understand why the Tramiels were using an analogy of when Commodore owned some computer stores that it would be the same with a big chain of stores. All the details are in his interview on the Antic podcast.

(Rant on...) WTF? W. T. F. Why don't you sell the monitor too? Donate it back to the store you bought it from. Sell it on eBay. Someone will want it. Yet you know it's rare, but you would rather destroy it than to make someone else happy with it. I find it so hypocritical that you complain about spending $167 on an UltraSatan SD card drive, yet you would rather throw away a perfectly good rare monitor that is in demand. The last PS3000 monitor sold for $250 on eBay. You would rather throw away $250, yet you complain that $167 is too much for you to spend. W.T.F. You act poor (I can't $167 to spend...), yet you act like you're filthy rich ($250 is nothing to me. I would rather throw it away...) Un-(f***en)-believable! No wonder you are poor... You need another hobby. Seriously. Vintage computers are not for you if you throw them away instead of giving it to someone who wants it because you can't figure it out. I can't imagine what would happen if you ended up with an Atari Falcon030, Atari 1450XLD, Apple I or something. "It's too hard for me to figure out so I'm throwing it away!" (Rant off...)

I didn't realize this was happening. I am one of those people who like to play games, but I completely suck at them! So playing to the end would be a challenge for me even in a trainer mode. It's not so bad for shoot-em ups, but for strategy games, it can be tough because "you need this object to that object to advance" makes it hard to reach the end. Games that force you to start the level all over instead of continuing where you were also make it tough for me to advance to the end. I will do my best to help out though. It will be tough to carve out time for this, but I want to see these hard drive adapted games (and ST programs in general) be preserved for the computer history archives. It seems like the ST is not appreciated enough in the computer history books compared to other platforms, so I don't want to see the excellent work you are doing stop. Thank you for all the work you have done.

I finally got around to unZIPping the file and yep, Christos is right. A bunch of ST MIDI programs. They are: CLIPBRD = Atari Clipboard storage area DRUMMER = MIDI Master Drummer - a drum machine pattern sequencer EDITRK = EditTrack by Hybrid Arts - Hybrid Arts' top of the line MIDI sequencer w/o SMPTE features MIDIFILE = Some MIDI file called BIRTHDAY MTPRO36 = Master Tracks Pro by Passport Designs SMPTETRK = SMPTEtrack by Hybrid Arts - EditTrack with SMPTE synchronization features

At least the ST and Amiga had 2-buttoned mice, so the wiring is there for two buttons. I don't know if a two-buttoned controller could have been made with a simple additional wire or not, but theoretically it could be done. Any hardware people can chime in on this idea?

Hi Jeff, I have to concur that I don't believe piracy was any worse on the ST than other platforms. If piracy was such a problem, why were so many other software publishers releasing ST software into the 1990s? They are businesses too just like EA, yet it seemed like they continued to churn out ST products. I am sure they would have stopped supporting the ST too if they saw their sales plummeting. Yet that did not happen. Software publishers only started to not port some ST products in the early 1990s when PCs were becoming cheaper and more powerful. Ok, the Amiga 500 may have played a role, but not as much as the cheap PC clones with VGA graphics and 16-bit sound. I still remember EA not treating Atari users well. Trip Hawkins was all over the Amiga when it and the ST came out, so they developed for it first while only releasing one product (Financial Cookbook) for the ST. Not a good start to develop a good relationship with Atari ST users! When ST sales were outpacing the Amiga, then it seemed like EA just reluctantly released ST versions of their products. I don't recall the quality of all of EA's ST products, but I remember two products that I was dying to see ST versions of were Marble Madness and Music Construction Set. When they were finally released, I was shocked at how BAD they were! Marble Madness...oh god, you can't even control the damn marble! When I tried it out at a computer fair, I thought the mouse ball was dirty or something because the marble just would not move in the direction I wanted it to. I was a decent player of the arcade version, so the fact that I could not even get passed the first level is saying something. The bad controls were confirmed in reviews in ST magazines. The ST Informer review really stood out because the reviewer actually sent back his free review copy that he was allowed to keep. He also included a letter stating he was highly anticipating this product (like me) but was so badly disappointed by how bad it was that he didn't even want the FREE copy. Music Construction Set felt like a half-finished port of a C64 product. The most glaring problem with it was that it was limited to 3 voices even through MIDI, so if I have a multi-timbral synth with 8 voices and a drum machine, I can still only play 3 voices. I was lucky to be able to try these out before buying them and was glad I did. I would have been really pissed off if I spent my hard-earned allowance as a poor teenager on these crappy products. I would not be surprised if that led some to give up buying software (especially EA software) because they got screwed buying bad products. And no, I did not pirate them either. One of the best selling games on the ST was Populous. Peter Molyneaux (the author) said the ST version sold about 46,000 copies. Not too shabby if you ask me for 1989. By the way, Populous was distributed by....oh, geez...Electronic Arts. If that is too few copies for EA, then EA has some serious greed issues because in those days, I am sure any software author would be happy selling that many copies.

Considering the Satandisk and UltraSatan are open source, I am a bit surprised by this news. He has said before that he would rather spend his time designing things rather than manufacturing/testing/selling them.

Isn't CosmosEx open-source? It looks like the sources are on GitHub. However, I don't know anything about programming so the files are all an empty cloud to me. All it takes for a new batch is for someone to take the sources and figure out what to do with them...

Did you ever have a CatBox or ScatBox for an Atari Jaguar? If so, I am pretty sure that Monitor Adapter Plug plugs into the RGB port on the Cat/ScatBox so that you can use the Jaguar on an ST monitor. I have an adapter that looks just like that.