Amiga 1200 vs Atari ST.

[Atari030]

I used to hang with a lot of Amiga owners back in the day, we used to play multiplayer games and for flight sim work the ST clearly came into its own. But, we all agreed each machine had its merits, who am I kidding, the STFM was better than the A500 as far as I was concerned and we would constantly pull out demos and games that would silence the Amiga fraternity. For every advantage the A500 had, it also had flaws.

 

A couple of weeks ago I was listening to MOD playback on my stock Falcon vs my A1200. Falcon was the clear winner. :-) I still love listening to MODs on the STFM too. Why? Because I just love my Ataris and I don't feel the need to justify that to anyone.

[Foebane]

 

I would ignore Foebane really.

 

Good luck trying to do that here. And I'd do it to you as well.

[Foebane]

who am I kidding, the STFM was better than the A500 as far as I was concerned and we would constantly pull out demos and games that would silence the Amiga fraternity. For every advantage the A500 had, it also had flaws.

 

A couple of weeks ago I was listening to MOD playback on my stock Falcon vs my A1200. Falcon was the clear winner. :-) I still love listening to MODs on the STFM too. Why? Because I just love my Ataris and I don't feel the need to justify that to anyone.

 

1st paragraph: Hahahaha! You're DELUSIONAL, Atari030! What games and demos would "silence" us? Please, do tell.

 

2nd paragraph: Fair enough, the Falcon had brand-spanking-new audio hardware whilst the A1200's was unchanged, so MODs were the same or clearer. But you listen to MODs on the ST as well? You LIKE that awful, scratchy sound?

[Atari030]

Back in the day the Amoeba owners said you could never play mods or load pics with more than 16 colours on an ST. I did both. There are a ton of mod players and editors. Have a gander.

 

While the Amiga owners eyes were failing due to excessive interlace and all those dramas just pulling a file off a PC...... its all coming back to me now, lol. And when I put 4MB chip ram in the STFM..... damn, we had fun back then.

[Foebane]

Back in the day the Amoeba owners said you could never play mods or load pics with more than 16 colours on an ST. I did both. There are a ton of mod players and editors. Have a gander.

 

While the Amiga owners eyes were failing due to excessive interlace and all those dramas just pulling a file off a PC...... its all coming back to me now, lol. And when I put 4MB chip ram in the STFM..... damn, we had fun back then.

 

As I said, I had an ST before I had an Amiga, and I definitely remember playing mods with samples from the STampede disk magazine.

 

And I've seen Spectrum 512, and ST/E demos that put hundreds of colours on screen at once, even fade ins and outs.

 

Interlace on Amiga? Couldn't get enough of it. Seriously, I got used to it in the end, even on a TV. And I used to put PC floppies in my A1200 all the time, no problems there, except maybe for the differences concerning line feeds and carriage returns

 

Did the ST have "chip RAM"? I thought that was an Amiga thing only.

[Mulletino]

 

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.

 

Back in the late 80s early 90s i had a Miggy 500, used it mostly for gaming but also did sampling/sequencing with external hardware, although quite basic it worked well enough to get us signed to a label. The recording studios we used in London though all used PCs or Atari STs, luckily the sound engineers were familiar with them so I didn't have to relearn anything. Good times.

 

I remember doing the soldering/cut mod to make my 500kb expansion into Chip Ram. My mate had an ST so I got to enjoy both.

Edited April 5, 2018 by Mulletino

[Atari030]

No, we do. My CT2 Falcon has 14MB chip (called ST RAM) and 128 MB fast (called TT RAM). My TT has 4mb ST and 16mb TT.

 

Have a look at photochrome by Doug Little, IIRC it could do 4096 colours on an STFM and 19,200 on an STE. These days I think he squeezed even more out of it. Photochrome still dazzles me. Stunt car racer and F16 always looked faster to me on the STFM than A500. I used to run the cheats on F16 and nail this one Amiga user all the time, used to drive him nuts.

 

As MOD players went along they got better and better. Stretching my memory a bit here, I seem to recall it was possible to play back pretty high sampling rates on the STFM, albeit using a ton of CPU and mono, got some pretty incredible results. I have a MegaSTE and Falcon so its a no brainer. 50khz MOD playback rulz.

 

I remember the time the Amiga blokes first saw the Froggies over the fence Demo, I fell in love with that one - utter silence. Stock STFM with 1MB RAM. Just beautiful.

 

 

Another that stood out was the Sam Fox slideshow, hell, its Sam Fox;

 

 

AN cool, blessed be thy name, we worship thee.

 

The way I see it, if you really want to compare models of Amiga, you should do it in the right order;

 

A1000 - ST/F/M

A500 - STE

A2000 - MegaST and MegaSTE ( a little unfair in the latter)

A3000 - TT030

A1200 - Falcon030 ( a little unfair in the Falcon, DSP kills it)

A4000 - Nothing really, except Medusa and clones.

CD32 - Jaguar

 

These days those marvelous men with their programming machines are doing things that would have been considered impossible 30 yaren ago.

 

 

 

I have nearly every model of Atari and Commodore, Amiga's are fine, I like them, but I love Atari. You can't quantify that. These days I work on thousands of dollars of Servers and the like, I would still much rather hack an STFM. Atari had soul.

[Foebane]

Oh, I love Sea of Colour, this is what I meant by the fade in/out with hundreds of colours, and that soundtrack...!

[+DarkLord]

As a long term Atari user, I find these conversations these days to be highly amusing.

 

Way back in 85/86 when I bought my first Atari ST, I got a package deal from CDW

computers (think I got that name right), that consisted of the 520ST, a double sided

floppy and a SC1224 plus software that totaled $999.00. I could have gotten the base

model without the monitor for $799.00.

 

Couldn't touch that with the Amiga, despite all it's high tech appeal. I mean seriously,

$1500.00 just for the base unit alone? Too rich for this poor boy's blood.

 

Later on, when prices did come down, I eventually got the original A1000, an A2000

and finally, an A1200. I liked the A1000 best. I thought the recessed keyboard, case

and signatures on the inner cover were all cool. Hated the disk swapping for the OS.

I was disappointed in the A2000. Didn't like the keyboard at all. The A1200 was okay,

nice step up from the original line but it had a lot of things I didn't like. I didn't like the

keyboard, especially the shortened keys and felt that the whole design suffered from

flimsy construction. The external P/S with the on/off switch on it was awkward. Also,

a lack of audio upgrades was a mistake, IMHO.

 

So I've seen the hardware, played the games and demos on both. As many people

here have already stated, I too prefer my Atari's.

 

I have a Mega ST4 that runs my BBS. Very solid construction, love the keyboard. I

have a Mega STe - wonderful machine! Nice keyboard as well. A CT60 Falcon with

a Supervidel sets at the high end of my collection. Last, but certainly not least, I have

a highly modified STacy that holds a special place in my heart.

 

I can't think of anything Amiga that I would swap them out for, then or now.....

 

Foebane, let me ask you a direct question. What is your purpose here, in an Atari

forum? Is is to be contentious and argumentative? You'll get nowhere fast like that,

any faster than if I went to an Amiga forum and began waving an Atari banner.

 

Most of us have been here a very long time (and I understand the OP was asking

a very specific question) but honestly, you're not going to change any of our minds

about our Atari's.

 

Wall. Banging head. Uselessly.

 

Hope you think about what I'm saying here....appreciated.

[calimero]

I agree with DarkLord. I had similar experience: in 1986. Amiga was too expensive, same as Mac or PC.

I bought Amiga 500 somewhere in 1993-1994 to play games but only that. It was unusable for any work without harddisc or lot of RAM while ST was perfectly usable with 1MB and without harddisc.

 

Anyway, I find this link very informative regarding Amiga vs Atari: http://amiga.lychesis.net/knowledge/Comparison.html

[MrMaddog]

I agree with DarkLord. I had similar experience: in 1986. Amiga was too expensive, same as Mac or PC.

I bought Amiga 500 somewhere in 1993-1994 to play games but only that. It was unusable for any work without harddisc or lot of RAM while ST was perfectly usable with 1MB and without harddisc.

 

Anyway, I find this link very informative regarding Amiga vs Atari: http://amiga.lychesis.net/knowledge/Comparison.html

 

Seriously does anyone, especially in Europe, use the Amiga for anything besides games, demos & Mac emulation?

 

(I already know about Video Toasters & NASA but that's by professionalss in the States)

[calimero]

That whole NASA story...

 

ONE employee that have Amiga at home suggest to use Amiga for recording telemetrics. He (one person) organize everything (wrote program...) to use Amiga.

 

What I am trying to tell is that using Amiga at NASA was not choise that come from top management nor is some massive occurence but rather one individual person that was familiar with Amiga outside his job.

 

It was not like hundreds of STs in national Holland railway company (if I remember corectly, I could search for link to news paper)...

 

 

 

"Problem" with Amiga users is that they are "loud" and proud on Amiga. They are very prone on making myths around Amigas...

Edited April 9, 2018 by calimero

[Atari030]

Pretty sure Nasa used Atari 8 bits too.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

I remember that Amiga was used a lot for adding subtitles to VHS videos - because it's genlock capability. Some were used by video clip makers - not top firms for sure.

That's normal, because whole video stage design was TV standard compatible.

[calimero]

Pretty sure Nasa used Atari 8 bits too.

Any link?

[Atari030]

https://www.atarimagazines.com/v8n1/spaceageatari.html

Antic. I am sure I read it in another mag though. Maybe Explorer? Something to do with simulations.

[Christos]

I also remember NASA buying TT directly from Atari.

[calimero]

@christos

but we never hear of that ... (That NASA bought TTs)

 

We only hear how NASA use Amiga...

[Christos]

@calimero

 

They are more than us

[Atari030]

And we aren't compensating.

[atarian63]

I own both and unless you have some Nostaliga with the ST I would say you can pass! The Amiga 1200 is a great machine that can run ALL Amiga software, even older Amiga 500 games! (You do need some degrader tools or WHDLoad)

I do too, but A500 spends its time boxed up Ste gets play all the time for me.

[English Invader]

I do too, but A500 spends its time boxed up Ste gets play all the time for me.

 

Same here but in my case it's an A600 that gets used once in a blue moon. 9 times out of 10, if I want to play something Amiga related I'll use an emulator but with the ST emulation just doesn't cut it for me.

[Keatah]

"Problem" with Amiga users is that they are "loud" and proud on Amiga. They are very prone on making myths around Amigas...

 

That's right.

[GlowingGhoul]

 

That's right.

 

Amiga users also seemed to make up the largest contingent of "It's going to come back!"computer flat earthers who continued to use their antiquated machines not out of nostalgia, but out of the powerful self delusion that Amiga was "superior" to PCs all the way through the early 2000's. I think most of them became those annoying Linux fanatics (who've now also largely gone quiet).

[Keatah]

Computer version of those flat earthers.. Bwahahahahah!! I think even today they're still holding out hopes of a comeback. New operating systems, new accelerators, and around and round they go.

 

Yes. And praise all gods that those Linux evangelists are subsiding.