Maxi C64 now need to get them to do a Atari ST

[hobbyhands]

So by now many of you have seen the released TheC64.  I am hoping that it is really popular. So the company might be interested in moving on to another machine. The Atari ST would be a great option. I think anyways. 

 

Having the originals is great, but as they get old and older the harder it will be find ones that work. So a replacement while not the exact same thing would be nice. Your thoughts?

[chad5200]

I totally agree. This would be great if they did one for the ST or even the 800XL.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

So, this is same design as first C64 - the fat. With modern storage - USB , some games included, and goes on modern TVs - HDMI . For some 120 bucks. That should sell well. Of course not millions ?

With Atari ST it will be harder, I guess. May be some legal issues, price to get right for manufacturing with more less original name. But if it could sell for about 200 bucks, including keyboard, mouse, joystick that should be hit.

Of course, we have already for some years FPGA clones, which use regular PC keyboards and mouses, SD cards ... They are more flexible, so price of 'real clone' should be max in same range. 

I hope that no one will come with demand that it includes floppy drive ? Even if it would be useful for those with SW on it. Because it would increase price - I guess no one will manufacture drives now for low price in low quantity. Who wants that floppy sound - well, we have Steem SSE ?

And who knows, maybe there will be some benefit from all those hard disk adapts ?

[tjam]

On 12/25/2019 at 2:54 AM, hobbyhands said:

So by now many of you have seen the released TheC64.  I am hoping that it is really popular. So the company might be interested in moving on to another machine. The Atari ST would be a great option. I think anyways. 

 

Having the originals is great, but as they get old and older the harder it will be find ones that work. So a replacement while not the exact same thing would be nice. Your thoughts?

8bit retro is very popular now. There's also ZX Spectrum Next, bus as fas a I know it's not mass produced like TheC64... I guess that 16bit projects will follow, maybe first with Amiga since it was more popular platform than ST.

[hobbyhands]

So the spectrum is hard to get especially in the USA. So I would love to have one. Even if it's not the original

[English Invader]

My guess is that if they do something along these lines they'll go straight to the Amiga and skip the ST which has been the prevailing trend for most retro products.  The ST has never got the same attention as the Amiga and never will - the Amiga has an established reputation as "the superior machine" and most people will follow the "Amiga good, ST bad" mantra.

 

In some ways, I'm glad that the ST hasn't been given the "mini" treatment because I don't think there is any way to do the system justice in such a cheap, cost-reduced package.  One of the things that makes the Amiga/ST computers so special is that they're big, bulky and take up lots of space; they feel big and well-built and they're as much an emotional investment as a financial and physical one.  A mini can't emulate that.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

It says 'Maxi C64' - and someone here talks about 'mini'   ??

 

Only stupid people could call Amiga superior to ST. And ST was more popular than Amiga until end of 1987 - because Amiga 500 arrived that year, but SW choice was very limited first months. Amiga was better only for gamers, it's OS was slow, multitasking very basic, etc. And even not better with 3D games.

 

And Atari ST or Amiga 500 are not much bigger than fat C64.    Emotional investment, because it was big. bulky ...  ???  I guess someone is already in new year 'mood' ?

 

[English Invader]

2 hours ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

And Atari ST or Amiga 500 are not much bigger than fat C64.    Emotional investment, because it was big. bulky ...  ???  I guess someone is already in new year 'mood' ?

 

Emotional investment in the sense that the Amiga/ST computers have a much steeper learning curve than the 8-bits.  It took me years to figure out all the different models, ROM and RAM configurations and hardware flaws while a C64 is pretty much a C64; just you, the blue screen and 38k of memory.

 

And the 16-bits require more desk space simply by the fact that they require a mouse for operation.  I suppose in the old days, a 5.25" disk drive and/or a tape deck would have taken a lot of space but that problem has long since been eliminated by palm-sized digital solutions like the SD2IEC and 1541u.

 

I didn't say that the Amiga was superior to the ST - just that it's the prevailing public opinion which will ultimately determine a mini (or maxi)'s success.  If people assume the ST is crap, they won't buy products related to it - simple as that.  I've known and loved the ST from the age of 10 but I don't speak for everyone.

[hobbyhands]

Well,

 

So The Amiga is better than the ST. The ST is better than the Amiga. I personally don't really care. They seem to each of had some benefits. Somethings the Amiga did better. And some things the ST did better. They both were better than almost anything else out there for the time. So I can't call anyone stupid for liking either one at the time. I just say if you own both. Enjoy both. 

[ParanoidLittleMan]

First: saying 'superior' is not same as saying 'better' - superior would be much-much better, eats for breakfast and in that manner ..

What is better is very relative. For normal people better is what better suits their needs - so simple.

But as always, there are such, who must making 'mine is bigger' type case of everything. So such people has Amiga (or whatever), then it must be best, superior something, just because they are so smart that always buy the best thing. And then some silly arguments - that's why I call them stupid.

Just simple example: claiming that Amiga floppy system is much better than Atari's because it using some 880 KB capacity with DD, DS floppies - typical case of taking just one argument, one feature. And ignoring something other, what is actually worse - in this case it would be floppy transfer and access speed. What is better in case of Atari. Not to mention that 880 KB is possible with Atari too, probably slower even than on Amiga. But for normal usage, I prefer faster 800 KB than slow 880 KB. Normally, you just don't need that extra 80 KB .

[MantaNZ]

On 12/25/2019 at 1:54 PM, hobbyhands said:

So by now many of you have seen the released TheC64.  I am hoping that it is really popular. So the company might be interested in moving on to another machine. The Atari ST would be a great option. I think anyways. 

 

Having the originals is great, but as they get old and older the harder it will be find ones that work. So a replacement while not the exact same thing would be nice. Your thoughts?

I have one and it is amazing. Also, I heard a rumour that they will be giving the Amiga 500 the same treatment... here's hoping...

 

EDIT - if there is an Amiga coming, I hope it's a mini first, like with TheC64 as I don't have the desk space for a full sized Amiga!

Edited January 6, 2020 by MantaNZ

[zzip]

On 1/5/2020 at 12:07 AM, hobbyhands said:

They both were better than almost anything else out there for the time

And this is the infuriating thing about console/computer wars!   Both are better than anything you ever owned,  but because one can show a few more colors on screen or run a fraction of a Mhz faster,  the other one is "obviously" a piece of crap.

[leech]

45 minutes ago, zzip said:

And this is the infuriating thing about console/computer wars!   Both are better than anything you ever owned,  but because one can show a few more colors on screen or run a fraction of a Mhz faster,  the other one is "obviously" a piece of crap.

Yeah, I always go with whatever has the better software library.  Sadly the ST's software dried up long before the Amiga's.  But again it depends on what software you use.  If you do MIDI, the ST completely dominates.  But look at the Falcon vs the A1200.  The Falcon is clearly the superior machine.  But doesn't have a large library of software supporting it, so for most people the A1200 is better.

[MantaNZ]

4 hours ago, zzip said:

And this is the infuriating thing about console/computer wars!   Both are better than anything you ever owned,  but because one can show a few more colors on screen or run a fraction of a Mhz faster,  the other one is "obviously" a piece of crap.

I had an Amiga 500 (but was late to the party - it was 1992) but was always interested in the ST, same as I was interested in the Amstrad and Speccy when I had a C64 and saw all the reviews of various game versions in magazines (I think I only ever saw one Speccy and one Amstrad in NZ). I don't get the 'wars' over it - though we did have a few debates at school over which was better, C64 or Amiga (pretty much the only systems kids in NZ owned, other than Sega consoles). Silly really. I've still never had an ST and I really want whatever model it was that had the awesome sound - proper chiptunes, unlike the Amiga's cheating use of samples, haha.

[ParanoidLittleMan]

16 hours ago, leech said:

Yeah, I always go with whatever has the better software library.  Sadly the ST's software dried up long before the Amiga's.  But again it depends on what software you use.  If you do MIDI, the ST completely dominates.  But look at the Falcon vs the A1200.  The Falcon is clearly the superior machine.  But doesn't have a large library of software supporting it, so for most people the A1200 is better.

I admit that know very little about Amiga 1200, was never interested for. But this 'Falcon is clearly the superior machine' made me to go in new 'flame war' ?

So, I looked Wiki about Amiga 1200. And there were some prices from 1992 (year of release). So tried to see same for Falcon, but Wiki page about has no prices. I remember that Falcon was some 2700 DEM (version with 60 MB drive) in Germany in 1992, so it seems that Amiga 1200 was cheaper.

That would be 0:1

Then, the CPU, bus:  surely Falcon's 68030 at 16 MHz is better than 68020 at 14. However, Falcon has 16 bit data bus, while A1200 32 bit. Ops. I guess that it means that it is actually faster a bit.   0:2

Graphic: Amiga: 16 M colors, more modes, Falcon 65K colors, less modes.  0:3

Special features:  DSP by Falcon    1:3

Expansions:  clearly Amiga better:  1:4

Build quality:   have no clue

Compatibility with 16-bit machines from house:  can not say which was better. Surely CPU self was reason for some incompatibilities - stackframe, pipeline. Other is on OS and HW design.

Falcon made it's PSG audio port not fully compatible without good reason. DMA is pretty much good STE compatible. I guess that in this no some bigger diff.

SW support:  in that year (1992) Atari SW sales, releasing new ones were already much lower than for Amiga (16 bit) . As result of lower sales of HW generally. But also as result of too late STE release, poor documentation by Atari.

But most interesting in all this is: how things would be if Amiga project (was under other name for sure) done by team which designed Atari XL would not go to Commodore, and stay at Atari ? Maybe it would be more less same HW as Commodore Amiga, but with different OS - something like TOS by DRI  ? And yes, basically graphic, video, gaming oriented machine.

Then Atari maybe would go on something more business, programming oriented as alternative ?

Maybe Atari ST was so popular in Eu because was universal. In USA maybe specialized way would be more successful ? As more I thinking, so less I know ?

[leech]

6 hours ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

I admit that know very little about Amiga 1200, was never interested for. But this 'Falcon is clearly the superior machine' made me to go in new 'flame war' ?

So, I looked Wiki about Amiga 1200. And there were some prices from 1992 (year of release). So tried to see same for Falcon, but Wiki page about has no prices. I remember that Falcon was some 2700 DEM (version with 60 MB drive) in Germany in 1992, so it seems that Amiga 1200 was cheaper.

That would be 0:1

Then, the CPU, bus:  surely Falcon's 68030 at 16 MHz is better than 68020 at 14. However, Falcon has 16 bit data bus, while A1200 32 bit. Ops. I guess that it means that it is actually faster a bit.   0:2

Graphic: Amiga: 16 M colors, more modes, Falcon 65K colors, less modes.  0:3

Special features:  DSP by Falcon    1:3

Expansions:  clearly Amiga better:  1:4

Build quality:   have no clue

Compatibility with 16-bit machines from house:  can not say which was better. Surely CPU self was reason for some incompatibilities - stackframe, pipeline. Other is on OS and HW design.

Falcon made it's PSG audio port not fully compatible without good reason. DMA is pretty much good STE compatible. I guess that in this no some bigger diff.

SW support:  in that year (1992) Atari SW sales, releasing new ones were already much lower than for Amiga (16 bit) . As result of lower sales of HW generally. But also as result of too late STE release, poor documentation by Atari.

But most interesting in all this is: how things would be if Amiga project (was under other name for sure) done by team which designed Atari XL would not go to Commodore, and stay at Atari ? Maybe it would be more less same HW as Commodore Amiga, but with different OS - something like TOS by DRI  ? And yes, basically graphic, video, gaming oriented machine.

Then Atari maybe would go on something more business, programming oriented as alternative ?

Maybe Atari ST was so popular in Eu because was universal. In USA maybe specialized way would be more successful ? As more I thinking, so less I know ?

Pretty sure Falcon has more than 65k colors and has a very configurable / overclockable chip.  It is actually very Amiga like. 

Having dealt with A1200s and knowing the upgrade everyone gets is a an accelerator card with an 030 or better, I know that the 680ec20 was a gimped processor as well.  The 16bit data bus was dumb on the falcon, but the DSP makes up for all of it.  See for example Doom port on a stock Falcon vs Stock A1200.  Oh, wait pretty sure Doom requires at least an 030.

Funny enough, there are videos with 060 accelerated of the two, and the Falcon just edges out a little faster.

 

So yeah the Falcon is better (when talking stock, and in some cases accelerated) than the A1200.  Yeah, Atari killed it off in favor of the Jag so it got nearly no software support.  Doesn't mean it is a bad machine in the least.  Some people have gotten some crazy resolutions out of it.

One thing that I thonk really hurts the Amiga is a max of 2mb chip RAM.  If it were not for tricks added later, like loading icons into fast RAM, the OS would be unusable.   You would literally just run out of memory opening a folder.  (I have personally done this!  Even with 16mb of Fast RAM...)

I own A4000s, a Vamped A500 and a Falcon with ct60e and SV.  And overall OS-wise, the Falcon also seems snappier, but then the OS is a bit less clunky in a lot of ways.  AmigaOS is definitely different in many ways...than anything else out there.

[Hwlngmad]

Having a 'new' Atari ST would be cool, but considering one of the groups behind The C64 Maxi is Cloanto, I would say the possibility of an Amiga system would be higher than that of an ST.

[leech]

18 minutes ago, Hwlngmad said:

Having a 'new' Atari ST would be cool, but considering one of the groups behind The C64 Maxi is Cloanto, I would say the possibility of an Amiga system would be higher than that of an ST.

I thought Cloanto only liked to sue anyone trying to do anything with the Amiga? 

[carlsson]

In this case, I think they are licensing out the rights to the firmware on THEC64. I don't know how much else they are involved.

 

Bill L has previously discussed the possibility of AtGames models covering e.g. Atari 8-bit and ST, both considered nearly unknown to the general audience and would be hard for stores to sell on brand recognition. They considered the C64 but thought it would be tough to find games to license since about 99% of the library is 3rd party. As you can see from THEC64 library, to a great deal it resembles what you could find on the C64DTV which says something about which software companies are possible to get ahold of and would license their old IP for reasonable money. Some people would complain that very few of the notable games are preloaded on the device, simply because they could not obtain licenses for those.

 

I don't know about the Atari ST games library but would suppose that at least 95% of the relevant library is 3rd party too, some perhaps from the same publishers who already were involved in licensing their C64 IP. The same goes of course for Amiga (99% third party?) and even the A8 etc. As many games were multiplatform, you'd end up with an array of emulating devices that have pretty much the same selection of games in either 8-bit or 16-bit resolution, and only the exterior varies. Even harder for vendors to sell those on volume, in particular if say RGL would release an Amiga device and AtGames release an Atari ST device simultaneously, both with limited nostalgia recognition and just about the same gameplay content.

 

Sure, smaller runs of replicas for surviving gamers and collectors is another matter but then the price point would also be different. Although systems like NES Mini, SNES Mini, Mega Drive Mini, PC Engine Mini, THEC64 in variants etc aren't exactly pocket change, at least they're released in such volume that it brings down cost a bit. Actually the Turbo-Grafx/PC Engine Mini probably wouldn't exist at all if it wasn't for the Japanese market and they took the opportunity to release it worldwide while at it. To my knowledge there is not a single region in the world which is so Atari ST crazy that it would cover up for releasing a remake/mini system worldwide.

 

[Hwlngmad]

4 hours ago, leech said:

I thought Cloanto only liked to sue anyone trying to do anything with the Amiga? 

True right?  Still, like what carlsson stated, I just don't know any areas that are really fired up for an The C64 Maxi type device.  However, the Amiga on the other hand has a very vibrant community, especially in Europe (UK and Germany most notably).  I could see a device like that getting released, especially if The C64 Maxi proves successful and profitable.

[carlsson]

By the way, I went through the list of 64 games included in THEC64 full version. Ordered by publisher, the list looks something like this:

 

Epyx: 17 (of 62)

Hewson & Rack-It: 16 (of 44)
Gremlin Graphics & Alligata Software: 12 (of 91)
Odin Computer Graphics & Thor Computer Software: 5 (of 14)
Llamasoft: 2 (of 14) + 2 on VIC-20
Artic Computing: 2 (of 11)
Incentive Software & Electric Dreams: 2 (of 32)
Firebird: 1 (of 92)
First Star Software: 1 (of 16)
Image Works: 1 (of 15)
Martech: 1 (of 17)
Mikro-Gen: 1 (of 7)

+ 1 homebrew

 

I'm sure a few of those somehow are linked together, though I didn't detect how. Also I realize that not all games in respective publisher's library are accessible due to various licensing, change of ownership and more.

 

Translated to the Atari ST library as listed on Atarimania.com, it would give a maximum possible library of the following:

 

Epyx 24
Hewson 18
Gremlin & Alligata: 57 + 2
Llamasoft: 3
Incentive & Electric Dreams: 3 + 7
Firebird UK: 21 + Rainbird 29 + Silverbird 4
First Star: 5
Image Works: 31
Martech: 5

 

Titles like R-Type, Super Hang-On, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles etc might be out of licensing scope, as well as others. Some of the titles might appear for multiple publishers which brings down the numbers.

 

In any case, working with the same publishers as seen on THEC64, there would be a theoretical maximum of a little over 200 games to choose from, of which a good chunk probably would be off limits once digging deep. If the library from Infogrames (now Atari SA) would be available, add some 55-60 games. If the libraries from e.g. Atari UK and Atari USA also are available, add another ~30 games. We're approaching a possible library of 300 games, though perhaps not the most popular ones once you break it down to titles. Note that THEC64 has about 15% of the theoretically possible games, which could mean somewhere around 40-50 games on the final Atari ST product + option to soft load from an USB stick or SD card perhaps but that would mostly be used by advanced users.

Edited January 10, 2020 by carlsson

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Well, I don't see why integrated - to say so, games is so important. If it is some serious clone, it must have option to load/run games and other SW from some modern storage, like SD cards.

There will be more problems to make those old floppy based games to run from mass storage. And that's much harder in case of Atari ST than by some tape storage based 8-bit, like C64, Sinclair Spectrum. Most of games is single part, load it from tape and start type. That's very easy to convert to mass storage. I know it well - I converted (adapted) hundreds of Spectrum games from tape to floppy, then little later to hard disk (about 1993). All it went very fast, and I used compression (packing) to save space on 60 MB hard drive.

In case of floppy storage based Atari ST it's much more complicated, in big part because there is disk access during gameplay in most cases. Then protections, diverse custom loaders, TOS version problems etc.   Actually, that may be enough reason that some commercial, licensed Atari ST clone will never appear, or at least not until all old SW becomes freeware - expired copyright. They are it actually already, and WEB is full with sites holding disk (ROM incorrectly) images, and nobody cares (some 15 years ago such sites were closed).

Example:  Xenon 2. It is on 2 floppies, with custom loader. Some copy protection too. If that clone would have something like SuperCard Pro then could write SCP images onto floppies with it. But God save as from bothering with real floppy disks. That would increase price at lot, and it's not loading time what is main problem, but low reliability. 2 disks for only 1 game, price equal to price of some 4 GB SD card, what can hold all Atari ST games and other SW.

Btw. look how it is with sites of old, popular game publishers. Many of them have download section, and what it there in most cases: images of cracks ?

 

 

[Hwlngmad]

On 1/10/2020 at 12:44 PM, ParanoidLittleMan said:

Well, I don't see why integrated - to say so, games is so important. If it is some serious clone, it must have option to load/run games and other SW from some modern storage, like SD cards.

There will be more problems to make those old floppy based games to run from mass storage. And that's much harder in case of Atari ST than by some tape storage based 8-bit, like C64, Sinclair Spectrum. Most of games is single part, load it from tape and start type. That's very easy to convert to mass storage. I know it well - I converted (adapted) hundreds of Spectrum games from tape to floppy, then little later to hard disk (about 1993). All it went very fast, and I used compression (packing) to save space on 60 MB hard drive.

In case of floppy storage based Atari ST it's much more complicated, in big part because there is disk access during gameplay in most cases. Then protections, diverse custom loaders, TOS version problems etc.   Actually, that may be enough reason that some commercial, licensed Atari ST clone will never appear, or at least not until all old SW becomes freeware - expired copyright. They are it actually already, and WEB is full with sites holding disk (ROM incorrectly) images, and nobody cares (some 15 years ago such sites were closed).

Example:  Xenon 2. It is on 2 floppies, with custom loader. Some copy protection too. If that clone would have something like SuperCard Pro then could write SCP images onto floppies with it. But God save as from bothering with real floppy disks. That would increase price at lot, and it's not loading time what is main problem, but low reliability. 2 disks for only 1 game, price equal to price of some 4 GB SD card, what can hold all Atari ST games and other SW.

Btw. look how it is with sites of old, popular game publishers. Many of them have download section, and what it there in most cases: images of cracks ?

 

 

Yeah.  Liked I stated earlier, it would be cool to have a 'new' Atari ST come out, or even an 8-bit machine a la The C64 Maxi.  However, I just think you will see an Amiga product along the lines of The C64 Maxi much, much sooner than an Atari machine.  Just my thoughts.  I would be happy to be proven wrong.

[leech]

3 minutes ago, Hwlngmad said:

Yeah.  Liked I stated earlier, it would be cool to have a 'new' Atari ST come out, or even an 8-bit machine a la The C64 Maxi.  However, I just think you will see an Amiga product along the lines of The C64 Maxi much, much sooner than an Atari machine.  Just my thoughts.  I would be happy to be proven wrong.

Ha, well I haven't tried getting any of the modern remakes, except I do have an Ultimate 64, but I never had a C64 originally, and only remember my friend's that he'd go to make a sandwich, eat the sandwich and watch a movie before games would finish loading.  Where my 800xl with a 1050 was MUCH faster at such things, especially when I had the Happy drive...

Sadly, being a dumb kid, I took apart the floppy drive to see what it looked like inside, and when I re-inserted the happy chip, I was one row of pins off, so it messed up the drive, and we never saw it again (sent it off to be repaired, and I'm pretty sure the place we sent it to went out of business shortly afterward, because we kept getting the run around when we'd try to ask about it). 

Thanks, now I want to buy a happy chip...

[carlsson]

If you anyway are a hobbyist knowing your way around things, wouldn't getting a MiST and load it with the appropriate core be your first step? Perhaps someone can design an Atari ST looking case for the MiST unless one already exists, which leaves the keyboard in order to get a semi-authentic experience. No, that will not be a mass market product you'll find at Bed, Bath & Beyond but for most purposes it will serve your needs as well as a "THEC64" version of the ST would do.

 

Big N took down some romz sites last year or so, but it seems most of the other publishers think it is more of a hassle than worth the paperwork. Still if you go commercial about a product and sell it in major stores as well as online, you want your licenses cleared or sell it anonymously so its origin can't be traced. I think a lot of the stuff you can find on Wish but also in some home electronics stores contains pirated stuff but then you only know it comes from one of a million different Chinese vendors and products disappear and new are added all the time.