State of Atari scene?

[MartinW]

Firmly in OT because I know there can be a lot of rivalry Atari vs. Amiga

I'm sure there are plenty of people well versed in both systems!

I was just using my RTG Amiga to Connect to my FTP server and I was wondering if Atari has a lot of the modern things that we now have in the Amiga scene? Not so much what it had back in the 90's, more so now.

I mean an RTG 68030/40/60 equipped Amiga with internet is a pretty respectable setup and even dare I say it, modern (in relative terms). Whenever I see Atari screenshots it always seems to look quite clunky in comparison (to my eyes at least) and often even black and white. I confess that I've never desperately liked the look of GEM / TOS mind so I am a bit biased in that respect.

I'm curious if a lot of the stuff we have now is also there on the Atari's, just not being in that scene, I don't see it. Of course once you get down to games and things that are generally PAL or NTSC anyway then things level out a lot more anyway with ups and downs to each.

I'm also curious about emulation (which I might well have a look into). The UAE series and WinUAE in particular are very, very mature and well done bits of software to the point that with the right config and host system, unless you really want to use the real hardware (as I do most of the time) then to be fair, emulation is likely to suffice these days. Again, is there a similarly mature emulator on the Atari side? Hatari?

[Ian]

Best bet is to take a look over here:

http://www.atari-forum.com/

Emulation is pretty good, but does have severual usability problems that make the experience less than stella, but actual emulation is pretty good with STEem Steven Segal Edition and Hatari once running.

The file selectors on both are utter garbage.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by MartinW

Firmly in OT because I know there can be a lot of rivalry Atari vs. Amiga

No need to have this thread located in the Off Topic > OT - General section

We are all adults, hopefully, so can discuss civilly.

[MartinW]

I honestly thought being an Amiga forum, OT was where it belonged

Anyway, I'll have a nose at the forum link. I've seen that there's some pretty modern Falcon hardware kicking about but the problem is with the Flacons in the first place. Not that high end Amiga kit is really much different in that respect.

I'm just kicking the proverbial tyres really to see what the other side of the fence is like as it were.

[LongLifeA1200]

Well the Atari Operating System is so ugly, to be honest, I can understand why no hardware has been developed to spend any time within such an environment.

Their "scene", however, is still impressive.

[alexh]

They have ct60(e) which is a 100MHz capable 68060 accelerator with an SDRAM memory interface better than Amiga DRAM versions. They also have CTPCI which is the equivalent of a Mediator/GrexPCI and support for Radeon GFX cards in their equivalent of RTG called VDI. It's slightly more clunky having fewer users and even fewer developers but it does work and offers an equivalent of high resolution high colour user interface with AES which is similar to P96/CGX. But they dont have OpenGL and little/no 3D acceleration unlike Amiga with Warp3D

They have an equivalent to MiniMig (FPGA based amiga) but with much higher accuracy called FX CAST

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by LongLifeA1200

Well the Atari Operating System is so ugly, to be honest, I can understand why no hardware has been developed to spend any time within such an environment.

Now this is a comment that's clearly been made by someone who has no idea...

http://xaaes.gokmase.com/images/scre...s/mathias1.jpg

[LongLifeA1200]

I had no idea about FireBee + FreeMINT + XaAES... until now.

[Hewitson]

Originally Posted by LongLifeA1200

I had no idea about FireBee + FreeMINT + XaAES... until now.

Well then your comment is like an Atari fan saying how ugly WB is, when they've only ever seen 1.3

[Foebane]

I tried ST/E emulation a while ago, with Steem SSE, and for a while it was fine. I was even able to run demos from the HDD mode by selecting folders, but (unlike Amiga) forget renaming them to my preferred naming convention, as 8.3 filenames is the biggest problem with Atari ST TOS. And then Steven Seagal changed Steem for the worse. I cannot believe to this day he broke his emulator that was working so fine before (albeit a bit glitchy). It was the "wait states" or something that was altered, and whereas before I could run any demo without having to worry about them, now I had to manually set them before each one. So I gave up. I could never get Hatari to work well enough for me, it seemed so slow in disk loading. And the interface is piss-ugly.

[Tigerskunk]

There are some impressive things going on in the Atari scene..

And they never had that split up of MOS/AOS, Classic vs NG, etc.. Their forums and scene seem much more friendly and unified.

I have always seen the Amiga and ST as brothers with a friendly rivalry. No need to shit on each other.

[chip]

I tried a little an Atari ST emulator

Just saw one demo, it looked fine to me

But i stopped not because Atari ST is bad (i really don't think so), but because it's too expensive (at least for me) following two different systems

So, in the end i decided to become an expert (i hope so) about Amiga world

But sure i must learn still a lot of things

[MartinW]

Originally Posted by alexh

They have ct60(e) which is a 100MHz capable 68060 accelerator with an SDRAM memory interface better than Amiga DRAM versions. They also have CTPCI which is the equivalent of a Mediator/GrexPCI and support for Radeon GFX cards in their equivalent of RTG called VDI. It's slightly more clunky having fewer users and even fewer developers but it does work and offers an equivalent of high resolution high colour user interface with AES which is similar to P96/CGX. But they dont have OpenGL and little/no 3D acceleration unlike Amiga with Warp3D

They have an equivalent to MiniMig (FPGA based amiga) but with much higher accuracy called FX CAST

Ok, that all sounds really cool and from a hardware point of view what I was getting at. Not that I'm about to go and get any hardware mind you, I'm purely curious!

Originally Posted by Hewitson

http://xaaes.gokmase.com/images/scre...s/mathias1.jpg

And that certainly looks better than a stock desktop for sure

[drHirudo]

As someone who ported the Hatari emulator to the Amiga some years ago, I must say that I was quite impressed with the quality of the emulators and some of the demos that I've used to test the port.

While the Atari ST is quite rubbish, compared to the Amiga 500, with the STE they caught with the Amiga 500. Then with the Falcon they were even leap forward compared to the Amiga in both graphics and sound/music terms, but the Falcon didn't sell many units, so the software that utilises that awesome power is almost quite nonexistent.

With that being said the recent Atari and especially Falcon scene releases quite impressive products. There were some 68060 Amiga demos, ported to the Falcon and running quite good on it. (Remember the Amiga with 68060 is ~1996-1997 product), while the Falcon is a product from 1992.

On the Operating Systems fields, the crappy CPM-alike OS of the Ataris is nothing like the real multitasking AmigaOS. But on the other hand the Atarians managed to re-write and make a free usable ROM replacement for the Atari models (not very compatible, but it is usable), while the Amiga AROS ROM rewrite is not of much use.

[jayminer]

I think most of us Amiga-users think the old TOS is a pretty bad OS - even compared to AmigaOS 1.3, but I do envy what the Atari got going with MiNT. I have been following the Atari-scene loosely the last few years and there is lots of interesting stuff happening, and it's amazing to see what can be made on a Falcon when utilising the DSP, it really was a great machine. Too bad it never had a chance, mostly because of Atari switching focus to the Jaguar.

The Atari community seems like a very nice and friendly community, way better than the Amiga community which is so torn apart.

[britelite]

Originally Posted by drHirudo

There were some 68060 Amiga demos, ported to the Falcon and running quite good on it. (Remember the Amiga with 68060 is ~1996-1997 product), while the Falcon is a product from 1992.

Well, to be fair, the 68060-accelerator required to run the demos on Falcon is definitely not a 1992 product

[MartinW]

I would like an Atari but me being me wouldn't be happy unless it was a Falcon with 68060 and all the bells and whistles and that's not a rabbit hole I want to go down right now.

[trixster]

Like alexh I have a Falcon with CT60e and 100+MHz capable 060. I don’t have a CTPCI but I do intend to fit a SuperVidel graphics board:

http://nature.atari.org/supervidel.html

[idrougge]

When Atari stopped supporting the ST, a range of Atari clones with 040 and 060 processors and PCI or ISA graphics were made, such as the Hades and Milan.

However, the ST being something you bought because you didn't have much money, they never sold as good as they would have if they were sold into the Amiga marker.

[LongLifeA1200]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

Well then your comment is like an Atari fan saying how ugly WB is, when they've only ever seen 1.3

If you say so.

Originally Posted by LongLifeA1200

...
FireBee
...

So what's preventing Amiga from having something like this, today?

Originally Posted by idrougge

When Atari stopped supporting the ST, a range of Atari clones with 040 and 060 processors and PCI or ISA graphics were made, such as the Hades and Milan.

However, the ST being something you bought because you didn't have much money, they never sold as good as they would have if they were sold into the Amiga marker.

"Power without the price."