Atari ST Indoctrination

[khph_re]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

it's a pity that Amiga development was held back by companies trying to fit in with the ST as well.

Playing Devil's advocate, the Amiga may not have got many early games at all if the ST hadn't existed to be ported form.

[tolkien]

Or the Amiga could have better games from start and not those horrendous atari ports.

[BigD]

Difficult one. If the A500 was the 'first' Amiga then the world would be better off without the ST. The A1000 however was NOT what the world wanted even though it was a marvel! It didn't have enough Ram and was expensive. It didn't have enough slots for expansion and was a multimedia powerhouse but without a USP! The Toaster have birth to that USP but the A1000 can't use a Toaster as no space! C='s gift to the world really was knowing how to cost reduce stuff!

Therefore, games came as a steady stream as soon as the A500 was released because the first A500 was the Atari 520ST! 2 years earlier!

[BigD]

The Amiga even played catch up with 1MB Ram configuration. Our family got a 1040 STF in 1988! When did the A500+ launch with 1MB? Late!

[Megalomaniac]

I think the A500 was bundled with a free 512K expansion from early 1991. And I'm pretty sure most STs and STes sold even that late were 512k (though I think the ST was slightly more memory-efficient - Dungeon Master and Monkey Island both needed 1 Meg on the Amiga but not the ST). Still, even in 1991 most action games ran in 512K, though a 1 Meg system usually got less loading or more sound. You needed 1 Meg for most sims or adventures though,

[TCD]

Most A500 users had a 512k ram expansion in 1990. That's why Team17 games (in a less than original form) were so popular. The A500+ was a mistake by CBM.

[TEG]

Originally Posted by TCD

Most A500 users had a 512k ram expansion in 1990. That's why Team17 games (in a less than original form) were so popular. The A500+ was a mistake by CBM.

I can confirm that there was a lot of games not running on the 500+. Frustrating.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by BigD

Difficult one. If the A500 was the 'first' Amiga then the world would be better off without the ST. The A1000 however was NOT what the world wanted... and was expensive.

I wanted one, and it wasn't any more expensive than other machines of its class. But the only way I could get one was to 'grey import' a 120V NTSC system from the US with onerous import duties and shipping fess. So I waited until Commodore officially lunched it in New Zealand in 1987.

It didn't have enough Ram

RAM expansion to 512k (A500 standard) was available and not expensive. Theoretically it wasn't required for games because you could put the game code on the kickstart disk and load it into the 256k WCS, but AFAIK nobody actually did that.

It didn't have enough slots for expansion

It had the same expansion slot as the A500. I got a Microbotics 2MB RAM expansion for it, and I built an interface to run an ISA hard drive controller and 20MB hard drive. Worked brilliantly! I even tried connecting an A590 to it, and that worked too!

and was a multimedia powerhouse but without a USP! The Toaster have birth to that USP but the A1000 can't use a Toaster as no space! C='s gift to the world really was knowing how to cost reduce stuff!

The Toaster was NTSC only, useless in New Zealand - even for those of us who could have used one.

I've no idea what 'USP' means.

Therefore, games came as a steady stream as soon as the A500 was released because the first A500 was the Atari 520ST! 2 years earlier!

Games starting appearing shortly after the A1000's release, mostly from US developers. According the Hall of Light 18 games were released in 1885, and 127 in 1986.

I bought The Faery Tale Adventure (which was originally developed for the A1000) and spent countless hours playing it. Who needs a lot of games when you have a few good ones!

Sadly my A1000 was stolen in 1991. Some time later I acquired an ST, and was not impressed. I never would have bought one new.

Since the A1000 wasn't available in NZ in 1985 I bought an Amstrad CPC664 instead. It was nice machine and cheap too, but not patch on the Amiga. Today I have a good collection of home computers including a ZX Spectrum +3, Atari 130XE, Amstrad CPC6128, Tandy Color Computer 3 and Archimedes 3000 (with extra RAM and hard drive), all of which never get turned on because I am always using my Amigas! I though about buying an ST, but didn't bother because I know I wouldn't use it.

[Retro1234]

If the ST didn't exist there would be nothing to blame for all the bad Arcade ports.

[BigD]

Originally Posted by Retro1234

If the ST didn't exist there would be nothing to blame for all the bad Arcade ports.

True! Canvas (poor man's DPaint), Papurus (good Word Processor), Gauntlet 2, Robocop, Blue War III, Super Huey and Time Bandits all hold a special place for me however the sound WAS appalling! Heck the Amstrad CPC464 sounded better IMHO! The STE and Falcon were rejected by the market making the A1200 seem like a run away success!

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

I think the A500 was bundled with a free 512K expansion from early 1991. And I'm pretty sure most STs and STes sold even that late were 512k (though I think the ST was slightly more memory-efficient - Dungeon Master and Monkey Island both needed 1 Meg on the Amiga but not the ST). Still, even in 1991 most action games ran in 512K, though a 1 Meg system usually got less loading or more sound. You needed 1 Meg for most sims or adventures though,

Had nothing to do with the ST being more memory efficient, had to do with the ST having less resources in the first place.

When the majority of ST games are only 16 colours without timer tricks, and those games you mention were likely to be 32 colours on Amiga, there is some extra memory taken up right away.

Also the penchant for the Amiga to use samples for all audio, whereas the ST in most cases didn't, again, those samples take up more memory.

The one memory advantage the ST did have was that its disk track buffer wasn't taking up ST memory, it was all in the WD controller in the floppy drive, but that is a tiny amount of ram saved.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by BigD

The Amiga even played catch up with 1MB Ram configuration. Our family got a 1040 STF in 1988! When did the A500+ launch with 1MB? Late!

1 Meg upgrades on Amiga came quite quickly. My 1.2 A500 got one in 1989, and it wasn't very expensive either, I got it because there were a few cracks I couldn't play because they needed 1meg to run.

The 1 meg standard was already being established before Commodore made it official with the A500+, everyone I knew personally had a ram expansion.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

everyone I knew personally had a ram expansion.

Same here and almost everyone I knew had a second floppy drive.

[Megalomaniac]

Team 17 were probably right that 512k wasn't enough memory for an Amiga's potential to really 'breathe', even for action games. Alien Breed's sampled sound added a lot to the atmosphere, and Project-X looked better than any previous shooter - not that graphics and sound are everything, of course. To think that there were 256K Amigas out there, you could hardly have done anything with that.

On the ST I think Railroad Tycoon was the first big 1 Meg only game, F1GP pretty soon after that. In terms of pure action games I don't think there was much at all that needed 1 Meg on the ST.

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

It's easy to forget that the ST launched 2 years before the A500

2 Years ? It launched 1 month before Amiga, not 2 years.... June 1985 vs July 1985.

[Megalomaniac]

That's when the $1500 A1000 launched - the A500 with a three-figure price tag and all-in-one case was 1987. I said 'A500', not 'Amiga'

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

That's when the $1500 A1000 launched - the A500 with a three-figure price tag and all-in-one case was 1987. I said 'A500', not 'Amiga'

The basic specs of A1000 and A500 are the same, so it is a bit misleading to say Atari ST was 2 years faster. Also it wasn't the $1500 price but $1285 , it came to around $1500 with the monitor included.

[Megalomaniac]

I was trying to convey that the ST was an affordable home system 2 years before the Amiga was, rather than that the basic hardware was 2 years newer, hence that people were making games for it long before many people were buying Amigas for games. The ST had a big lead on quantity of games until at least 1989 for that reason. Sorry if it wasn't clear.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by tomcat666

The basic specs of A1000 and A500 are the same, so it is a bit misleading to say Atari ST was 2 years faster. Also it wasn't the $1500 price but $1285 , it came to around $1500 with the monitor included.

Furthermore on release the ST wasn't exactly complete.

Atari ST

Atari had intended to release the 130ST with 128 KB of RAM and the 260ST with 256 KB of RAM. However, the ST was initially shipped without TOS in ROM and required booting TOS from floppy, requiring 206 KB RAM when loaded, leaving little or no space for applications. The 260ST was launched in Europe on a limited basis...

The ST originally had a separate power supply and disk drive too (which was only 360k), while the A1000's PSU and 880k drive were more conveniently built in (like later STs).

Yes, the A1000 was more expensive, but part of that was due to providing an extra 256k of WCS 'ROM' rather than gobbling up user RAM with a disk-loaded OS. This became useful later when ks1.2 and 1.3 were released, as the A1000 could upgrade without needing to have new ROMs installed.

[AF2013]

What if Atari ST had 32 Colours in 1985 and would we all seeing better games in ST and Amiga too.