I have very fond memories of my 1040ST — I bought one as soon as I got to college, and the “hi-res” screen made it perfect for writing papers and (more importantly for me) logging into the BSD VAXen from the dorms.
Inside the 1040ST
41–50 of 87 posts
Re: Inside the 1040ST
#42My brother and I got a 1040ST in 1987 while we were still developing 8-bit games, because the PDS, a z80 game development tool, had been developed for PC and for ST, but not Amiga, and the PCs were/felt sort of clunky and expensive. It was a beautiful machine that could do music, desktop publishing and solid tools, and gave us a much wider understanding of what computers could do besides games. A couple years later w…
PDS in itself is quite interesting, I was familiar with the Apricot PC version but had no idea it ran on an ST.
https://retro-hardware.com/2019/05/29/programmers-developmen...
Re: Inside the 1040ST
#43I used one for a while. And for a while, it was the fastest Mac I used, too :)
What made it faster than a Mac? Clock speed, low wait states, or something else?
Re: Inside the 1040ST
#44Nothing but happy memories about this machine. My dad wrote books about programming microcomputers throughout the 80s so we were very lucky to grow up around a menagerie of machines, but somehow this one has the warmest place in my heart. I suppose I was even aware that it was inferior to the Amiga, but that did nothing to cheapen the hours I spent playing Rock Star Ate My Hamster, Player Manager and Xenon II (which…
Same here, some of my earliest memories were of interacting with the GEM desktop on one of these when my Dad wasn't looking so that I could load up robocop :P then he caught me and was like "how did you figure out how to do that".
Silly little things like the bee are now permanently etched in my mind.
https://www.dwitter.net/d/19166
I even embedded it as a cursor for some of my internal pages at work :P
cursor: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABAAAAAQCAYAAAAf8/9hAAAAvElEQVQ4T32TURLEIAhD9Rx6/5PpOdqNM3FeEZcvpiUhEKwF0Vp7xhil917mnNW/9J11zlWzi/QxIzBYxAw1URwEZCepcoOUW2mlPEmyCgPcmeAPwfOLjJ0EN/AagQpit6y7pe8RuGkCYi4VEfxx4aaE2+cotnm5kFmVdYwjLQUR7C7R93hIPrbDNhZy5uiU6zbBzapssQYLkxK4sw/m31EdBNEqXl02UrpEvshoL93Zjyl7rnzOtJpLVs0LZPjTMbC4RZoAAAAASUVORK5CYII=);Re: Inside the 1040ST
#45Nothing but happy memories about this machine. My dad wrote books about programming microcomputers throughout the 80s so we were very lucky to grow up around a menagerie of machines, but somehow this one has the warmest place in my heart. I suppose I was even aware that it was inferior to the Amiga, but that did nothing to cheapen the hours I spent playing Rock Star Ate My Hamster, Player Manager and Xenon II (which…
agree completely about the function keys - and they were diagonal! why?
hehe, maybe because it makes it look faster?
Re: Inside the 1040ST
#46I used one for a while. And for a while, it was the fastest Mac I used, too :)
What made it faster than a Mac? Clock speed, low wait states, or something else?
Yeah, slightly higher clock and bus rate.
That and it ran at 640x400, so more screen real estate.
So people would use the Macintosh emulators on them (piece of hardware that plugged in the Mac ROMs and some floppy adapter stuff) and get a machine far cheaper than (and superior to) a standard Mac of the time. Biggest problem was getting the ROMs.
If I recall the products were SpectreGCR & Magic Sac.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_GCR
I never did it, but knew people who did, and they were very happy with it.
Re: Inside the 1040ST
#47Nothing but happy memories about this machine. My dad wrote books about programming microcomputers throughout the 80s so we were very lucky to grow up around a menagerie of machines, but somehow this one has the warmest place in my heart. I suppose I was even aware that it was inferior to the Amiga, but that did nothing to cheapen the hours I spent playing Rock Star Ate My Hamster, Player Manager and Xenon II (which…
Yes: the membrane keyboard on the Sinclair ZX80.
Re: Inside the 1040ST
#48In 1986 I was given the greenlight by my parents to get some $$ from them to upgrade off my VIC-20 and onto a more real computer.
I had my heart set on a Commodore 128. 80 columns! Z-80 mode! 128kB of RAM. I fantasized about an Amiga. But... didn't fit in the budget. I came from a working class family without a tonne of discretionary spending to toss around on stuff like that.
Then I read about the Atari ST, and I was like.. what? I can get 512kB of RAM, an 8mhz 32-bit 68000, internal 3.5" floppy, built-in GUI, and a beautiful flicker free monochrome monitor for the same price as a C128+Monitor+floppy? Was half the price of the equivalent Amiga setup at the time, too.
Great machines. I had a second-hand 520STfm, but upgraded the RAM to 1MB and the floppy to 720k so it was basically a 1040ST. Imagine coming from a 1mhz 5kB VIC-20 to that. What a dream it was to turn it on the first time!
The ST was an incredible value. People who try to compare it unfavourably to the Amiga aren't going back and looking at price sheets from the mid-80s. Spec for spec, there was no competition to the "rock bottom price" of the ST and it remained an absolutely superb productivity machine (but just a meh gaming machine really). The monochrome monitor Atari provided was stellar for its time.
Commodore evened it up a bit when they launched the A500 at a more reasonable price. But still had the problem with the interlaced monitor situation. Fixable, but cost $$.
I beat the crap out of my ST and used it right through til late 92, when I was able to get a 486 50mhz and run early Linux on.
Re: Inside the 1040ST
#49I have very fond memories of my 1040ST — I bought one as soon as I got to college, and the “hi-res” screen made it perfect for writing papers and (more importantly for me) logging into the BSD VAXen from the dorms.
Years after I got a 486 and stopped using my ST I often continued to use it as a dumb terminal hooked up to my 486 which was running Linux via null-modem cable. I did that right up til about 1995.
Atari was very smart building a VT52 mode into the ST, and the mono hi-res monitor was great.
Re: Inside the 1040ST
#50As for "there seem to be quite a few different Atari 1040ST board designs" noted in the article. There is actually a huge number of different board layouts. Look at the entries for "STF" or "STFM" in this overview: https://temlib.org/AtariForumWiki/index.php/Atari_ST_motherb... . As for why Atari redesigned the board so many times: no idea.
Seemed common back then. Esp for the Tramiels. There's so many different C64 boards, for example. Likely for cost savings in manufacturing.