I'm a Commodore guy, but there is one thing I've always envied about Atari ST owners. No, not the MIDI interface. The ST just looks so damn good. To me, it's still a high point in industrial design.
One simple but genius detail about the Atari ST's case design is that the case screws on the bottom have square holes while other screws have round holes. You don't have to learn beforehand which screws are which, or risk loosening things inside that you didn't intend to.
While I know this is common knowledge for people who were around back then I think it's worth pointing out because it's so wild.
The Atari ST was designed by ex-Commodore people. The Commodore Amiga, arguably the biggest direct rival of the ST, was designed by ex-Atari people. (Both lost to the IBM PC in the end.)
The backstory of Atari, Commodore, and Amiga, Inc. is a great one and almost feels like fiction made real.
One of the images in TFA shows the Atari being called a "Supercomputer". Interestingly, NVIDIA announced a few days ago they were releasing an "AI Supercomputer". One thing I will say... The Supercomputers of old were a lot prettier (and let's not even mention actual Supercomputers such as the Cray and the Connection Machine)!
Aside from the function keys, which were angled to make it as easy as possible to hit the wrong one!
I loved my monochrome 520ST. First C programming (Megamax C, IIRC), first online communications (BBS). How did I afford it when I was an engineering student living on about $7,000 a year, including $1,700 tuition?
Agreed, it looks pretty nice. I remember admiring it in a computer store. ST is also a bit faster.
Although I take my blitter, copper, hardware display overscan and flexible per scanline resolution & color depth, sprites and 4 channel PCM audio any day over an ST.
Sadly many early games were direct ports from ST, not utilizing Amiga's hardware.
The irony is that Jack Tramiel (of Commodore) fired all of his developers over a disagreement, and Atari stopped development of a successor to the Atari 400/800, letting all of their developers go --- guess who Tramiel hired?
When Atari decided to stay in the computer business, guess who they hired?
While I had a 8088 based PC, the hours spent on a friend's 1040ST playing games were in the 500+
Really grateful to the friend and to Atari of course :)
This is no longer a common personal dynamic for kids. I grew up going to my buddy's place to play CoCo and MSX, to my uncle's to play Atari 800 and Mac, and friends came over to play Apple 2 and ZX Spectrum. My kid plays with friends, but it's all online through Discord.
Whilst games were loading we used to go outside and play football or whatever. Taking turns to run indoors to check loading hadn’t crashed. I got to enjoy the rugged real world, and offline technology; for that I’m very grateful.
Also the 40th anniversary of the Amiga (year at least, not sure on month)! Happy anniversary to all.
The Amiga's 40th anniversary will be in July.
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