Atari STE love?

[andy223uk]

Any Atari STE fans and users out there?

Back in the late 80s I was 9 years old and I saved up Christmas and birthday and had the sum of £80. A spot in the local newsagents was a Atari ST520FM with a box of games and a joystick. One day later I had convinced my Mum and Dad to let me buy it (although I really wanted an Amiga 500 they were well over £100 and totally out of my price range).

I spent hours playing interceptor and escape the planet of robots? And oriental games.

So.

Fast forward to last year and on Facebook pops up a Atari STE 1024 for £50 untested. After a quick look and power on without a monitor a price was agreed and I took it away, bought some missing cables and a Atari to PS2 mouse adapter and connected it to an old TV in hope it would work and it does! It even has 4MB of ram. Roll on the 1980s!

Any other ST gamers out there? What's your top recommended games?

 

[Pottsey]

Recently I got hold of a Atari ST Falcon. Still have my STE and all my old Atari disks. Will go nice next to my Atari Jaguar.

The only problem I have is a lot of the disks have degraded. I need to find a way to reformat the disks and copy a new downloaded image onto them. Getting disk files is easy, seems to be a bit of a challenge to transfer that file to a disk.



Top games, Dungeon Master, Xenon 1+2, Turrican 2, Lemmings 2, Supercars 2 well I could go on and on.

One of my top memory's which recently I get reminded about a lot, is I did Ray Tracing on my old STE. I cannot help thinking about that every time I see the recent talk about Ray Tracing in todays games.

 

[andy223uk]

Turrican, classic had that one.

 

[picnic]

What retro things have you done today?

As mentioned here, it seemed a good idea to have a 'What have you done today' thread for all things retro related. So what have you been up to or got planned? I will kick off by saying I'll be playing this when it comes out :D https://www.romerogames.ie/sigil/ SIGIL™ is a free megawad created...

forums.overclockers.co.uk

Not done anything since. Been a bit poorly. Maybe get a chance soon though. Intrigued to find out if the HDs spin up.

 

[ShortWarning]

It was the first console/computer in our household. I think I was about 5 when my Dad brought one home.

Rick Dangerous, TMNT, Prince of Persia. Lots of classics.

I remember playing Street Fighter (on my Neighbours, we only had a 512). What a horrific experience (changing disks in between fights), 5 fps. Still loved it though.

 

[andy223uk]

Rick Dangerous that's one I used to play a lot and Chase HQ.

I've found a box full of games but there unlabeled and some could be Acorn games also.

Anyone using a Gotek?

 

[RevBillyG]

Oh yes indeed. Still have my 1040ste. Still works and so do all the disks I've tried so far

Atari ST appreciation thread

Hey folks. So do we have any Atari fans about? Yeah, I know that Amiga was technically a superior machine, but I was always an ST fanboy :) At the time of my first purchase (a 520stfm) it was £100 cheaper than the Amiga, had more games and they were cheaper too. I believe this was the pack I...

forums.overclockers.co.uk

 

[Fluffybob]

My mate and I got one of each Atari and Amiga to see if there was a difference, I think I got the better option (Amiga) but tbh there was good and bad things on both.

 

[Bubo]

I think time perception/dilation as you get older is a real thing because as I recall the period when I had a 520STFM, between BBC Micro prior and an A500 afterwards, it was at most a 2 year run. But as I recall that short time now it feels like it was much much longer, but was just a blip really. I think this may be a consequence of the speed at which things seemed to progress back then and the number of games I seemed to get through back in them days compared to now. Anyway, fond memories of that brief time. I remember Dungeon Master and Oids being particular highlights on the ST.

 

[!bluetonic!]

Long term Amiga owner here who despised the ST.

However, in recent years I picked up a 1040 STE, 4MB off eBay.

Having watched the Atari ST appear on the fantastic history that is Computer Chronicles, I admire what was achieved by Atari.

I can (through bias) see why the Amiga was better. It had custom chips and a Blitter that when properly used, could deliver greatness.

But the ST stole the show with built in Midi.

I sold the unit, but glad I have owned and experienced the ST nostalgia.

 

[Pottsey]

I seem to recall there are STE only games or STE enhanced games like Stardust that didn't run on the older version before the STE. Might be worth looking up STE games over just ST. I don't think there are many STE games compared to ST games but the few that game out are worth playing around with. Right now Stardusk is all I can remember.

 

[KompuKare]

The best thing about the ST was the SM124.

Digital TTL 72Hz crisp mono screen made by Lucky Goldstar AFAIR (who has since re-branded themselves as Life's Good).

Of course it make the whole market a bit split-personality. The 640x400 mono stuff was like a cheap Mac SE, while the TV stuff was all games.

 

[Gregvivi0401]

I was commodore C64 user my m8 Amiga love them both.

 

[ElectroBlaster]

I had the Atari STE 520 Turbo pack back in christmas 1990. I will never forget that christmas morning, opening a brand new STE

I still have a bunch of ST's now, the only machines I do not own are the Falcon, Mega and TT.

I will assume you know about things like the Gotek floppy emulator? fit one of them and load a usb stick up with disk images and you are set.

Also another way is to use an older pc that has an on-board floppy drive port. Install FDRWCmd and FLOImg to read and write st disks.
This will open up a huge collection of stuff if you have plenty of physical disks at hand to use. I am a bit of a stickler for using proper disk media for old machines,
Seems more real to me

 

[ElectroBlaster]

Recently I got hold of a Atari ST Falcon. Still have my STE and all my old Atari disks. Will go nice next to my Atari Jaguar.

The only problem I have is a lot of the disks have degraded. I need to find a way to reformat the disks and copy a new downloaded image onto them. Getting disk files is easy, seems to be a bit of a challenge to transfer that file to a disk.



Top games, Dungeon Master, Xenon 1+2, Turrican 2, Lemmings 2, Supercars 2 well I could go on and on.

One of my top memory's which recently I get reminded about a lot, is I did Ray Tracing on my old STE. I cannot help thinking about that every time I see the recent talk about Ray Tracing in todays games.

FDRWCmd and FLOImg.

Requires the use of a pc with a floppy drive.

or

Supercard Pro, Kryoflux disk imager coupled with a floppy drive. Attaches to a pc using usb.

I am not 100% sure but I think Arduino-based disk imagers can also do ST disks

 

[Pottsey]

FDRWCmd and FLOImg.

Requires the use of a pc with a floppy drive.

or

Supercard Pro, Kryoflux disk imager coupled with a floppy drive. Attaches to a pc using usb.

I am not 100% sure but I think Arduino-based disk imagers can also do ST disks

Thank you that is very useful. I have bookmarked this for next time I get a holiday. I know I could use an emulator, but I would rather run the disk on the actual machine. The sensible part of me keeps saying sell the Falcon on buy I just cannot bring myself to sell it or the STE.

 

[ElectroBlaster]

Thank you that is very useful. I have bookmarked this for next time I get a holiday. I know I could use an emulator, but I would rather run the disk on the actual machine. The sensible part of me keeps saying sell the Falcon on buy I just cannot bring myself to sell it or the STE.

No probs, glad to help

If you ever wanted to sell that Falcon then you have a buyer sat here lol. I lusted after one when they came out and then Atari vanished

FLOImg is quite a powerful little program. I also use it to read/write Opus Discovery and MGT+ Spectrum disks. I have even used it for old-school PC Dos based disks.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

I had an Atari ST and bought a 40 meg hard drive for £450.
I also had music software Steinberg 24 and that computer earned me a lot of money with music and designing posters for places like Trentham Gardens.
Kick Off 2 nearly caused a divorce.

 

[Gregvivi0401]

I had an Atari ST and bought a 40 meg hard drive for £450.
I also had music software Steinberg 24 and that computer earned me a lot of money with music and designing posters for places like Trentham Gardens.
Kick Off 2 nearly caused a divorce.

WOW

 

[andy223uk]

I had an Atari ST and bought a 40 meg hard drive for £450.
I also had music software Steinberg 24 and that computer earned me a lot of money with music and designing posters for places like Trentham Gardens.
Kick Off 2 nearly caused a divorce.

I had kick off 2 I could never work out if it was skill or just 'chip and charge'. Bit like sensible soccer never really knew how to aim at the goal properly.