Barbarian on the Atari

But why did the bloke say 'keith' every time he swung to chop someones head off

 

bollox

the Amiga was the superior machine. Although the ST's cpu ran marginally faster, that was EASILY countered by the Amiga's custom co-processors. Pre-emptive multi-tasking, hold and modify mode graphics, the list goes on....

Jay Miner was a creative genius who also helped design Atari VCS 2600. Atari actually pulled out of the Amiga deal. When it was later offered to Commodore, they couldn't believe their luck!

 

I'm with ChefDude - BBC ruled

 

The Atari wasn't too bad to program, I got some contract work converting games to it and some of them were even published. I remember reading 'De Re Atari' quite a lot!

Then I discovered that games programming was hard, all the math and collision detection ... and I could get paid more writing Cobol or RPG for companies.

Steve

 

Lol, the Amiga had a slot underneath which you simply plugged in the memory expansion, how difficult was that

 

It certainly took me a while to understand De Re Atari, but I was only about 12 at the time Display list interrupts rock I'm trying to remember the name of that classic Atari animation where you use DLI to have different colours on each line that you then cycled, was it "colour flow"?

However, only about 15k of video RAM did limit things compared to say the BBC, Amstrad, C64 - resolutions and colours were a bit limited, 160x192 in 4 colours IIRC. Amiga had the same problem really with only 320x256 having 32 colours unless you messed about with HAM, which was only any good for drawing packages? Interlaced mode was horrid.

However, the smoothness of Atari 8 bit, C64, Amiga games was great for 2d stuff. However, 3d games on the Amiga were disappointing, just a fraction slower than the ST with its higher clock, blitter couldn't do much for 3d stuff, couldn't really draw polygons with it IIRC.

 

Love these threads.

Had both and both were great machines.

I love reading all the game titles mentioned, floods of memories come back.

Here's some more:

48k:
Tranz-am
Skool Daze
Ant attack
Head over heels
Ye ar Kung Fu

C64:
Combat School
IK+
International Soccer
Football Manager
Uridium
Triad 64


aaah man, hours of fun there. Might have to dig out some of those emulators/remakes listed earlier.

 

I've got De Re in .pdf format! I started programming (assembler) on the Spectrum, which was hell really when you take into account the dev environment - if I'd know there were luxuries like De Re and the Atari, I'd have switched immediately!

These days, I do a tiny bit of retro game programming and its all high level and O-O. Much less of a pain than good old 6502, Z80 and 68000, although part of me misses it.

 

Wrong but thanks for playing.

The differences in gameplay were hardly noticable.

ST had built in modulators FACT
ST had built in ROM based desktop system FACT
ST had built in MIDI system for music and was the computer of choice for many in the music industry (even remember seeing one on top of the pops as a youngster) FACT
ST had a memory single chip system (unified memory) which is the one used by many computers today the custom chip thing went to the wall FACT
ST had better graphic handling (if not scrolling) capabilities so it was much better at things like CAD and was even used as a business machine FACT

Atari didn't pull out of the Amiga project, Atari was set up because one of the Commodore design team wanted his own firm. They were banned from using the chips they had developed and paid off by Amiga Corp.

The Amiga was a good games machine but nothing else where the Atari set many firsts and had much wider uses. Also, it didn't have a habit of setting on fire. The reason the Amiga did so well is because Atari didn't have a machine that competed with the C64 and people stuck with what they knew.

Bit of reading might stop the unnecessary next time Atari ST - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

5t.

 

Who gives a fig about modulators and the crappy GEM desktop ?

It had a MIDI port, I'll give you that Fat lot of good it was for games, which was the main market both machines competed in.

At the end of the day sale figures tell the story nicely and the Amiga comfortably outsold the Atari.

End of story / GAME OVER if you like

 

Christ Fivetide, have you just been transported from a school playground from the year 1989?

 

That's what I was thinking! I was just about to post "Fight fight fight fight!"



Steve

 

Only happened to the VIC20. Didn't have any issues with the AMIGA 500, CDTV or A1200 when Owned them. But then again I seem to recall the Amigas had the RF modulators built inside the case opposed to the VIC and the C64.

 

Thankfully, Amiga 500s had an external modulator - just as well, mine blew three times (not including the one that was faulty when new).

Simple to fix though; chop out the old chip, solder in a chip holder, and plonk in a new chip. After that it was just a simple 30second chip swap which cost a couple of quid.

A600s and A1200s modulators were internal; when they blew (and they did) it was more tricky to fix (like the c64). Although one could just plug in a Modulator of a A500 instead.

Problem was easily solved by getting a TV with a RGB input...no modulator needed then

 

I never used a TV with mine - it was always plugged into a Commodore 1084 monitor which had stereo side speakers too.

anyone remember:


and of course the Gran Turismo of the day was this:


or was it this?

 

LOL

Didnt the ST or rather Mega ST get used a lot in offices in Germany

My old ST used to run a Mac emulator that was actually quicker than a Mac Classic

I started off with a 512 ST, then I got a 512 STe then a Mega STE with seperate keyboard etc

Had onboard SCSI and had a 40Mb hard drive in it, 4Mb Ram and Mono Hi Res monitor very heavily used with Cubase

 

Could have sworn the graphics for F1 Gp were better than that, maybe I had the PC version (486 SX 25MHz - still have it in the loft )

 

I used to load up my game before school, rush home to play it, to find syntax error ! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

Tape drives were the creation of the devil

 

Especially the Commodore ones that were unique to that computer, unlike the Spectrum you could use any old tat of a tape deck


I remember being so made up at getting a 3.5k memory cartridge for our Vic-20 fat load of use it was too

 

The Amiga was slightly more powerful than the ST, despite using the same basic chipsets. The ST owners always used to play the "much better for music" card, which was true, but for most people they were primarily games machines anyway.

Some serious classics on the Amiga too - many a happy hour spent playing classics like Rick Dangerous, Lemmings, Golden Axe - really was the machine to have in the late 80's, early 90's!

Loved those music demos too like Jesus on E's!

 

My 8K one came in very handy. Especially when coming to program game code from 'popular computing weekly'. Why were those programs always buggy and never work properly?

The best use for the cartridge bay were the cartridge games you called buy for it. Remember having 'Sargan 2 Chess' and 'Gorf' . They were a tad on the expensive side and didn't catch on too much.

 

I had a few listings published there and the programs worked when they were sent in. Sometimes whilst typesetting someone who didn't know what they were doing would just remove a quote or a character 'that wouldn't matter much' to make the listing look better and fit on a page.

Steve

 

Small world Which games did you submit Steve?
I remember one I had to program in, which was based on an adventure type game. In the end a teacher at my junior school ended up re-jigging the program to get it to work.

 

Jay Miner was a genuis indeed.

Can't believe we're having a ST Vs Amiga in 2008 - I thought we'd burried them long ago Wasn't the Atari OS call Tos? For a reason I think lol

The Amiga was really let down badly by Commodore though. Shame as it was ahead of it's time and Workbench was so much better than anything else. I reckon Windows/OS X are still catching up on some bits!

 

I had both but prefered the 'quality' feel of the c64 , used to love exploding fist, paradroid and uridium. Wating 15 mins for JSW to load off of the tape deck was a pain though! Game coding on the c64 was better with sprite support but ya gotta love the old speccy's!

 

Interestingly TOS was called that allegedly for Tramiel Operating System, after Jack Tramiel

If memory serves me correctly 'TOS' was written by Digital Research which were two former Apple Employees hence it being so like a Mac in several ways, so much so it had to be toned down due to lawsuits from Apple

The same guys also wrote DrDos too for the PC again IIRC

I used to sit there on many an evening after school typing in all that code only to spend just as long debugging the thing to get it working

I think there was some satisfaction in typing in all that nonsense just to get it working

To this day I still have no idea why I bought my ST, I went to town one day walking past Dixons walked in and just bought it with knowing absolutly nothing about it other than I heard it was used for music

 

hence one of it's nicknames - "The Jacintosh"

 

Great site for everything Spectrum - World of Spectrum . I've still got my 48K rubber keyed Speccy with Specdrum and ZX printer.
For the record everyone knows the Amiga was a better machine.

 

In terms of Spectrum vs C64, I had neither. Was the amstrad 464 for me! Plenty of games, but always wanted the 6128 instead for the disk drive. Loading games from tape was a pain! Had a VIC20 before that though. Had the 16k expansion pack for it, but for some reason it was switchable between 3 and 16k, god knows why!

I always wanted an Amiga and was about to splash out on one, but got convinced to get a PC instead! Got a 286 machine with a whole megabyte of memory and a 40 Meg hard disk! Thing came with Dos3.3 so couldn't even have the whole 40 Meg as a single partition. Get strange looks off the lads in the office when I tell them my first PC had a smaller hard drive than the amount of memory that printers have now!