A Glimpse Back in Time: The Atari ST and Commodore's Rivalry

Let us travel back to the year 1985, an era marked by technological advancements and fierce competition between legendary electronics companies. This was the year Atari, a pioneer in the world of personal computers, was about to release a new 16-bit computer, directly challenging its rival Commodore's latest offering.

The rivalry between Atari and Commodore had been brewing for years, with both companies pushing the boundaries of innovation and design. In 1983, the tension between them reached boiling point as both companies released spectacular 8-bit machines, further intensifying their competitive spirit. The situation was chaotic, with key hardware designers at Atari planning a Motorola 68000-based computer to succeed the Atari 8-bit line. However, Atari had other plans, and rejected the idea, resulting in Miner and many others leaving the company to create their own computer on their own. They eventually dubbed it the Amiga.

The great video game crash of that same year was in full swing, and Atari was losing money fast. The company was soon up for sale, creating an opportunity for Jack Tramiel of Commodore to expand his empire. At the time, Tramiel was facing internal issues at his own company as he attempted to develop his own next-gen 16-bit computer. However, his efforts were met with failure, and he was soon dismissed from his position.

Seizing the chance to acquire Atari, Tramiel purchased the company and promptly fired almost everyone in attendance. He brought in his own people, including Shiraz Shivji, a renowned hardware designer who had previously worked on the Commodore 64. With his team in place, work commenced on Atari's new 16-bit home computer.

The result of this collaboration was the Atari ST, named after its Motorola 68000's CPU's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internal bus. The first model in the line of ST computers was the Atari 520ST, a groundbreaking device that featured an awesomely designed chassis that was incredibly lightweight. Much like the recently released Macintosh, the Atari ST came equipped with a graphical user interface known as The Operating System, or TOS.

In a fascinating twist of fate, Microsoft's operating system, Windows, was turned down in favor of one from Digital Research, dubbed by DR as the Graphical Environment Manager, or GEM. However, this decision led to the creation of the Atari TOS, an operating system that made file management, graphical manipulation, and configuring your computer a breeze. The Atari TOS was so similar to the much-lauded Apple Mac OS that it became well known among users as the "clone" of the Mact.

The Atari ST's sleek design, coupled with its impressive technical specifications, marked the beginning of an exciting era in personal computing. As we look back on this pivotal moment in history, it becomes clear that the rivalry between Atari and Commodore had a profound impact on the development of technology as we know it today.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enLet's travel back to the year 1985.Legendary electronics company Atariis about to release a new 16-bit computer,right before legendary electronics companyCommodore has released theirs.It may have looked like simplecapitalist competition to an outsider,but it didn't take much digging to see that thingshad been chaotic between the two giants for years.Previously, in 1983, Atari and Commodorewere at each other's throats.Both had spectacular 8-bit machines,and the tension was growingbetween the companies daily.Jay Miner, as well as many otherkey hardware designers at Atari,had plans for a Motorola 68000-basedcomputer to succeed the Atari 8-bit line.But Atari had other plans, and rejected the idea,resulting in Miner and many others leavingto create the computer on their own,eventually dubbing it the Amiga.The great video game crash ofthat same year was in full swing,and Atari was losing money fast,and was soon up for sale.At the same time, Jack Tramiel of Commodorewas having internal issues at his company,while trying to develop theirown next-gen 16-bit computer,and he was soon dismissed.Seeing that Atari was up for sale,Tramiel purchased Atari,and promptly fired pretty much everyone,and brought in his own people.One of those was Shiraz Shivji,who was well known forworking on the Commodore 64,and work quickly commenced onAtari's new 16-bit home computer.The result came in June of 1985 with the Atari ST,so-named for its Motorola 68000'sCPU's 16-bit external bus,and 32-bit internal bus.The Atari 520ST was the firstmodel in the line of ST computers.It featured no internal disk drive or power supply,but the plus side to this was that its awesomelydesigned chassis was very lightweight.Much like the recently released Macintosh,it had a graphical user interface,known as The Operating System, or TOS.In a story that is almost theexact opposite of the IBM PC,Microsoft's operating system,Windows, was turned downin favor of one from Digital Research,dubbed by DR the Graphical Environment Manager,or GEM.What became known as the Atari TOSmade file management, graphical manipulationand configuring your computer a breeze,very similarly to the much-lauded Apple Mac OS.In fact, it was so similar to the Macthat the Atari ST became knownto many as the \"Jackintosh,\"for its relation to both the Macintosh and Jack Tremiel.In 1986 came the 1040ST series of machines,which included a built-in power supply,and was upgraded to 1MB of RAMand sold for $1,000,making it the first personal computerto break the elusive $1,000 per MB price point.It also came in variations like the STf,which included a built-in floppy drive,and the STfm,including both a floppy drive and an RF modulatorto allow the machine to display on a TV.There were also 1040ST Mega variations,which saw some popularity in Europe,and were geared toward the professionalmarket with a new form factor,external keyboard and internal expansion bus.Then in 1989 came the STE line of machines,an enhanced series of ST computerswith higher quality graphics and sound,an updated operating system, among other things.This unfortunately also broughtalong some compatibility issueswith certain programs and games.Also in 1989 came a rather peculiarmachine known as the Atari STacy.This was essentially a portable Atari 1040ST,which ran on twelve standard C-cell alkaline batteries.However, when it was discovered that allthose batteries only lasted about fifteen minutes,interest in the machine quickly faded.Lastly, in 1990 and 1992 camethe Atari TT and Falcon computers.Both of these had upgraded 32-bit 16 MHz 68030 CPUs,more RAM, better graphics, hard drive options,and a bunch of other awesome, expensive stuff.And by 1993, it was all over,and the final Atari computer left the assembly lineso Atari could focus on their new Jaguar console.I'm sure that was worth it.Ha ha.I got my Atari 1040STfm for the cost of shipping,as it was generously donatedby the totally awesome Borin81.This one comes from Sweden,and as such contains a Swedish-languageoperating system and keyboard layout.I've never actually used anAmerican or any other ST system,so I'm not sure if there are anyother significant differences.Here in the US, you can expect to pay around $60-120for a complete ST system,depending on the model, what it comes with,where you buy it, what time of year it is,how big of a crap you took that morning, etc.On the outside, of course, you've got the keyboard,with a full numeric keypad, cursor keys,and the highly unique-looking function keys in a row,diagonally, above the other keyboard keys.There's also this cheese grater thing on the top,which allows the innards to cooland gives it an extra-funky aesthetic.It does not grate cheese.With all this slanting everywhere,I can't help but love the look of the Atari ST.And I think it's neat Atarireintroduced the 8-bit line computersas the XE series to match up with the ST's look.On the right side of the unit,you've got the integrated 3½-inch floppy drive,which initially used single-sided 360K disks,but on later models like this oneuse double-sided 720K disks.If you are a PC guy, then these numberswill probably sound familiar to you.Yes, you can in fact use IBM PCmicrofloppies on the Atari ST.In fact, the double-sided drive caneven read IBM-formatted floppieswithout any trouble at all,which I'll cover in more detail later.The downside to this built-in floppy driveis the joystick ports had to be moved.But instead of putting themsomewhere that makes sense,Atari put them in what I considerto be the stupidest place possible:underneath the computer.Why Atari did this, I will never understand,because it is quite possibly the mostannoying joystick placement I have ever seen.It's simply painful to insert a joystick into its port,and that's totally what she said.It makes the cord stick out from the frontof the machine in the most awkward way,It's even worse if you have toswap joystick ports to play a game,which happens quite often,because then you have all sortsof cords in the back of the machinethat make it uncomfortable to lift it up and swap ports.And it's not just joysticks you haveto worry about with these ports,it's the Atari ST's mouse.I mean, with a graphical user interface,it's pretty much a requirement,so you can't just ignore plugging this thing in.No, you have to deal with those stupid joystick portsany time you want to use the mouse,which is probably all the time.There's one other thing thatreally annoys me about these ports.Unlike pretty much every other machinethat I've seen that uses DE-9 ports,you can't use controllers that *aren't* Atari controllers.At least in my experience, controllers likethe Sega Genesis just do not work at all.Sorry, I can't help but harp on this.I hate these joystick ports!Thankfully, the rest of the design makes sense.On the back, you've got an RS-232c port for a modem,Centronics printer port,ACSI port for hard drives and laser printers,an external floppy drive port,RF video output,RGB monitor output,power switch,standard three-prong port for the power supply,and a reset button.And finally, on the left side,there's a couple of neat additions:the rarely used 40-pin cartridge portand MIDI input and output ports.The cartridge port was meantto take 128K ROM expansions,but I can't find many things that used it at all.However, the MIDI port saw allkinds of usage back in the day,and really put the Atari ST on the mapfor amateur and professional musicians alike.In case you don't know, the MusicalInstrument Digital Interface, or MIDI,is a digital interface for musical instruments.It allows you to use any MIDI devicetogether with other MIDI devices,like the Atari ST in this case.So you can hook up your piano, drummachine, sequencer, sampler device,or whatever else that uses MIDI,and use the Atari ST to bothsend and receive information.So with its graphical user interface,powerful CPU and MIDI ports in every machine,the ST became a staple in recordingstudios the world over for years.Well that's enough of the outside.Let's see the inside,where you've got the classicMotorola 68000 CPU running at 8 MHz.This was an extremely popular CPU back then,and is essentially the same processorused in contemporary machineslike the Macintosh and Amiga.Working with the CPU are the custom Atari chips–Shifter, Glue, DMA, and MMU–which control all sorts of things,like memory allocation and graphics.You also have 1MB of RAM in this particular machine,as well as a 192KB ROMwhich contains The Operating System.Earlier machines only had a 32K ROM,since The Operating System wasinstead supplied on a floppy diskBut since TOS is on a chip, you'll have to swap chipsif you want to upgrade the system software.For instance, if I wanted an English-language UI instead of Swedish,I'd have to swap these for compatible English ICs.For sound, the Atari ST comes with a variationof the classic General InstrumentAY-3-8910 sound generator,in this case the Yamaha YM2149.This provides three voices covering eight octavesand a single noise channel,and is very similar to the sound chipused in machines like the Sinclair 128,Amstrad CPC and various MSX computers.Finally, you have the graphics system,which outputs in a 640x400 monochrome mode,and either a 640x200 or 320x200resolution color graphics mode,with either four or 16 simultaneous colorsout of a selection of 512, respectively.Of course, clever programmers could achievemore impressive variations of color and resolutionthrough tweaks and tricks.One big hurdle you'll have to dealwith is how to display...the display.Unless you see an \"M\" on the end of the computer's title,your only option out of the box is to hookthe machine up to an Atari ST monitor.The monitor connection sends bothvideo and audio signals to an RGB monitor.Which is nice, if you have one,since you don't have to worryabout PAL or NTSC video signals.But if you don't have a monitor, like me,you need to use the RF modulator output.Not only does the image quality suffer from this,but you'll also have to make sure you havethe equipment to handle the video signal.Since this machine hails from Sweden,it outputs PAL video.So I use a USB capture device todisplay PAL RF video on my PC.At least I will until I can get a proper ST monitor.The power supply on the 1040STfmis integrated into the unit itself,which makes the computer muchheaver than it might normally be,but it also makes it much less of acluttered mess when it's all hooked up.Just grab any three-prong cablelike the kind you find on all PCsand many other electronic devices nowadays.However, it's not a switching power supply,so keep in mind that you'll need toconvert your power to the proper voltageif you've got an imported machine.As you should know by now,the Atari ST uses a variant of the GEM OSknown as The Operating System.The version mine comes with is theSwedish localization of Version 2.06.I don't speak Swedish,but I known enough to be ableto read most of the user interfaceand thankfully it's simple and intuitive enoughthat you can probably figure it out anyways.It's got your standard GUIfeatures like dropdown menus,drag-and-dropping, scrolling, icons,windows, selecting files, etc.You also have the disk driveexploring and formatting optionsa trash can for file deletion,and various customization optionsfor the user interface itself.One thing that really bothers me is the factthat the default color scheme is white and lime green.This is probably one of the single most displeasingpairing of colors I've seen on a computer screen.Thankfully, you can change the color,and even choose from various patterns,much like the Macintosh OS of the time.Running games on the ST couldn't be easier.Just insert a disk, turn the machine onand it'll probably start up.If not, you might need tobrowse the disk contents in TOSand choose a program file to open the game.And as for the games themselves,you've got a giant crapload to choose from.Just like any other popular computerback in the mid-to-late '80s,you have games from all overthe world in every genre imaginable.I am simply unable to adequately show themassive variety of Atari ST games in this video,so here are just a few of my favorites.Sector 1As for acquiring these games,it really depends on where you live.The Atari ST was really popular in placeslike Germany, Sweden, the UK and Canada,but not so much in the USA.So if you are in America, the largest selectionof games are going to have to be imported.This means most of the games are probablygoing to be designed with a PAL machine in mind.And although I'm not aware of any majorPAL-to-NTSC compatibility problems,just keep in mind that there may be someissues if you're mixing territories around.Thankfully, if you happen to getyour hands on any disk images,it's stupidly easy to write them if youhave a PC with a 3½-inch floppy drive.Yep. Writing Atari ST disks on an IBM PCreally is as simple as dragging and dropping.All you need is a 720K double-sided floppy disk,and the eloquently named\"Floppy Imaging and File Transfer\" program.Just insert your disk, choose the image file,write it to the disk and you're good to go.And as always, emulation is an optionfor those of you who don't mind goingimpure with your vintage computer usage.The excellent Steam Engine is my emulator of choice,and it very accurately emulates thebreadth of the Atari ST computer linewith grace and finesse.But really, this is like looking at adultentertainment instead of having a real girl,and that's rather silly if you have the option.So that brings us to the final question:Is the Atari ST worth buying or not?Well the Atari 1040STfm,which is all I can really speak for,is definitely worth considering.It's got a ton of great games.Many obscure ones,many not-so-obscure ones,arcade classics, lots of Atari conversions and such.Lots of homebrew.And there's also a really easy wayto get them onto the computer,which I mentioned earlier, and that'smaking your own floppies on a PC.So it doesn't get much easier than that.And then there's also the MIDI,which it's got built in,if you like to mess with MIDIor you like old school MIDI...stuff,and think this is interesting,then that might be a selling point to you.But there are some downsides,and I cannot ignore those.The first being that the graphicsaren't exactly the most spectacular.They're okay.But compared to some othersystems that were out at this time,you're not always getting thebest ports of games available,as far as graphical fidelity goes.The same goes for the audio.It's okay. It's decent enough.It works.But it's nowhere near up to parof something like the Amiga.And that's just unfortunate,because, for whatever reason,when I'm playing a game on here,sometimes I know there's abetter conversion available.I'm like, \"well, why am I notplaying it on *that* machine?\"The only other thing that really bothers me,of course, is the stupid joystick ports.I friggin' hate them.And then, it's not a problem on mine,but it you have a system thatdoesn't have an \"M\" on the badge,that means that you *have* to use an Atari monitor.There's no way to hook it up to a TV,so that adds some expense.There's also some more expense if you're in Americabecause the games weren't as popular here.The computer wasn't as popular here,so you're probably going to have to be importing them.And, um...Yeah, that's pretty much it. I mean...some of those are nit-picky, like the graphics and stuff.Okay, maybe I can get over that. But it's mainlythe availability of the games, the availabilityof other hardware peripherals and things here in the US.If you're in Europe, this might not be much of a problem.Either way, I would still give the Atari ST a look,if you're into 16-bit vintage machines.But I also might shop around a little bitbefore making your final decision.\n"