Atari ST

Atari, Atari ST, Computers

What do I want to say about the ST?

It is the successor to Atari 8-bit computers like the Atari 400 and 800 It has a 16-bit Motorola 68K CPU

From Wikipedia:

Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company’s 8-bit home computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available in July.[2][3] It was the first personal computer with a bitmapped color graphical user interface,[4] using a version of Digital Research’s GEM interface / operating system from February 1985.[5][better source needed]

The Atari 1040ST, released in 1986 with 1 MB of memory, was the first home computer with a cost per kilobyte of RAM under US$1/KB.[6]

From my existing article:

Graphics glitches. Timing issues. Emulators suck. The best way to enjoy retro games is on real hardware.

With this in mind, I headed to the attic in search of my old Atari ST. After (too much) digging, I unearthed the beast:

Colour-coded monitor, system and keyboard. 4MB RAM. 30MB hard drive. Truly glorious.

After some time lost in memory, I fired her up. Fingers crossed, I waited for the hard drive to initialise … success! They don’t make ‘em like they used to.

What about some old games? I rummaged through the disk box and pulled out an old favourite - Magic Pockets. Pop the disk in, hit the reset button and … boot to the desktop!? That wasn’t supposed to happen. The game was supposed to load! After a few more tries and a few more games … mixed results. Looks like the years haven’t been kind to my magnetic media.

But it’s no problem, right? The internet is full of old Atari ST disk images. How can I get them running on the old hardware? Time for some research …

More Atari ST Posts

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