Atari ST?
- Thread starter Mash
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angrypants
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the amiga and the atari st are two very similar but diffrent systems. I have never acctually played either not even in an emulated state but both were around about the same time and were compedeters. the ST made by atari and the Amiga made by comador. They were more than simply game consoles but acutaly home computers. However both seemed to have a ton of games released for them. I could be wrong about some of this stuff but thats pretty much it. Look on ebay or simply do some research on google to get some more info on the two systems. As for getting roms for the ST I know there is joe's ftp which has almost all of the stari roms known to man as well you can look on emuchina.net which is the most complete emulation site I have ever seen take a look at it the site will blow your mind.
As pointed out, the Atari ST and Amiga are two completely seperate systems. They were both around at the same time, both of them were computer systems (not consoles) and both also had similar features, but the Amiga was the more powerful and successful of the two (and in my opinion, the greatest gaming machine ever).
As for roms, sorry but i'm not promoting any rom sites on this message board but try doing a search in Google or check out Kazaa.
If you would like more information on both systems then check out:
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=20 <-----the Atari ST series
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/comput....asp?st=1&c=628 <----The Amiga 1200
As for roms, sorry but i'm not promoting any rom sites on this message board but try doing a search in Google or check out Kazaa.
If you would like more information on both systems then check out:
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=20 <-----the Atari ST series
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/comput....asp?st=1&c=628 <----The Amiga 1200
Swiss_Cheeseman
SwissCM
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an ftp with heaps of atari st stuff was posted on this board not too long ago, search for it.
Looking for Atari ST Disks.... (ST / MSA)
http://atari.games.free.fr/atarist/index.html :lol:
bye,
d4rkm4r3
PS: The AMIGA was made by Commodore
http://atari.games.free.fr/atarist/index.html :lol:
bye,
d4rkm4r3
PS: The AMIGA was made by Commodore
Swiss_Cheeseman
SwissCM
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Actually, it wasnt, Amiga got eaten up by commodore after the amiga got released.
More Games...
ftp://ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de/pub/atari/
bye,
d4rkm4r3
>> "Actually, it wasnt, Amiga got eaten up by commodore after the amiga got released"
really? :huh:
Tell me more, i don't know much of the Amiga/-Scene...
There a lot of Stories about the Amiga in the Atari-Scene...
ftp://ftp.cs.tu-berlin.de/pub/atari/
bye,
d4rkm4r3
>> "Actually, it wasnt, Amiga got eaten up by commodore after the amiga got released"
really? :huh:
Tell me more, i don't know much of the Amiga/-Scene...
There a lot of Stories about the Amiga in the Atari-Scene...
Swiss_Cheeseman
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Thats pretty much all I know =D
dan miracle
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The history of the Atari ST V Amiga is quite an interesting one..
Originally Amiga was a seperate company, founded by Jay Miner- one of the original Atari 2600 design engineers.
Atari had made an offer to Amiga to make the Amiga their 16 bit computer, however Commodore came in at the last minute and offered more money. So it became the Commodore Amiga (as opposed to the Atari Amiga.. sounds strange)
Apparently Atari were so annoyed at this that the CEO at the time demanded they release a 16 bit computer anyway. So the Atari was "cobbled together" (for want of a better term ) from various off the shelf parts...
You should get the Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven L Kent. It gives a lot of detail about this period (and before hand), and the general incestious nature of the industry then!!!
Originally Amiga was a seperate company, founded by Jay Miner- one of the original Atari 2600 design engineers.
Atari had made an offer to Amiga to make the Amiga their 16 bit computer, however Commodore came in at the last minute and offered more money. So it became the Commodore Amiga (as opposed to the Atari Amiga.. sounds strange)
Apparently Atari were so annoyed at this that the CEO at the time demanded they release a 16 bit computer anyway. So the Atari was "cobbled together" (for want of a better term
) from various off the shelf parts...You should get the Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven L Kent. It gives a lot of detail about this period (and before hand), and the general incestious nature of the industry then!!!
actually i think commodore aquired amiga just prior. I remember my school buying a bunch of A1000s and they had magic C= logo on them. naturally, i have no evidence to back this up.. :lol:
http://amiga.emugaming.com/amigahistory.html
has a good history of amiga.
http://amiga.emugaming.com/prototypes/cbm-...ne-portrait.jpg
has one of my favorite pictures of a prototype board...
http://www.amiga.com/
AMIGA INC today, still going...
I only recently sold my last A1200.. I was a semi-diehard fan I suppose, and untill this year had never-ever played a single ST game.... CASTaway is changing that, most of the ST software I've seen running on it, is close enough to the old amiga version I'm blown away! it's a frekkin awesome emu... so being that this is an ST thread, who can shed some light on the ST's history...?
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The "main" differences between the two were that the Atari was better on the GFX side of computing, the Amiga on the music. As far as the better of the two, that is debatable! The Amiga, which I think was stated earlier, was the more powerful of the two machines, and I believe had more games/apps/progs released, but the Atari’s graphics were a lot better. I never had an Amiga, only an Atari – But that was fun enough – My friend had an Amiga, and that was the main reason I went for the other – The games looked better! At least the Atari didn’t have an operating system from Emmerdale!
None of them came close to the Amstrad 464+ though! (Please note the "+" there - For all those who know what trouble that caused!) :lol:
None of them came close to the Amstrad 464+ though! (Please note the "+" there - For all those who know what trouble that caused!) :lol:
JDUK
Member
ST had bettter GFX than the Amiga ? :blink: :blink: :blink:
Sure your not thinking of the C64 ?
Sure your not thinking of the C64 ?
stickofjoy
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IIRC:
Jack Tramiel worked for Commodore and was funding a home computer development. He then left and joined Atari to bolster their home computer division. He wanted to use the same computer he had been looking at whilst at Commodore, the Amiga, but it was not to be. He then hastily had a similar system developed, the Atari ST.
So it could have been the Atari Amiga, but instead we got the wonderful Atari ST.
a nice insight here:
http://www.lowendmac.com/clones/atari.html
Jack Tramiel worked for Commodore and was funding a home computer development. He then left and joined Atari to bolster their home computer division. He wanted to use the same computer he had been looking at whilst at Commodore, the Amiga, but it was not to be. He then hastily had a similar system developed, the Atari ST.
So it could have been the Atari Amiga, but instead we got the wonderful Atari ST.
a nice insight here:
http://www.lowendmac.com/clones/atari.html
tdp
Member
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- May 13, 2003
- Messages
- 70
Differences between the Atari ST and Amiga (sorry about the length)
Information about the Amiga's custom chipset
The Custom Chipset
CPU: MOTOROLA 68000
The Amiga uses exactly the same 16-bit chip as the Atari ST and the Apple Macintosh, the 7.16MHz 68000 chip, first released in 1979. This is one of the best 16-bit chips because it has a very good instruction set. The difference between the ST and Amiga, however, is that the Amiga does not depend on the 68000 to do all the work. Instead, it employs a set of custom chips known collectively as 'The PAD': Paula, Agnus and Denise. The custom chips are allowed to ignore the CPU completely, performing their own operations and accessing memory directly.
THE PAD
Although all the chips work together, each has its own independant tasks. A large part of this is DMA, direct memory access, which means that for their own allotted tasks these chips can go straight to the RAM chips to get information and so avoid using CPU time.
All three custom chips are constructed using VLSI technology which stands for very large scale integration. This means that each chip has many more componants (mainly transistors) than usual. So they are highly specific to the task they are designed for.
AGNUS
Agnus is the boss chip of the PAD custom set and is home to the blitter. Blitter stands for Block Image Transferrer. Commodore tried to phase in the terms 'blimmer' (Block Image Manipulator), and 'bimmer' (Bitmap Image Manipulator) to replace it but they never caught on. It is responsible for most of the graphics and display functions. It has three inputs and one output so it can take three graphical inputs and output the resulting image.
The blitter can move a 16-bit chuck into memory every 280 nanoseconds. It has 256 logic instructions, and is directly responsible for line drawing and solid fills. It is capable of drawing nearly 4000 lines every second. Agnus and the blitter are also responsible for reading information from disk into memory. This is done a track at a time, starting from any point where the disk heads happen to be, sorting it all out into a sensible order afterwards. Again, this is DMA function so uses up no processor time.
Agnus also includes the cooper, a small graphics co-processor with its own three commands, which basically monitors the functioning of the screen display (watching where the phospher dot is). Therefore it can handle screen displays such as split-screen, which is particularly handy for pull down split screen capacity of multi-tasking.
DENISE
Denise's specific responsibilities are to control the major functions of screen display. It converts bitplane information into an actual screen display. Denise is responsible for the 4096-colour capability of the Amiga and also controls the mouse and handles hardware sprites. The mouse pointer is a good example of a hardware sprite, but these types of sprite are often used in games. Denise also provides for such features as collision detection in games.
PAULA
Paula is in charge of the creation and the output of sound. It features a full nine octaves over four voices of sound, configured as two stereo chanels, and also includes the digital to analogue converter that builds and audio output into analogue impulses that the speakers can handle. Internally, sound information is handled entirely digitally: it is built up from wave-forms stored in memory. Both amplitude and frequency modulation are supported. This digital wave-form technique is what gives the Amiga its massive sound sampling and manipulation abilities.
GARY
Gary is a contraction of 'Gate Array': it monitors interfaces, handeling the movement of data to peripherals such as a bridgeboard.
Atari ST and emulation
The Atari ST is much more easily emulated than the eight bit models, because it used the same 68000 processor as the first Amigas, and had relatively little custom hardware. The sound chip is the three-channel one used in eight bit micros like Amstrad CPC, Spectrum 128, Oric and BBC Micro, but STs have MIDI built-in as well.
The ST runs in three display resolutions: LowRes, with 320 by 200 pixels in 16 colours from a palette of 512, mainly used for games, MediumRes, 640 by 200 pixels in four colours, and HighRes 640 by 400, which required a special monochrome monitor on a real ST and uses an interlaced display on the Amiga.
Later models like the STe, TT and Falcon had extra hardware to bring them closer to the Amiga's specification, with more colours and eight bit sampled sound. The TT and Falcon have 68030 processors but Atari went no further, so there's no support for the 68040 or 68060, even in late versions of the Atari operating system.
16 bit Atari disks use a variant of the 360K, 720K and 1.44 Meg MSDOS formats, so you can read and write ST files with CrossDOS, bundled with the Amiga. Some disks have one extra sector per track, pushing the capacity to 800K or 1.6 Megs; these need a special mountlist.
ST emulators usually require you to obtain your own copy of the Atari ROM, which is inauspiciously known as TOS, for Tramiel Operating System. Much of the code inside came from seventies micro pioneers Digital Research, including a 16 bit version of CP/M and GEM (Graphics Environment Manager), a simple single-tasking windowing system, also used on some Amstrad PC clones.
Atari ST programs fall into two main categories - GEM applications, which use the operating system, and others - mainly games and demos - which hit the hardware directly. Current Amiga ST emulators only work with well -behaved GEM applications. They use operating system patches to re-direct system calls to the Amiga hardware. This means that very few ST games can be emulated, and clobbers packages that make direct access to the ST's built-in MIDI.
The main strengths of the ST are in MIDI and Desktop Publishing. MIDI emulation is problematic because of hardware differences, but DTP packages like Calamus can out-perform Amiga equivalents on 68000 machines.
The verdict
Most ST games were converted to the Amiga. Indeed, in the heyday of the ST Amiga users used to complain that games like Populous and Formula One Grand Prix were written first for the simpler ST, and converted, which is why they ended up using only 16 colours rather than the 32 or 64 which the Amiga 500 can handle. However, it's not that simple. The ST's faster CPU made a noticable difference for 3D games. So what you have is an older version of GP32 vs. GBA. The GBA has a slower (a lot slower) CPU, but custom chips to compensate. The GP32 (some what like the ST) has just a more powerful CPU, and basic screen handling.
But the most in important thing is that the ST version of Dungeon Master is better - much better!!!!! And I can play it on my GP32.
Information about the Amiga's custom chipset
The Custom Chipset
CPU: MOTOROLA 68000
The Amiga uses exactly the same 16-bit chip as the Atari ST and the Apple Macintosh, the 7.16MHz 68000 chip, first released in 1979. This is one of the best 16-bit chips because it has a very good instruction set. The difference between the ST and Amiga, however, is that the Amiga does not depend on the 68000 to do all the work. Instead, it employs a set of custom chips known collectively as 'The PAD': Paula, Agnus and Denise. The custom chips are allowed to ignore the CPU completely, performing their own operations and accessing memory directly.
THE PAD
Although all the chips work together, each has its own independant tasks. A large part of this is DMA, direct memory access, which means that for their own allotted tasks these chips can go straight to the RAM chips to get information and so avoid using CPU time.
All three custom chips are constructed using VLSI technology which stands for very large scale integration. This means that each chip has many more componants (mainly transistors) than usual. So they are highly specific to the task they are designed for.
AGNUS
Agnus is the boss chip of the PAD custom set and is home to the blitter. Blitter stands for Block Image Transferrer. Commodore tried to phase in the terms 'blimmer' (Block Image Manipulator), and 'bimmer' (Bitmap Image Manipulator) to replace it but they never caught on. It is responsible for most of the graphics and display functions. It has three inputs and one output so it can take three graphical inputs and output the resulting image.
The blitter can move a 16-bit chuck into memory every 280 nanoseconds. It has 256 logic instructions, and is directly responsible for line drawing and solid fills. It is capable of drawing nearly 4000 lines every second. Agnus and the blitter are also responsible for reading information from disk into memory. This is done a track at a time, starting from any point where the disk heads happen to be, sorting it all out into a sensible order afterwards. Again, this is DMA function so uses up no processor time.
Agnus also includes the cooper, a small graphics co-processor with its own three commands, which basically monitors the functioning of the screen display (watching where the phospher dot is). Therefore it can handle screen displays such as split-screen, which is particularly handy for pull down split screen capacity of multi-tasking.
DENISE
Denise's specific responsibilities are to control the major functions of screen display. It converts bitplane information into an actual screen display. Denise is responsible for the 4096-colour capability of the Amiga and also controls the mouse and handles hardware sprites. The mouse pointer is a good example of a hardware sprite, but these types of sprite are often used in games. Denise also provides for such features as collision detection in games.
PAULA
Paula is in charge of the creation and the output of sound. It features a full nine octaves over four voices of sound, configured as two stereo chanels, and also includes the digital to analogue converter that builds and audio output into analogue impulses that the speakers can handle. Internally, sound information is handled entirely digitally: it is built up from wave-forms stored in memory. Both amplitude and frequency modulation are supported. This digital wave-form technique is what gives the Amiga its massive sound sampling and manipulation abilities.
GARY
Gary is a contraction of 'Gate Array': it monitors interfaces, handeling the movement of data to peripherals such as a bridgeboard.
Atari ST and emulation
The Atari ST is much more easily emulated than the eight bit models, because it used the same 68000 processor as the first Amigas, and had relatively little custom hardware. The sound chip is the three-channel one used in eight bit micros like Amstrad CPC, Spectrum 128, Oric and BBC Micro, but STs have MIDI built-in as well.
The ST runs in three display resolutions: LowRes, with 320 by 200 pixels in 16 colours from a palette of 512, mainly used for games, MediumRes, 640 by 200 pixels in four colours, and HighRes 640 by 400, which required a special monochrome monitor on a real ST and uses an interlaced display on the Amiga.
Later models like the STe, TT and Falcon had extra hardware to bring them closer to the Amiga's specification, with more colours and eight bit sampled sound. The TT and Falcon have 68030 processors but Atari went no further, so there's no support for the 68040 or 68060, even in late versions of the Atari operating system.
16 bit Atari disks use a variant of the 360K, 720K and 1.44 Meg MSDOS formats, so you can read and write ST files with CrossDOS, bundled with the Amiga. Some disks have one extra sector per track, pushing the capacity to 800K or 1.6 Megs; these need a special mountlist.
ST emulators usually require you to obtain your own copy of the Atari ROM, which is inauspiciously known as TOS, for Tramiel Operating System. Much of the code inside came from seventies micro pioneers Digital Research, including a 16 bit version of CP/M and GEM (Graphics Environment Manager), a simple single-tasking windowing system, also used on some Amstrad PC clones.
Atari ST programs fall into two main categories - GEM applications, which use the operating system, and others - mainly games and demos - which hit the hardware directly. Current Amiga ST emulators only work with well -behaved GEM applications. They use operating system patches to re-direct system calls to the Amiga hardware. This means that very few ST games can be emulated, and clobbers packages that make direct access to the ST's built-in MIDI.
The main strengths of the ST are in MIDI and Desktop Publishing. MIDI emulation is problematic because of hardware differences, but DTP packages like Calamus can out-perform Amiga equivalents on 68000 machines.
The verdict
Most ST games were converted to the Amiga. Indeed, in the heyday of the ST Amiga users used to complain that games like Populous and Formula One Grand Prix were written first for the simpler ST, and converted, which is why they ended up using only 16 colours rather than the 32 or 64 which the Amiga 500 can handle. However, it's not that simple. The ST's faster CPU made a noticable difference for 3D games. So what you have is an older version of GP32 vs. GBA. The GBA has a slower (a lot slower) CPU, but custom chips to compensate. The GP32 (some what like the ST) has just a more powerful CPU, and basic screen handling.
But the most in important thing is that the ST version of Dungeon Master is better - much better!!!!! And I can play it on my GP32.
Hmmm.The amiga and St had similar graphics (resolution and colours),the st had good sound capability through its midi port BUT the amiga had its blitter (graphics chip) and hardware scrolling with made the games on it superior to the st (although a few st owners I know will argue differently).I suppose it comes down to which system you owned.
Charge
Member
I owned, actually still own an Amiga, so it was better
trooper
Trooper`s watching you !!!
I still have a couple of amiga`s myself, And they are better.
Trooper
Trooper
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