Discussion The Atari ST line of computers.

[whm1974]

I just watch this video earlier on the Atari Falcon 030 and if Atari haven't kept losing their focus they would still be in business as a computer manufacturer with with its own line like Apple.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Falcon

Now I am wondering if Atari stayed focused on a few products such as the ST and later 8-bit models and got out of game consoles and didn't bother with a PC line, they would have done a lot better?

I wanted An ST about a year or two after they were released, but I was just a kid at the time. Did anyone had an ST? My stepfather had an 800XL at the time, and I was using that with PaperClip to write papers all the way until I was 17.

I do believe that the Jaguar killed them off as they bet the Farm on the console.

 

[whm1974]

Found this about still doing music with the Falcon in 2019!!! Not bad at all for a computer made in 1986!!!

 

[mindless1]

I had an 800XL, with the floppy drive, and a game emulator cartridge, and learned Atari basic by fiddling around with pirated game cartridge code.

Gave it to a friend about 8 years ago because it had just been sitting around in the basement boxed up, now it's sitting in his (outdoor, not climate controlled) shed boxed up. Not sure if it's in a better place but I doubted I'd ever use it again.

 

[OlyAR15]

I had an ST. While they were fine at the beginning, they couldn't keep up with the hardware advancements and PCs ate their lunch after a couple of years. Plus, no one made any decent software for it, and that was the death-knell.

 

[whm1974]

I had an ST. While they were fine at the beginning, they couldn't keep up with the hardware advancements and PCs ate their lunch after a couple of years. Plus, no one made any decent software for it, and that was the death-knell.

Was Atari ST and Falcon the only computers that came with MIDI ports built in? This line is the only ones I heard of.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

I used Atari STs and still own Commodore Amigas. Atari was doomed for many reasons:

1) They never fully recovered from the video game crash of 1983. The crash was what eventually caused Warner to sell Atari to Tramiel, which eliminated a potentially large source of capital.
2) Their main competition was the Amiga, and the Amiga was superior in almost every way.
3) Lack of business software relegated Atari (and Commodore) to niche markets and sales weren’t enough to fund enough R&D for them to keep pace with the PC.

IMO, between Atari and Commodore and their computing platforms, Commodore had the best chance of surviving into the modern era but mismanagement doomed them. The Amiga was so ridiculously far ahead of every platform on release that it wasn’t completely eclipsed until around 1995. As a teenage computer geek when both were released in 1985, I can tell you that almost everyone I knew wanted the Amiga.

I personally think that had Atari kept focusing on consoles and made some smart decisions, they might still be a major player in the console market. The Jaguar was too little, too late - had they slugged it out with Nintendo in the late 80s, it might have turned out differently.

 

[OlyAR15]

Was Atari ST and Falcon the only computers that came with MIDI ports built in? This line is the only ones I heard of.

AFAIK, they were. It was a niche that was theirs for quite a while. Unfortunately, as a general purpose machine, the ST line just didn't have the software support. Plus, the PC was so versatile, and the hardware improved so quickly, that a few years after its release, it was really difficult to choose an ST over a PC unless you were after a really cheap computer.

 

[whm1974]

AFAIK, they were. It was a niche that was theirs for quite a while. Unfortunately, as a general purpose machine, the ST line just didn't have the software support. Plus, the PC was so versatile, and the hardware improved so quickly, that a few years after its release, it was really difficult to choose an ST over a PC unless you were after a really cheap computer.

From all that I read about the ST(and Amiga), I can't help thinking that if the company simply focus on the computer's strengths, such the a home computer, gaming, and music, they wouldn't have went under?

And oh yea, Desktop Publishing as well.

 

[OlyAR15]

They were doomed from the start. Didn't matter if they concentrated entirely on the ST/Amiga, there was no way they could compete with the PC. For the ST, its main advantage was price. Sure, its graphics capability at first was better than most PCs, but they caught up quickly after a few years, and then surpassed the ST. But the problem with a cheap computer is that a lot of people that buy one will then not want to buy a lot of expensive software. Therefore, not a lot of developers were willing to write software for the machine. And the software available was often not the highest quality. And piracy made the situation much worse. I still remember buying WordPerfect for the ST. It was one of the few serious business apps for the ST, and it was buggy as hell. They eventually fixed many of the bugs, but I doubt any company would be happy with the initial release.

Same for a lot of other programs, even games. I remember buying SubLogic's Jet, and it was a POS. Average framerate was around 1-2 FPS (that's not a typo). Meanwhile, on the PC, you could buy Falcon AT and later Falcon 3, Wing Commander, Strike Commander, etc. All way better than anything available on the ST. But since sales weren't high enough to justify investing a lot of effort in producing software for it, the machine was eventually ignored. And since there was so little quality software, no one in their right mind would buy the machine no matter how good the hardware (which was not great to begin with.)

The other major issue with the ST and Amiga was that they were integrated machines. That meant Atari and Commodore had to do basically all the R&D. The PC, on the other hand, was modular and expandable. So individual companies could produce parts that were better than what was available on the ST or Amiga. Does the PC have poor graphics? Well, individual companies could just concentrate on making better video cards, and they could be swapped into your PC in minutes. Bad audio quality? Sound card makers soon fixed that. And of course, once the Voodoo was released as an add-in card, that triggered an arms race for 3d graphics that just dwarfed anything the ST or Amiga could do. Same for storage. Same for CPU. Same for memory. And since there was such a large installed base of machines, these companies could actually sell enough to make enough money to put back into R&D, allowing even better versions in the near future.

I upgraded both the OS and memory on my ST. It involved de-soldering the RF shield, prying the individual chips out of the motherboard (an IC puller would have been useful, but since I didn't have one, a screwdriver had to do.), then press the new chips back in, all the while hoping not to bend any of the pins. User friendly it was not. Imagine if we had to upgrade our OS by swapping a ROM chip rather than installing software? It would be a nightmare for pretty much everyone.

So combine a small installed base that couldn't justify 3rd party software support, being responsible for the R&D of the entire machine, basing your machine on a family of CPU that couldn't compete with Intel, and lack of easy expandability and modularity, and the ST was doomed to be a niche machine.

I kept mine for almost 10 years. It served me from the final year in high school all the way through medical school. I couldn't afford to buy a new machine, so I had to live with it while trying not to be jealous of all the games being released for the PC. I almost broke down and bought a PC when I saw Doom for the first time, though. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that there weren't any good games for the ST, as it meant I could concentrate on my studies.