A fantastic machine, could have been so much more though:
TBH I think bigger impacts would have come from a few tweaks to the ST hardware:
Autocad started life on the ST with the Cyber series of products - including a full expansion port as the cartridge port would allow for high-colour videocards, which the lack of forced them to migrate to other platforms. Similarly for DTP which was huge on the ST at launch.
The AMY chip was pulled at the last minute, but having an 8 channel stereo synth capable of mp3-style playback, alongside a DMA channel (1bit PWM on the DMA chip) would have changed the face of computer audio for 15 years. Even putting stereo output for the YM, and the 1bit PWM on the DMA chip would have been enough to raise the sound bar at the time (vs c64).
Unifying the system clocks like the STE would have allowed the ST to genlock, which together with the expansion port, stereo and midi ports, might have tempted Newtek to do an AV workstation ie. Move professional video production to the platform.
Moving TOS to accommodate large rom sizes could also have changed things, in that MINT (and multitos) were available before linux, and being POSIX compatible (bash, rpm, multiuser etc), it would be similar to having OSX in rom in 1991.
Writing network drivers for the midi ports into TOS would have been beneficial for small businesses, with support for 16 networked machines, and fostered much more collaborative software like lotus notes.
The ST can actually support 7 button joy pads through use of impossible combinations eg. Left+right simultaneously as a fire button. Had Atari sold joypads from launch, that would have benefitted the Amiga as well (it can support even more stuff).
Including the blitter socket as standard in every ST would have allowed Atari to use the T212 transputer instead of the blitter chip in 1987 (the blitter was only available then). In terms of raw power that is roughly equivalent to having a SuperFX2 chip in 1987, but it would potentially change GPU architecture completely as the next generation (T414 in a 32bit) machine would be able to cluster the coprocessors similar to Intel's Xeon Phi, but better.
The ST can do 4pix hardware scrolling and overscan by abusing the shifter (https://youtu.be/hpUbWZWTOiw), there wasn't enough documentation to discover that quickly though. The main thing lacking throughout the ST's and Amiga's life was support of the platform- ship the hardware, make as much money as you can and move on to the next platform, hence lack of development of TOS, no SDK, OCS lasting Commodore until 92. PCs had a much easier time taking over the space thanks to this.
I think, of all the computer companies, the amount of engineering talent that went through Atari Corp was unmatched (ST, EST, ATW, Portfolio, Atari book, CDAR604, TT, Falcon, Lynx, Jaguar, JagVR). I can never understand how it all came to nothing.
It does seem to me that Atari did very well with the use of COTS hardware and software to get a usable machine out at such a low price. It was more usable than the Amiga at base spec (512kB RAM, 1 floppy) because the OS in ROM meant much less disk swapping.
But it did need both a lot more upgrades and expansions as time went on, as you point out, correctly IMHO. Secondly, I think Atari should have adopted PC standards as they appeared and settled: PS/2 ports, VGA and SVGA monitors and display modes, Baby AT motherboards, SIMM slots, IDE connectors, ISA slots and so on. Apple successfully adopted a lot of this stuff, so classic Macs had standard RAM slots, and the lower-end ones had IDE drives, and so on.
Things like PCI (1992), ATX motherboards and USB (1995) came along too late.
Agreed. The Falcon started down this route with IDE, SCSI2, localtalk, chunky VGA (props to Richard Miller), but Atari cheaped out as they had already decided to leave the computer market and were really just clearing stock.
TOS/GEM was so very basic that enterprising 3rd party developers were able to extend it from a single-tasking OS to a complete multitasking one, over time, without totally losing compatibility.
(Yes, yes, before any Amiga owners "Well actually..." me: we know, AmigaOS had that built in... But with interprocess communications designed for a single flat shared memory space, that meant that it could't be extended to support 68030+ memory management without breaking compatibility.)
The ST had the potential to really grow as a platform, just as Atari gave up on it. The TT 030, Falcon and ATW (AKA Abaq) were amazing machines with great potential, but it went unrealised.
Oddly enough, the relatively humble Sinclair QL, which was by Sinclair standards a flop, went on to inspire both hardware compatibles (ICL One Per Desk, Merlin Tonto, Telecom Australia ComputerPhone), motherboard upgrades (Gold Card, Aurora), and up-specced clones (CST Thor, Thor II, Thor XVI), and subsequent compatible machines (Q40, Q60, Q68), and hardware boards for other PCs (QXL card), and its OS continued on other hardware (SMSQ/E).
It has Kickstart in ROM. That is, broadly, the bootloader. All the rest is loaded in from floppy.
The classic Amiga is a legendarily poor experience with a single floppy drive: disk-swapping agogo. It was famous for it 35 years ago.
With an ST -- or an Archimedes -- you can turn on and with no media at all reach the desktop.
You can insert a disk with a desktop app and run that app from that disk with no other media at all.
Both of these are impossible on an Amiga, and with any Mac, 680x0 or PowerPC, except a single model: the Mac Classic, which has System 6.0.3 in a ROMdisk.
With an ST -- or an Archimedes -- you can turn on and with no media at all reach the desktop.
Correct. It's a little more direct than the Amiga.
With the Amiga, you need two extra steps:
- Initialize dos.library (which is in the rom). This is done by the bootblock of the floppy you boot from.
- loadwb command (starts workbench, which again resides in the ROM)
The classic Amiga is a legendarily poor experience with a single floppy drive: disk-swapping agogo. It was famous for it 35 years ago.
This is not how I remember the Amiga.
Due to dynamic library support, LIBS: is the library path, assigned to SYS:Libs by default, where SYS: is the filesystem you booted from.
Thus, if you booted with your workbench floppy then loaded a program from another floppy, it'd keep requesting to insert workbench: back every time it needs a dynamic library. (or font, or printer driver...)
The workaround, if you knew how to use your Amiga, would have been to assign the program's floppy as the first in the list for libraries, preventing this.
But, generally, you'd boot with the program's disk, to use a specific program, that is easiest.
dos.library, input.device, FastFileSystem and so on.
And, in 2.0+ ROMs, it even contains a bunch of shell commands (dir, echo etc) that reside in sys:c on older ROMs.
What's loaded from disk is your user programs and your data, besides any other libraries you might need (like diskfont.library, which is used to load fonts from disk, if you don't like the ROM provided one).
Comments
A fantastic machine, could have been so much more though:
TBH I think bigger impacts would have come from a few tweaks to the ST hardware: Autocad started life on the ST with the Cyber series of products - including a full expansion port as the cartridge port would allow for high-colour videocards, which the lack of forced them to migrate to other platforms. Similarly for DTP which was huge on the ST at launch.
The AMY chip was pulled at the last minute, but having an 8 channel stereo synth capable of mp3-style playback, alongside a DMA channel (1bit PWM on the DMA chip) would have changed the face of computer audio for 15 years. Even putting stereo output for the YM, and the 1bit PWM on the DMA chip would have been enough to raise the sound bar at the time (vs c64).
Unifying the system clocks like the STE would have allowed the ST to genlock, which together with the expansion port, stereo and midi ports, might have tempted Newtek to do an AV workstation ie. Move professional video production to the platform.
Moving TOS to accommodate large rom sizes could also have changed things, in that MINT (and multitos) were available before linux, and being POSIX compatible (bash, rpm, multiuser etc), it would be similar to having OSX in rom in 1991.
Writing network drivers for the midi ports into TOS would have been beneficial for small businesses, with support for 16 networked machines, and fostered much more collaborative software like lotus notes.
The ST can actually support 7 button joy pads through use of impossible combinations eg. Left+right simultaneously as a fire button. Had Atari sold joypads from launch, that would have benefitted the Amiga as well (it can support even more stuff).
Including the blitter socket as standard in every ST would have allowed Atari to use the T212 transputer instead of the blitter chip in 1987 (the blitter was only available then). In terms of raw power that is roughly equivalent to having a SuperFX2 chip in 1987, but it would potentially change GPU architecture completely as the next generation (T414 in a 32bit) machine would be able to cluster the coprocessors similar to Intel's Xeon Phi, but better.
The ST can do 4pix hardware scrolling and overscan by abusing the shifter (https://youtu.be/hpUbWZWTOiw), there wasn't enough documentation to discover that quickly though. The main thing lacking throughout the ST's and Amiga's life was support of the platform- ship the hardware, make as much money as you can and move on to the next platform, hence lack of development of TOS, no SDK, OCS lasting Commodore until 92. PCs had a much easier time taking over the space thanks to this.
I think, of all the computer companies, the amount of engineering talent that went through Atari Corp was unmatched (ST, EST, ATW, Portfolio, Atari book, CDAR604, TT, Falcon, Lynx, Jaguar, JagVR). I can never understand how it all came to nothing.
All excellent points.
It does seem to me that Atari did very well with the use of COTS hardware and software to get a usable machine out at such a low price. It was more usable than the Amiga at base spec (512kB RAM, 1 floppy) because the OS in ROM meant much less disk swapping.
But it did need both a lot more upgrades and expansions as time went on, as you point out, correctly IMHO. Secondly, I think Atari should have adopted PC standards as they appeared and settled: PS/2 ports, VGA and SVGA monitors and display modes, Baby AT motherboards, SIMM slots, IDE connectors, ISA slots and so on. Apple successfully adopted a lot of this stuff, so classic Macs had standard RAM slots, and the lower-end ones had IDE drives, and so on.
Things like PCI (1992), ATX motherboards and USB (1995) came along too late.
Agreed. The Falcon started down this route with IDE, SCSI2, localtalk, chunky VGA (props to Richard Miller), but Atari cheaped out as they had already decided to leave the computer market and were really just clearing stock.
Yup.
It is a damned shame, really.
TOS/GEM was so very basic that enterprising 3rd party developers were able to extend it from a single-tasking OS to a complete multitasking one, over time, without totally losing compatibility.
(Yes, yes, before any Amiga owners "Well actually..." me: we know, AmigaOS had that built in... But with interprocess communications designed for a single flat shared memory space, that meant that it could't be extended to support 68030+ memory management without breaking compatibility.)
The ST had the potential to really grow as a platform, just as Atari gave up on it. The TT 030, Falcon and ATW (AKA Abaq) were amazing machines with great potential, but it went unrealised.
Oddly enough, the relatively humble Sinclair QL, which was by Sinclair standards a flop, went on to inspire both hardware compatibles (ICL One Per Desk, Merlin Tonto, Telecom Australia ComputerPhone), motherboard upgrades (Gold Card, Aurora), and up-specced clones (CST Thor, Thor II, Thor XVI), and subsequent compatible machines (Q40, Q60, Q68), and hardware boards for other PCs (QXL card), and its OS continued on other hardware (SMSQ/E).
An impressive legacy for a "flop".
Amiga also has the OS in the ROM. Much more of it even (256KB ROM).
Yeah, no. I own one. This is deeply disingenuous.
It has Kickstart in ROM. That is, broadly, the bootloader. All the rest is loaded in from floppy.
The classic Amiga is a legendarily poor experience with a single floppy drive: disk-swapping agogo. It was famous for it 35 years ago.
With an ST -- or an Archimedes -- you can turn on and with no media at all reach the desktop.
You can insert a disk with a desktop app and run that app from that disk with no other media at all.
Both of these are impossible on an Amiga, and with any Mac, 680x0 or PowerPC, except a single model: the Mac Classic, which has System 6.0.3 in a ROMdisk.
https://lowendmac.com/1990/mac-classic/
Correct. It's a little more direct than the Amiga.
With the Amiga, you need two extra steps:
- Initialize dos.library (which is in the rom). This is done by the bootblock of the floppy you boot from.
- loadwb command (starts workbench, which again resides in the ROM)
This is not how I remember the Amiga.
Due to dynamic library support, LIBS: is the library path, assigned to SYS:Libs by default, where SYS: is the filesystem you booted from.
Thus, if you booted with your workbench floppy then loaded a program from another floppy, it'd keep requesting to insert workbench: back every time it needs a dynamic library. (or font, or printer driver...)
The workaround, if you knew how to use your Amiga, would have been to assign the program's floppy as the first in the list for libraries, preventing this.
But, generally, you'd boot with the program's disk, to use a specific program, that is easiest.
Uh, I own six, and disagree, profoundly.
That's the name of the ROM images, yes.
This is not just "broad", but outright wrong.
The ROM contains, e.g.:
* exec library (kernel)
* graphics.library (display routines)
* intuition.library (windows and menus)
* amigashell (the CLI shell)
* workbench.library (literally, the Workbench)
dos.library, input.device, FastFileSystem and so on.
And, in 2.0+ ROMs, it even contains a bunch of shell commands (dir, echo etc) that reside in sys:c on older ROMs.
What's loaded from disk is your user programs and your data, besides any other libraries you might need (like diskfont.library, which is used to load fonts from disk, if you don't like the ROM provided one).
I know you meant Autodesk 3D Studio Max (not AutoCad) but just pointing it out in case you want to edit your good post.
Thanks, I appended a note :)
Edit Thanks djmips, it should be Autodesk 3D Studio Max rather than Autocad, editing is locked on the post now.
Gier frisst Hirn! Greed eats brain, minimum viable product, in hindsight always sucked.