LGR - Atari ST Computer System Review

The Atari ST was introduced right before the Commodore Amiga in 1985. Popular with gamers, musicians and desktop publishers, the ST earned its right as one of the best 16-bit computers of its day. But is it still worth owning to a current collector of vintage computers?

This is an overview of the history, hardware and software of the ST from the perspective of an American collector. How do the pros and cons stack up, and is it worth getting an ST over similar systems like the Amiga?

Many thanks to Borin81 for the 1040STfm!

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This video contains music by The Insider and Kevin MacLeod that is provided under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license for commercial use. Those photos at the beginning are CC images sourced from Wikimedia.

[fubaralakbar]

Man...those old 16-bit machines were sweet looking.

[LaneBeScrolling]

"One thing that really bothers me is that the default color scheme is white and lime-green"

* Side-eyes LGR logo *

[hoffmanshaven]

My family owned a 520, 1040, an Amiga, and several PCs back in those days. We wrote our own games and everything. Thanks for the walk down memory lane.

[TheBrightPixel]

Extra fun fact. The cartridge port was used by the required dongle for C-Lab Notator, which was the MIDI software we all used on this great machine. The connector was in close proximity to the MIDI ports, mounted directly on the PCB with little mechanical support, and a lot of the used units out there have dodgy cart slots as a result.

This was my first computer and I used it for years to make music on, and really loved it - despite the fact that I had to secure the dongle with gaffa tape in the end.

[blueybean]

We had an STE with Notator Software, SMPTE synced to a 16 track tape deck and about 10 MIDI Synths and Effects wired to it. It NEVER missed a beat, it NEVER crashed. Best music system ever.

[mapesdhs]

Something I really liked about the ST was coding in assembler, it was a joy to do, with excellent reference books available. I'd done a fair bit of 6502 coding on BBC Micros and an Electrion, but asy on the ST was in a different league. I ended up writing an entire word processor in 68K, which was ridiculously fast in use (it was my main 3rd year project at uni, the largest they'd ever received, the listing took 2.5 hours to print out). Funny thing, the program became popular with other students, they used it in preference to the editor supplied by the uni. :D

Ian.

[computeraisle]

You could link up to 16 computers using the midi ports and play multiplayer MidiMaze. The tagline was "KILL A HAPPY FACE" It looked something like hover, but the characters were all round balls/happy faces. You roam around a maze and shoot at each other. FUN! A buddy and I also made a hard disk interface that converted the Atari DMA port (proper terminology) to a SCSI port so you could hook up any hard drive. Mine had a 480mb NEC drive, a CDRom from an Apple, an 68030/12mb upgrade (the SST from Gadgets by Small), and a video card upgrade to 1024x768x16 bit graphics. It outpaced PC's for 10 more years. I still have it, but haven't fired it up in 20 years.

[JelliedInfant]

I bought the Atari ST because I could not afford the Amiga. I knew I was making a devil's bargain but it was still AWESOME (at the time). The IBM compatibles were just shit.

I had a lot of fun with the MIDI ports. :-)

Actually I should thank my girlfriend at the time since she actually bought it for me... and then reclaimed it when we broke up a few years later. :-(

[pocketsuke]

Fun fact - You can use Sega Mastersystem controllers.

[Scotty_Russell_Music]

The timing of the midi ports on these machines still scores the highest accuracy scores in midi timing device shootouts, the midi clock is unburdened by a bloated OS like modern pcs which have shockingly bad midi timing.I learnt all i know about music using cubase on the 1040ste.Great machines :-)

[q]

Wow! Considering when the computer came out, those games look super impressive!

[LGR]

@hewey999 Thank you, I'm happy to bring on some loved-reviews!

[jwtgaming]

The end of each word in Lazy Game Reviews spell YES

Lazy
Game
Reviews

[LGR]

@EriclawElitewolf There will be, yes! Should be online next weekend.

[djcsdy]

The Atari ST’s joystick placement still beats 90s PCs, where there was a single joystick port, on the sound card, at the back.

[NoExtraTeam]

Very amazing presentation of the ATARI ST from American people :)
There are always a community (gamers, coders, etc.) of this computer and events mainly in Europe like the SillyVenture in Poland every years.
Really nice STFM computer on the video, very clean so far with many years.

[kaminobatto]

I was the proud owner of a 1040STE, loved the games, and I'm super glad that you put Hunter and Vroom here! I cannot count the days I spent on these two in addition to Midnight Resistance, Prince of Persia, Toki, R-Type and Metal Mutant which is a hidden gem in my humble opinion. As for apps, I mostly used Audio Sculpture, Fun Face, Publishing Partner and Calamus. Of course, no Atari user of the era overlooked the amazing demo scene and my favourite by far was Punish Your Machine! I also used the MS-Dos boot loader disk, which was very quick to load and handled some early dos applications well without having to buy an expensive PC expansion. All in all, it's one of my most beloved machines of all time and I do have plenty, but this one has a special place in my heart❤️❤️❤️

[marccarter]

Atari, always so close to being great. I loved my 800 as a kid

[FinalBaton]

This is the best description of emulation I have ever heard : "it's like adult entertainment, when you could be with a real girl". haha, brilliant!

[LGR]

@PSLover9 Why? It works fine. And besides, this is a PAL system, as explained in the video. I don't have a PAL TV/VCR/DVD player or whatever thing I use.