Lets not forget the Notator sequencer software. Lots of Electronic/Hip-Hop producers used that.

You can update early models RAM but it requires desoldering/soldering unlike the STE where you can simply replace/add SIMMs to do so. Still got both a 520STM (like in this video) and 2MB 520STE (was 4MB but I took 2MB when I built my very 1st PC).

This 520ST (TOS in ROM) with monitor and single sided external floppy was basically the starter system sold in stores off the shelf in the mid 80s. My Dad bought exactly this set up sometime around 1986-87. He later upgraded the floppy to double-sided. We reformatted the single-sided disks as double-sided which surprisingly worked as reliably as branded double sided diskettes. I think he daisy chained the single sided floppy as the B drive. He also soldered RAM chips directly on top of the existing RAM chips, upgrading it to 1M. The mouse kept gumming up with dirt and the buttons did start to fail a few years later around the time when I left for university and Dad migrated to PCs. He later scrapped that Atari ST, desoldering many of the components for use in his electronics projects.

@@ErraticPT Were they standard 30 pin 1 mb dimms? They can be found cheap still.

@@bornach We used to reformat the 720 disks as 1.44s for PC's for the same reason. Sometimes I had to burn a hole in a corner to satisfy some floppy drives that had a sensor and cared about which disk you used.

TOS is so limited though it's easy to think you're in some sort of very basic boot environment.

And GEM is so limited it is very easy to think you're in a very basic TOS environment!

@@Vanders456 You say limited, I say fat-free.

Honest question: Wasn't it also possible to boot a non-ROM TOS from disk (possibly a later, more advanced version) even if you were doing it on a ROM TOS machine?

The Atari ST was kind of weird about that, compared to the norm for 16 bit systems. It had TOS in ROM, but any configuration settings had to go on a floppy.

I once had to make my own connector for UHER 6000 tape recorder. It also had DIN14 connectors for remote control, although those were different, they were the same size as normal DIN (3...8) conenctors, but had 2 circles of pins, 5 in the inner circle and the rest in the outer circle. Apparently, internet is mostly unaware of this connector - only managed to find a single datasheet with dimensions. That connector is still sitting in my parts bin, I didn't think through what would I need it for :D

Going in blind was fun but there were so many different weird things about these computers that researching first would been better. It being a 520STm is interesting and I don't think I mind missing the internal floppy and PSU since I would likely have to open it to fix both now anyway. Other than the yellowing , which I personally don't care about, it's actually in pretty good shape. There aren't any scratches or dings, just a bit of cleaning is needed. And yeah, the TOS disk was a lesson hard learned.

@@TechTangents The internal floppy comes at the expense of VERY annoying joystick/mouse port placement (underneath the computer, at an awkward angle).

I just got a machine like this a few days ago. Mine was still in its factory shipping box both the computer and monitor. It looks unused by anyone. Did you ever get it fully working after the monitor died and do you still use it? What games would you recommend?

I still.have my original stm complete with both monitors and all the boxes.

MIDIMaze! Yeah, that was fun. :)

I read Atari STs were discontinued because Atari wanted to pull out of the computer market in 1993 to focus on the Jaguar.

@@Desmaad You're correct, the Atari ST was killed off in 1993, three years before the Amiga was killed off. I feel that this was an incredibly bad call by Atari. They should have merged the Jaguar into the Atari ST, producing something like an ST version of the XEGS but with 3D accelerated graphics. Yes, this ST/Jaguar hybrid would have cost more. But it would have had a LOT of RAM, making it a prestige system that could do stuff not possible anywhere else. Remember that the Amiga 1000 was too expensive to gain mass market appeal. But developers flocked to it because it was the Rolls Royce of game development.

@@Great-Documentaries I'd say the writing was on the wall for the Amiga with the arrival of VGA and Soundblaster cards.

@@Great-Documentaries Interesting perspective; I always felt from a tech standpoint that the ST was a step to the left and backwards vs., say, the Mac 128k. More RAM sure, but ultimately a GUI on top of CP/M was a weird way to go in terms of an OS. Not, mind you, that OS1.2 for the Amiga (which let's be honest was its real competition at the time, not the Mac nor the PC) was any great shakes either with its unprotected memory scheme (for example). Both had shortcomings which took a loooooong time compared to the development cycle of the PC to overcome, and by 1990/1991...that was all she wrote. Big box Amigas (a format the ST never ever had) were too expensive, despite the fact that you could use PC hardware in them, and indeed with bridgeboards make them in to PCs (or with other hardware/software solutions, macintosh systems). But I do go on about ancient history.

@@Great-Documentaries I was in the US, and it simply isn't accurate to say the ST and Amiga were dead in 1990. In fact, I had a mistaken impression that the press ignored the alternatives to PC and Mac at that time. I went back through episodes of The Computer Chronicles (a popular computer TV show in the USA at the time) and noticed that it did, in fact, continue to cover newer Amiga and ST models into the 90s. Neither Windows 3 (haha) nor Windows 3.1 (actually pretty good) were Amiga/ST killers, nor of course Mac killers. They simply didn't attract a whole lot of developer interest compared to good old DOS. Windows 95 was the thing that finally got lots of folks to switch over. As for the Amiga's superior hardware ... well, unfortunately it would stunt the platform's ability to keep up in the early 1990s. AGA was expensive to develop, complex, and just wasn't competitive. The ST ironically was in a better position to leapfrog into the 3D accelerated era, with its simpler base paradigm and Atari's investment in 3D acceleration for Jaguar. As it was, the Amiga (in the USA) was a damn fine platform to use for productivity and video production, with its pre-emptive multitasking OS, easy to handle plug-and-play expansion, and IFF format making workflows with different software a breeze. (This is before jpg and gif became de facto standards.) This was all great, but it didn't truly rely upon the Amiga's unique hardware to make happen. Windows 95 and PCI would come and do a good enough close enough replacement, but with higher resolution SVGA and CPUs many times faster. Yes, in Europe the ST and Amiga were more popular but they were heavily used simply as games machines. Here in the USA they were more heavily used as actual productivity platforms. Yes, MIDI on the ST was a big deal, giving musicians an affordable platform that had lots of software useful for them and which was EASY to setup and maintain. Good lord the PC platform was a nightmare. Similarly, the video and genlock capabilities of the Amiga were a big deal for video production. For one thing, it freaking produced an actual valid NTSC signal with CORRECT NTSC standard video timings. The genlock, and of course Video Toaster, were easy to setup and maintain. PC and Mac alternatives were ... ugh. You may scoff and say, "Who cares about that stuff?" Well, if you were someone working in those fields, you cared.

Замечательный компьютер, замечательная технология. Мне нравится этот компьютер гораздо больше Амиги и Мака. Относительно простой, с отличным графическим интерфейсом, умеренным быстродействием.

Really? I though the gild was kind of taken off the lily with his report. But I just bought a Mac IIX from the same year, so...

LOL. Even though I don't share your opinion, it did make me chuckle.

The Amiga is better in more or less every way.

@@tarstarkusz I've been a hardcore Amiga user since I was 16. Tell me more! ;-/

@@tarstarkusz *was* better. Today an Amiga is just as boring as an early PC, it has no personality unlike the ST, or even better the C64 ;)

@@YQN2149 If Amiga was anything, boring wasn't it. I have no idea what you are talking about.

@Lewis Cressey Amiga 500 released in 1987 but the Amiga 1000 (formerly just called "the Amiga") was released less then a year after the 520 ST. I think it was late 1985 or early 1986.

Every one should have RMC's Amiga "swear" jar when filming their Atari ST videos. Would raise a lot for charity.

@Lewis Cressey thanks but I already knew that. I was just speaking earlier that the Amiga had a closer release date to the ST than what was indicated.

Why would you let your mom do that? Like seriously WTF?

@@theannoyedmrfloyd3998 If I told you what my mom through away.... I wasn't around to stop her.... Later, I still only had one mom.

The same fate happened to my two STFMs after I got my first x86 PC in 1998. It seems ridiculous now but we just didn't have enough space and the ST was totally old news by then. Still hurts thinking about it though... those machines served me really well.

Early 520 STFMs came with single sided 360k disk drives. They changed in 1988. All 1040s came with double sided drives

This many years there are people so attached to one old system. I had both and they were both great. Now I only have an Atari but would love a A1200.

As an ST user back in the day I whole-heartedly agree with this comment. Now, STE is a different story, but we'll have to wait for a video on this.

​@@superxorn Just some friendly joking. I was an Amiga owner but that doesn't mean I'm down on the ST. The MIDI capabilities at that price point I know were a huge deal for music composers and I remember seeing a few years ago that Dr. Dre still uses one in his personal studio which is very cool.

@@robintst Fun fact: MIDI was only added as a makeshift solution more or less as the built-in sound capabilities were lacking.

@@robintst Its funny how the old rivalry is still going on like 20 years later! I've always been on the ST side because it was the computer I was familiar with growing up. I have an A500 as well and of course its great - but the attachment comes from the early experience, I suppose :) (And hey, low price is not an insignificant thing!)

Or the monochrome screen was super useful for doing homework on.

Or you were into MIDI

The ST had both color and mono displays available from day 1.

I was originally going to have a companion video to go along with this one to explain that. But the TL;DR is that I don't buy any of my vintage computers online. There are too many reasons why I don't to list them all in a comment, but I only buy things locally.

@@TechTangents same. Anything you want is usually out there, online, for sale, for way too much money. But people like us like the thrill of having a system finally pop up locally, and typically muuuuch cheaper than grabbing the first BIN that pops up on ebay. Nearly every system I've wanted, whether it took 2 months or 10 years, eventually popped up locally for free or cheap. Just gotta look!

Despite the fact that an entire decade of music wouldn't exist without the STe and Notator? Sure.

At the time the original ST came out, the choice of 16 bit computers wasn't exactly overwhelming. The Amiga and the ST for home, or an IBM compatible that was great for office tasks, but not games. The Apple stuff was too expensive for most home users. The Acorn Archimedes had their new ARM 32 bit chips, but they were not so common outside of the UK... although the Acorn ARM processor eventually conquered the world.

Can you plug in a Midi synth box and select it for games, like on PC games of the era? I used a Pro Audio Spectrum 16 on my PC (486?) and I liked listening to Midi files and the game output in games that had that option. A Roland Sound Canvas daughter board was even better. I wanted to try an external synth but never bought one.

@@auteurfiddler8706 yes, absolutely. Wikipedia has a list of Roland MT-32 compatible games including those for the Atari ST, I haven't found a comprehensive list for ST games that support General MIDI/Roland Sound Canvas, but they're out there as well.

Seconded. Really hope we see some more work on the DG minicomputer.