Hi @arifeldman6365, yes, it was a fun machine! Thank you for your feedback! ~ Victor, CHAP

I personally bought my Mega4 and Megafile30, my first loan at 16.

Turn it on at least every two years for the sake of the capacitors. I have a German Mega ST. :)

TechTinkering, still have it, wow! Glad you enjoyed the video!

I still have mine, and an STFM. And my Falcon. Fantastic machines

Yeah, last time I tried it about 5 years ago the disk drive wasn't working, perished bands. I wanted to use it as a midi sequencer. The Atari at is not dead yet!!! 🛫🌄🏞️🌌🛰️

@@techtinkerin Install a nice Floppy Emulator device along with an internal hard disk interface. I did this with mine using an IDE 44-pin type with a 2GB CompactFlash card. It ran so fast and a joy to use. I just wish this had been available when I was using Steinberg Cubase up until the early 2000s.

It was so exciting getting the next Atari ST magazine disk and playing the new demos. It's all online now but it's not the same experience. Are we just showing our age?

That was a mistake .

Hi @freibier, fantastic observations and a very well written summary of observations! It sounds like you have really been in touch with many of the evolutionary tech changes you mention over the past 30 + years. Thanks very much for sharing your observations. Your perspective is greatly appreciated! ~ Victor, at CHAP

Interesting. Sounds like you have experience with several different models! The NRI computer correspondence courses were quite good back in the day too.

Most st computers were used by youngsters to play.

@@dlfrsilver LOL, that MUST mean, then, that today's WIN PC's are even more toy-like!

@@ShallRemainUnknown today pcs can't be toys, as those are not sold as such.....

Hi whitecube twozerosix, you are most welcome!

Hi MistaMaddog247, glad this brought back some good memories, and thanks for sharing a bit of your history with the machine. ~ Charles, CHAP

Hi Scott, thank you for the feedback, it is appreciated. We always appreciate our viewers, newcomers and long time viewers. Hope you will continue to explore and support our channel. Many more good tech films to come. ~ Victor, at CHAP

Good catch! GEM was way ahead of its time.

Hi EgoShredder, fascinating! Ahead of its time in that area.

The STe itself can display 16 of 4096 colors at a time. 15 Bit = 32,768 colors.

@@johnsmith-xw4ez That is correct yes. Photocrome basically fools the eyes into thinking it can see thousands more. Technically though its as you say, although it uses a special hold mode; is it Genlock? I forget what the name is, been a long time. To get the right effect a monitor or TV is required for the interlace etc.

As I recall, it could only display a certain number of colours on each line, but it would switch the palette fast enough that it could display a different set of colours on each line, so it could display the whole palette across the overall image. For the palette switching to be done fast enough, there wasn't much processor power left for anything else, so it was really limited to slideshows. It couldn't be used for full palette games for example.

Basically it switches to 16 new colors each line. So with some restrictions you can see around 3k different colors theoretically (from the 4096 palette) then it interlace every second frame to simulate higher palette depth. Resulting in appearance of more shades but with a bit of flickering sensation

Hi Atarian Web 2000, cool. Glad you found our channel too. ~ VK

But the Amiga was limited. Fine for gaming, but when you had to get real work done, you needed an ST, Mac or PC.

@@Sl1pstreams What? What was it the ST, Mac and PC could do that Amiga couldn't?

Hi Ian, yes, it seems the "transputer" is a very rare bird these days. One can find info on it by searching, but it does not pop up on general searches for early microcomputers. And yes, it might have been interesting if Commodore and Atari had stayed around a little longer. They made their mark on history, but faded away too quickly. ~ Thank you for your comments! ~ Charles

@@madigorfkgoogle9349 There was a limit to the amount of Transputer chips you could connect together in one system - in theory about 500 would be the absolute maximum due to communication bottlenecks. You could still build a pretty formidable system for the day at that rate though, I think they were about 10 or 20 mips each. The downsides I heard were lack of memory protection, but with a stack based architecture this was not apparently much of a problem. I'm not sure why anyone didn't come up with the idea of digital metering back then for things like water, gas and electricity - with a single board transputer running Helios. Seems to me to be an ideal solution. The real issue with the Transputer was cost. There was nothing like the scale in transputer production like there was in conventional CPUs at the time. Conventional CPUs could be had cheaper than a transputer, and when the CPUs were available with Transputer performance, then it was basically game over for that technology. All this is interesting because there are attempts to revive the Transputer architecture, with a revised and modernised instruction set, as it is considered absolutely Ideal for IOT hardware. The price point for transputers to be adopted in the 80's was about $25. If that price could have been achieved, then they would have taken off and would have been used in everything - hard drive controllers, network controllers, printers, televisions - anything and everything you can think of. We could have possibly had the Internet of Things happen 30 years earlier than it did happen. Imagine that. I disagree that we would be worse off if Atari and Commodore stayed around. Commodore engineers were certainly putting every effort they could in making sure the Amiga used industry standards. There were even plans to use PCI in the next gen systems. I would say that we would be at least not worse off, and quite possibly a lot further along. Certainly at least, more choice for those that want it.

@@madigorfkgoogle9349 I'm not sure what proprietary standards you are referring to? The Amiga had pretty much standard ports and software on it for the time: RS232, SCSI, Centronics. Protocols were standard x modem, y modem, z modem. ARCNET and Ethernet were available, TCP/IP as well. Even big box Amigas had 16 bit ISA slots for anyone that wanted to use them. In fact when they built the Amiga4000, Bill Sydnes (Ex IBM, Mr PC Junior) insisted that the Hard Drive be IDE, which caused controversy with the engineers because it was slower than SCSI at the time. PCI support for the next generation Amigas based on the PA-RISC Hombre chipset that were being worked on was a Commodore thing, not Escom. There's videos out there with Dave Haynie talking about it, he was one of the designers of the architecture.

I always like telling Commodore AMIGA users just because it says Commodore doesn't mean the AMIGA is really an ATARI machine in heart . The AMIGA was created by the original 8 bit ATARI computers . And it has ATARI proprietary patents .

Hi marakatti, that is fascinating and helpful info! Thank you very much for sharing it. ~ VK

Holy cow, Cybersculpt! 🤯🤯🤯 I loved the technically accurate animation of the floppy disc format process!

CAD 3d was the program that got me interested in 3D modeling and animation. Ended up springing for an Amiga 2000 to get access to all the great 3D programs on that and eventually sold my 1040 ST to one of my coworkers who was into music and liked all the MIDI oriented software on the ST.

I suggest getting a MiST or MiSTer, they're awesome for going down that memory lane...

That's Marilyn Gorman and she is originally Australian but has lived in the USA for years. I think she is trying too hard to do an American accent here.

@@TrenchcoatSteve I wonder if she is still alive?

@@EgoShredder She is not as old as you think in this video. She now runs the Lean Startup Co.

@@TrenchcoatSteve That would explain it. Thanks for clarifying it.

“Dahhh-ta”. Okay but where are those electric outlets from? Not North American. Not UK (based on seeing many Sinclair ZX and Amstrad and BBC/acorn videos). 🤔 hmmmm

Hi theden0minat0r, glad you enjoyed this! ~ VK, CHAP

Hi Shamrock1961, what did you think of the 520STe?? Was it a good machine?

Hi Paul, thank you very much for your feedback! - The lady speaker is Marilyn Gorman and she is originally Australian but has lived in the USA for years, according to one of our viewers. I believe she also runs Gorman Consulting Group. ~ Charles, CHAP

I could tell she was Australian. She was trying to speak in a more clipped accent, but certain words gave it away.

Hi Johnathan! Thank you very much for the donation! Every bit helps support our channel so we can find and present more interesting historical content! Keep well. ~ CHAP

Elle dit dans la vidéo qu'elle te trouve très beau et demande si tu voudrais bien sortir avec elle.

@@roucoupse : OK mais il faut s'acheter une paire de lunettes.

It could not. Amiga had pcm sound and able to display 32 or 64 colors. The ste was 16 colors only.

Great observation, I have to agree with your sentiment. : )

The STE had hardware scrolling!

Hey, that's exactly what i wanted to write, before i saw your comment 😂

The Amiga was more a game console than a real computer, due to its unexpandable RAM and lack of native support for a hard drive.

Your higher than a kite. You want credit for the fact that the ST had MIDI ports built in. It cost me all of twenty dollars back in the day to equip my 2000 with MIDI ports. The Amiga sold far more than the ST is still supported far more than the ST and was used in broadcast studios among other places for video far more than the ST was used for MIDI. There is a reason why Atari wanted the Amigas chipset. The big box Amiga's also had far better expansion abilities in the form of actual expansion slots. The ST needed MIDI because its onboard Audio chip was trash compared to the Amiga. As far as a built-in hard drive port on the ST. The friends that I had back in the day that had ST's none of them had hard drives. Adding a hard drive to an amiga was just as easy. It was connected right to the 500's expansion slot on the side of the machine and internally on the big box Amiga's. The Amiga's memory was very much expandable. Mine was expanded from 1MB to 5MB.I'm pretty sure even the 500 could be expanded to 8MB. It could be expanded even more with an accelerated card in the 2000 and above.@@Sl1pstreams

Hi roadmonitoroz Brisbane, wow, that's a nice collection... do you have many of these still today?

No need to be. So many games refused to run on the STE.

Hi Winston, thank you for the great comment. Seems like there are lots of Atari former-users out there. The stories and experiences are fascinating! Thanks for sharing. ~ Charles, CHAP

The ST desktop was clean and uncluttered.

You had to put disks in to get your workbench. A ST could get to its "dated" desktop without a disk needed.

@@blackterminal Plus the ST desktop - especially from TOS 1.4 onwards - was more usable than the Amiga’s ugly orange and blue UI with its CLI. Most Amiga users just used the workbench to launch games.

In the U.K. they actually started selling the ST again after discontinuing it, presumably because it was cheaper to make so could be sold cheaper. The amount of STE specific software was so small the only advantage of the STE was the ease of expanding the RAM using 30 pin SIMMs. Source: I had an ST then bought an STE off a friend who had just maxed out his credit card buying an Amiga 1200 complete with built in hard drive.

​@MrDuncl I have both and a number of my original ST games will not run on the STE. It's still cool to have.

He should’ve learned to play the guitar. He should’ve learned to play them drums. Considering the standard MIDI ports, he really should’ve learned to play a synthesizer. Sorry, mark knopfler!

Different markets often made their own promotional videos.

I had an 800XL and then a 130XE. The Atari magazines had ST specific publications but there was still ST coverage in the original mags (ie those that originally covered 8bit) So I certainly had my share of ST propaganda. But I got a modem. And on either GEnie or Delphi, I read the story of the Amiga. And on a local BBS I found out that the mall wanted local user groups to do a demo of their systems one night. I volunteered for the XL/XE representation. I sat next to one end of a table next to an ST at the end. And to my left was an Amiga. That guy played the Dragon’s Lair demo. It was only a few years since that was an arcade all star attraction. I, in my high school years, was suddenly nostalgic for grade school and the hey day of arcades. I was amazed by the graphics and sound. And multitasking! One magazine said in an ST propaganda piece “we don’t need no stinking multitasking”. Right…. After that night at the mall I never looked back at the ST. Bought a used 1000 in a month or two. The future was so bright, I had to wear shades (btw, I wear my sunglasses at night).

Hi Daniel, great question! Perhaps someone can shed more light on this. Had to "Google" to find the definition of "Transputer". Here's what Google returned: "(TRANSistor comPUTER) A microprocessor architecture in the early 1980s from British semiconductor company Inmos Limited that contained a CPU, memory and communications capability on a single chip." -- Fascinating! . .

I think it's a PCF554. I read that it could be connected to both the Atari PC and ST.

No it wasn’t. The comparable Amiga 500 wasn’t expandable without expensive add-ons, lacked native hard drive support, lacked professional software, and had an interlaced screen that flickered - making it unusable for work.