This Atari was nearly trashed! Can I save it?

[@IvorySoul696]

Hey Adrian, It’s me who donated the Atari! So stoked to see the inside of that thing and glad it was in better shape on the inside. I’m happy it’s in good hands now.

[@momopeachies]

-I mean, technically I donated the Atari lol. Glad to know I could save this rad piece of hardware!- I just want to edit this because my memory of the situation and the memory of my comment suck. I had been holding onto this Atari for years and when I was staying with OP for a few weeks, I asked if he would like it because he's into old games. It never occurred to be that it was a computer. So I gave OP the Atari, and the same day he contacted Adrian and we set up a time for me to drop it off. When I made this comment, I honestly could not have told you the specific details of those conversations other than "Would you like this thing? No, but I know someone who does!" I thought I was being silly by making the comment in the first place, and honestly I couldn't remember the conversations we had had well enough to say what had actually happened. I struggle a lot with short-term memory loss, but that is not an excuse for saying something that honestly was really shitty. Hind sight is 20/20 and all that, but this is just something I need to work on, being more empathetic and being less impulsive when I open my mouth/fingers. So @IvorySoul696, I'm really sorry. I know you RL and I'm sorry I did something callously and shortsighted. I just want all the cards on the table

[@TheLevitatingChin]

Eh? So which one donated it and which one is a big dirty scutter?

[@nosuchthing4789]

I guess everybody donated Atari...

[@momopeachies]

@@TheLevitatingChin op connected me with Adrian.

[@infinitecanadian]

What happened to it?

[@nickblackburn1903]

I literally grabbed an Atari 520fm from a guy who was about to launch it into a skip (dumpster in USA) because he said it was just an old keyboard. He also had all the cables and some manuals and software, also getting dumped. I took it all and it worked perfectly. Interesting video Adrian, thank you.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Ouch :( I’ve seen AIO computers thrown out as “old monitors” too…

[@adilsongoliveira]

Congratulations! I'd love to get me something like that but they are VERY rare here in Brazil and when it's available, costs a lot of money.

[@volvo09]

Sounds like a house cleanout... ? I wish I could dig through all the roll off dumpstersfrom house cleanings after a relative passes. So much historic things and vintage electronics gets tossed.

[@Bakamoichigei]

The GameStop employee who prevented this machine from ending up in a landfill is a hero, both of the environment _and_ retro computing. 😁

[@ctrlaltrees]

Thanks for the shoutout Adrian. So cool to finally see the a deep dive like this on the original 520ST on your channel! Let me know if you need any help at all with it, always happy to lend a hand. That RAM expansion is weird! 🙂

[@aaronjamt]

Aaaaand subscribed. I love when channels I watch shoutout other channels, allowing me to find more new content

[@PixelPipes]

Congrats on the shoutout! haha

[@BenCos2018]

@@aaronjamt agreed haha

[@davidhaney1394]

The ST was popular with music production because the midi clock was flawless , it had astounding accuracy . I used one many many times for midi and I still have one today . Its a great midi machine .

[@Hutschnur]

Adrian is doing Atari stuff? Instant thumbs up :D

[@TzOk]

This kind of RAM expansions requires internal RAM to be disabled, so if you remove the expansion, you have to re-enable the onboard RAM. It is usually disabled by some pullups, or just by cutting the power to the ICs (power to the RAM chips is routed via a big choke on the motherboard).

[@darkstatehk]

I'm looking forward to this Atari restoration series ⭐️

[@semillerimages]

I bought so much stuff from Toad Computers back in the day and even visited their store once! I have a TT030 from 1992 and the 16 Mb ram upgrade I got from them, but also tons of software and computer support too! What was really wild, is that when I went into the store - I live in California, the people there - I think it was a husband and wife team that owned the place, recognized my VOICE because I used to call them so much :) I sure wish you would do something on the TT030, I still have mine - with an EXTERNAL graphics card even :) And yeah, no, I am not going to donate it :) Thanks for your videos Adrian!

[@TheJeremyHolloway]

Is your external graphics card a VME expansion card? I know in the latter days of the TT, Atari made a 256MB RAM upgrade module for it. I don't know if that was ever eclipsed with a 512MB or 1GB upgrade years later by enthusiasts but it would be sweet if they did!

[@semillerimages]

@@TheJeremyHolloway honestly, I don't remember the terminology about it, but it is a fairly wide ribbon cable attached to something inside the machine. I still have it, I will have to dig it out and check one of these days. I only have 16Mb of ram and it was the max without an expansion board. I used it primarily for Calamus - the German page layout program which was beyond anything on the PC and Mac at the time.

[@The-Weekend-Warrior]

An ironic fact. The Atari ST was THE de facto leader in music production studios for very very long. Cubase was born on the Atari for example. Actually another company was the all-time leader. C-Lab (became Emagic in 92). Their products were everywhere, in every studio. Creator was the first, Notator was the second, Notator Logic (later just Logic) was the pinnacle. Apple bought Emagic and this product became Apple Logic. I still have something as early as Cubase 1.0.4 on the Atari ST (Mega ST) :)) So fun.

[@valentine_puppy]

It is so cool to see this, ST doesn't get enough love. Thank you Adrian.

[@truezulu]

I remember a program I had on my Amiga500 back in the day. Cant remember the name of it, but it displayed different computers of the time one by one, and playing a chime for each. The Atari chime was a fart... Always cracked me up ;)

[@mikelahey1220]

The chip in the RF shield area is indeed the shifter, the square custom chip with the RAM expansion board plugged into it is the Memory Management Unit, the other PLCC chip is the glue logic chip. I believe that the ST with no modulator has RGB and mono output on the video socket with composite and separate sync signals but no composite video out, only STs with modulators had the Composite out signal. The later STs had the Midi ports on the side and the Mouse / Joystick connectors underneath and indeed there were port extender cables which I used to own.

[@massmike11]

I believe the keyboard must be plugged in for the ST to boot.

[@ThecrackpotdadPlus]

That was my first thoughts too

[@charlesballard5251]

Yeah, I was wondering why he didn't have the keyboard present. I was wondering if that would help.

[@gregcoons7308]

This was my very first computer I got after begging my parents for an Atari 800xl. Had the original 520ST. Used it from 1986 until my first pentium PC in the mid 90’s. Thank you for the Atari content! Love your channel.

[@techkev140]

First ST i ever saw was 520STFM and that was the one i bought. When i first saw a picture of a 520ST in a UK magazine i thought, wow they made it smaller, but i couldn't work out where the disk drive was. When i realised it didn't have a drive i also realised it was an earlier model. While i still owned the ST before i moved on it struck me, the number of different models and specs over the years seriously did not help the platform. My 520STFM had a single sided drive, later models had double sided drives, something they should have had from the beginning. Cost cutting indeed hamstrung the ST, but sadly Atari seemed to do that to every system they developed from then on.

[@RobbC.]

Friend of mine rang me one day, about 2 years ago, to ask "Hey, you are in to retro computers and junk stuff right? Because there's this old machine been sitting in the gutter at the end of my road for a week, through winter winds and rain. Do you want me to grab it for you?" - Of course I said yes. It was an Atari ST. I took it home, dried it off, just gave the keyboard a light clean out. Plug in the cord and it fired up first time, as if it was 1985. Those things are bulletproof. I was really impressed, considering I only ever owned Amiga's :) Great video :)

[@nichderjeniche]

Nice, never been a Atari guy, but a ST I would have taken as well. As a child I found outside on the street next to the garbage container some 5.25" floppy disks, wet from rain. I took them home, opened them with a knife, carefully tried the fleece and the magnetic disk inside and put them together and tried them in my C64 disk drive and some of them were working and had some games on it which I or my friends didn't had at this time :) That was my only street find.

[@briansrcadventures1316]

I used to love my Atari STFM. I was dead jealous of my cousin though with his Atari 1040 STE! Although I used to have a recurring dream, where I was able to unlock a special full colour high resolution mode!

[@bufordmaddogtannen]

So you were dreaming about the Amiga? Cool. 🤣😂

[@REALsandwitchlotter]

@@bufordmaddogtannen hahaa isn’t it nice to be to be on the right side of history sometimes? Loved my amiga500 but at the start all the games were lazy st ports

[@bufordmaddogtannen]

@@REALsandwitchlotter sadly there are not many good Amiga games for this reason. Things also got worse towards the end of the system life. Sadly many Amiga games didn't age well, and what did was also available on PC.

[@TheJeremyHolloway]

@@REALsandwitchlotter that's okay. Those same lazy software publishers almost never released any STe enhancements to their games or supported the STe's - and Falcon030's - Enhanced Joystick Ports to use, say, the ST Power Pads/JagPads or any other types of accessories or adapters [like a PC GamePort Adapter, which would've been doable]. So basically, they screwed us too with their "laziness". Hell, they rarely even issued patches so their games would work on the later versions of TOS like Rainbow TOS 1.04 or the later 1.06, so consequently, a lot of ST owners didn't upgrade their OSes.

[@TheJeremyHolloway]

Spectrum 512 could display the entire 512 color palette on a stock ST. I forget if the guys at the ComputerTime! store in Citrus Heights coded that paint program or the ST version of Deluxe Paint for EA. There was also a board that installed a 2nd SHIFTER chip into the ST that upgraded the palette to 4,096 colors... and that was before the STe was released. Now I wonder if that 2nd SHIFTER grabbed a second chunk of 32K from the system's RAM...

[@chriswareham]

Wow, that's the most yellowed mouse and keyboard I've ever seen! Interesting RAM upgrade, my 520STFM was upgraded to 4MB with a single board that had the RAM chips directly soldered to it rather than on regular modules. I was actually very lucky with that upgrade, as I ordered a 1MB upgrade but received the 4MB one. It was a serious difference in cost at the time, so I notified the vendor but they let me keep it saying it was honest of me to let them know. Loved that machine, even learning assembler and C on it so o probably owe it my career as a programmer!

[@964cuplove]

I recall soldering Ram onto the built in chips to double the RAM capacity, you had to bent 1 leg up and connect it somewhere else…. Later we had a 20 MB external hard drive that was an enormous step… The b&w monitor was actually pretty good for its time and that was the reason we used it in our first office…

[@richardkelsch3640]

It's good to see Atari's finally get some love. ST's work better if you plug the keyboard in, seriously, they need their keyboards plugged in. They will usually hang there making key noises without their keyboards. Plug in the keyboard. There is an Atari branded diagnostic harness and cartridge available (I have one). If you want to borrow what I have, go ahead and contact me.

[@FXGreggan.]

My favorite repairguy and my favorite vintage computer, love it :)

[@brianwild4640]

dont lose the floppy drive cable its worth more than all the rest put together

[@TzOk]

That's true!

[@Dave5281968]

It is! eBay has gone completely CRAZY with prices on any 1980's computing accessories. :(

[@nickfifteen]

Really?? /srs I don't own any Atari ST stuff, but I managed to randomly find a third party Atari floppy drive at a Goodwill recently (a "MFD 720"), complete with power and cable. I picked it up just on a whim, but I guess I should hold onto it now just in case I stumble upon any Atari ST units, huh?? :D

[@TzOk]

@@nickfifteen Most ST line computers have a floppy built in... but an external floppy still is a valuable add-on.

[@brianwild4640]

@@nickfifteen keep the cable. The plugs on each end can be $60 easy

[@thomasbohl6924]

I hope you show the DeskCart in more detail. I'm always fascinated about home computers being used "productive". Most of the surviving history is about games, games and games.

[@infinitecanadian]

Games were huge business and still are. Everyone tries to program games even just to see if it can be done. Even the Altair 8800 and the PDP-8 had games.

[@galier2]

Then I should start my youtube channel. I used my Mega ST2+PC-Speed emulator (and later even with VGA card) and then my TT030 almost never to play but for my studies at University: writing text with Signum and Tempus Word, programming with ST-Pascal and Tempus Editor, later Turbo-C aka Pure-C. I even had the luck to be able to use my TT at work where we built a telecommunication card that was based on the 030 processor and my TT came in very handy ineed. I really should start a channel.

[@thomasbohl6924]

​@@galier2 Please do :-) I have already subscripted.

[@TheJeremyHolloway]

@@galier2 Did your TT030 have the 68882 FPU from the factory or did you upgrade it yourself? [if at all]...

[@galier2]

@@TheJeremyHolloway It had the FPU from factory. 4+4 MB and a 80 MB harddisk that I replaced quickly by a 200 then added 700 MB one. Unfortunately I lost those disks. I bought the machine 1991 in Germany.

[@welliben]

When man spends hours trouble shooting, but Atari ST just wants keyboard plugged in.. (probably) ;)

[@strredwolf]

Ah yes, Toad Computers! I visited them as a kid and bought a replacement mouse for it for my 520ST. Oh my... Sadly I don't have my 520ST anymore. I donated it to college space club.

[@Wtfinc]

Cool. I wish I had some new cool vintage computers or tech. I love this stuff. When I think back to all the awesome vintage stuff I had that got destroyed or thrown away of mine and so many passed opportunities because it seemed like junk at the time. I either didn't know its worth, what it did and how to use it, or it wasn't vintage at the time. It's been great rediscovering it all again.

[@luked3172]

I love the provenance of this computer! It's nice to hear about people seeing the value in saving things that are old and unique. And now it has a nice home with AB :) Can't wait to see more!

[@MinhasA]

Yess! Finally an ST video from my favorite computer KZbinr Adrian! Thank you! Even though I grew up on PCs with DOS and windows, I've recently started collecting STs. I've got a 1040 STF and a 1040 STE.. been playing on them with my NES64 controllers you recommended and they are awesome!!

[@stocksons]

Ah memories! A upgraded the RAM on my 520 by soldering extra chips piggy backed to the existing rams and just bent up the enable pins and connected them together and IIRC there was a point on the mboard I could get the extra address line. I had the mono monitor and it was very good. I used for a few years until upgrading to the original Acorn Archimedes.

[@Ghost82uk]

Adrian, try putting the ram expansion back in and plug in the keyboard, I think if the keyboard isn't connected you just get a white screen

[@FXGreggan.]

I think you are totally correct if I recall correctly

[@IanMicheal]

@@FXGreggan. pretty sure that's the case as well

[@decidedly_retro]

The ST will start, but I can’t remember if it will get to GEM, without the keyboard but will produce a constant “key click”, so turn the sound up on the monitor.

[@samspock11]

You don't need the keyboard to test. Also, don't need to wait. I twill go to the gem desktop in a few seconds. It does not care if the drive is connected since it has the full Tos set.

[@sprybug]

Hey Adrian, I have an Atari 520ST as well, and if I recall correctly, you NEED to have the keyboard plugged in for it to boot. I had to do some work on mine as well to get it working and I discovered that in the troubleshooting process. I don't recall if you need to have the mouse plugged in or not either, but I'm pretty positive you need to have the keyboard reconnected or it will just give you a white screen like you have been getting.

[@Lucien86]

You prompted my memory. I had exactly the same problem then discovered that reconnecting the keyboard instantly made it work again..

[@tjlazer71]

This is incorrect. It will boot fine without the keyboard. It will make an annoying continuous key click sound though without it!

[@Lucien86]

@@tjlazer71 I remember the problem but not entirely sure which machine it was on - ST, Amiga, or QL.

[@samspock11]

I was one of the owners of Toad back during that time. I was also the main tech support and repair person so I am pretty sure I did the work mentioned on the invoice. I don't recall if I did the hot glue but anything is possible. We had to do some pretty suspect things to fix stuff back in the day. The odd thing that sticks out to me is the $0 charge for working on it. Typically we would charge $39 to work on things that did not need new parts. My guess is that we sold them the memory upgrade and was treating this as a "warranty" repair. Been 26 years so it's quite a bit fuzzy. Looking at the old Toad catalog I see we sold that for $79 for the upgrade and $39 each for the simms. You did not do the #1 repair method for ST's! Turn it off, lift it 6" of the table and drop it. That would reseat all the chips, especially the plcc's. When I saw the shipping invoice I about lost it. :)

[@outbackchillin5628]

so does it need a keyboard to boot ?

[@samspock11]

@@outbackchillin5628 No. It can boot without it.

[@frankowalker4662]

My Atari 520 is a newer version than this. It has the built in PSU, Floppy, RF and the stupid joystick ports under the keyboard. I found it in a skip with it's monitor one night, It was too dark to see if there were any discs or other goodies, But me and my mate got it back to mine and plugged it in. It worked first time, that was in the late 90's. It still works today. :)

[@ssokolow]

Probably the 520STFM like the one I also rescued from garbage collection. If so, there will be a tiny top-aligned "FM" to the right of the 520ST on the badge. Were you lucky enough to find it with a high-res monitor? (Lucky because, if you've got the high-res B&W monitor, low-res colour is just a $15-20 composite RCA adapter cable off eBay.) (Sorry if you see this twice. No clue why KZbin likes to delete my comments if I edit them.)

[@frankowalker4662]

@@ssokolow Yes, It does have the B/W hi-res monitor. But I still don't have any proper discs for it. The best I can do is download small programs and put them on 720K PC discs. I don't use it enough to warrant a Gotek, all my main art and music is done on 2 Amiga A1200's with CF hard drives. I've just looked, it does have the FM badge.

[@ssokolow]

@@frankowalker4662 At least you can do that. All the disks I'd be willing to wipe are 1.44MB and a box of NOS 720K disks isn't a cost-effective choice.

[@gklinger]

520ST (no floppy, no RF modulator), 520STf (floppy, no RF modulator), 520STfm (floppy and RF modulator). And the earliest STs sold in North America did not have TOS in ROM but within months Atari was shipping them with ROMs and earlier machines could be upgraded for free. Very few stock, original 520STs exist in the world, especially in NA. I'm lucky enough to have one if you'd like some photos.

[@BrianRRenfro]

"Zero dollars to reseat the simm" Well that was nice of them to not charge them ANYTHING *opens up top and see's how they did it* Oh. Wait. Okay. Now I understand! I would have wanted TOAD computing to pay ME for that fix!

[@6581punk]

13:42 The cartridge slot was used for audio samplers and extended MIDI ports for some pro MIDI sequencers.

[@Xoferif]

I was going to say that the only cart I had back in the day was a Forget-Me-Clock II battery backed clock, but now I think about it I had a sound sampler cart too. Thanks for the unexpected burst of nostalgia! =)

[@chriswareham]

It was also used for anti-piracy dongles, which lead to Steinberg's multiple MIDI port add-on having a pass through for their own software's dongle.

[@HoosierNewman]

ST came out in Early 85, I was still in tech school in OKC, but worked at a small shop during the time. Everybody wanted a certificate, so I went to tech school. Though hacking electronics since I was nine. We are modifying Atari 520ST to upgrade to 1024. Stacking ram chips and using wires across address lines, and another wireline for the RAS and CAS - these wires were bare. Later we mylar taped to prevent possibility of shorting.

[@YogSothoth1969]

Great video Adrian, I hope you'll be able to fix the Atari, I wish you all the best for this project!! Michael

[@EddieLeal]

Oh the nostalgia. Love these old machines. In the 1980s, Apple donated almost 9,000 Apple IIe computers to eligible schools in California as part of the "Kids Can't Wait" initiative. The Apple IIe was Apple's first iconic computer and became a mainstay in American classrooms. The computers came with 64k bytes of memory, a monitor, a floppy disk drive, coupons for software, and a manual for Apple Logo, a programming language for students. By 1987, more than one million Apple IIs were in use at American schools. Apple helped pioneer the use of computers in schools with the graphical interface of the Macintosh. We got these at our elementary school in Texas around this time period. My first introduction to the computer was with these machines. Loved them. When I got to high school we had the TRSDOS-80 COMPUTER. Mr Martinez, don't recall his first name, was our teacher for the BASIC programming class. Much to my dismay, and my parents, I failed it like a champ. Guess it wasn't basic enough for my thick skull. While I liked computers I found I didn't like the BASIC class as much. More than likely because I couldn't wrap my brain around the information. Of course it also helps when you actually go to class every day and not go skipping with your friends..and studying would have definitely helped. . MR MARTINEZ! If you by chance are reading this, please accept my sincere apologies for having been such a problem for you. You did everything you could to get me to learn and pass your class. It wasn't you sir it was me. 😉 I'm sure I was the cause for all the grey hairs on your head and many of those migraine headaches you complained about. Maybe I should have taken woodshop. 🤷🏻‍♂

[@TranceTrousers]

Even though I never had one of these, it's nice to see something other than a Commodore or Apple computer on the channel :-)

[@nwbackcountry5327]

Why did comments get turned off for Green Mac Classic? That Green screen is awesome. 10/10 mod.

[@Arti9m]

Perhaps by mistake? Or perhaps Adrian immediately got comments about how he "ruined" the originality of the machine :D

[@blackcathardware6238]

Don't get confused: 260ST ALWAYS came with 512KB despite their name. For 256KB they would have to be populated with 2 banks of 16x 4164 DRAMs. I bought one new in Jan.1986 (still have it) and came with one RAM bank with 512KB and the two Boot ROMs. After loading TOS from FDD and the Atari Basic interpreter I had less "BASIC Bytes free" than on my C64.

[@BAZFANSHOTHITSClassicTunes]

The Atari STe 520 was my first true computer. My first 16bit and i loved it, and i still love it.

[@Okurka.]

It's 16/32 bit.

[@FADE2GRY2048]

It was my first 16-bit computer which I got a few months after is was released. I replaced it with a 1040ST once it was available. That one stayed with me for at least 4 years. It was a much more useful machine with its increased memory and larger capacity floppy drive. Nice to see a 520 again.

[@mario-bjornpeikert1572]

Moin from North Germany (Moin is a word used to greet anyone for any daytime and derived from the old german word moy which means nice so please don't be alarmed!) On the first revisions of the ST line at least here in Germany we needed the mouse to be connected before booting and to make shure not to touch it because the first versions randomly crashed tos while booting. So please check out your board with the mouse and the floppy drive connected. This could make all the difference.

[@bobbus_74]

Good to see you doing an ST at last Adrian!

[@TheJeremyHolloway]

That 520ST was a very early manufactured model that it most likely shipped with TOS on disc and then later upgraded with the ROM chips for free once it was finalized. Of course, the owner later upgraded it to TOS 1.04 [Rainbow]. Thanks to lazy software publishers, very few games were ever patched to work with the later TOS revisions but thankfully there's been active modders in the community that have patched a lot of the commercial library so the games will run regardless of TOS version, 680x0 installed, or the amount of RAM in the system. To answer your musing about extender cables for the later F and FM/E models, there were extension cables for the Mouse & Joystick ports underneath as well as external switch devices like the popular Practical Solutions' "Mouse Master" product. You should totally get one of those for your STe. There's also a product or two that adds springs to the mushy keyboards since all of the STs besides the Megas and TTs were plagued with that issue. I believe one such product was called "TT Keys". Best Electronics probably still has some in stock. Since the Atari ST had a WD disc controller chip, its disc drives weren't "smart" like the Atari or Commodore 8-bit disk drives. But the same company responsible for the Atari 8-bit "Happy Drive" enhancement boards sold a disc copying cartridge for the ST that allowed 4 disc drives to be connected to it. I really like your SC1224. That was the last version produced. It was built by Samsung. While it didn't have as good of a picture as the first SC1224 built by JVC, it certainly had a better case design [front bezel] than the version most users have which was manufactured by Goldstar [LG]. Others in here have mentioned the modern Ubeswitch which plugs in the ST's DIN monitor port and converts to VGA and also provides audio out. You mentioned the ASCI "proprietary" Atari hard drive port. It was based upon draft SCSI prior to that standard being finalized. Pretty sure it did 10Mbps. It certainly was amazing when the SH204 external hard drive debuted. That sucker cost more than the 1040STf itself! But man, was it more impressive than loading programs from 3.5" disc or having to copy things using 2 disc drives...

[@computeraisle]

I used to pop the PLCC chips and wipe the pins across some white paper to remove oxidation. Lots of black streaks - wipe until the tracks lighten up. Didn't have to do the 'drop fix' as often after doing that.

[@usptact]

Moral of the story: your "repair" may be displayed to much wider public than you think.

[@RickinBaltimore]

That Toad Computers is now a "Creative Dance Center" in Severna Park!

[@Havanacuba1985]

The STE had a problem with memory chips becoming unseated ,a well known remedy was to raise it about an inch on one side and let it drop to the desk which apparently reseated them. Never had any problems with my STE and STFM s first computer I got online with on primitive internet via dialup into a PAD on an academic network in the U.K. which I happened to find a number for ;)

[@ceebee23]

Looking forward to your adventures resurrecting this Atari .... and bringing it back to its 1980s glory

[@MacCrafter707]

One of my fellow soldiers in the Army bought one of these and was showing it off in the barracks. It's what pushed me to grab a C64 and then Amiga 500 when they became available at the Post Exchange.

[@phillipzx3754]

We used to take the early models of the 520 and add the RAM basically turning them into a 1040. The motherboards cam from Atari with open DIP locations that would have been used in the 1040's. We were using them with the Hybrid Arts ADAP audio samplers.

[@fradd182]

ST was much faster than mac, despite having almost the same CPU frequency. The reason was in the way how ST was designed so that video chip didnt steal CPU cycles while accessing RAM in order to generate picture (unlike Mac). The difference was 30% easily.

[@galier2]

Indeed, the Mac ran in reality more like a 5MHz 68000 rather than the 7.9 MHz its clock was set to. This was one of the big selling points of the Mac emulators that were sold at the beginning (Spectre128), it was 30 % faster, had 30 % more screen area and cost only 30 % of the Mac.

[@eekee6034]

Thanks for that. I knew the ST was faster, but was confused as to why.

[@xredhead7135x]

Love the channel and look forward to each video!

[@Brad-D]

I actually worked for toad computers in 2003! (then called toadnet, A local dial-up and DSL ISP) We ran out of the same location that’s on your shipping label!

[@marzsit9833]

in 1987 i worked for an electronics distributor and we carried the entire atari line, the st's were in very high demand and every time we received a shipment from the factory, all of them were gone by the next day. we also couldn't keep the hard drive units in stock for very long they were also in very high demand. funny thing was the floppy drive units tended to sit on the shelf, there wasn't a lot of demand for them, especially after the 520stfm came out with the built-in floppy.

[@marksterling8286]

Great to see the Atari A few Atari videos have popped up the last few weeks. Great to see takes me back to university days, lots of Amiga’s lots of pc and a few Macs Atari’s and acorn a3000’s. Takes me back where I would make 9pin d type extension cables for mouse and joystick using ribbon cable and crimp on sockets and plugs so they could change joysticks without lifting the machines. ST 530FM I think they were. Later I started making 25 pin printer port to 9 pin joystick port for the Amiga and at for games like dynoblast it would use the dongle to connect 2 extra joysticks and have 4 player mode

[@TheJeremyHolloway]

Gauntlet II and Leatherneck also supported the Parallel Port Adapters for 4-player action.

[@mrdali67]

The thing about the Atari and the midi interface, is its basically hooked directly up to the 68000 data port, which makes it extremely fast with close to zero midi latency. Something that is first accomplished with very new PC's and Mac's after introducing usb 2. The common way of hooking a midi interface up on either the RS232 or the gaming port on a soundcard introduces quite some midi latency and was the culprit why you for the the first decade of PC's with Windows music software it was almost impossible to get a steady midi clock, which was the reason that Studios for over 2 decades had an Atari in the corner for stable master midi clock that controlled the much more newer DaW systems on more modern hardware. This was a little genius move that have kept the Atari alive for a couple decades in the Music scene after Atari folded.

[@jimechols4347]

I regret not buying an Amiga 500. I bought the Atari 520 st fm with sc1224 monitor and two single-sided 360K SF 354 drives in 1986. I wasted years of my life settling for a subpar experience. The Amiga would have given me more colors, stereo sampled sound and blitter video scrolling. Atari St gave a decent gaming experience but nothing like shadow of the beast on Amiga. (And BTW the atari sc1224 color monitor had the most amazing picture quality, it was rock stable and had amazing red green and blue vibrancy. I would have liked to see an amiga hooked up to it.)

[@batlin]

The placement of mouse and joystick ports on the later STFM and STE models was really bad and bugged owners everywhere. I used to keep a stack of disks on top of my STFM for quick disk swaps, and would often need to swap the mouse for a second joystick (i.e. when playing with someone else)... if I lifted the ST to a certain angle I could do it, but a little too much and the disks all slid off and fell behind my desk. Because of their awkward placement, people would often stress the ports while trying to disconnect a mouse or joystick, and this very often caused broken solder joints and you'd get a machine whose mouse only goes horizontally etc. Extender cables were a thing but I never saw any here in Dublin back in the day.

[@mjaap]

I remember reading about the Deskcart in ST-Magazin from Germany. Because the ST had no true multitasking until 1992, programs like Deskcart were quite popular that offered a whole bunch of useful features while running the main program.

[@TheJeremyHolloway]

If the "programs" were Desk Accessories, you could run 5 or 6 of 'em at the same time. So the ST had pseudo multitasking going all the way back to 1985.

[@eekee6034]

@@TheJeremyHolloway I don't think there's been a true single-tasking computer since the 50s. (Disclaimer: I'm not a historian.) PC/MS-DOS had TSRs - "terminate and stay resident" programs which could hook into just-about anything. You might be familiar with one class of TSRs; drivers which supported hardware like mice or NICs, but other TSRs provided user facilities just like desk accessories. The user TSRs would hook into the keyboard to activate on certain keypresses, or they might just overwrite a corner of the screen with a clock. MS-DOS may have been crude and kind-of backward, but it was incredibly extensible. What's really weird is that the ST wasn't fully multitasking. The best excuse is that it might have spoiled its excellent MIDI timing, but look at the other 16-bit computers of the time. The Mac, Amiga, Sinclair QL, Windows, and even PC-DOS 4 were all multitasking, while there were several 3rd-party multitasking clones of MS-DOS. The only reason MS-DOS 5 & 6 (and maybe 3) were single-tasking was that Microsoft wanted people to buy Windows. (PC-DOS 4 was an IBM thing, not very well conceived as they changed all the command names. This confused buyers who stuck with PC-DOS/MS-DOS 3.) There were other 3rd-party operating systems too, but I can't tell you much about them. OS/9 was an RTOS and Forth systems often multi-tasked, but that's about all I know.

[@williamsquires3070]

Wow, that dates me; I remember Nancy and Ronald Reagan! Those were the days when you could get up at 6-7 A.M on Saturday to watch Looney Tunes, and other cartoons. It’s a good thing we have good YT channels like this one, Mr Carlson’s Lab, GadgetUK164, shango066, radiotvphononut, Noel’s Retro Lab, EEVBlog, and so on, or I’d just go plumb crazy! 😜

[@senilyDeluxe]

This is like half the channels I love watching! Here's the other, some are more into retrogaming: CuriousMarc, Classic Arcade Repairs, Joe's Classic Video Games, RetroSpector78, The 8-Bit Guy, Jacklick's Arcade and Tech Repair, LGR, Usagi Electric, Jan Beta and some more. (btw. RetroSpector, Jan Beta and Jacklick have VERY similar content to this video so it's a safe bet you're gonna love these too) (CuriousMarc is the one who got a real Lunar Lander spacecraft computer back up and running for the 40 year anniversary - the computers he deals with are usually not used by mere mortals) (Usagi is currently trying to get an early 80s Minicomputer - which by the late 80s would be called mainframe - to work as well as construct a vacuum tube computer for fun) I even have a RasPi hooked up to a CRT TV and watch these on this thing - there's barely anything else worth watching on regular TV. (and I've seen someone else put a RasPi in a CRT TV and hook up the channel buttons to GPIO and have them control which literal YT channel he's watching) Although I'm probably a bit younger - I went retro in 1997 when I was about 12. And dang I love Looney Tunes!

[@williamsquires3070]

@@senilyDeluxe - Some other good ones are: 12voltvids, 8 bit show and tell, Uncle Doug, the Guitologist, Matt Hefferman, Ben Eater, RetroRecipes, Northridge Fix, Louis Rossman, and others I’ve likely forgotten. * 12voltvids - mostly VCRs, some TVs, and the occasional random teardown/repair video. * 8-bit show and tell - 6502 assembler and BASIC for the Commodore Vic-20/64/Pet computers, and some reverse engineering and discussion of Easter eggs hidden in C64 games. * Uncle Doug/The Guitologist - Guitar amp restoration & repair * Matt Hefferman - 6502 and Z80 systems and assembly language. * Ben Eater - educational series on building a breadboard computer (and peripherals) based on the 6502. * RetroRecipes - Mostly C64 games, from what I can tell. That, or trying to anthromorphize their dog. Goofy, although the girlfriend looks kind of like Trinity from The Matrix (movie). * Northridge Fix/Louis Rossman - Repair of more modern game consoles, tablets, smartphones, laptops, and graphics cards. Beware though, that Louis Rossman has started wandering further and further into politics-land, especially as regards Right-to-repair, and the Politics of New York. Most of his repair videos cover iPhones, iPads, and Mac laptops, while the guy over at Northridge Fix mostly does game consoles, random brand laptops, iPads, and graphics cards.

[@senilyDeluxe]

@@williamsquires3070 Thanks, I didn't know Matt Hefferman, as a retro game programmer that's right up my alley. (have you checked my channel? Although it's just 1-3 short videos a year and most is in German. I do consider doing arcade repair videos, but filming takes forever, you never know if a machine takes 30 minutes or 3 full work days to fix, and then edit that nightmare, no thanks. I do keep written logs though.) Northridge Fix and The Guitologist aren't, although I'd probably give those a watch if I had more time. The others I know and watch every now and then.

[@drewleclair1281]

Cool to see this video. I sold a 1040ST last year, that I’m pretty sure had a hard drive. Had the original monitor and Mouse. Was not yellow at all, and a guy gladly handed me $350 for it with no haggling. I acquired it with an analog recording console I bought, which came fitted with an aftermarket automation system that never really worked right and that there is no information on, that ran on the 1040. I kinda regret selling it a little because it was in such great shape. New owner really loves it, and I believe is using it for an ancient version of Cubase! The console was built in 1989, so I guess that tracks 🤔

[@heffe2001]

That's a 1st generation 520ST, same as my release model I had back in the day. None of those initial models came with the modulator, that was added later with the STm models. Most likely that's from the first year production, if I had to guess.. The memory upgrade kind of looks like a marpet board, had the same (or very similar anyway) in my original machine as well.

[@heffe2001]

Also the original release models of the 520 had that Kickstart like bios installed, atari offered a free upgrade to TOS 1.0 sometime later if I remember correctly. EDIT: Posted this while watching, and see that you identify it near the end, lol.

[@HuntersMoon78]

A few years ago I found an Atari STe in a charity shop for £2, looked a bit further and found a mouse, manual and a couple of games for £1

[@Xoferif]

Wow! I hope you bought them!

[@HuntersMoon78]

@@Xoferif I did. It works perfectly too

[@muchosa1]

I used to go to TOAD Computers in the late 80's- to early 90's.

[@electronash]

What happened to it? Did it croak?

[@muchosa1]

@@electronash It was sold in 2004, used to be and ISP also called Toadnet

[@flipjunk1998]

@@electronash did it croak 😂🤣

[@KyoshoLP]

26:32 "Animaniac." Just the one, eh? Which one went solo, I wonder? My money's on Dot.

[@KevinPalivec]

I bought one of those back when they first came out. Out of the box. Mine didn't work. I got the bombs. I called Atari support and they said to "Flex" it. basically give it a little twist. They said the ram would get unseated and had to be flexed to reseat it!. I did and it worked!

[@SilverSergeant]

I had a 520ST in the 80s. It was a great machine. I sent it to New York to have the RAM doubled. The technicians did that by piggy-backing every RAM chip. I thought I would never, ever need more RAM.

[@d0nKsTaH]

Somewhere.... In Bay County FL... Is a storage rental... Loaded with at *least* 100 Amiga 4000's with VIdeo Toasters in each one of them. Years ago, they replaced ALL of the Amigas in the "TV and VIdeo" classes at all the High Schools... Each HS had about 30+ Amiga 4000's with VIdeo Toasters. There may have even been some of the older 060's installed on some of them at some point. The old machines were transported to storage rather than tossed to the dump. I never could get anyone's attention to them. Knew someone who worked in the computers at the School Board and they did confirm they weren't thrown out. Just think... Over 100 A4000's with Video toasters... and ALL the manuals for them... sitting... collecting dust in a storage area!

[@briandolbec37]

I have an original 1st gen Atari 520st that I got from the store I worked at. It came without the GEM OS roms originally as they were not yet ready. So we had to boot it from the floppy. We did install the final GEM OS ROMS eventually when they came out. I have several disk drives, a 314, 354 and a 5.25 dual sided drive, color monitor. They should still be in great condition in original boxes. I have been wanting to get it hooked again for some years now. Last I seen they have not yellowed :) Once I get back home and finish my computer corner, I likely will. I also wonder how many of the old disks are still good... hopefully they haven't been corrupted/degraded. I used to love demonstrating the Atari running MAC OS applications (through the emulator) faster than the mac even though, both machines ran the same cpu & clock speed.

[@TPau65]

25:25 Afaik the double-sided SF314 drives don't have belts inside, they use direct drive. At least it's the case with my SF314, which works rock solid even today. The older single-sided SF354 had a belt inside. But you have to look inside to be sure, as Atari used different drives back then. Even the electronics are pretty different from drive to drive. My SF314 has proprietary connectors and PCB, so you can't connect e.g. a Gotek to it, while other drives use standard connections like in the STF/STE where a Gotek is simply plug and play!

[@adriansdigitalbasement]

Nice, yeah I did some googling and came to the conclusion that matches your experience. That is great and hopefully the drive just needs a clean and should be great.

[@munocat]

My only experience with the Atari, was the st1040 in 1988, it was used to build a real-time batch process control system based in the 68K, using modula-2 language, C-MAC C-quin

[@TheJeremyHolloway]

1040ST. An ST1040 sounds like a shoddy Seagate hard drive model.

[@StevenOBrien]

Good on Toad Computers for not charging for the memory re-seat! Wonder whatever happened to them.

[@oestrek]

They kind of croaked a couple decades back I was buying from them and Paxtron (Amiga stuff) right up till the end which was sometime around 98

[@markwanklyn4195]

does the 520ST require a floppy drive to be connected? my 520STe will not boot to the GEM desktop if its' floppy drive is unplugged - gives a white screen then a line of bombs.

[@ssokolow]

I can't speak to the 520ST, but I just pulled out the 520STFM I rescued on garbage day and unplugged the internal floppy drive (single-sided with perished belts) and it boots just fine. Heck, it's better than *with* the drive because it doesn't spend tens of seconds on the white screen trying to get the drive to respond before booting. (I've reflashed a Gotek floppy emulator to put in it but I really don't want to do surgery on a yellowed but otherwise vintage case to make a hole for it, so I still need to get around to ordering the 3D-printed bracket to mount the floppy emulator *behind* the floppy disk slot built into the case.)

[@decidedly_retro]

TOS 2.06 will bomb if there are no floppy drives but TOS 1.04 will boot normally without any.

[@tobindavis9351]

Iirc, you need 5he keyboard plugged in. It has been a while though. On an aside, I will be pulling my ST systems out soon. I discovered the UltraSPARC SD to ASCI drive online recently, and it just arrived today. I also have a clone of the Atari Diagnostics cartridge (I cloned it back in '86 when I worked at an Atari retailer while in high school).

[@vincei4252]

Wow, zero dollars to reseat a SIMM? Modern day Apple will tell you to replace the entire motherboard and toss the original. How times have changed.

[@BrianRRenfro]

Did you see how they did it? I would have wanted them to pay ME if they did that to my computer!

[@vincei4252]

@@BrianRRenfro I have not gotten that far in yet but I'll watch to the end. Now I'm nervous 😬

[@sumplais]

Today was a good day for retrobrighting. I don't know how many more of those we've got left this year in Portland.

[@adriansdigitalbasement]

I know I thought about that today too! I'm not ready to attack it quite yet but perhaps I should even if I can't get the machine running quite yet

[@redhawk668]

260ST’s were sold in Europe, especially in Germany and in the Netherlands. They were actually sold with 512kb of RAM, but with TOS on disk, it only had It’s bootcode in ROM. As a result they were a bit cheaper. The 520ST had TOS in ROM.. My first ST was a 520STm with TOS in ROM and modulator. The image quality from the modulator was pretty bad to say the least. The floppydrive I used was a bog standard PC drive cased in a metal case with some electronics to adapt it to the ST.

[@bambua]

Might not be as odd as you think to see a repair in the 90's in high school I worked at Hobbytown USA and we used ATARI ST computers as our POS system. We didn't swap it out for PCs running Gemulator until I think '98 or '99? With the color of that mouse it looks like it was somewhere that got UV on it for a long time so may have come from one of their stores.

[@rager1969]

Nice to see you work on an ST

[@berczigabor]

7:58 That spot was brighter not because of retrobrighting, but because of the paper strip for the WordPress key shortcuts, which obviously sit there originally (and prevented the yellowing of the underlying plastic in the first place), but slid up during transport or when you removed the computer from the box

[@CJ-rf9jm]

An easy way to identify early ST's by model is ST was no modulator or floppy internally. STf had floppy, STfm had both floppy & modulator. From what I remember is the 6 chip rom sets for TOS were models previous to the STe & TT models which had the 2 chip rom sets. the 260ST model from what I remember wasn't sold in north america.

[@101Osprey101]

Interesting video but I had to laugh when you said "So, without further ado, let's get right to it." right before playing opening credits.

[@brianlhughes]

I had a 520 ST and I upgraded it to 1 or 2 MB with a kit. I had to solder wires to base of the square chip he pulled and I think i cooked that chip because I got hard drive and floppy failures that got worse and worse. I sold it for parts in 1992 and moved on to a PC clone. I was thinking if they would have given me small crimping tubes for the wires it would have been a safer upgrade. I had a lot of fun with ST, I was programming in assembly and C and made a transparent sprite library in assembly that would have worked well but I needed to discover how use double buffering for video to eliminate flickering. Funny how I figured that out years later. Hands down the 68000 assembly language set will always be my favorite.

[@stanburton6224]

Another reason why the ST was cheaper was Jack Tramiel had left Commodore and took over Atari. Jack was very frugal (which is why he left Commodore)and was infamous about driving costs as low as possible.

[@Dave5281968]

Many would argue he also drove Atari out of business, too. But that's another topic altogether.

[@TheJeremyHolloway]

...or Commodore decided to price gouge the Amiga customers to make up for the money they shelled out in stealing the Amiga from Atari in the first place. They certainly pissed off Jay Miner and many other former Amiga employees when they shipped the Amiga 1000 with only 256K RAM.

[@eatportchops]

Always enjoy the repair videos. I'm currently trying to bring a Fairchild Channel F back from the dead.

[@IanSlothieRolfe]

Looking forward to this (series of?) repair video. I always admired the ST computers, but when they came out I had just graduated and was looking for a job, so I stuck to my 8 bits :) By the time I got a job and had the money, I was offered a deal on an IBM 286 clone that I couldn't refuse so I never got my ST! A flatmate of mine had one, however, and I was always impressed with it and what he was able to do with it. This was long before windows 3.0 came out, so in comparison the ST seemed really futuristic; I did get a "review" copy of Windows 1.0, but it was basically a toy compared to the ST.

[@TheJeremyHolloway]

What amazed me was how bad DRI's GEM was on PC - at least until GEM/3 - compared to Atari's own customized version of GEM on the ST. And yet a lot of ST owners constantly complained about GEM so they rolled out various alternative desktops like NEOdesk and others.

[@Mattfromthepast]

Love your videos, this should be an interesting series. Believe it or not I was twelve the night of those TV listings and I know for a fact I was watching PBS that night because I was a huge Wodehouse and The Good Life fan at the time and I had been looking forward to that airing of Stormy Weather for weeks and I remember watching it that night. That was a fun trip down memory lane, thanks.

[@Butterscott_NJ]

I got what I'd consider the ultimate deal about 7 or 8 years ago which was an Atari ST 1040FM with both a color and monochrome display for $300. Mine also came with a QMI Deskcart, but alas, I never could get it working.

[@ArtemisMaxs]

it may be a good idea to have the drive plugged in. the drive light should come on while its still on that white screen and that would at least indicate where its begins starting then crashes or if it never starts executing

[@Lardzor]

I would suspect the ROM chips (the six chips with labels on them along the left edge of the board). I saw you press down on them to re-seat them, but if the pins on the chip didn't move relative to the slots that their in, it may not have made a difference. I would re-seat the chips by placing a thin flat-head screwdriver on the ends of the chip between the chip and the socket, and then torquing the screwdriver just a bit to force the chip away from the socket a little bit. Even a millimeter of lift would help. Just so that all of the pins move relative to the sockets they stick into. Then press the chips back into place and try again.

[@barry99705]

Oh wow! We had one of those when I was in middle school. There was an Atari store in Fairbanks in the early 90's.

[@IanMorpeth]

I had a similar problem with a memory upgrade on an STFM. I bent in the pins on the socket to make better contact and that did the trick.

[@DieselPLL]

I am pretty big fan of Atari ST, STe, TT, Falcon 030 computers I am literally sitting here and glued to the screen right now currently at 2:30. ):

[@nickca420]

There are still a few music producers who use the Atari ST to this day, just because it's always worked for them. Hell, Vince Clarke still uses a BBC Micro.

[@ChrisEdwardsRestoration]

holy crap, toad computers was right down the street from my old house when i lived in maryland. wow. long time no see that!

[@jacobdavidcunningham1440]

Dang thank goodness for USB/USB-C seeing all those random port designs