Commodore Amiga vs Atari ST: Part 1 Hardware & Operating systems explained

One of the biggest and lengthy platform battles happened during the late 80's and early 90's. Long before the established status quo of IBM compatible PC's had taken over the business world and multi-tasking operating systems became the norm, a whole new path and direction was taking shape.
Personal computers had long since been established with 2 company's taking the lead to grow that market in very bold, exciting and yet similar paths. I start my 2 part dive into a big part of my gaming childhood, 2 titans in Atari and Commodore, I look into the hardware that these machines were built on, the similarities and differences in addition to the leading edge Operating Systems they also helped usher in, and we largely still use derivatives of today.
Part 2 will cover the games and how these machines delivered them, which is just as interesting as the hardware itself. And some of those expectations, which were not always met.
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[@sluggotg]

The Atari ST was completely created in like 6 months. A Record that has never been broken. These folks created all the hardware and OS in that time Period. They had to use off the shelf Sound and Video chips. They created a Cheap, Very High Performance Machine! Amazing!

[@Foebane72]

Is it, though? Amazing? I sincerely doubt it.

[@AlestroBakai]

@@Foebane72 I lived through that time and I owned both, Amiga and Atari ST. Amiga was the graphics monster and gaming monster. I used DPaint and nothing could beat it. I gamed in sheer bliss. Video producing and manipulating - the Amiga was a monster (so I've been told, and I take that at face value). Atari ST on the other hand was the monster when it came to word processing (1st Word), desktop publishing (Calamus) and Basic programming (GfA Basic)... and nothing could beat it. MIDI music - the Atari was a monster (so I've been told, and I take that at face value as well). So... both systems had their strengths and you were lucky when you had access to both. Long time ago, during the Amiga / Atari Wars in full swing I recall a developer (forget his name) give an interview and he said "This bickering is detrimental. The winner in this conflict is IBM compatible. Amiga and Atari users should come forward and say "We are the future - pick one of us". Fast forward to 2022... Amiga and Atari are retro computer systems with a die-hard following of people who dream "what could have been".

[@sideburn]

Well said. I went from Atari 8 bit to a Mac back then but i bought an Atari 520 ST cheap around 1990 and a guy at my work made it into a Hackintosh somehow. I remember we had to wire wrap a hard drive for some reason. I just got it out of the closet and opened it up thinking there would be mac roms in it but it looks like original roms to me. I’ll be firing it up once I get a power supply and see what condition it is in. Today I finally have both and Amiga 2000 that’s loaded with cards and a video toaster a friend gave me that I repaired and just got an Atari Stacy 2 so I’m finally learning all about these machines over 30 years later! I only use my MacBook Pro to do boring modern coding for money 😂 oh and write comments on KZbin…

[@kevinhulse2983]

@@Foebane72 Any 68k machine was a giant leap forward at the time.

[@CaptainDangeax]

Atari created nothing, it was Motorola's reference design from the cpu datasheet. No wonder why Jay Miner left

[@somegreenguy]

In terms of power, it definitely has to be the Amiga, the ST definitely wasn't up to snuff In terms of aesthetics, I love the ST more, with its lines and slants, its a very attractive machine Overall though, if I had the choice, I would have to pick an Amiga

[@Sl1pstreams]

The ST was more powerful, actually. A 1040ST cost significantly less than an A500, had twice the RAM, had a stable hi-res display that the Amiga couldn’t match, had built in support for mass storage via SCSI (the A500 didn’t), supported MIDI for music production and networking computers together (the Amiga couldn’t), and was also faster with its 8 MHz chip versus the A500’s 7 MHz. The only area where the Amiga performed better was sound and graphics in low res for video games. As an actual computer for getting stuff done, the ST absolutely slaughtered the Amiga.

[@karehaqt]

I loved my Amiga 500+, saved my paper round money for a whole year and Dad gave me the rest to buy it :)

[@OriginalMergatroid]

This sure brings back a lot of memories. I started out on the Vic 20, moved to the C=64. A friend of mine bought an Amiga 1000, which was really expensive. All my friends were drooling over it when another friend purchased one. It was a year or two before they finally came out with the Amiga 500, and to a T, all the people in my circles who were C=64 users sold their C=64 with their huge software collections and purchased Amiga 500 computers, with the new monitors and the external floppy drive. We were pretty amazed at the power of this machine. This is when I started taking Engineering Technology courses at college, and I was doing all my homework on the Amiga, including drawing schematics using IntroCAD. No one else in the courses I was taking had the marks I achieved from doing such a great job on my assignments. After graduating I started working at a local franchise of National Electronic Service Association. They were doing warranty repaires for both Commodore and Atari (not to mention Intellivision and Vectrex and Coleco). I got to be quite familiar with all the machines these companies produced. This is what I have to say about the Atari St: It was a good MIDI machine. That's it. It wouldn't multitask, had shitty audio, it was cheaply built and often would break when being disassembled because the plastic was so cheap, the units with the internal power supplies would go bad all the time as those units had no fans and would overheat, damaging the boards. To top it off, the GUI was horrid. It looked so primitive beside the Amiga it was comical. Even more so when the Amiga was upgraded to Kickstart and Workbench 2.0, and later 3.0 with AGA (Advanced Graphics Architecture). I couldn't even use an ST for any more than a few minutes because I found the interface so distasteful. The Amiga was amazing because of the expansions available to it. You touched on the bay under the computer, which could be used for memory expansions, but more importantly for combo memory expansion and accelerator cards which, at the time, sported a replacement CPU in the form of a 68020 or a 68030 cpu usually with another 8 MB of RAM (which was super expensive at the time). However, there was another expansion port on the left side of the machine, which was used for hard drive expansions. These expansions would also plug directly into the bus, and allowed the Amiga to reach it's full potential as easily the best computer of its time, a decade ahead of its time. In fact, it wasn't until PCs started using 3D graphics cards (Ala 3DFX) and finally got a multitasking operating system (Windows 95) with a sound card, that there was any real competition for the Amiga. Once a hard drive was added, they became real powerhouses. I ended up purchasing an Arrow expansion case from Germany, which looked like a larger Amiga 1000, with an internal power supply and a riser card converting that left side expansion into four expansion slots similar to what the newer Amiga 2000 had, and two hard drive bays. It even came with a housing to install your keyboard in, so it looked like any other keyboard on a PC at the time. Later I traded in my Amiga 500 and all it's mods for an Amiga 1200 with a 68030 CPU and 8MB of RAM (2MB of graphics RAM) via another expansion card (the Amiga 1200 came with a 68020 CPU and just the 2GB of "fastRAM". What really killed us all was seeing a demo in Sears at the time the Amiga 1000 first came out, and this demo showed an animated scene of a city block with all sorts of animated toons walking around, and every one of those toons was a separate program. We were just amazed. The Amiga was easily out in front of all its competition at the time, and the only thing that killed it was the incompetence of Commodore Business Machines management. They came out with the C16, and the Plus 4 which were both pieces of trash. Months after hitting the stores they were discounted to the bargain bins. This basically killed Commodore with all the resources they spent on two computers that any Commodore customer could have told them would fail. Right when this was happening, the PC was seeing two revolutionary games, Descent and Mechwarrior II. Descent was a two player game played over a modem, a true 3D game where you would pilot a fighter craft through tunnels to kill robots that had gone crazy. You could play with a friend over a modem, and this was almost revolutionary at the time (the Amiga had Stunt Car Racer, but the graphics were pretty weak). That game, combined with a segment on the News on CBC showing this amazing new game called Mechwarrior II, where you were actually piloting a mech, convinced me to finally sell my Amiga 1200 while the selling was good, and purchase my first PC. The Amiga was most likely right up there with the Commodore 64 as the most revolutionary home computers of all time.

[@NXGamer]

Firstly, thank you for sharing such a detailed and interesting look back at your life and the Amiga. You clearly have a great deal of history with it and experience and I echo so much of what you said. Expansion was a huge, huge part of the Amiga's core hook allowing the system to be improved and augmented gave you such a longer choice and lifespan. I also added a HD to my Amiga after a dual floppy drive did not resolve all my woes, as you can imagine I try to keep these videos as tight and easy to follow as possible, so much of what you have covered with the CPU upgrades and side port I left as a simple reference alongside the base chipset rather than covering the later AGA and various models, but I will cover more and would possibly like to chat with you regards that and a future video if you are interested? Anyway, thanks again for sharing.

[@OriginalMergatroid]

Any time. Happy to help. I still work in electronics, repairing everything from TVs and monitors, to laptops and desktops.

[@allan.n.7227]

My gosh that Turrican ][ soundtrack is still sounding epic...

[@gallan671]

Having moved up from my Commodore 16, to a Commodore 64.. when that got old I spent a fortune of Paper round money on an Atari 800xl.. it used to take hours to load games from cassette - as a platform it never caught on.. so I went back to my Commodore roots and got the Amiga 500 - i used to earn £3.60 a week as a paper round and i think it cost £399! - luckily once i'd saved up 50% my parents chipped in the rest for Xmas :)

[@dangiambrone7350]

"The blitter rivals"..... ....... So glad you're back! This has made my good weekend turn great. What a nostalgia trip.

[@NXGamer]

Cool, that is always what I like to hear.

[@gdavies1103]

Welcome back! Great video as always. I was an Amiga 500 fan back in the day and that short clip of lotus esprit turbo challenge reminded me of the great times I had with friends as a nipper. Such a long time ago.

[@paulolameiras861]

Amiga 500 was a beast for its time. It came out in 85, yet ended up competing with most platforms of early 90s.

[@NXGamer]

So true, it really was a gigantic leap forward from the competition.

[@konrad303]

Amiga 500 came out in 1987. 1985 was when the original Amiga (later called Amiga 1000) hit the market.

[@jamiey5779]

+konrad303 The Amiga 500 is basically a repurposed Amiga 1000. They did update the Angus chip in the A500 which allowed the system to address more total memory over the 1000, as well as adding support for fast RAM, buts its essentially the same core hardware.

[@konrad303]

And you didn't need to boot the Kickstart from disk anymore. It was also cost-reduced and marketed differently. Anyways, this was a product released in 1987, so when the OP references the 500 instead of the 1000, the release date in question is that of the 500.

[@MyKharli]

Mine still works ! its the floppies that are failing ,since chaos engine packed up I haven't played :(

[@davidlowton9359]

You probibly have no idea just how perfect a video this is for me. I had the Atari ST and then later the STE. One of these systems later had an additional 512k of memory soldiered on to the motherboard which also needed some resisters changing. A family friend did this. Poor sod. Some of the best years in gaming. I miss psygnosis. Thank you so much for the very informative insight you have provided. Can't wait for part 2. I remember there was some revolutionary anti-piracy protection back in the day but the name escapes me. Everything about those days were great. Lending games to friends, couch co-op. Demo scene. Magazines. Demo disks. Perfection. Thank you :)

[@davidlowton9359]

BTW my favourite game of the time was Dungeon Master. PSYGNOSIS and BitMap bothers both dished out incredible titles back in the day.

[@NXGamer]

Always great to hear and I remember soldering in my mates ST with a 512Kb update, It was actually my own ST that I sold him in 1988 as I wanted to buy my Amiga, 1 game that I will cover in part 2 made the choice to move over almost instant.. it was an incredible time and I also loved Dungeon master and No second Prize which made me jealous of giving up my ST at the time as I could not afford both.

[@sipazang9201]

@NX Gamer My first computer was an Atari 800 in 1981. Other than my first ST in about 1986, the 800 was the best until I got my Amiga 500 in 1991. I owned almost ALL Atari models, starting from the 2600 all the way through the 1040 ST. But when I got the A500, I was hooked, hardcore. I even got a job at my local computer store and sold and repaired C64's, Ataris, and Amigas for about 5 years. I eventually ended up becoming the service department manager. The reason I mention all that, is because watching your videos brings back a flood of memories repairing computers down to the component level, unlike we do today. In this day and age, it's a pull and toss parts method, instead of replacing blown capacitors, resistors, and IC's. I un/soldered many Paula, Agnus, and Denise chips, but I always took the time to be professional and socket any chip I replaced. In those 5 years, I repaired probably 1,000 C64, Amiga, and Atari computers. Great times. I wish I could go back, but man, I'd miss Google and KZbin...lol EDIT: I love and appreciate these two Amiga vs Atari ST videos I've watched. I know I'm a couple of years late to the party, but I thoroughly enjoyed them. Well done. Great work.

[@AtariLegend]

What an amazingly informative video. Very well done! I am an Atari ST fan at heart and will always be. But you paid tribute to both machines in this video! Great stuff.

[@miikasuominen3845]

I enjoy your videos. Happy, that you still decided to continue. And I really hope, you get more recognition. All the best and keep 'em coming!

[@NXGamer]

Thanks for your kind words.

[@bucminster9172]

Imagine a Universe where Amiga and Atari merged into one company.

[@NXGamer]

Glorious...

[@wishusknight3009]

It would have either been epic, or sucked twice as much.

[@Highlander1518]

Commotari. Ataridore.

[@maxxdahl6062]

@Brad Viviviyal I always liked Jack's philosophy of trying to make computer hardware that was very affordable.

[@user-gf3vb7xj3h]

Awesome

[@aideyp7333]

Welcome back !!! My best mate had the Amiga 1000, I had the A500, I recall getting a 500kb memory expansion

[@NXGamer]

Cheers, they were both superb machines, and the expansion boards sold like hot cakes, such a treat to buy 512KB update AND a second drive, I felt like a king with half the disc swapping :-)

[@bitsnbobsbobsnbits368]

I remember getting the flight of the fantasy pack amiga 500 in the summer of 89. Set it all up only to have a piece of cardboard stuck in the drive, got it out but the drive was making a nasty sound and wouldn't read the disks. Had to wait a fortnight for a replacement, but well worth it. All time favourite machine and taught me a lot about computers. Very informative video really well put together.

[@thegood9]

Me and my friend had these battles all the time. He was all Amiga, I was all Atari...we never settled! I loved my Atari (and I was a musician, so the software was better given Emagic's entries with their early Logic software) and he loved his Amiga. We both played on both all the time. But I loved my Atari and still do!

[@livelongandprosper70]

ST had built in midi.. so really he should have been the ST guy..

[@bighairydel]

great video, many thanks. i had both machines when i was younger and could clearly see amiga was a far better machine!

[@dark1x]

Welcome back NX! Really enjoyed this one!

[@NXGamer]

Cheers John, been a nice break. I need to catch-up on your retro series, as I have not watched any YT for months, but I enjoy your work greatly.

[@ajsingh4545]

John loved your retro features. Would love for you to cover the pc-engine. It has unique hardware as you may know and unique history.

[@farhanyousaf5616]

Probably one of the best under the hood comparisons I've seen so far. Kudos!

[@mjayjoseph855]

Welcome back! NX! 😎👍🏽 and it's great to see the early beginnings of gaming hardware with your in-depth analysis 👌🏽

[@NXGamer]

Cheers man, I am happy many are enjoying it :-0

[@mjayjoseph855]

NX Gamer Yeah definitely 👍🏽 and plus we need you because this year is going to be a very interesting & technical year, one of the first on the list is God of War and others.

[@user-gf3vb7xj3h]

Awesome Review , Atari ST , STF ,STFM , STE , FALCON 030 , Commodore Amiga 500 , 600 , 1200 were the best computers ever , I wish computer technology would have stopped in 1994

[@MrSEA-ok2ll]

They were both part of my past and I still own and appreciate them today...great video

[@2drealms196]

Damn KZbin notifications didn't notify me for a month you had new videos. Welcome back NX Gamer!

[@NXGamer]

Shame, hopefully you are seeing them now for my new stuff?

[@Hoopla10]

You seemed to have sadly disappeared and then you come back with this slice of gold! Brilliant stuff.

[@quantass]

Terrific work! Very informative and enjoyable.

[@johndd9140]

Excellent Vid, thanks for making it. I was an Atari fan, had a 520STFM (upgraded to 1mb), and an STE upgraded to 2mb. I miss them and the 100s of games

[@_Quint_]

Great analysis, I'm looking forward to part 2.

[@backtogeek]

Just found this channel today, suggested via 'Nostalgia Nerd' subscribed, love the content.

[@NXGamer]

anthony smith That puts a smile on my face, thanks and hope you enjoy your long stay :-).

[@robintst]

I was in the Amiga camp but I never cared for fueling the rivalry with the ST owners. Both lines of machines had their pros and cons and the one commonality we all had to experience anyway was the original bridge burner himself, Jack Tramiel. Besides, neither company survived the overtaking of the market by the IBM-compatibles in the early/mid-90s so it's been a moot point for a long time now.

[@alexparkish]

Love this! seeing that old amiga manual brought some great memories back!

[@NXGamer]

Yeah, they always do, sitting in bed even when the computer was off, such cool bed time reading thinking about all the things you would try tomorrow when you got home from school lol

[@TaimatCR]

Welcome back, great video as always

[@NXGamer]

Cheers

[@Breakfast_of_Champions]

Awesome video! A friend actually got the early Amiga 1000 and it was a mindblowing experience even with the very early games. Our C64s were looking very old suddenly.

[@OlderRockRocks]

I had the normal Amiga 500. Awesome gaming pc. I will never forget Lotus Turbo Challenge and Cannon Fodder.

[@NXGamer]

So many great titles on these machines, I hope to cover some classics that other enjoyed in Part 2 next week :-)

[@djaybeetoo]

I too was a Lotus Freak back in the day lol

[@JoaoVentura]

​@Kurt Pedersen Seeing that one of those computer options was a fully multi-tasking operating system (albeit very buggy), and considering that at the time you had only DOS and Windows for Workgroups 3.11, I think you're not understanding how the Amiga was a much, much better PC than the IBM-compatible PC. By the time that the PCs got a comparable OS (Windows 95, or for really proper multitasking, NT 4.0) both Amiga and the Atari ST were already dead. Vanquished by their inability to run the PC killer app: Lotus-1-2-3.

[@TheGraemi]

I connected my 500 with the 2000 with a null modem cable -> 4 players. Cool game.

[@dannymormone]

Fantastic video, watched it over a few times now. When is Part 2 likely to be released as I cannot wait to see it. Thanks again for creating this.

[@FlukeyHeadshot]

Awesome to see you back mate! great video! I had the Amiga 600 which did the job for 2 player Sensible Soccer that's all i needed :)

[@NXGamer]

Ah, sensible soccer, that was such a tremendous game, 2-players round your mates, with snacks and drinks, hours just sailed past.

[@FlukeyHeadshot]

It was always me Vs my Sisters Boyfriends lol, this continued into Pro Evolution Soccer. An Edgar Davids outside the area shot that hit the underside of the bar and went in was celebrated as though id won the league myself lol

[@NXGamer]

ha ha, I can just picture it now...and we all know, it is just as important as winning the league.

[@FlukeyHeadshot]

Great to see you back on mate! Have to attempt to jump in the same game at some point mate!

[@mcuthbertson74]

Fantastic video! I Started with an st and saw shadow of the beast and drivin’ force on the Amiga and i was sold. Sold my soul to get an Amiga but it was worth it. If you pause at 12:50 you can see the face they used on the Amiga power pack packaging! Long time avid watcher - first time commenter!

[@azmodanpc]

@25:10 Jeebus, I never saw the Shadow of the Beast Atari port until today...Man, I'm very happy my dad bought an Amiga, the graphics and sound for this particular conversion/port are simply abysmal.

[@GregsGameRoom]

The Atari ST is like the Genesis/Mega Drive while the Amiga is the Super Nintendo. Both great machines with strengths and weaknesses. I myself fell on the Atari side and got a 1040STe with a 320 meg SCSI hard drive with the Geneva OS and NeoDesk 4. Made the interface much nicer and polished than the original basic GEM/TOS.

[@petergriffin5256]

Glad you're back! :D

[@NXGamer]

Cheers, I hope this is an enjoyable video for many.

[@BondRichBond]

And then the old 1 meg expansion, Amiga 1200 and Atari Falcon.... ah the good old days! Great video BTW

[@NXGamer]

Indeed they were, I did have a 1200 and that was a beast at the time, but sadly never owned a Falcon as the cost and path had moved on, I hope to get one at some point to cover it in detail.

[@zarjesve2]

If you buy Falcon, you could check Doom on 16MHz ;) kzbin.info/www/bejne/sJy6kIppqpiEY9U

[@krelakuma]

Awesome to see you back ! Had some great times on the Amiga ! Moonstone !

[@NXGamer]

Ha, yes the Monty Python game, that was cool, and I also remember Gore, which did not even try and hide its aim.

[@sto4713]

I remember the excitement when I got my Amiga which I felt was a huge upgrade from my c64 its hard to think of a time recently when I was so excited about technology maybe my first smart phone but that still doesnt compete with the excitement of the Amiga!

[@RedArmsTOR]

I can watch videos like that all day long. GJ!

[@NXGamer]

Great to heat, thanks

[@RetroChiZ]

Excellent video, many thanks.

[@sirgwaine2695]

Great Video, though you didn't mention much about the amiga 500 left side expansion port. I had a GVP HD expansion mounted back in the day... which rocked :)

[@NXGamer]

True, sorry, I should have but the expansion options with the Amiga were great. I used Master sound for serial fed sampling to create my own remixes, such a great time.

[@Xenon0000000000001]

@@NXGamer The Atari ST (at least the STFM on) had an expansion port as well. I had a Stereo Master for capturing sound samples, a hand scanner for scanning docs, a clock (the ST didn't have an internal battery for the clock), and even a video capture device all working on an STE. The STE also used SIMMs for memory expansion same as PCs today.

[@victorc2989]

So Glad your back love your content : - )

[@telemaster]

Excellent stuff as always. 👍

[@NXGamer]

Thanks, your logo tells me which machine you hold in higher favour :-)

[@IsaandAli]

Glad you are back man!!

[@sluggotg]

The amiga has 32 colors from a 4096 palette, (or, with no performance penalty.. 64 colors in extra Half Bright Mode.. very useful). The Atari ST had 16 colors our of 512 color palette). The Amiga can display 4096 colors in HAM mode or in Sliced HAM mode.. but it is very limited in actual Gaming Modes. The 4 channel Stereo mode on the Amiga was Vastly superior to the Atari's crude sound chip. The Atari had a built in MIDI interface, very handy. The Amiga Users had to spend extra money to buy a MIDI interface, ($25-$50 ). The Amiga had a fully Pre-Emptive Multitasking Operating System. The Atari did not.. nor did the MAC.. until a few decades later... (Windows NT and IBM's OS/2 had it fairly early). The Amiga has Hardware Accelerated Graphics to help with gaming. The Atari ST was totally designed and produced in a shockingly short period of time..!!!! Jack, through his Personality.. Made it happen! No computer has EVER been developed in such a short period of Time. Everyone who was involved are GODS. They went from nothing to an actual computer in like 6 months. The ST was shockingly Cheap, and was a killer computer and gaming platform. Great Job folks!

[@AmirKhan-qx2lr]

@4:05 music from double dragon... Geez i remember playing that in the arcade when it came out

[@joelandersson3168]

This will be fun to watch. Loved my Amiga 500.

[@NXGamer]

Hope you enjoyed it, and a little secret...I did too.

[@Rich77UK]

I am biased...I had an A500 (one of the last before the plus was released). I had a 512mb upgrade and it was a blessing. The machine ran perfectly until I moved to a PC in around 1999. I still love the Amiga and lament Commodores demise.

[@BDAkaGoat]

Glad yoa are back!

[@FF_81_]

Waiting for Part 2, thanks 👍

[@NXGamer]

Great to hear, hope it is enjoyed as much if not more than this one.

[@Gamers4um]

Very good and unbiased video, liked it a lot (I was a Commodore guy by the way) Just one extremely minor thing to add... the part with the one and only mr. Huelsbeck, Turrican 2, actually sports *intro* music, not ingame: this is due to the an issue you talked about a lot for the AtariST, i.e. intro, credits and high score music was written with TFMX 7voice routine, that used CPU to mix sound in real time so to have more audio channels... that was basically not possible during normal gameplay AFAIK, so it was restricted to less demanding parts of the game (I can't remember any Amiga game that used this tecnique ingame, I'd gladly hear from Amiga fellows anyway if they know about some that actually did) Best regards!

[@Sinn0100]

Blitter rivals...love it, love everthing about it well played sir! Unfortunately, I never really experienced the micros as an American. I started with the Nes (1985) and Master System (1986) and finally becoming a gamer in 1989 with my launch Sega Genesis (I lucked out as a kid and had all three consoles the first year they came out). It looks like both the Amiga and Atari ST had sprite scalling and rotation which the Genesis could do through brute force but not by design...amazing!

[@CFalcon030]

Nope, both of them did this in software.

[@matthewlong1978]

I was always on the Commodore fence, starting with the C16 Plus/4, , C64, Amiga 500 and then 1200 glad i was a part of it

[@RetroComputingwithMike]

Sweet nostalgia, i've got a couple of Atari 520ST waiting to be revived, really hope they will come out as great as yours :)

[@snkneo-geo933]

I bought my Amiga in December 1989 I had the Barman Pack for £399 and I've still got it 😉

[@adeelabbasi2811]

man i though you left but thank God that your are back

[@jojo51ytb]

Another masterpiece of hardware review deserved to these legendary machines!

[@eurocrusader1724]

Xenon 2 and Turrican on the Atari 1040 STe, sound of my youth...

[@NXGamer]

Love it, what a game and on the STe it used the Blitter chip to be smoother and faster. That and the Falcon came that little bit too late.

[@8bitrocketstudios]

Good and very thorough stuff here!

[@trip2themoon]

I remember some games on the ST were awkward to play, like Super Hang On for example. You had to push up to accelerate whilst trying to steer with the joystick. My mate adapted a Mega Drive pad to work on the ST with an extra button. He took the wire from the up direction on the MD pad and soldered it to the C button on the MD pad so pressing C would act like the joystick's up direction. It made a huge difference in some games. Having a button to accelerate in Super Hang On made the game playable and having a jump button turned the ST's Rainbow Islands into a whole new game. It was like playing the arcade game. Only having one fire button really hindered the 16 bit computers. I think they would have whooped the consoles of the time in the gaming market if they had the extra fire buttons. Imagine back then: console quality games at a fraction of the price of a game cartridge. You could pirate the consoles back then but you needed very expensive equipment. With the computers all you needed to copy your mate's games was a copy of X Copy or Fast Copy. My friendly neighbourhood pirate dealer used X Copy to make is pirates. Their stall was open only on Saturdays and Sundays and they made an absolute fortune.

[@Ten_Pence]

How interesting.... great video buddy

[@JimmerofOz]

Was there ever a part 2 to this? would love to see it!

[@NXGamer]

Yes, it was released a couple of weeks after this one:- kzbin.info/www/bejne/mYOZZo1_h5x-iZI Thanks

[@1960ARC]

Great video. The Amiga was really a games machine and everyone knows had better sound than the ST. However this fact did not effect my game play on the ST as I didn't know better. I also used my ST for writing out hundreds of reports, so it was a real computer with a decent OS. I still have my final machine, 1040 STE with 2.5 meg of ram. I have two a500s one of which is still boxed with the free T shirt, I just love looking at these old machines of which I have quite a collection. NES, SNES, MEGADRIVE, Just about every Atari bar 3. Even have my first ever computer the 48 ZX spectrum. Things sure have changed.

[@eila2088]

How was word processing on it? If you a good wpm would it lag?

[@Dzeath1]

Welcome back!!

[@truelazerlight]

Fantastic, insightful, interesting!

[@NXGamer]

Glad you enjoyed it.

[@parusogtz]

Excelente comparación y analisis

[@Freddie1980]

21:40 That's kinda spooky almost real life foreshadowing.

[@OdeeOz]

Would love to see a side-by-side play of *Rescue on Fractalus,* and/or *Air Warrior* between these two games. _I still have working; _*_VIC-20, C-64, Amiga-1000, and Atari 1040-ST._* 👍👍👍

[@yaantsudnbesdai972]

Our family owned an Atari ST throughout the 80s-early 90s. I heard and had the notion -though I never ever saw or used on in person- that the Commodore Amiga was a somewhat more advanced PC esp. for gaming. This video seems to also suggest this... I believe that both PCs were well ahead of their times and also their games...

[@sluggotg]

Another Point on the A500.. It had a memory expansion port in the bottom and a very high end expansion port on the left side of the machine! (you could buy SCSI controllers/Memory expansions../Genlocks or many other things for it).

[@welshjay74]

Guess who back NX gamer back tell a friend.........welcome back awesome video I had Atari 800xl and I loved it had a simple code book and I created a simple clock working clock with the code I was using can’t remember the name of the code but it was like 10 print something 20 goto10 etc etc I was around 13 yrs old I think long time ago now

[@NXGamer]

Basic was a superb start to coding as it made you understand the logic of the cycles and how it all hung together, I loved those days of learning, trying, failing, reading, extracting code and even typing your code from magazine listings...and then that infamous message "error at line 2856!" ahhhhhh!

[@th3d3wd3r]

Ahhh you've made me start thinking about my amiga lol. I have a 500plus and I need to re-cap it and replace the battery. Also sort out some method of hooking it up to a modern display. I also have the old commodore monitor, but it just demands too much space.

[@NXGamer]

Do it, the easiest method is to buy an Amiga Scart cable and a cheap upscaller that coverts scart into HDMI. From here you can plug straight into your HD TV.

[@Mikebumpful]

The SNES didn't have true sample based music though, it had a wavetable (or more presicesly «graintable») synthesizer chip using tiny lengths (or grains) of digital sound in place of oscillators. It simply did not have the memory to do what the Amiga could, even if the Amiga was limited by its 4 channels. This Wavetable synthesis would later be used by legendary PC sound interfaces like the Gravis Ultrasound and the SoundBlaster AWE32, but by then, pre-mixed stereo 16 bit PCM (CD quality) music could be decoded without taxing the system so sequenced (MIDI) music was being left behind in games.

[@CaptainDangeax]

Altough the amiga was a bit slower (7,16 MHz versus 8 MHz for the ST), the ST was only a reference design from Motorola with nothing fancy, while the Amiga had a handful of specialised co-processors. A friend of mine lend me an ST for some weeks, and I wasn't impressed, specialy by the sound really under what my C64 was capable of. I finally bought an Amiga500, which was the real step forward.

[@ndr2q]

I owned an Amiga 500 here in America, and I agree the US marketing was shockingly inept. It was an amazing system, but it floundered over here due to terrible, awful marketing and business decisions. I think Commodore in the 80s was still so scared of the great video game crash here in the US market that they were afraid to mention the graphics, sound, and gaming capabilities abilities of the system. They viewed mentioning gaming or graphics as the kiss of death. Which, ironically, should have been the selling point of the system.

[@sipazang9201]

Well put. I agree. I was in the retail/service end of that industry. It was almost an embarrassment that it was so underrepresented.

[@DJ_Dopamine]

I can still vividly remember getting the Cartoon Classics pack for Christmas. Firing up the machine to play Lemmings (superb) and rather naff Captain Planet and Simpsons games. What a fanatic machine it was. I later added a hard disk and a printer, so it was a true 'PC' in that respect. But it was with games that the Amiga really justified its price tag. Piracy was a big problem though. I initially bought all my games, but my school friends would share their pirated copies of virtually every game with me. A box of cheap floppy disks and X-Copy and you were good to go!

[@NXGamer]

So true, piracy was a real, real problem for the Amiga. I can recall being at school and literally having discs being swapped and sold in the 100's. X-copy was the go to tool and the various teams that hacked the games to open them up for free share. Those plastic boxes with a key sat next to more Amiga's than a monitor i bet lol, sad but did allow us to play so many more games than we could have afforded.

[@dlfrsilver]

Piracy was a problem on the Amiga, for sure, but it was under the Piracy on the ST. Basically, companies had to develop for the Amiga, because they just didn't earned a buck on the ST ! The Piracy was crushing on this machine. Amiga users were more prone to buy the game. Just to illustrate, in 1994 Mortal Kombat II Amiga sold more than 120.000 copies (source : coder based on its royalties).

[@violator1017]

To be a little more clearer than what was said in the video, using a 1040 for sequencing that's a Tim Simenon(Bomb The Bass) way of working, not a DEPECHE MODE one. Tim produced a Depeche's piece of art, the album ULTRA 😉

[@radiozelaza]

in Polish demoscene there was a notorious .MOD made on Amiga (and later distributed among other platforms) which made fun of the "Spectrum-like capabilities" of Atari ST with sampled vocal tracks. check out "Anty Atari Song"

[@tazmanceltic]

Hahahaha great to see u back lad ....hope the break did u good!!!

[@NXGamer]

Thanks man, it was good and helped me rethink many things and enjoy the time I got back.

[@tazmanceltic]

NX Gamer good to hear it man. Mybe don't put yourself under too much pressure and just make content on the things you really want to. Regardless I'm glad to see your keeping well dude.

[@NXGamer]

That is the plan, will not be as often and hard pushed now. Just want to make good quality that is enjoyable.

[@miggies8140]

thank goodness hes back

[@mgabrysSF]

Nitpick 02:31 - Atari's meltdown was the 2600 and 5200 - not 7800. The 7800 didn't get wide release until after the ST was introduced. Great viddy regardless!

[@farshadbarnoos8749]

Welcome back:)

[@Megalocade]

I had the ST back in the early 90s really annoyed me when buying a game in the shops the St section was very limited, turn round and there were wall to wall of amiga games

[@dlfrsilver]

normal, there was 1 ST original game sold for 10 amiga original !

[@fangerdanga]

I loved my amiga, started off with amiga 500 then upgraded to a amiga 2000.

[@sipazang9201]

I had a 2000 and 3000. I loved the improved computing power of the 3000, but the 2000 was much more pleasant to work with. So much more room. I was a Commodore technician for a few years, and the 2000 was way better to work on. It felt like nothing fit into the 3000 properly, especially the NewTek Toaster. What a pain.

[@fangerdanga]

Sipa Zang didn’t the A600, A1200 and A3000 have an updated chipset.

[@sipazang9201]

I apologize if my rambling reply did't answer your question. This is a decades old question, and I'm unclear how to answer it properly...lol

[@sluggotg]

The Demos depicted above, did not understand the Fully Preemptive Multitasking OS that the Amiga had.

[@mattx5499]

Both computers were really awesome. I'm an Amiga fan, but I can't say Atari ST was bad. I would pick ST over any console or PC of the era. I never used ST in real life but I got an emulator and I enjoyed TOS and some software. Having such a machine in the late 80's and early 90's when many people still had 8-bit computers and consoles had to be super fun. I remember seeing GUI OS that was easy to use for a 8 years old kid and being fascinated with all the interactivity. Even such simple things like using a notepad and saving files, exploring what different applications can do felt futuristic.

[@sluggotg]

The A500 had an expansion slot on the left. You could replace the CPU to an 68030 or add memory/hardrives or an Action Replay cart. Basically you could upgrade it to what ever you wanted!

[@Sl1pstreams]

The ST did the same, and it had support for hard drive and memory expansions without needing to use the slot; the STE even supported SIMMs for RAM upgrades. The A500 couldn’t use a hard drive without an expensive add-on cartridge. The ST supported daisy-chained SCSI via the ACSI port.

[@CarsandCats]

I still have the Amiga 500 I bought new back in the 80's. I also have a 520ST. Both have 1 meg of RAM. I am thinking about setting up a room in my house for classic computing.

[@user-tg6yo7io2y]

Amiga - the FIRST multimedia machine in a World!

[@zarjesve2]

@NX gamer Did you have mono monitor for ST back in '80s? Or just color?

[@NXGamer]

I used a CRT for many years with the Modulator (I had the FM model). I never got a colour monitor until the Amiga in 89. I did have a friend (well his dad) that had the ST with the colour monitor and it looked so much better than my TV, but I was still happy with it.

[@zarjesve2]

Then you miss best feature of ST: 71Hz, crystal clear, hi resolution mono monitor - SM124. It was pure joy to sit in front of ST computer for hours using text processors, CAD, music application... on super sharp, flicker free hi res monitor. I suspect that you did not use ST with SM124 since otherwise you would mention this as ST highlight. Btw here you can find lots of software (bussiness) for ST with screenshots: milan.kovac.cc/atari/software/index.php

[@davidrmcmahon]

I had an Atari ST 520STFM, remember playing a Submarine game on it

[@maxxdahl6062]

Nice, always wanted an Atari ST or an Amiga, my house was IBM by that time, (Though we had the c64 before that.). Closest thing I have now is my raspberry pi I more or less made into a legal Amiga Mini. lol (Bought Amiga Forever, transferred over the kickrom and work bench files. Boom. Legal Mini. lol)

[@8bitrocketstudios]

Look the ST was pretty good. In the right hands it could be made to do miracles with no special chips. I owned one and it was such a step up from the 8bits that we loved it and importing games from the UK to the USA. But seriously, for gaming, the Amiga had it beat hands down. The STE was nice and could play great samples with a fantastic mixer chip that rivaled the Amiga, Plus a blitter for fast scrolling and animation. So the few games that used those features compare well with the best Amiga games, but mostly the ST was is lost to gaming history because the Amiga started to outshine it when programmers got by the buggy dev kits and could work straight the the metal.

[@TheJeremyHolloway]

The STe also made it easy to upgrade the RAM to 4MB using SIMM chips, yet games still generally only used the 512K shipping RAM from the original 520ST from 1985. And the STe also had the Enhanced Joystick Ports that could support the ST Power Pads which became the Jaguar's JagPads. The software publishers hardly supported them on the STe either...

[@mjp29]

It was most interesting that Jack Tramiel owned both companies - first Commodore & then Atari.... Tramiel was largely responsible for keeping the prices of his machines dirt cheap (c64 and ST).

[@eSKAone-]

Good stuff.

[@AntneeUK]

Around 2:58 you show Ballblazer. That's an 8 bit game, never released on the ST AFAIK