Venturing into the Atari STe Land

[protek]

I only 'left' the atari scene as I visitied a friends house and he had a 286 PC with SVGA monitor and windows 3.0 - that didn't impress me but the windows wallpaper was a collage of er...well.... lets just say 'ladies toilet parts' in glorious full colour - i just had to ge me one o' them

Well, sex sells, as they say.

 

[Starteck2002]

I only 'left' the atari scene as I visitied a friends house and he had a 286 PC with SVGA monitor and windows 3.0 - that didn't impress me but the windows wallpaper was a collage of er...well.... lets just say 'ladies toilet parts' in glorious full colour - i just had to ge me one o' them

Well, sex sells, as they say.

If only Atari had come up with that wallpaper - things may have turned out differently ;-)

---------- Post added at 14:03 ---------- Previous post was at 13:55 ----------

I only 'left' the atari scene as I visitied a friends house and he had a 286 PC with SVGA monitor and windows 3.0 - that didn't impress me but the windows wallpaper was a collage of er...well.... lets just say 'ladies toilet parts' in glorious full colour - i just had to ge me one o' them

I sold the atari stuff (a mega st2, megafile 30, thousands of disks) and bought myself my first PC which had huge ESDI drives and was a bit of a monster to drive. Always missed the Atari from then on. Now I have a 4mb STe, a 4mb Mega STe and by Wednesday an Atari TT so getting right back into it all again. If you have questions, feel free to ask and I'll help out as best I can.

You little Jammy dodger you lol!

A TT. That was the pinnacle of the Atari ST ownage for me back in the early 1990's and I knew that it would always be a pipedream

The holy grail as it were!

Then the Falcon came out and I wanted one of those! I have a silly idea that, well if I ever pull my thumb out will come together and involves:

Atari STE
HxC
4MB
NOS Falcon keyboard
4160 STE badge

I have everything here. I am buried in stuff and also work/family takes centre stage at the moment. I will do this one day.

Still very excited about the TT arriving tomorrow, i just know i'm going to end up spending a forune on it (I want a graphics card!) and the missus and I will no doubt be in 'vision only' for a few days until she realises it will be getting moved to the man cave. Now that I (almost) have the TT I am tempted to sell the rest of my stuff - this all depends on compatibility with older software though. Plus, I can't sell the Mega STe until the IDE board arrives from AlanH

Family and work do get in the way of this hobby - fortunately for me I work from home (valuevps.co.uk for anyone nosey enough to look) so I can play and work at the same time. One of my kids started asking what the blue plastic cartridge was that i was putting in the 'old' computer so there is a spark of interest there - until I explained the workings of a floppy disk - it went right over her head and the interest was soon lost :-(

 

[Paradroid90]

Glad to hear everyone's experiences with the STe I know it does not sound much but just waiting for some more floppies to arrive and a disk box.

But starting to build quite a collection now

 

[rabindranath72]

Nice! Have you got a Real-Time clock inside the STe? There's the Dallas semiconductor chip which is plugged piggyback under the ROM, and there are even drivers developed by someone a few years back. I might have one or two more I bought for my other two STes but never got to use as they died

 

[TommyIII]

One of my favorite machines. The ease of use and floppy transfer with PC makes this a must have. I have a Ultrasatan II for SD cards and love it too. I'm Happy to have a sTe in my collection.

 

[Astrofra]

Hey
This is the demo I worked on, with Cyg & 505 ! ("STrange Robots")

Glad to see that you like it

 

[Paradroid90]

Yeah Strange Robots I really liked

Expanded my collection with some disks from Dojo Dan which came with some Power Pack Disks and some disk only originals.

After some formatting on my pc of the disks I have expanded my games and demo collection.

Need to save up for an HD next

 

[Paradroid90]

Atari Ste Retrobrighted

Atari Ste Retrobrighted

As promised to my good friend Blues Brothers, my Atari STe has been retrobrighted because of the fantastic weather we are having in the Garden of England at present.

The result after just six hours in the Kentish Sunshine was great.

Might give it another bash in the summer as I still have a little yellowing burn left but please judge for yourself

I have attached before, after prep and after results

 

[BluesBrothers]

Looking good chap

Any plans to seal it?

 

[Paradroid90]

Will be Bud you cannot really tell but there is still some signs of yellowing burn at the bottom.

Might give it another quick bash before sealing it

 

[Zetr0]

I like this thread

+1!

 

[Paradroid90]

Thanks Keith

 

[Zetr0]

Your welcome buddy!

Its a great little read, and a cracking start on the Retr0-Brighting!

 

[Harrison]

I also have a soft spot for the ST. in the 80's I didn't know anything about the Amiga and had been following the ST wishing to own one, until I managed to save for an STFM in 1987. I really enjoyed owning that ST, and quite a few friends purchases them around the same time so we swapped games a lot.

Buying magazines I closely followed the development of the STE and wished I could own one, then the TT was released and that looked amazing at the time.. but way out of my budget. And the Falcon was just starting to be talked about when I suddenly jumped ship to the Amiga.

I had started to notice the screenshots on the back of game boxes. The Amiga versions were looking a lot better than the STs. And there had been the magazine ST/Amiga Format, which was clearly showing me how bad GEM was compared to Workbench! That still didn't put me off being a proud ST user. But then I did eventually get an Amiga in 1990 and the ST instantly fell by the way side.

The STFM was later sold as its PSU died and someone bought it for spares. But very recently I noticed an STFM for same for hardly any money and grabbed it to relive the old days. And then I just had to get hold of an STE as I'd always wanted one. Brilliant fun to watch all the demoscene productions I never knew about back in the day.

I haven't really expanded or upgraded the STE. It already had the full 4MB ram so that didn't need doing. I still want to setup a switching multirom and also get an HD solution of some sort for it at some point though.

I also remember well in about 1996 discovering ST emulation and having not owned an ST for some time really enjoyed playing around with that. And also came across an ST archive site containing every game. I utilised the Universities fast internet connection and downloaded the lot to Zip disks. Those were the days!

 

[Paradroid90]

Hi Guys

Just a quick update on my STE project.....The STE has now been fitted by our resident guru "TC" a IDE Interface from Alan Holraine http://www.freemint.org/ide/ide.html and with a spare 1GB CF Card now have a HD enviroment operational.

The CF Card was split into three partitions which now HD Adapted Games, ST Disk Images and Demos Ultities.

Using Drive Imager to transfer files from my PC is a bit tedious, but it is an on going project and I will get there in the end. With a TOS 2.06 upgrade means the CF Card boots on start up but is struggling with some HD adapted games (IE Lotus and Lotus II are just not having it :-( )

All in all its still fun and I am sure that very soon I will have a GEM enviroment which I am really proud of.

I will post some images later

Thanks for looking

 

[Gatecrasher]

Got me a 1040ste a few months ago, upgraded the memory to 4meg and added a 4160 sticker , now just added a Hxc Slim floppy emu and itreally is a great system and the memories come flooding back best game is OIDS and never came out on any other system.

I like the idea of having a internal HD/CF card sounds very appealing, it is a pity not more games etc have been adapted to run on the off the CF/HD like they have with WHD on the Amiga. still time though.

Nice machine Paradroid, i opted to spray paint mine and seal it with a uv clear-coat but the colour is alot darker than the original grey but I like it

Cheers

 

[sir_beaker]

I've got one TC is doing up Also going down the 4MB + HxC route.

I also got a Supercharger XT add on without any cables. Has anyone ever used any of these and know if they're any good?