10 Amazing Atari ST Facts 

As an Amiga owner back in the day, I was obviously in the anti-ST camp in playground debates at school, but have grown to really appreciate the machine! The main downfall was the sound chip imo. Amiga just blew it out the water in that area.

Great video! As someone from the USA who bought a Atari ST, I knew very few people here who had one. A couple friends bought one, but that was about it as most everyone was using dedicated game systems. Loved my ST

Good job. I live in Canada and my Dad bought us an Atari 520ST in the late 80's... I still have that machine and it produced endless hours of entertainment and memories I still hold dear to this day. I enjoyed watching your video!

I'm surprised you didn't mention another area where Atari ST/TT were really shining for quite some time - namely DTP and Calamus software. It was a significant milestone for this industry, similar to the influence of Atari in sound production that you covered.

I loved the Atari ST, a wonderful machine back in the day, happy memories, thanks for the video.

Fantastic video which has now left me with an overwhelming urge to go and have a few games of Llamatron

Oh, the memories! In my mid teens in '86 or I sold the Commodore 64 system I had scrimped, saved and bartered to assemble - it was pretty extensive - to fund the purchase of an Atari 520ST. It was awesome! I had it for about a year when I sold it to fund the purchase of my first car. Later I switched to back Commodore and owned three Amigas at different times. Those were the days!

I was a massive Atari ST enthusiast from about 1986-1995. By the end I had a 200mb ide hard drive, a double-speed mod, 19.2k serial port mod, HD floppy drive mod and a plug-in PC emulator. I created ads for two different companies on it, and of course... all those games!

I had an Atari SRFM and STE. I used them to compose music. The Atari monochrome monitor was the best I’ve ever used.

Here in the USA, the game that instantly turned the Amiga into the premier game development and target platform was in 1986 - Defender of the Crown. It's impossible to overstate the significance of Defender of the Crown, because just two years prior King's Quest wowed everyone and it made the IBM PC the premier game development platform ... but Defender of the Crown was so much more dazzling that it yanked away the PC's crown within just two years. The thing is - the IBM PC was always going to be a huge success, because people had already been waiting years for IBM's PC because they knew it would become the standard they had been desperately waiting for. So, if it had remained the premier game development platform for more than a couple years, that would have been the end of the story more or less. Defender of the Crown changed all that, and it wouldn't be until Wing Commander that the IBM PC took back the title. It's pretty crazy to see how so many (USA?) developers developed on and for the Amiga, despite sales that were far below the IBM PC. Things might have gone very differently had Defender of the Crown been originally developed on Atari ST. Things DEFINITELY would have gone very differently had Defender of the Crown been originally developed on IBM PC.

Ahh the memories of the 16bit home computer scene :-) Awesome video as always and thanks for all the work you put into them.

Llamatron was one of the best games ever.

This is an excellent presentation.. probably the best I have ever seen for the ST series!

I want to thank you for these types of videos covering the home computer scene during the 80's. As an american it has sparked a new avenue to explore these systems and where they fit into the industry as a whole

Well done sir,, excellent vid. So many memories

Great job, K! Fantastic work.

I once had the Atari ST, wow, this brought back memories. Thanks!!!

Nice Video, thanks! Lots of interesting info I did not know about!

The Falcon030 was a disaster for two main reasons apart from Atari's lack of support: 1) The 56000 DSP had a serious fault that corrupted memory making it unusable. 2) The supplied development software was crapp and there was no version of Pure C and Pure Debugger that worked under MultiTOS. This software was used for most of the serious German ST software development. Other German ST software that deserves mentioning were Interface (the best GEM resource editor), the Tempus editor, and Calamus desk top publisher. GEM was not a "Windows style GUI OS", it was a Xerox style GUI and Windows was a poor late comer. One feature of GEM programs was that all the menus and dialogs were in a separate .RSC file making it easy to translate programs into other languages. Try doing that on a PC or Mac.

Love my STE and Falcon. The Falcon should have been from day one a Jaguar Hybrid though, so it could have been a much faster cheaper machine, and also a much cheaper and easier Jaguar development system.

I’d be really interested to find out more about the ST clones. Great video as always.

Middle of the night. Massive old telly. Load up Xenon and pump up the sound. Happy days.

I had an Atari ST and later Atari TT. I learned a lot on that computer, including M68000 assembly and C (there was actual Borland C for Atari ST). There was also alternative kernel called MiNT that had stuff like preemptive multitasking MinixFS (a Unix-style filesystem), TCP/IP driver and even virtual consoles where you could switch between graphics and text console (and compared to usual Linux switching between X and console it was actually fast). I remember compiling NCSA httpd on my TT with gcc and it worked. I also got Linux-68K to run on TT as well. But then Linux on PC just took over for me.

Long live the glorious ST. I had a nice, little 1040 STe in 1990. Lovely machine.

The thing about Power Pack is absolutely true. During the years I had Atari ST I only got two new games (Dungeon Master and Populous 2) because the Power Pack kept me so well entertained.

Amazing what RU-vid suggests to you on occasions and how it can bring back some great memories. Still got my 520stfm up in its box in the attic along with probably 30 floppy discs of games. My favourite had to be flight simulator f16 fighting falcon, fantastic graphics for the time but damn complicated, I think it used almost all of the keyboard for specific functions while flying plus a joystick to actually control the plane.

First Word to do college work on the ST. That brings back memories. And hooked up to a Canon BJ10e inkjet where despite the volume of work, one ink cartridge lasted four months.

Really loved my ST machines. I owned an Atari ST-F, then an Atari ST-E. Also got a 520 in there as well. I used it mostly for games (with a touch of music as I owned an electronic keyboard then) and my dad used it mostly for it's "business side" with the spreadsheet, word, and some programming years in there. The whole family was ST (tho I had friends with the other systems like Amiga, MACs, and some consoles), it really was an awesome machine back then. My dad bought himself the first model with the external HDD drive featured in this video but I never got to use it as he sold it rather quickly. Returned to PC in 1993 on a 386, as Atari was all but gone as far as newer stuff and PC was starting to get much better games and I needed a PC to do work stuff on. I was pretty excited when I saw concepts for the "AtariST2" - the art with a backlit Atari keyboard unit... Unfortunately nothing ever came of it. Did get a PC C64 look-alike that's sitting on the desk behind me tho. A bit outdated now but I sue it to run emulation of old games from both C64/AtariST :) I miss the Atari computers. Too bad it wasn't meant to be.

In North America, there was no Speccy/C64 war. It was Atari XL/XE and Commodore 64/128. Since I done mostly music on my C64, I upgraded to an Atari ST, but had a friend with an Amiga that I mostly played newer games on. While I did play Dungeon Master on the ST (I still have the poster that came with the game) I mostly used the ST for music connected to my MIDI setup. Ironically, my friend with the Amiga, when he worked on demos, he would use samples and loops recorded from my ST powered MIDI rack. It would yet be several years at the time before the Amiga gotten powerful enough to run software synths that produce professional sound. Yet, it is 8-bit samples, so it really was never in the pro arena for music.

Atari was with the ST the only company in the home market that designed their own SCSI interface Hardware. It was based on the ASCI Bus interface. Atari made a reference design when the SCSI1 standard where released. All other used chips from Adaptec, Intel, NEC etc.

I think one of the big things about the popularity of the Atari ST was MIDI and the good prices offered by Silica Shop/Evesham Micros back in the day. I remember being made unemployed and was still able to get the funds together over time to get the ST520 and hook it up to my JX8P, Emu Proteus and Roland W30. Had it for many years and it still holds a spot in my heart. For sure the Amiga was the better choice for games but was too rich for me... plus the lack of MIDI and software like Cubase made the choice clear for fledgling musicians like myself until PCs came along.

Amiga guy here....minor in college was Computer Art and Animation. Prof was a huge ST guy and that was all we had. Spent hours and hours with Zoetrope creating anims. Had so much fun!

I had an STFM and a later STE (having started with an 800XL). All were great machines and fondly remembered.

My first computer was an Atari ST520 (later upgraded to 1MB RAM) and my second computer was an Atari STE (later upgraded to 2MB RAM). Both were for purposes of MIDI sequencing. Although both are long since dead, I still use the same program for MIDI sequencing today that I used then, Master Tracks Pro (but on my PC).

Thanks for the video. I tinkered a bit with a 260ST, and it actually had 512 KB RAM. About half of it remained after loading TOS. Replacing boot ROM with actual TOS chips turned it into 520ST. Other fun fact about these machines is that they were designed to have joystick/mouse ports integrated with the keyboard from the very beginning. On 260ST you have a myriad of cables connecting joystick ports from the mainboard directly to the keyboard, and then the joy/mouse/kbd data is going back via serial. [edit: fixed MB/KB mistake]

Excellent history lesson. I had no idea the laptops existed.

I had a 520STFM that from memory got upgraded to 4MB. Back in the day I use to lug it to gigs using Mastertracks 6.2 to play midi sequences along with live guitar/vocals as a solo musician. A 12" B&W TV completed the setup - "Those were the days!" LOL :)

I never owned either an ST or Amiga. But from the perspective from the playground (I was a kid at the time), the Amiga was the machine to own. But that's from the perspective of a child. I think the ST was the better choice for business software as it had more commercial software from known developers (including Microsoft and Word Perfect) which would have looked great on the ST's well regarded high resolution monochrome monitor. I think of the ST as more of an all rounder. With the exception of the MIDI niche, it was the Jack (pun intended) of all trades but the master of none - except maybe price. It had better games than the Mac / PC and better business software than the Amiga and it cost less than both. When Apple released their low cost colour Macs (starting with the Mac LC), more and more quality colour games were released on a machine that many families could afford (and wanted, because that's what they were using at work or school). At the same time, PCs started getting games getting close to the ST and Amiga's quality, and their GUI (Windows 3.x) was now good enough for wide adoption across all markets. This was the start of the demise of the ST and Amiga. Then first person shooters (Wolfenstein 3D and Doom) were the final nail in the coffin. Mostly though, I think Apple and IBM / Microsoft succeeded because they didn't just create one computer, but rather a platform. Atari and Commodore seemed to develop the ST and Amiga like a computer that they'd replace down the line, similar to when they replaced the Atari 8-bit and C64. When Atari and Commodore released proper upgrades (not just the STe or Amiga 600), it was perhaps too late.

Brought back some of my childhood, used to wright games on the ST using STOS, and after a while went to amiga using AMOS for game creating. anyhoo here is a fun fact, you could double the size of the disk by formatting the disk with 99 sectors giving you just over 1.3 megs of space. good times indeed.

Good video subbed!

From the late 80s to the mid 90s, we used a Mega ST for customer data, to write the invoices and do the accounting for the family business. It was a good, reliable machine. We switched to PC afterwards, because our tax accountant offered a better rate if we could provide digital data (on a floppy disk) instead of printed out reports.

As an old-school ST fan boy, from what I recall, project "Sparrow" was originally intended as an official expansion board that would allow ST owners to radically upgrade their old machines up to 32bit standard, but was ultimately scrapped in favour of creating the entirely new Falcon, albeit still utilising the original ST case. As is well known at this point, the planned new case for the Falcon 060 was bought by Sony, and was eventually fed to us as the PlayStation 2. (Not that any revised Falcon was going to be as powerful as that!). I still own the 520STFM (big button model with single sided disk drive) we had as the family computer since 1987, but also a good condition 520STE, which was launched in an attempt to match the performance of the Amiga. The Falcon however has become an absolute Unicorn of a machine, currently commanding about £3500 for a reasonably functional example. Such machines are widely considered more than a match for the Amigo 1200, although few exist without modifications, which obviously muddy the waters somewhat. I once lusted after a FireBee, bit now don't see much point: Give me a well-preserved Falcon or TT any day! Of course, a thoroughly sorted STE with 4mb of RAM, an UltraSatan and a Gotek conversion is still an absolute beast, and more than adequate for MIDI shenanigans, which is my ultimate goal...

The ST is one of the machines missing from my collection of old tech computers. One of these days I will find one. I do have an Atari 400 and 800XL but no ST class Atari machine.

Those Silica Ads brought back memories. I used to work for them in one of the Debenhams consessions.

I'm pretty sure that Australian commercial at 27:30 is exactly what sparked my dad into buying our 1040 for the family in 1989. In fact I'm sure it is, as I recall my dad asking my brother and I, "Do you kids like Double Dragon?" which was explicitely called out in the ad. We got the same power pack and didn't buy new software for a year, which confirms the problems the software houses raised at the time. By 1992 I couldn't find any software in Sydney, except from a musical instrument shop that had a handful of games. It was depressing going to large shops like The Gamesmen once per season and seeing the ST shelf shrink away to nothing. I stil have my 1040 STFM and all my ST magazines.

I bought a an STe specifically as a 'poor man's Mac'! I got the upgraded STe, the Atari 'Hi-Res' monitor (fantastic) AND a 20MB external hard drive from Germany! And it was Germany that led the ST's graphic design and desktop publishing arena with CALAMUS and DA's VECTOR PRO. I only eventually retired my STe while doing my Design degree when I traded it in for an Apple Performer 600!

My dad was too tight and bought me an ST and not an Amiga as a kid. I was the butt of all the jokes of my Amiga owning classmates. It was a good machine in its own right though not as good as the Amiga. The rivalry was intense and a bit bizarre. I did buy an Amiga many years later and in many respects the ST came with better software like STOS BASIC and was more user friendly with an inbuilt OS. I've not to this day found an arts program better than the hacked version of Neochrome called Neochrome Master.

I ran a business for many years off of an ST, then a TT030 (with the 19" Moniterm/Atari monitor). Applications such as Pagestream, Superbase Pro, Payroll Master, etc. made it quite easy to do. If I needed a good word processor, I'd fire up pfWrite Pro using PC Ditto, but later bought the ST version of Word Perfect. Over the years I also had many ST's, Mega STe's, a Falcon 030 (I hated it compared to the TT030), etc. I also ran a very successful BBS using Rats0ft (yes, that's the right spelling). I even had a 16mhz Stacy for a few years! I really miss those times.

Laird, you gave the ST it’s due! I didn’t know that a Soccer (Football?) game was the “turning point” where Amiga overtook the ST. I’m not a fan of sports games, and was too busy enjoying Domark’s Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back. Not to mention Space Gun, Super Space Invaders, OIDS, Goldrunner, Warlock, Indiana Jones/Temple of Doom, Ghouls and Ghosts, Gauntlet II, Road Blasters,Beast Busters,Better Dead Than Alien, and (of course!) Atari’s own Star Raiders. I lived within short driving distance of two ST dealers, and happily enjoyed cutting-edge game software from 1988 through the early 1990’s. The ST had me completely “hooked” when I loaded up “Goldrunner” for the first time. I still have a fully-functioning Mega4 and SC1224 monitor. And I still play most of the games listed above. But my Atari favorite will always be the 8-bit Atari 800/800XL. Commodore, Schlommodore!!!!! Atari shall ALWAYS RULE the 80’s!!!!!!!

It's kind of interesting to hear you say that the inclusion of lots of games with ST computers was an eventual downfall of the ST, I say this mainly because many IBM PC compatible PCs in the late 90s and early 2000s sold with large amounts of software and quite a few games included, this didn't really affect game and other software sales. Now of course when you buy a new PC, you only really get the operating system. I'd be interested to see if a company like RGL develop an Atari ST replica device. I've never actually used an ST as far as I know, but I think it's time we saw a resurgence of the ST as we've seen several reiterations of the Commodore 64.

I really really like this video. Best of luck!

The ST was used to write StarGate film score plus several other films. The ST which was used to write these scores only changed hands within the last year!!!! You missed this fact

The MiSTer is named after Amiga/ST, and (to me) is the real successor of these systems!

I held onto my 1040STfm until 1998 when I finally (regretfully) bought an Intel Celeryon. I sold it to one of Shania Twin’s songwriters.

this was my 1st 16 bit computer , then got an amiga to copy protected st discs , copied across the protection aswell

I was not previously aware of the intention for Windows to be run on the ST. Thank goodness that never came off. I remember the first time I used Windows, and how horrible I thought it was compared to my beloved ST and its GEM front end. I've never been much into games, and I mostly used my ST for graphics and especially DTP. I had a high res B&W monitor which was of startling quality. But when it came down to it, all I wanted was.a Mac but they were insanely expensive. Even so, it had a floppy disk drive! I always wanted a HDD but it's easy to forget just how expensive these were (and only 20MB).

The Atari ST is still the only system I got just so I could play one particular game, the legendary "Dungeon Master".

Wait a minute... Did I hear right man? Did you just say you were using the ST in college during the late 1980's? Man, I thought we were close to the same age man. I was around for the 1980's but really grew up in the 1990's (started college in 1998).

Whats's that 2D lookdown dungeon explorer game at about 4:58? It looks very like the 8-bit classic ATIC ATAC by Ultimate: Play The Game but apart from the slight graphic upgrade there are sufficient differences to make me wonder if it is an unofficial / fan made ST remake of ATIC ATAC. Where did that one come from?

I remember 6 player MiDi Maze, best game ever.

I liked GEM. When I left the ST behind and migrated to the PC I used GEM almost as much as I used DOS.

Interesting, but worth a mention is that the first computer to have MIDI Ports was a Yamaha computer (I forget the name, so long ago!) It was somewhat held back by the use of cartridges for games and 'apps' and of course, it also had the obligatory cassette tape machine on the side for data storage. But I remember my joy using its clunky score editing software to play a tune, replicated by a primative 4 operator software synth built in (but capable of running several voices simultaneously), a sort of forunner of the about to be announced DX7 synth from Yamaha themselves. I passed over from that computer (due to the cartridges) and eventually got a 1024 ST, along with a hacked version of Steinbergs Pro 16 software... followed by Pro 24. No audio at this point, just a MIDI editing program. Later came Cubase (although I don't think it was called that initially) but sadly the ST really wasn't up to running audio! So the falcon got released. I stuck with my trusty ST for many years, and opening a studio, I had to shell out for the Steinberg Software.... expensive! I eventually could afford a PC and then dived into Cubase (and bought it!). Never looked back :) But happy days with the ST. It's MIDI timing was rock steady. A legend.

I had a 1040ST and an Amiga 500 at the same time and they both had their uses. The Amiga graphics and sound were far better as well as gaming. I enjoyed the PC and Mac emulation on the ST.

Excuse me sir, hello. You took me back to a wonderful time I had long forgotten. My youth! Thank you. I have a question, If I may ask? You obviously have a knowledge of games. I'm sure you remember the game Tempest? Not many games were made with a similar style of play, or controls. So, I've been on the hunt for the name of an arcade game, (mid-eighties) that had the same spin knob in the middle with the fire button off to the side. It had to do with a big, white skull in the middle of the screen that bobbed and weaved. It's exterior had to be broken before it could be defeated. I want to say that the exterior looked like stalactites. Anyhow, I apologize for taking up so much of your time. Thanks again for bringing back great memories.

I had a monster ST system with the laser printer, scanners, digitizers & everything else that could be had except for the cd drive which they did have in my local store but nothing to use on it. Ultimately over time there was no new software and the system was just plain aged so I jumped to PC... 🤗

A couple of errors here, the STe launched just before the TT030, which was delayed as the CPU was upgraded from 16MHz to 32MHz, the Mega STe launched towards the end of 1990 using the TT case and ST colours, not the order you have here. Also while the TT had a few other resolutions to the STe, due to lack of Blitter chip, the graphics processor was not as powerful, relying on the 69030 to provide the processing power like the ST originally. One issue with marketing the Falcon was that Atari didn’t want to fund this, as it turned out they didn’t have the money, so the industry that supported the computers put a marketing campaign together that made no sense what so ever. No one knew what the falcon was capable of, let alone that it was available! The Mega STe also used the STacy laptops SCSI adapter board to convert an internal DMA port connector to SCSI while the TT had SCSI directly on the motherboard.

best software was 'on-stage'. I could prepare my midi files at home, then just take the ST and a sound module (Dr Boss by Roland) to the theatre. Plug it in and turn on and it would auto-boot, loading the midi files into memory. Then using the numeric keypad get instant playback of the files. e.g. 1 for the overture, 2 for the arrival of the fairy, 3 for the villain's music etc. Play along with these on the digital piano and even let Iain play along on the drums, much better as my tempo was strict playing along with the midi files.

Great video. I was an Amiga user.. lol Tossers!!

I bought one of the first ST's. It was so early the ROMs weren't done yet so it came with a simple ROM that loaded the system from a floppy. Eventually they sent me the real ROMs and instructions on how to install them. Fun days. I did a lot of code writing on that machine and now long vanished programing language product called Dragon FORTH. I still have it boxed up in storage. I wonder if it would still boot...

My understanding from listening to interview of the Amiga crew is that it was Jack Tramiel who didn't want to purchase Amiga. When Amiga borrowed some money from Atari it used its intellectual property as a collateral. So Tramiel was betting on Amiga unable to reimburse the loan so that he would get all of Amiga's IP without spending an extra dime. Unfortunately for him, Commodore swooped in and bought Amiga one day before the reimbursement deadline. In the U.S. many companies didn't want to have anything to do with Atari, not because of its association with video games but because of Jack Tramiel's ruthless, take-no-prisoner, screw-your-partner reputation. He burned way too many bridges as the head of Commodore. As far as newer versions (STE, TT, Falcon), it was too little too late when facing the Amiga and the PC. Another big mistake was the "if you build it, they will come" approach. When you release a new system with beefed up hardware, it is critical to release software which showcases said hardware. Just like a picture is worth a thousand words, a demo is worth a thousand spec sheets. The original Atari ST had the GUI as killer demo (as well as a beautiful waterfall demo). I don't remember anything about subsequent models which generated excitement. Note that Sinclair and Commodore did the same mistake with resp. the QL and subsequent Amiga models.

A time when a new computer was always a revolution in terms of specs and performance, moving, as I did from a ZX-Spectrum to a PC-XT-CGA/MDA was amazing, and then from a 80286-EGA to a 80386-VGA then 80486-SVGA ... and it was like that till the PII, after that, yes computers were faster but no more this giant performance gap as in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s.

Still got my STFM but I'm in the process of exporting my music stuff before decommissioning it to make space.

24:04 If this looks familiar to people: Sony actually purchased the MicroBox design from Atari, so yeah, the Playstation 2 was technically designed by Atari. The US Patent (US D450,318 S) explicitly mentions the MicroBox.

Another thing that hampered the ST was the jump in price for games £14 to £24 for you regular title. A massive hike in the mid 80s

I've not had any meaningful experience with either the Atari ST or Commodore Amiga, I was born in 1984 so I was a bit young to understand computers when these machines were on the market, I just think it's a dreadful shame that both Atari and Commodore were so badly managed and both went bankrupt in the 90s. I can remember seeing an Atari Lynx in 1993 and I wanted one, I got one in 1996, but by then Atari were just about to shut up shop.

18:28 What is this Alien Breed looking game playing in the background?

I had the Signum DTP program, it was next level, at the time. We got Dungeonmaster first too. I would have gotten an Amiga had I known Jay Miner went over to Commodore probably. Edit: I got in at the 520stfm era.

I was wondering what happened to your channel cause it never came up in my feed anymore. RU-vid unsubscribed me. I Subscribed again. I just thought you should know that.

Here is the 11th amazing fact. Everyone can talk about how the St was as good or better than the Amiga if they want. The truth is it only exists because they weren't able to secure the Amiga's custom chips. Atari really wanted the Amiga's custom chips because they recognized they couldn't do better. That was their original intent, and you can argue about it all you want. No, the Amiga did not come standard with MIDI ports something a vast majority would never use. I did however add them to my A2000 back in the day for less than $30. Atari eventually added a Blitter and an upgraded sound chip to compete with the Amiga which had them from the beginning. The Amiga was always able to utilize this because all Amiga's had them, but because Atari added them late in the game, they were never able to utilize said chips because as we all know publishers write for the lowest common denominator and most of the St base did not have them.

Sony PS2 design looks very similar to the Falcon 030 MICROBOX

Though I was a Commodore 64 and then Amiga owner, I did buy a second-hand Atari ST (external floppy drive and modulator) purely to play Oids, which never came to the Amiga. I still have it, somewhere. [Edit] What's the game at 14:05?

I remember running a PC emulator on Atari (I guess it was PC Ditto) and loading Larry 1. It was a nightmare to play because the game was so unresponsive. The only thing which worked on that PC emulator in a non-irritating game was some English learning program.

How about some Coleco Adam computer love? It was the basis for the MSX and Sega Mark I

I have two Atari ST in my computer room closet. Don't know what I'll do with them yet, lol.

LOL Skullduggery I used to love that game

Not reminiscing, I'm playing the 1040st/e tonight

Pc Ditto was sooooo slow. 20% of an 8088.

@4:20 Jack did not "find out" that Atari is on the sale but CEO of Warner call Jack and make him an offer! Tramiel mention that he was on leisure trip around the world when Warner CEO give him a call.

@5:20 Jack Tramiel did CONTRA-SUE Commodore regarding Amiga only after Commodore fill law suit against six Jack engineering and effectively block future development of ST.

The st was a great computer but it needed a better screen resolution and the ste improved it quite a bit the falcon is what the machine really should have been

I still want a Falcon 030 or 040.

Well, now I get the feeling I got ripped off by that "great offer" with Atari 1040 STfm, that came only with Omikron Basic disk in 1990 :|

Great history, not sure what the 10 facts were though.

...Otherwise great video! Thanks!!

Llamatron sucked away my childhood. Can I have it back!!

my brother had an Atari 520 ST i had a commodore 64. I thought the design of the Atari was sooo much better than the C64

@5:00 how that Jack Tramiel is "divisive" when Amiga guys work an agreement "under the table" with Commodore... I would say that they were "divisive".

Love your videos, but why do you show mostly games in the background, especially when you're explaining business software? Anyway, I loved my 520ST which surpasses the Amiga with its 640/400 resolution in b&w, making it a perfect cheaper Mac. The Amiga could only do 640/512 in interlaced mode, thus quite unusable. I sold my ST for the crappy keyboard and bought an Amiga 500 which I regretted later. Cheers!

The Microbox looks like it could be a prototype PS2. I remember Edge's supplement in 1993 showing the upcoming 32 bit systems the prototype Playstation (or PSX as it was called then) looked gorgeous. The grey slab that was officially released was a huge let down. I never knew anyone who owned a Falcon, know a good few people who owned original STs as well as the various Amigas but never a Falcon. I live 10 minutes on the train from Glasgow so we had easy access to the famous Barras market which covered all our cheap pirate game needs. They even done SNES copies. Mainstream media tried to paint the pirates as scumbags but the Barras was only open 2 days a week so they thrived on their reputation. If you took a disc home and it didn't work they had a strict replace or refund policy after they tested the disc first. They made silly amounts of money selling their stuff at £3 a disc or 2 for a fiver, it wasn't in their interests to start screwing their punters for the sake of a few quid. At one point it was all done at the one stall in front of you but after a bust you would place your order then a wee guy would disappear for about ten minutes then he'd come back with your games. Eventually they started putting look outs on the main entry points to the market. They were at it right up to the PS2 AFAIK, I've not been up post PS1.

I see lot of lovers of Dungeon Master. I can pointed you to "Legend of Grimrock" game - it was made by a Dungeon Master lovers :)