At last! An Atari ST in The Cave - Meeting and Restoring a 520 STFM 

🎵 Only Atari ST makes it possible 🎵 This was great fun to explore and I'm looking forward to your suggestions on what upgrades to install. What should I order and where do you recommend I get the parts from? Thank you to ru-vid.com for joining us on this episode, he's always a huge help, and why not consider giving his channel a sub for more repair vids Neil - RMC

I couldn't be happier to see the Atari ST finally make it to a series. I love my ST!

More ST content please, there are tens of us out here :D

I remember owning an Atari ST 520 STFM as a kid and wanted to upgrade the internal single sided disk drive. The new drive arrived but was disappointed to find that the drive bay slot on the Atari case would need modification to allow disk insertion into the new drive. My father, hacksaw in hand and a glint in his eye, said 'Don't worry son, I will resolve this for you, do not fear'! Before I could protest my Atari was whisked away to his shed and after much banging and crashing and horrific zip, zip, zip sounds my father returned proudly holding a case that looked as though it had been inserted into an industrial threshing machine. The drive worked just fine but you could have driven a bus into that insertion slot. Bless you dad, love you loads! 😘

The YM2149 was used because it had additional IO Ports. The parallel (printer) port is driven over these IOs. The ST was cheap because of its reduced chip count. It was not only the MIDI-ports but also the ability to "shut down" nearly all hardware to create an real-time environment that made the ST the MIDI-machine we know. The MegaST1 was the first ST with a Blitter chip. They omitted the Blitter because of supply problems. Early versions of the Blitter weren't stable and had a lot of dead chips in production. The first Blitter you could buy where the version 5 or 6. (You could buy the Bitter as an "upgrade" for the ST together with TOS 1.04 directly from Atari at some point) You can add 512k on the second bank. On some models the needed additional resitors are already installed, not on others. If some Resistors between the MCU and RAM are missing add some with 47-Ohm. The MCU is overloaded when the RAM is selected if the resitors are missing (bridged). To expand the RAM to 4Mb (max possible) needs some additional Resistors and RAM-select Line from the MCU. 520 ST you have is a very late model. The Custom ICs aren't socked as in early revisions of the board. The floppy is also the later model with the small eject button. The early floppies are less reliable, create the "known" noisy floppy sound and are receptive to the "headcrash visus" ( A boot sector virus that would drive the floppy head so far back that i got stuck and possibly disalign the floppy ) The SM124 Monitor is a must to use. With 72Hz it was a joy to work with. You can run onto problems with the ACSI port. It uses internal "inverter delay timer" to create the communication timings with the hardware. Because of the age the timings can get somewhat distorted (shortened) As a result some hardware didn't work. Lowering the voltage of the IC with a diode can help.

List of things i love about the ST: 1. Jaunty function keys. 2. ..... that is all.

Thanks for taking the ST on it own merits. It's not An Amiga, it's an ST. It was a low cost, general purpose computer that many of us used as a games machine (well a few of us here in the USA, but many more in the UK, etc) right as the 8bits were getting long in the tooth. It provided a bridge between the 8bit gaming systems and the 1991-1994 Amiga years, but hardly ever gets the recognition it deserves. The winners write the history books, but for some reason the ST years are never talked about...except on podcasts and channels like ours (and now yours of course). Upgrades: You can add the Blitter, and the Ultra Satan hard drive as well as a VGA out. You can replace the floppy with a USB one also. The Blitter will allow you to have better scrolling / animation in a number of games that are specifically Blitter enhanced.

The Blitter chip actually can be fitted to that ST, and will be used by TOS 1.04. Blitter was also present in some later Mega STs.

I started with an Atari 800 and then went to the 520ST. Atari was a foundational part of my childhood. It is where I learned to program and set me fourth on my lifelong career. The ST was an absolute amazing computer.

All the Amiga's in the cave start to mysteriously emit strange, eery sounds, Lost Ark Of The Covenant style....

Finally, my favorite computer on my favorite youtube show! ;-)

I just donated a 520ST to Adrian from Adrian's Digital Basement because it was something I can't get running again as I don't have the equipment, and it was completely borked. He fixed it! Maybe one day I can take a trip to the cave and finally play one.

The blitter actually came with the Mega ST, a couple of years before the STe came out.

Finally, a video that's not about the bloody Amiga!

Get a copy of the B.I.G. Demo, you'll see what the ST is capable of, without expansion!, I have an ST ;I did have all the games you guys had on your tabel, and even taught myself to program in Assembly on this machine, this was my life! This is how over the years I got into IT because of this small beginning!

I miss my Atari 520ST. I had one kick ass system back in 1987, with both the RGB and Monochrome monitors with a switcher to allow me to boot either depending on which one I wanted. I had 2 Hard Drives mounted in an XT case, LOADS of software, peripherals, an Epson 24 pin printer, and so on. In 1990 I sold all of that to get a.....well, 286 PC clone that I built. I went on to become a huge PC enthusiast, but I still would absolutely LOVE to have my old ST system back today, sitting along side my PC. (sigh)......oh the good ole days! The late 80's and early 90's were a lot of fun! I grew up with computers through the late 70's, and had a computer of some kind since 1982. But the ST is still my most beloved and missed computer of all-time!

Loved my ST, great to see some love here for it 🙌🏼 BitMap brothers games… happy days

Little Extra Club! Memories flooding back.

rmc is the warm cardy, cup of tea, and a biscuit of the internet

I had a 1040 STFM at first, then I sold it to get a Mega STE. The Mega STE is actually still in my basement. 40MB internal HD. Yes!

It's nice to have a video on Tramiel's Revenge.

About bloody time!

My first 16 bit computer was the same Atari STFM purchased in 1988 here in Canada, after migrating from the 8 bit Atari computers. Obliterator was one of the first games purchased for this machine. Obliterator lagged so much and was so hard to control, but it was the best thing since sliced bread at the time. Zenon 1 though, was simply jaw dropping regarding soundtrack and how amazingly smooth it played...super sweet memories!

Oh jeez, I had one of those Halifax little xtra club money boxes. That brings back some long forgotten memories!

I owned one of these back in the day. i had it for about a year until my cousin brought his computer over to my house, and the games looked and sounded so much better on his machine. I then realised I had bought the wrong computer, so I sold it at a ridiculously low price and bought one of those instead (and never looked back). The computer my cousin had...yes it was an Amiga.

As a former french demomaker (Secotr One), I'm very happy to see both ST enthusiasts like you guys. Keep it up !

This was my second computer as a kid, after the Spectrum +2B and before the Amiga 1200. All of them were second hand and I was always about 4 or 5 years behind everyone else as a kid, computer-wise (the benefit being cheap games at car boot sales!) I saved up pocket money for months to buy a 1meg upgrade for my Atari STFM. Unfortunately my motherboard revision required patch cables and soldering when the upgrade arrived. I was just a kid and didn't really know what I was doing, but my youthful hubris led to me pushing ahead anyway. Sadly, that was the death of my machine! I'm sure you'll be much more successful! Soon after I got my A1200, and left upgrading until I was a teen, adding a CD drive, which blew my mind - going from disks to CDs was amazing, and this was when Amiga Format was still around and doing cover CDs - heaven :)

Looking forward to part 2. As a former Amiga 500 owner, I've always been curious about the Atari ST line of computers to see how the competition did things.

Yes, the Atari ST. I love the ST (yes and the Amiga) For me ST was my music system and the Amiga my game system. I had a Apple Macintosh hardware emulator in it, and later a 8080 TX hardware emulator build in my Atari ST. And I made a cap’s-lock LED in the ST.

I missed out on the amiga/st era i was 18 at the time and had found the joys of illegal raves (warehouse party's) and pubs.

Lots of love for the Atari ST from me. Thanks for putting it on the channel.

I just popped in to say "Dungeon Master FTW!"

Great to see an ST 😁 1MB RAM, blitter. Gotek. Satan disk. And try the few games that supported midi, connecting your Mt32, or SC 55 in Mt 32 mode. Games like the ones from Sierra and Cruse for a Corpse sound great in midi. Via the rgb scart, it looks really sharp and crisp on a Sony PVM.

Good job reviving and giving some love to this ST. Thank you for sharing.

My first PC in December (Christmas) 1985 was an Atari 130XE. But I never had a floppy disk, I had a tape deck that went with it. The ST was the stuff of dreams! I was 13 years old! I have been gaming on PC ever since. I still hark after coding in basic, loading up on tapes. Twas an excellent machine, much better than the C64, Spectrum ZX. I had the upgrades over time as well. I used this well into the mid 1990s. It's possible that it's still in my mother's loft somewhere!

My first job after school was repairing computers and printers for a retailer. We handled both the Atari ST range and the Amiga Range, and it was interesting comparing their construction. As I remember it the Amiga was built following all the design rules of the time. A lot of circuits was socketed and they used pull down resistor nets like it was a religion. Capacitators were used everywhere you were told they should be, every port had buffer chips to preserve signal integrity and so on. The Atari on the other hand was obviously built to a price point. Pulldown resistor nets were used if they were necessary, capacitors were sparingly used, the ports were directly wired to the logic chips without any buffers and there were very few socketed chips. Given the differences you would have thought that the Amiga would be the more robust design, but our experience was that it was the other way around. Now a lot of that had to do with the large socketed chips that tended to creep as the computer chassis flexed when it was moved. But we also had some problems with ports that got burned out even though on paper they should be way more resilient than those on the Atari ST machines. OK, so I've done my part and gotten that old story typed out. It's been a long time since I opened one of those machines. The fun thing was that back then there were no problem to get the circuit diagrams for machines like this. Today I don't think it would be as easy...

I have commented many times about my fandom for the Amiga. But I have a soft spot for the ST, as before I ever owned my first A500 my first sight of 16-bit gaming was on a friend's STFM... and it blew my 8-bit world away! A lot of folk fondly remember the Amiga these days, but we should remember how accessible the ST was in the late 80s. Not least it was considerably easier to afford and in 1987/88 it generally got more games than the A1000 or 500. Early on it was a no-brainer which to pick...

I had an STFM once. The cream helped a lot with the itching.

Got my 520STFM from Silica Shop for £299 in 1987. Used my Hitachi 12" TV and a second floppy. Dungeon Master was my favourite game. Traded it in a couple of years later for an Amiga A500... 😁

Another fascinating video. I love the interaction between the two presenters!

seriously guys your work is awesome, could watch these all day

I love the Atari ST family of computers! My brother used to have a 1040 STE back in the day that he sold a few years later. I bought another one again in 2009 or 2010 off of Ebay and upgraded the RAM to 4MB (no soldering, just a nice slot). I have so many memories with this machine; desktop publishing, drawing, music composition, and of course, games and "the demo scene". I cannot count the hours of enjoyment I got out of it, it's now back home in a closet and I haven't seen it since 2011. This video made me miss it so much. I also own an Amiga 500 Plus so I had the joy of having two of the most iconic gaming PCs of the late 80's and early 90's. What a great time it was!

Thanks for this video. Great fun to see the two of you cooperate!

I saved and saved to buy an STFM in 1988 from the Atari computer shop in Broad Street in Birmingham (UK) - I loved to play AH64 Gunship, Barbarian, Hostages, Captain Blood, Silkworm, Outrun and some programming with SToS and much much more. I also bought a Star LC10 dot matrix printer too! - in terms of Midi I understood that the 1988 album Optical Race from Tangerine Dream was composed on an ST but cannot confirm this.

Good to see you covering what I grew up with. I’ve till for a Mega STE and a Falcon. Wrote programs and gamed on the ST, and it’s responsible for my career in IT.

Great video, thanks for finally getting to the ST.

I loved Corporation on the ST.

Great collab guys, nice to see some ST action in the cave!

Started off with a 2nd-hand 520STM & external drive bought from One Step Beyond in Norwich when I first started college there. Problem with that machine was that I had to load TOS from disk up front, which left bugger all ram to do anything. And PSU's everywhere as the STM & drive had external PSUs. So, after working the summer I got a Philips 14" colour TV, an Atari SM124 mono monitor and... a 520STE :) Four months later, a Third Coast Technology 20mb (yes meg) Hard Disk - for £600!!! - and an NEC P2200 24 pin printer. And Calligrapher word processor on cartridge. Designed a 200 page software manual on that, and printed it on the NEC! Neighbours weren't happy with the noise! I did pass the course :)

Atari 520 STFM - My entry into the world of 16-Bit. I have such strong memories of my Nan buying it for me from a second-hand computer hardware shop in about 1993. I spent so many hours on my ST playing games (naturally): Lotus III: The Ultimate Challenge, OutRun, Chase HQ, Elite, Xenon 2, RoboCop, RoboCop 2,... So many hours creating imagery using Hyperpaint 2.

In the states, some publications referred to the ST as the "Jacintosh".

As someone who had an Amiga & only knew people with Amiga's I didn't have any access to the ST, I have to admit that all these years later I really like the aesthetics of the ST.

I'm so glad to see this series. I remember seeing adverts for the Atari ST and I had an Amiga friend who rubbished them but I've never seen one working.

I love my ST. Mine powered a set of midi keyboards using Cubase and a monochrome monitor in a music studio for decades. It is a 1040stf and sometime along it’s lifespan had the blitter installed. It lives out it’s retirement playing games on a correct sc1224 color monitor. I’m so glad you’re getting into the ST it’s my all-time favorite 80s computer

...always nice to see my first personal computer.

An ST in the cave! About time. One really interesting thing about the ST was because the earlier models came with a single sided 360k 3.5 inch floppy a lot of games accounted for that. So when the cracking crews came along and ST's were shipping with 720k drives we had CDs (not the optical kind). Our CDs were 720k disks with flashy demoesque menus where you could select from multiple cracked games on a single disk. Common on the ST.....not so on the Amiga as i understand.

I loved this one, guys! Good job! My very first computer was a 520STE complete with an external HDD and dot matrix printer. Had that from 1990 'till my parents bought me my very first PC around 95/96. Sensible Soccer, Monkey Island, Double Dragon, Bubble Bobble and Carrier Command were my favourite games.

Great to see the ST on RMC!

Loved the ST we had 3 of them over the years. Used to learn C, assembler. Great machine apart from PSU overheating

The Atari STE 520 was my first true 16bit computer before I went Amiga. Got it for christmas 1990 and it was the Turbo pack with Dragons Breath and some other bits. I loved that machine to death! got a memory to upgrade from analogic taking it up to 1024. Brilliant machine! I then stumbled upon Menu disks. I then got into music and never looked back. Even though I am Amiga nut I will always have desk space for an ST :)

I have that Halifax money box too, although I painted over it with Humbrol Airfix paint when I got bored one day, so now it has a silver roof, matte black walls and an olive drab foundation.

Cor blimey! I watched that previous STFM episode. I can't believe it was that long ago! I had that exact pack, back in the day. Happy days

About time! The ST was my introduction to computing. I had a 520 STFM Discovery pack just like this one, which we eventually had upgraded to 4MB RAM I’m the early 90s. The first game I played on it was the TMNT port (my parents tricked me into thinking they’d bought it by mistake for the 2600 we had!) which I actually spent days trying to get to work properly as my character wouldn’t move on the overhead view. It turns out I had autofire switched on my joystick! Really interested to see where this series goes, as there aren’t many videos on RU-vid about how to upgrade and enhance the ST. I wonder if the PiStorm would work?

Great. I have my own Atari now!

Great having my favorite retro system (after the commodore plus/4) on your show. I am still creative on this plattform and i love it and the community involved with it. Edit: Congrats to the 2:0 from Germany@

I'm a mature adult these days and can appreciate this look back at what was a decent comput... NO KILL IT WITH FIRE! AMIGA FOREVER!!!!!1 (he says writing this on custom built pc)

Nice to see one on the channel. I got myself an Atari ST a couple of months back to add to my collection, never owned 1 back in the day. Though I went for a 520STE (badged 4160STE). As well as the bonus of the Enhanced features, they're also easier to upgrade to 4MB RAM, thanks to the standard 30-pin SIMM slots. I'd definitely recommend a Gotek with FlashFloppy firmware + HXC Selector software, that's what I'm running on mine with a 3D printed bracket purchased from eBay and it's ideal. There's the UltraSatan HDD option available too. On that STFM, definitely consider installing the extra RAM, especially if you're considering the HDD option.

Finest home computer ever made!!

This was awesome. Brought back some memories. My Dad had an Atari 520ST. Not sure which version but I remember hooking up my Casio CZ101 and creating music with it. Best electronic music composing machine on the market back then.

One of my favourites. A Great home computer. I had my ram upgraded at a local computer shop. I wrote one game for the STFM. It wasn't great but it did get published and is out there still. It was called 'the Secret of Steel'. Only got a few hundred quid for it.

I had the 1040STE. Served me well.

I remember hearing Madonna's 'Get Into The Groove' for the first time on a friend's Atari ST.

I still got mine it's not been used for 20yrs but its still tidy never got the 1040 upgrade as never could afford it back in the day. Would donate to the cave as long as its not stored in the special space for STs. Still have so many games to. Ah nostalgia.

This got me through college. I had a 520 that was upgraded with Double sided drive and extra ram soldered in, and used with extra floppy drive and SM124. Even networked it through the serial cables and midi ports with others who also had. Used it to write and test my course work.

Looking forward to the rest of this series. I know very little about the ST

Amiga swear jar ! Brilliant 👏

The ST was great for the 3 years I owned it...before I traded it in for an Amiga.

I had a 520STFM in the late 80s and really enjoyed the machine. I regret selling it to this day (to buy a VHS player of all things!). Picked up a 1040STF recently that needs some TLC so will certainly be doing a full restore on it in the coming months.

I had an STFM back in the day and loved it. Yes whilst not technically has good as the Amiga it did have some great games for it some of which were exclusive to the format. Great to see one finally enter the cave.

Great video guys, Mark even survived the experience of touching the evil enemy of the big 'A' ;) After coveting an Amiga 1000 from afar (there was no way I was ever going to be able afford one), I bought an Amiga 500 on launch. But, like a large number of other early Amiga owners, both my floppy drive and mouse soon stopped working. This happened to so many people in fact, that there were not enough spares available, so I had to wait a month or so before I could get my machine up and running. Having put forward my entire life savings at the time to get this machine, I lost faith and instead, took my machine back for a full refund and bought an Atari 520 STFM with a high resolution monochrome monitor at a discount (from the shop I worked at previously). Games were played via the RF interface to a TV and later a Colour monitor with a switch was added. This machine introduced me to the power of full screen desk top publishing, which I used to take my magazine (Micro's Gazette) to the next level. It was my workhorse, my equivalent of the IBM PCs I used at work. I also got into programming the Gem window environment and put together some business applications (having moved on from writing games for the 8-bits). I did slowly upgrade, replacing the 520 with a 1040 and then that with a 1040STE, and then that with a Mega STE. Another great thing about the machine is the disc format is perfectly readable on a IBM PC, using the same sector and track layout, along with the same FAT as PC Jr machines. I recovered the text of my first book from my Atari ST discs, that I had written using Microsoft Write. And just so Mark doesn't get too unhappy, I did come back to the Amiga machines, starting with a 2nd hand 500, then a gifted 1000, a 1200 and my most recent machine is a very nice 2000. Definitely Ram (and I think you can install up to 4MB) and a floppy emulator as a minimum. Hard Disks will depend on what you can get hold of, I have one of the removeable cartridge hard drives that works quite well (extremely short DMA cable aside).

I always lusted after that Atari ST512. Such a gorgeous design. Its still looks like a Million bucks. However, I was working as a computer technician at Boeing of Canada, and I ended up building an IBM AT compatible with a math co-processor, to run AutoCad back in 1985. I should've bought the damn thing back then. Regrets, I have many...

I gasped when you brought the TV on: I had the exact same set alongside my STe when I was a child.

The Atari ST and the Amiga were the stuff of legends for me as a mere C64 owner. I had very little money at my disposal for entertaining my computerneeds back in the day. I was faced with buying a 1541 diskdrive for my C64 and being able to afford blank disks or buying an Amiga 500 or Atari ST with me being only able to afford blank disks very sparingly. 3.5" floppies - ones that worked in the ST or the Amiga were very expensive. The MSX 3.5" worked well with the much cheaper 720Kb SD disks. I ended up playing the ST and the Amiga over at friend's places and stuck with the C64 well into university (early 90s), then I got my paws on a MSX2 machine and was emulating that on my Philips PC XT NMS9100. Then the 486SX-25 for my thesis; upgrading that - the onset of UAE, Fellow - and finally buying an Amiga 500 and later a 1200 as an early retrogamer starting to collect systems very early on.

I'm a Concorde guy, but Concordski was quite stylish.

The joint history from Atari and Commodore is pretty mind boggling.

I had one of these back in the day (my then brother-in-law had an Amiga too), it replaced my Atari 800XL, I even bought myself a colour dot matrix printer! Brings back fond memories :)

Great video, I had an ST and loved it. Superb machine to program and had some great games. The Amiga and ST are much like the C64 and Spectrum for me. All great machines with their own strengths.

An ST 😍 Now we're talking!

Great to see some ST love going on in the cave! Don't forget, Amiga and ST can be friends, with a null modem cable. You can play games like Falcon + other flight sims, Armour-Geddon, etc in some sort of vs or even coop modes, depending on the game. Go on Neil, I know you want to explore that! :)

Hilarious how Mark just takes the disk and slides it in and out. Never fails to fit in the innuendo....lmao! I love it!

I had an Atari STe from 91 to 93. Had an amzing time with it. great gaming moments were made for me from this machine. I eventually upgraded to an Amiga1200, had that from 93 to 96.

On the one megabyte upgrade. You only need to add the RAM chips. I actually did that back in the day

I just discovered this channel today through your Kickstarter, which I backed, only to find this gem of nostalgia (pun intended)! My first computer was this exact STFM model with the same discovery pack, which I got in 1991 I think. I bought the upgrade to 4Mb of memory for around £100 in 94 and I remember that came as a kit with instructions if you were brave enough to do it yourself, which I turned out not to be after trying to make sense of the rather vague instructions. So I had to pay extra to get it installed! It was great because I could load some games into RAM disks and play them without having to swap disks! Sadly and unknown to me, the ST and all my floppies were moved to a cold, damp room while I was away for a few months, and most of them failed to load when I got back, and eventually none worked at all. I think the disk drive must have been affected too. I remember seeing ads for I think 40/80/120 Mb hard drives but they were too expensive for me. It's a shame hard drives were not more affordable at that time.

My most enjoyable experience of the atari ST was playing "MIDI maze" with multiple St's where the MIDI ports would make up the network! You must try it!

Loved the Atari ST, was the first computer I had as a young lad. It was the Amiga's equal but they both had their strengths and weaknesses. Both magical machines when played to their strengths. I still regret not rescuing my 1040 STFM when I had the chance from my parents house before it was thrown away in a major spring clean.

The first computer I experienced was the BBC Basic at school but the first computer that was MINE was The Atari ST and it has a huge place in my heart. I loved playing on my mate’s Amiga, but always had more love for the ‘underdog’ ST! I’ve ended up with 2 now, still love it!!

So I am a bit ahead of you on my own STE journey. I dug the machine out a few weeks ago and fitted an OpenFlops drive. I then dug a little deeper in the garage and found a 20MB Megafile HD in original box complete with price tag which when I plugged it in not only worked but booted up my old custom desktop. It uses an old style RLL Drive which I don’t think are manufactured any more. I also found 2 cardboard boxes full of original big box games complete with manuals and all the gubbins that came in the boxes. I now have a GreaseWeazle ready to try and image all these original disks plus a storage box of random floppies I found in the shed. I have a memory upgrade from Exxos ready to install when time permits. I also have the original Atari Mouse. Machine needs a thorough clean and a retrobrite at some point plus some tlc for the power supply caps

The type of content I like like!

My Dad bought a 1040ST when I was a kid and I loved playing a Star Trek game (can't remember what it was called) on it. Good old days!

Amiga 500 kicks this puppy to the curb when it comes to sound and graphics! It kicked every computer of the day to the curb as well. Including the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh.