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Dutch legend has been running his campsite since 1986 using an Atari ST:
If there's one thing YouTuber Viktor Bart likes, it's retro computers: his channel is dedicated to videos about building old machines, their functions, cool oddities, and just generally the joy of these beige things. Even Mr. Bart, however, was surprised by what he found in Koningsbosch, in the Dutch province of Limburg: a campsite that's been run since 1986 on an Atari ST.
[Ed note: Is there anybody here who has an Atari ST? Please share your experience in the comments.
I bought its predecessor, an Atari 800, in 1980. Even got an expansion cartridge to boost memory from the on-board 8 KB RAM. Yes, I spent countless hours playing Star Raiders. It was not as capable as the Atari ST, but it was a fun system that booted up instantly!]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Spamalope on Sunday October 03 2021, @06:26PM (2 children)
Lmao. Yeah, that was the Win/Mac; Android/iPhone fanboy thing of the late 80s.
The Amiga was over twice the price, and had stability issues as it was released prior to being fully baked for financial reasons. It had a multitasking OS far ahead of any other consumer system, and more possibilities for expansion and upgrade. The video toaster was a big deal.
The Atari had built in Midi (was visible in musician equipment racks for years). It had a laser printer that'd use the Atari for some of the heavy lifting via an external DMA port for faster render times. The printer cost 1/2 of a Laserjet and could print complex pages in half the time. (a friend typesetting a mail order magazine ad - less than 20 min for the Atari+Atari laser vs 45 internally on the LJ - it was a complex ad). The system chips apparently used the 68K in 'reserved for future use' ways that prevented the use of later processors while maintaining compatibility. It did catch on in Europe more than in the US so I was using terminal server access to get files via kermit/telnet back then. (and play on Muds - Darker Realms!)
Oids and Dungeon Master were two stand out games for it. (SpeedBall is excellent too)
I've still got one working. The original 5 1/4 half height ST251 84 meg SCSI drive died with a bang and cloud of smoke this year. I replaced it with a 1 gig Conner 3 1/2 drive I set aside in case of need. Sadly the Conner is just as annoyingly loud at idle, but without the neat jet engine start sounds.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 03 2021, @09:10PM
Whoah flashbacks. Darker Realms! Lambdamoo! RetroMud!
Good times. Not quite as old as LoTRD or OO][ levels but still.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 05 2021, @03:34PM
I hard crashed the Atari ST on one of my first uses. I don't even think I was trying to crash it. Desktop GUIs weren't that stable in those days.
But yeah, what I remember the Atari ST being popular for was the MIDI stuff.