SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 2) by optotronic on Monday October 04 2021, @01:48AM
I bought an Atari ST in the late 80's, I think, as an upgrade from my Atari 800XL which was upgrade from my Atari 400 (like martyb, I played a lot of Star Raiders). It was much more powerful and faster. Eventually I got a hard drive connected to it, as I recall.
I used the machine for college classwork, including several programming classes. C development was a lot easier than on the 8-bit Ataris because the C compiler was much closer to standard, compiling was faster, and the editor was a lot better. I did some preliminary programming using GEM, although developing for early GUI environments was a real chore back then with the available tools.
When I got my first real programming job, the Atari ST was less interesting because I was spending so much time on PCs and Macs and learning ST development seemed like a dead end. When I moved out of state in the mid 90's I sold all my Atari hardware.
My friend and former business partner used his ST in a band because of the MIDI capabilities. I remember him telling stories about the band leader having to buy time between songs so the new music could be loaded from floppy.
I think I miss my 8-bit Ataris more because I learned (and did) so much more on them than the ST. But now a Raspberry Pi is so much more powerful and putting up with 8-bit programming quirks is more tedious and frustrating compared to current practices.