• Category Archives Atari ST
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  • Atari STacy Portable Computer

    You could be forgiven for thinking this product is vaporware. Atari announced the Atari STacy, a portable Atari ST, years before it actually hit the streets. Only about 35,000 were shipped so they are pretty rare. While the price of $2,299 ($5,427 in today’s dollars) may seem high by today’s standards, it was a downright bargain compared to the similarly featured Macintosh Portable which cost $7,300 ($17,200 in today’s dollars). The STacy also looked much nicer than the Macintosh Portable.

    There were four models of the Stacy:

    • Stacy: 1MB RAM
    • Stacy 2: 2 MB RAM, 20 MB hard drive
    • Stacy 2: 2 MB RAM
    • Stacy 4: 4 MB RAM, 40 MB hard drive

    As you can see, the number referred to the amount of RAM that came standard. All versions included a 3.5″ disk drive, 68HC00 CPU @ 8 MHz, and were expandable to 4 MB of RAM. The screen was a 10.4″ passive matrix LCD.

    While the Atari STacy was portable, you can’t really think of it as a laptop. It could run on batteries but it needed 12 C cells and they would only last about 15 minutes…if you were lucky. So while it was relatively easy to transport, you really needed to plug it in wherever you went. Except for thickness, the dimensions weren’t terribly different from laptops today. However, it weighed over 15 pounds so lugging it around was certainly a chore compared to modern laptops.

    Other than gaming, the Atari ST was most used for its MIDI capabilities. The STacy featured MIDI input and output so could be quite useful for musicians…if they could afford it. But then again, professional MIDI equipment wasn’t cheap in whatever form it took. Other than the occasional hobbyist, I would imagine that most of the 35,000 STacys (STacies?) sold went to musicians. A professional MIDI extension was one of the few peripherals designed specifically for the STacy.

    Although the STacy may have mostly been used by musicians, it had a standard array of ports, including parallel, serial and FDD ports, an optional modem, and could run most software the standard Atari ST could run so it compared favorably to other portables at the time for general purpose computing. There was plenty of software available including word processing, spreadsheet, database, and of course games. You could get portable 386 computers by 1989 but they were more expensive and almost always had a black and white display. Certainly, for fans of the Atari ST, this would have been a great machine to have to complement your desktop setup. It’s just that most people couldn’t afford it or at least justify the price.


  • Antic: The Atari Resource (April 1987)

    Source: Antic: The Atari Resource – Volume 5, Number 12 – April 1987

    Antic was primarily an Atari 8-bit magazine though it did also cover the Atari ST. In 1987 it was nearing the end of its life. The April 1987 issue includes:

    Features

    • Designer Labels – A type-in program that lets you combine Print Shop graphics with your text to create custom labels.
    • Page 6 Grab-Bag, Part 2 – Two short and useful type-in programs. The first gives you the ability to pause or slow down program listings with the press of a button and the second makes it easy to insert sounds into your own programs.
    • All About [Break] Disabling – Pressing the break key normally interrupts whatever program you are running. If you do it accidentally, it can be a real time waster as well as cause you to lose data. This type-in program provides a way to disable this functionality.
    • ICD Boosts 8-Bit Atari Power – ICD is a company that produced high powered upgrades for the Atari 8-bit. Some of these include the 1MB Multi I/O Board, 256K RAMBO XL memory upgrade, R-Time 8 Cartridge (real-time clock/calendar), SpartaDOS 3.2, hard drive interface and more.
    • BTL Hard Disk System – Connect up to two hard drives to your Atari 800XL or Atari 130Xe for up to a total of 128MB of storage.
    • ’86 Federal Income Tax Spreadsheet – A template for SynCalc to make completing your 1986 tax return easy.

    Departments

    • Starting Out: New Owners Column – Part 13 of a BASIC programming tutorial. This part goes over the various ways to use color.
    • Game of the Month: Taxman – Keeping with the April income tax theme, this type-in game is a maze game in which you must collect interest from your accounts while evading the IRS agents. If they catch you, you must declare the interest. If they catch you 10 times, you get audited and the game is over.
    • I/O Board – Letters from readers about Son of Infobits database, the Star NX-10 printer, Bumblebee high scores, modems and the hearing impaired, the Atari 800 attract mode, databases that work with the 10MB SupraDrive, and more.
    • Product Reviews – Reviews of video Vegas from Baudville, Mercenary from Datasoft, Wizard’s Crown (an RPG from SSI), Fight Night from Accolade, and Gettysburg from SSI.
    • New Products – New products this month include News Station desktop publishing software, Rambo: First Blood part II from Mindscape, Hollywood Hijinx from Infocom, the Tac5 joystick and Print N Stack paper tray/stand from Suncom, Mail Order Monsters from Electronic Arts, the Midwest Computer Camp, and InSyst! Version 3.0 business software.
    • Tech Tips – Short BASIC program routines to return 18 possible values from the joystick port, generate the famous Atari Rainbow effect, and a software driver for the Hardware Key project from the August 1986 issue.

    ST Resource

    • Pathways Uncovered – File handling on the Atari ST, including creating folders or sub-directories.
    • ST Reviews – Reviews of The Pinball Factory from Michtron, Silent Service from MicroProse, Black Cauldron from Sierra On-Line, and Universe II from Omnitrend Software.
    • ST Product News – New products this month include Trivia Challenge, Backup!, and Pinball Factory from Michtron; HiSoft BASIC Compiler, DevPacST macroassembler and Saved! file utility/desk accessory from HiSoft; Accounts, Invoice/Order Processing, and Inventory Control System from Execon; and more.
    • Typesetter Elite – Software that enables you to create and print high resolution pages.

    …and more!


  • Antic (June 1986)

    Source: Antic – June 1986 

    Antic was one of the biggest Atari 8-bit magazines in North America. It also covered the Atari ST at times. The June 1986 issue includes:

    Features

    • Summer, Atari Style – It seems that by 1986, most computer camps had already died out. However, there were a number of camps still around that provided computers for learning as one of their many activities. Apparently there was even at least one that taught you skills like running your own BBS.
    • Weather Wizard – A type-in program that will predict the weather based on a few inputs.
    • Decide – A BASIC type-in program for creating a decision tree.
    • Math Art – A type-in program that generates graphical patterns based on mathematical equations and sine waves.
    • Recipe Converter – A type-in program that will automatically adjust the amount of ingredients needed based on the number of servings.
    • Micro Julius – A BASIC type-in program that will display a calendar from any month between 1900 and 2100 and calculate the number of days since an given event.

    Departments

    • Game of the Month: Bomb Squad – A type-in game consisting of ten levels in which you must avoid the mechanical guards and defuse bombs.
    • Starting Out: New Owners Column Lesson 4: Nested Loops – A BASIC tutorial on nested loops with type-in examples.
    • Education: Atari Learning Center – Making the case for why the Atari is the best educational computer.

    ST Resource

    • 68000 Exceptions & Interrupts – Part two of a three part series that details interrupts and exception handling on the Atari ST.
    • Basic Biorhythmics – A type-in program for generating biorhythms on the Atari ST. There was a (or many) version of this for every computer back in the day.
    • Zoomracks Review – A unique text-oriented database system for the Atari ST that uses a sort of card catalog or timecard metaphor.
    • DB Master One & 1st-Word Review – Review of a couple of pieces of software being included with each new Atari 520ST. 1st-Word is a word processing program and DB Master One is a database management program.
    • File I/O Intro – A guide to handling various file types on the Atari ST.
    • ST Product News – New products for the Atari ST examined this month include Holmes & Duckworth Forth, Brataccas (an animated adventure game from Psygnosis and Mindscape), Borrowed Time (an illustrated text adventure from Activision), HippoVision (a video digitizer), H & D Base (a database), The Manager (a relational database system), and lots more.

    Columns

    • I/O Board – Letters from readers with topics including Atari Lie Detector, Silent Service, the Okimate 10 printer, Lunar Lander Construction Set, DOS 2.5 vs. DOS 3, Atari modems, RAM expansion, Amdek disk drives, and a country music BBS.
    • Antic Online – What’s new with Antic on CompuServe.
    • Product Reviews – Reviews of MIDI Music System from Synthetic Software, Nam from Strategic Simulations, Inc., Soundmouse from Soundsoft, inc., Spellbreaker from Infocom, Batallion Commander from SSI, Spy vs. Spy II from First Star Software, and more.

    …and more!