Atari 520 ST rescue party

[hawsey]

So today I rescued this baby from the skip



Was doubtful it would work but when I plug it in to my Tv I get this



Does this look OK ?
Never owened a one before , nothing else with it , do I need a mouse or joystick ?

[pete]

Very nice Hawsey!

I remember those but do not know anything today about them.

[hawsey]

Thanks Pete
I'm just testing to see if BuZz is paying attention .
I've had a good look at it and it is a very heavy well made machine , underneath it looks like the black wires are for a joystick and a mouse , on the side is a floppy drive but I don't have any so can't try that , there are also interfaces for an external HDD and a monitor by the looks of it .

[pete]

Very interesting history on the Atari 520 ST.

Jay Miner, one of the original designers for the custom chips found in the Atari 2600 and Atari 8-bit family, tried to convince Atari management to create a new chipset for a video game console and computer. When his idea was rejected, Miner left Atari to form a small think tank called Hi-Toro in 1982 and began designing the new "Lorraine" chipset. The company, which was later renamed Amiga Corporation, was pretending to sell video game controllers to deceive competition while it developed a Lorraine-based computer.

Amiga ran out of capital to complete Lorraine's development, and Atari, owned by Warner Communications, paid Amiga to continue development work. In return Atari received exclusive use of the Lorraine design for one year as a video game console. After one year Atari would have the right to add a keyboard and market the complete computer, designated the 1850XLD. As Atari was heavily involved with Disney at the time, it was later code-named "Mickey", and the 256K memory expansion board was codenamed "Minnie".

Having heard rumors that Tramiel was negotiating to buy Atari, Amiga Corp. entered into discussions with Commodore. The discussions led to Commodore wanting to purchase Amiga Corporation outright, which Commodore believed would cancel any outstanding contracts, including Atari's. Instead of Amiga Corp. delivering Lorraine to Atari, Commodore delivered a check of $500,000 to Atari on Amiga's behalf, in effect returning the funds Atari invested into Amiga for the chipset. Tramiel countersued Amiga Corp. on August 13, 1984. He sought damages and an injunction to bar Amiga (and effectively Commodore) from producing anything with its technology.

At Commodore, the Amiga team was in limbo during the summer of 1984 because of the lawsuit. No word on the status of the chipset, the Lorraine computer, or the team's fate was known. In the fall of 1984, Commodore informed the team that the Lorraine project was active again, the chipset was to be improved, the operating system (OS) developed, and the hardware design completed. While Commodore announced the Amiga 1000 with the Lorraine chipset in July 1985, the delay gave Atari, with its many former Commodore engineers, time to deliver the first Atari ST units in June 1985. In March 1987, the two companies settled the dispute out of court in a closed decision.

Here have kept the old Atari 2600 with loads of games in the original boxes...still sitting around here some where.

Here first BBS installed in Chicago was using a Commodore PET computer. (also did go to getting a C64, C128, Amiga's back then).

I was into that telephone stuff and tapped my BBS in to a bank of some 6 payphone lines that I found in a telco box adjacent a commercial building we had. I made a hardware telephone switcher using some 6 Ventel modems and it worked well at the time.

I recall making a coin telephone box and being able to take over telephone trunk lines well and getting on conference calls with many folks at the time doing the same kind of stuff way back then (it was relatively easy and primitive at the time).

Purchased an Toaster back then and did get a bit involved in the use of the Amiga Toaster for a Chicago television station. It ran circles around the equipment utilized by the television station back then (which was some 250-500K USD at the time).

[Juggler]

I had an amiga, but I borrowed an atari st a couple of times and was quite impressed.

If you've got a way to write 3.5" disks, I think you could download images from the net and make some bootable disks. But I've seen adaptors for ST's and Amiga's that let you use modern flash memory as an alternative mass storage medium. Modern flash memory stores considerably more then the 350kb or 700kb you could get on a 3.5" floppy ! I seem to recall that either the amiga or the st had an unusual drive mechanism where the spin speed was proportional to the position of the head. Not sure.

Anyway did a few searches and you might find some of these useful :

LGD - For Atari ST Games, Reviews, Demos, Music, Downloads, Box Scans and Much More!
http://www.atari.st/
The Atari 16-bit computers at the Atari Museum
http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/16 ... tarist.htm
Atari Arcade
https://www.atari.com/arcade#!/arcade/combat
Satandisk - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satandisk
Atari UltraSatan and SatanDisk SD Card READY TO USE - £19.99 : Atari ST Sales, Software, Hardware, Buying, Refurbishing, Spares and Selling for the Atari ST
http://www.ataristsales.com/index.php?m ... cts_id=193
Atari ST HDD - Atari-Forum
http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=20782
Guide to Flash Storage for Vintage Computers - Retro Games Collector
http://www.retrogamescollector.com/flas ... computers/

If you'd like to tinker and you can get a few boot disks, then it might be possible to transfer software from your pc using the serial interface (RS232). Pretty sure the Atari ST has a serial port as a guy I knew used an ST to talk to his Terminal Node Controller (TNC) for packet radio.

Or if you can get hold of a usb floppy drive you may be able to write disks that way from your PC. Or maybe you have an old PC or laptop with a 3.5" floppy. Few searches reveal :

Make ST disks on a PC ? - Atari ST/TT/Falcon Computers - AtariAge Forums
http://atariage.com/forums/topic/181242 ... s-on-a-pc/
Writing Atari ST programs onto floppies with PC - Atari-Forum
http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=11708
Floppy Image program
http://atari.8bitchip.info/floimgd.php

So looks like you need some special software to do it.

Be interesting to hear what you do with it. I think a Joggler would sit nicely on top of it and could be used as an intelligent monitor ? I think emulators are great but it is nice to go native...

HTH

[Juggler]

Pete

Interesting comments. Some of the people considered to be the earliest hackers were doing interesting things with phones, this is an interesting read :

Esquire phone phreaking article from 1971
http://kottke.org/10/09/phone-phreaking-1971

and some of the groups/magazines :

Phrack - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrack
.:: Phrack Magazine ::.
http://www.phrack.org/
Phreaking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking
2600 News | 2600
http://www.2600.com/

I bought a copy of 2600 in around 1999 and it had stuff in there that I had not seen any where else.

I like to visit the local DefCon meeting when I can. Some of these groups are quite active. Heard some good things about hacker/maker spaces as well. Some Amateur Radio groups and rallies can be good too.

DC4420
https://dc4420.org/

[pete]

Thank you Juggler.

There was a contest of sorts way back and it just related to how many folks (telephreakers) you could conference in to one call.

I was amazed with the tinkering going on back then.

Mostly here just made use of it whenever or wherever I was; well and helped some friends that were never home talk to the wives and children from wherever whenever they happened to be.

[hawsey]

Cheers guys , lots for me look at here I agree , emulation is great but you can't beat the real thing , a bit like vinyl records .
Yep a joggler would sit nicely on top , a project for the man cave.....

[pete]

Yup; here have kept my old collection of vinyl records / CDs / DVDs / cassette tapes. Now just in boxes.

A few years back sold a rarely used Pioneer 8-Track tape recorder with a bunch of 8-Track tapes that I had sitting around.

Gone to pure streaming from NAS or Internet these days of audio and video.

Nice Atari 520ST project Hawsey!

Here more of a science fiction Star Trek than a Star Wars fan.

Recalling first or second Star Trek motion picture where Scotty walked up to a computer and asked it something and got a bit freaked when Spock mentioned the use of the keyboard.

[hawsey]

Ha ha , loved the old Star Trek too Pete , will have to check that scene out , I don't remember it

[pete]

It was The Voyage Home premièred on November 26, 1986.

It was about saving a humpback wale.

Principal photography commenced on February 24, 1986. Unlike previous Star Trek films, The Voyage Home was shot extensively on location; many real settings and buildings were used as stand-ins for scenes set around and in the city of San Francisco. Special effects firm Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) assisted in post-production and the film's special effects. Few of the humpback whales in the film were real: ILM devised full-size animatronics and small motorized models to stand in for the real creatures.

The Voyage Home premiered on November 26, 1986, in North America, becoming the top-grossing film in the weekend box office. The film's humor and unconventional story were well received by critics, fans of the series and the general audience. It was financially successful, earning $133 million worldwide.

The film earned several awards and four Academy Award nominations for its cinematography and audio. It was dedicated to the crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger, which broke up 73 seconds after takeoff on the morning of January 28, 1986. Principal photography for The Voyage Home began four weeks after Challenger and her crew were lost.

[hawsey]

Great info Pete , I saw that a long time ago , probably back in 1986 or 7 .
Cheers

[pete]

Yeah for a time way back collected all of the Star Trek television series on VHS tapes.

While I liked Star Wars it was basically a rip off of the Dune stuff from Frank Herbert redone a bit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_%28novel%29

So what will you be doing with the Atari computer?

[hawsey]

Hmm , well I need to source some game discs and a joystick / mouse to see what's what , it will be living in a shed / man cave eventually together with other aged gadgets the shed gets delivered Tuesday , a bit of TLC and a rebuild on to some flagstones and run the electric in not enough time ha, I also would like to build a pizza type clay oven beside the cave ....

[pete]

Interesting man cave solution. Here did something similar a few years ago (1980's) with my detached garage. (ran electric, water, telephone and gas lines to it).

I built a little shop in side of it to work on my auto mobiles and other stuff. (lasers for example). The playing with lasers was a bit low on the WAF as all of the lights would dim with the power requirements of what I was playing with at the time.

A few feet away from the old garage also had a shed which was next to one of those big satellite dishes so I used it for other stuff at the time.

Yup; here ran a natural gas line outside for the grill. We have used it a bit as an oven too. It also has burners next to it for cooking stuff.

In the 1980's would flip between buying pizza (delivered) and just making my own. Really making your own Pizza is the best flavour. We make our own pizza today and still purchase delivered pizza. Wife uses a clay stone here to bake the pizza in the oven. Best sausage here comes from a local butcher. The supermarket sausage (well almost any meat) is flavourless most of the time.

Take pictures Hawsey of your new endeavour as I would like to see your new project stuff.

[hawsey]

Will do Pete
Yes we make home made pizza once a week usually on the stones as you say , creatures of habit but my wife and son have chritzo or pepperoni and I like seafood , so prawns / mussels or tuna hmmmm
Personally prefer charcoal etc to gas , loads of friends have gas bbqs but I like the real thing myself.
The Atari , I fancy getting one of the adapters and running some Roms off that I think , a friend has offered me some floppy disks too.

[hawsey]

@Pete " Pizza Tonighta "


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[pete]

Very nice looking pizza Gary!



We did not make a pizza night ...just ordered out...BTW Chicago Pizza is the best.
We ran out of sausage from the butcher which is way levels above the sausage from the grocery stores around here.

Wife did pick up 4 pounds of Italian sausage today. She also picked up an octopus salad for me (very good stuff).

salad.jpg (14.51 KiB) Viewed 26846 times

She cuts it and then freezes it with vacuum sealing machine she has. It is a neat little gizmo that sucks out the air of some special freezer plastic then heat seals the plastic bag.

[BuZz]

late to the party ! did you save me some pizza? Nice Atari

[hawsey]

Of course pizza reserved .
Atari was a lucky find , my wife says I'm a skip rat ha ha but I'm not bothered , very chuffed to have rescued it , even happier that it works .....
A glass of vino too ?

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