Does anyone own one of these? I'm getting one and I want to see what people say about them, and if it has any good games.
I've got the STe version, and it's bloody brilliant! Got about 1000+ floppies in total, half of which are pirate. Cyber empires is awesome, deuteros is too, and onslaught, and heck even turrican! Some amazing games for that machine!
Not bult in no, it's essentially a laptop without a touchpad (It's just a keyboard). There was a lot of compatibility with SEGA stuff (it's 2 input ports are 9-pin DSUBs) with exception to the mouse which I believe required the official atari mouse, it's the only one that's ever worked on mine.
Well luckily I'm getting mine free and apparently with the box and manuals too. And does it have a membrane keyboard or a real one?
I got an STe for free recently too, although the condition it was in was shocking. It's had a few good gaming sessions but the floppy drive is a little erratic and getting the thing set up is a hassle. I did try and track down some kind of HDD/CF adapter but didn't get very far, if anyone knows one that works well I'd like to hear about it... dealing with floppies in this day and age is ridiculous.
Dunno that much about the ST, but I do know that most Amiga games were ported over to the ST as well. They may not be as easy to find because the ST wasn't as popular as the Amiga, though. I also know the sound chip is much worse than the Amiga one...
"I also know the sound chip is much worse than the Amiga one..." Preferance. Persoanlly I much prefer the ST's audio. The HD to CF won't work as the input is SCSI, and not normal SCSI, some propietry one and from what I rememeber it supported upto 100MB drives or something. A Floppy->USB emulator would be a much better idea, though as the atari doesn't use an IBM compatible disk type, I'm unsure if (and how) it would work.
While I like both, I do prefer the Atari, and I think that's pretty common. The ST chip is a lot harsher and grittier, certainly. A mate of mine really, really hates the Amiga sound (honestly, you don't want to get him started), although admittedly he had an Atari ST as a kid. Yeah, I know. That's why I said adapter These devices do exist, but I can't remember now if I couldn't find them for sale or if they were just too expensive. If I recall correctly, the Atari's floppy disk I/O has a bug in software that results in Atari disks being unreadable in a PC, hence needing special software just to image the floppy disk. I guess if the USB emulator functions normally as a floppy drive in Windows then the imaging software would just get on with it, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were issues.
No there is no bug. Amiga and atari and IBM are 3 completely different floppy formats are are not compatibile with each other, though there is a freeware program that allows you to read from atari and amiga disks, floating around somewhere. Compact flash > SCSI is very different whereas CF > IDE is very simple. You'd be looking at an FPGA converter which would cost a LOT of money
Don't take my word for it: http://www.emulators.com/gemul8r.htm If memory serves there were two devices folks were using, one SCSI-IDE and then IDE-CF. I can't really remember and frankly I can't be arsed to search (I'll leave that to you if you're interested), but people definitely have successfully done this.
I got my STE today. It is in really good conditon. No yellowing comes with everything, and I mean everything, including the plastic wrapping and styrafoam. And the manuals look almost new. it came with some floppies but some of them are bad and won't work. But a good amount do. The cable connecting the RF box to the unit has some styrafoam on it though, don't know how since it's wrapped in plastic, double, and in a separate box.
Very nice ages. I've got some blank atari disks that were unused, no PC could read them (I hadn't formatted them) but the atari could read them fine. Plus they didn't have 'IBM' or 'MS DOS' or 'HD', etc. on them.
I found a port of Robotron:2084 for it on Ebay, but it's still sealed. Not willing to open a sealed game, so I might not be getting that. Or I might so I can start a Robotron collection. Anyone have any accesories for it that you recommend I buy?
