Decided to quit grumbling about liking OLD systems and get one!
Of course it is an emulator.
A little history of the systems to start.
It must be remembered that my first two systems were not MS based, not even DOS although I worked with DOS at work. My first two systems were built by Atari. The f1rst was an Atari 400 but I picture the Atari 800 below as I built up my 400 to surpass the higher level 800... actually I will be showing both. The Atari 400/800 systems used a 6502 processor that ran at a whopping 1.79MHz. Keep in mind that they came out in 1979. At the time they were one of the most powerful systems available as they were one of the first to let the processor just process as they had separate chips to handle video and audio. These systems had initially had a max on RAM of 16KB for the 400 and 48KB for the 800. However they were the geek's dream system as you could totally change just about everything. By splicing a couple of points on the motherboard and jumpering a couple of leads on the RAM addressing chip my system could handle the overwhelming amount of RAM equaling 128KB
Here is the Atari 400. Note that the keyboard is a membrane. On mine I patched in a full keyboard but, due to the times, needed to have it wired, no such thing as wireless at that time. The hatch at the center is actually a cartridge slot.
Attachment:
atari 400.jpg [ 10.53 KiB | Viewed 6969 times ]
Here would be a typical Atari 800 system after they came out with a floppy drive. Initially storage was on a cassette deck. Note that the 800 had a full keyboard.
Attachment:
aTARI 800 SYSTEM.png [ 171.58 KiB | Viewed 6969 times ]
Then I progressed to an Atari ST. The Atari ST is a strange case as it was mostly developed by Jack Tramiel who was the founder of Commodore Computers. When he left Commodore Computers he bought the computer division of Atari from Warner Communications who actually owned Atari. What a wonderful machine he built!
The Atari ST was based on the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals. Keep in mind that we are talking about an internal buss rate of 32-bit in 1985, the machine was a monster. Musicians LOVED this system as it came from factory with a 16 channel MIDI interface. If anyone remembers the group Tangerine Dreams who did a fair number of music scores for movies, they used 11 Atari ST systems to allow 3 people to do full symphony type scores. Also the fact that this system could access 4MB of RAM in 1985 wasn't too bad.
On... it could also run other system's software. It could run to older Atari 400/800 software along with MS DOS, Macintosh Apple (at least up to 2e) and CPM.
Oh, just on the side ... The 16 channel Midi Port could also be used to network up to eight systems. The basic OS was on a chip so boot time was VERY fast but this version was very basic. However there was a 'special folder' where you could place boot time loads of pretty much anything you wanted on either a floppy or hard drive. In 1985 it had a max screen resolution of 800X600, pretty strong for the time!
An Atari ST... If you happen to notice something in common between both of these series of Atari Computers it just might be that there is no tower. The box that held the keyboard held the entire system. Today companies are pushing systems that are contained in a single unit. How 'before their time' may have Atari been? BTW, the 3,5 inch double sided, high density floppy drive is also contained in the keyboard. Considering that this system also used separate chips for audio and video it flat out screamed as to performance!
Attachment:
atari st.jpg [ 9.04 KiB | Viewed 6969 times ]
Here is an example of what it could do on a still image in 1985... Or at least as advertised. I cannot say for fact that this is an actual image off of a screen.
Attachment:
Atari graphics.jpg [ 25.39 KiB | Viewed 6969 times ]
I have the Atari 800 emulator working but it is an involved process. I will add shots to this thread as to progress if this thread gets responses. The next step will be to add an Atari ST emulator.
