[HN Gopher] Atari Falcon030
___________________________________________________________________
Atari Falcon030
Author : rbanffy
Score : 127 points
Date : 2024-03-19 10:35 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.goto10retro.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.goto10retro.com)
| crq-yml wrote:
| The 030 was targeted for a Quake 2 engine port some years back,
| which got to an impressive amount of progress:
|
| https://forums.atariage.com/topic/234077-quake-ii-engine-rew...
|
| And here is the 030 (plus some aftermarket RAM) running Quake 1:
|
| https://youtu.be/QFXSZlaQ1Wc?si=ZTt_N_nkJxENMETO
|
| The onboard DSP definitely makes a huge difference to what it can
| do.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| That Falcon030 has not only aftermarket RAM, but an aftermarket
| _CPU_.
| rob74 wrote:
| Apparently (from the boot screen) it's a "Falcon/CT60" - so
| upgraded to a 68060 CPU, which should be more than capable
| enough to run Quake.
|
| Edit: found it -
| https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/ct60-accelerator-upgr...
| foft wrote:
| These are still available:
| https://centuriontech.eu/product/ct63-rev-2022/
|
| There are also expansions for the expansion! People also use
| the CTPCI to run the desktop on a Radeon 7500. Alternatively
| there is an FPGA version of the graphics chip called
| SuperVidel.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Did Motorola ever take it beyond 68060, seems like I've read
| about an 080 (probably here on HN). Or was that just in the
| preplanning stages?
| bert64 wrote:
| No, but there is a third party FPGA core available which is
| called 68080, it's used in a modern line of Amiga
| accelerators and clones.
| srott wrote:
| http://www.apollo-core.com/index.htm?page=features
| kjs3 wrote:
| Not Motorola (or Freescale). After the 68060 they dumped
| the mc68k architecture outside the embedded market (68300
| line) for the 88000 RISC architecture. After 2-ish
| generations of 88k, they dumped it for PPC.
|
| There are numerous FPGA implementations of various folks
| ideas of what a post-060 mc68k might look like. There's
| also a 68070 from Philips that's a 68000+simple MMU+stuff;
| definitely not 060 class.
| foft wrote:
| Doom was ported to the vanilla falcon making heavy use of the
| dsp: https://www.leonik.net/dml/sec_bm.py
| repelsteeltje wrote:
| Too little too late indeed.
|
| There is a footnote about Amiga offering preemptive multitasking
| 7 years earlier. Considering Apple users had to wait even longer
| (and less popular Acorn Archimedes / RiscOS is still struggling
| with "cooperative" MT, today), I think Commodore -- or more
| accurately: _the Amiga team_ -- was way ahead of its time (also
| in terms of hardware) launching Amiga in 1985.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| The funny thing is that the Amiga was actually developed by
| Atari engineers and the ST by commodore ones (ok I oversimplify
| the situation a little bit there but the history is really
| weird)
| rusk wrote:
| Amiga was a startup that was I understand set to work around
| the lack of a product development pipeline in Commodore and
| it was the founder of commodore left to try to repeat his
| success by reviving Atari. Basically commodore corporate was
| a big hot mess and both of these entities spun out of that.
| Atari was essentially otherwise a dead duck already. The
| acquisition of Amiga wasn't enough to keep C= afloat and
| ultimately the product line was taken on by a German vendor
| ...
| timbit42 wrote:
| > Amiga was a startup that was I understand set to work
| around the lack of a product development pipeline in
| Commodore
|
| This is false.
| rusk wrote:
| > This is false
|
| This is vacuous
| Gormo wrote:
| > Amiga was a startup that was I understand set to work
| around the lack of a product development pipeline in
| Commodore
|
| Amiga Inc. was founded in 1982 by engineers leaving Atari,
| at a time when Atari was still all-in on the aging 2600,
| and did yet not have a replacement product in the pipeline.
| So you identified the right problem at the wrong company.
|
| Amiga's initial goal was to create a chipset for a next-
| generation console. While they were working on that, they
| generated revenue by selling 2600 peripherals (like the
| Joyboard [1]), but eventually got funding from Atari and
| negotiated a contract to license their new architecture as
| the basis for future Atari products.
|
| In '84, Jack Tramiel left Commodore and acquired Atari,
| which Warner had put up for sale following the crash of
| '83. Tramiel brought a bunch of Commodore engineers over to
| a newly reconstituted Atari, and they became the core of
| the ST team.
|
| This severed Amiga's relationship with Atari, and
| simultaneously left Commodore without an engineering team
| to design their next-generation products. After a bunch of
| lawsuits and back-and-forth negotiations, Commodore managed
| to acquire Amiga, and the rest was history.
|
| So it's pretty valid to say that the Amiga was designed by
| Atari engineers and the ST was designed by Commodore
| engineers.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyboard
| rusk wrote:
| Corrected and clarified. Thank you!
| kstrauser wrote:
| Ah, the Joyboard, origin of Amiga's Guru Meditation
| error.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| What happened with Commodore/Amiga and Atari/ST is an
| amazing bit of history. It really happened, of course,
| but it seems like it could have been the plot for a show
| like "Halt and Catch Fire".
| smallstepforman wrote:
| Its a pity Amiga team chose the 68000 instead of the 68010,
| since the the Pro Amiga would have had protected virtual
| memory.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Their original goal was a gaming console, not a general-
| purpose computer.
|
| One huge mistake was not to take Sun's hand and make the
| 3000/UX the low end option to Sun's workstation lineup.
| icedchai wrote:
| We always hear the Commodore / Sun 3000UX rumor. I'm
| skeptical. Sun already had their own 680x0 line of
| workstations (the Sun 3 series), which started about 5
| years before the A3000 was released. Why would they need
| Commodore? They were basically done with 68K by that point,
| just like all the other Unix workstation vendors.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Good point. It could be a stopgap. At the time the 3000
| was launched, Sun was divesting from their 68K line in
| favor of the SPARC line, but the 3000 would fill a niche
| at a lower price point than Sun had with their own Sun/3
| series (which were eye-wateringly expensive).
| icedchai wrote:
| I wonder if they would've ported SunOS 4.x to the Amiga,
| or gone with modifications to Commodore's Unix, which was
| SysV based. I had a used Sun 3/60 for a while, back in
| the 90's.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Is that a stylised version of the original Elite game there in
| the screenshot? It doesn't look like the real game. Strange.
| Maybe Atari wasn't allowed to use that in their marketing?
| elvis70 wrote:
| This seems to match this demo from Eclipse:
| https://www.atarimania.com/pgesoft.awp?version=31698
| weinzierl wrote:
| _" So looking back, it is obvious that neither Atari or Commodore
| would really be able to succeed in the long-term [..]"_
|
| To me this is not obvious at all, even in hindsight. There are
| lots of good points that support that argument, but I yet have to
| see one that is really compelling. Even if we combine all the
| little paper cuts together, while convincing, it is still far
| from pre-determining the future that came to be.
|
| _" Perhaps the biggest disappointment of the Falcon's hardware
| design was its case. In order to save money (apparently), Atari
| used the 1040ST one-piece case design."_
|
| I am an Amiga guy and I hate to say it, but the ST was the most
| handsome of the bunch.
| prox wrote:
| Amiga was really well used in broadcasting for a long time,
| even when ST and Amiga where on their way out, at least until
| graphic cards in PCs became a thing.
|
| You bought the Atari ST for music, and Amiga for graphics. I
| saw STs in music studios well into the 00s.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| I think the Amiga affinity for broadcast was that, iirc, it
| had either built-in or as an expansion, a genlock device.
|
| Regarding ST for music, did you ever come across the
| Intelligent Music products? My roommate was the guy who wrote
| "M" and "Realtime", the latter especially being a really cool
| compositional tool. He did some stuff in that UI that was
| really innovative at the time.
| LocalH wrote:
| The Amiga had the ability to sync the clock to an external
| video signal, and it also had a "color zero" signal present
| that would allow a genlock to know when to switch between
| the input video and the Amiga's video, so that you could
| superimpose Amiga graphics on top of video. As long as your
| input video was clean enough (my limited experience was
| SVHS without a TBC), the Amiga would remain stable.
| prox wrote:
| No, familiar with Cubase. M sounds like a precursor to live
| performance setups such as Ableton!
| bhaak wrote:
| > I am an Amiga guy and I hate to say it, but the ST was the
| most handsome of the bunch.
|
| No way. The Amiga 3000 was the most handsome of them all. :)
| snickerer wrote:
| Some weeks ago I switched on my old Falcon030 for the first time
| since 1997. The operating system feels surprisingly modern and
| fast. If it weren't for the low screen resolution, you could
| almost mistake it for an up-to-date window manager like XFCE.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I have the same opinion in regards to the Amiga, there are many
| workloads that they would do just fine nowadays.
|
| Writing letters, basic spreadsheets, homemade flyers, reading
| email,...
| rusk wrote:
| Wonder how it would manage with TLS everywhere ...
| pjmlp wrote:
| The tasks I listed don't require TLS everywhere.
| rusk wrote:
| These days they do. Everyone does their business on the
| web.
|
| Sorry I get where you're coming from but I was just
| adding this because as a vintage technology enthusiast
| this is an issue I come up against constantly.
| pjmlp wrote:
| In which part of "Writing letters, basic spreadsheets,
| homemade flyers" is TLS required?
| rusk wrote:
| Put the baseball bat down bro. You are describing
| something I do a lot, I play with old computers and try
| to put them to use. Pervasive cryptography has changed
| everything even stuff that's ten years old has issues
| with certificates and deprecated versions. In any modern
| setting this is a serious handicap.
|
| tl;dr our hardware requirements would be vastly slashed
| if we didn't have an expectation of TLS everywhere.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Bro explain the HN audience how using AmigaWriter or
| PageStream, alongside a printer pluged via the Amiga
| printer port, requires TLS.
| rusk wrote:
| Well you're really narrowing down the usescases to suit
| an argument we really don't even need to have this is
| boring
| pjmlp wrote:
| You are free to explain the same to the other use cases I
| mentioned on my first comment, and I am still curious.
|
| In case you go for email, I didn't mention the
| communication protocol, or possible existence of a
| gateway.
| kjs3 wrote:
| I though it was obvious: "you don't do what I do, exactly
| like I do it, therefore you are wrong". There's a lot of
| that type running around.
| anthk wrote:
| AmiSSL exists. Gemini browsers for Amiga too.
| icedchai wrote:
| His point seemed pretty simple to me. If you're running
| local apps, not going on the Internet, you don't need
| TLS. Nobody expects a 30+ year old retro system to run a
| modern browser.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| Wanted a Falcon030 back in the days, couldn't get one, settled
| with a Bebox.
| steve1977 wrote:
| I used the TOS alternative MagiC with NVDI and an alternative
| desktop called Jinnee on my Falcon back then (when I wasn't
| using it for music production, those programs where usually
| incompatible with MagiC).
|
| This made the system feel pretty much state of the art.
|
| https://www.atariuptodate.de/en/447/jinnee#img1
| palmfacehn wrote:
| >This RFC patch series adds a DRM driver for the good old Atari
| ST/TT/Falcon hardware.
|
| https://lore.kernel.org/dri-devel/cover.1669406380.git.geert...
| sp8 wrote:
| When I was about 16 and considering spending my hard-earned money
| on my first computer, I was drooling over the Falcon. I wanted to
| make music, so the built-in MIDI ports on the Atari computers was
| very compelling. However... my best friend at the time was big
| into the Amiga so in the end I got an A1200 (and never regretted
| it). But I still drool when I see the Falcon!
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Fond, fond memories ... thanks.
| steve1977 wrote:
| I really loved my Falcon 030, which I primarily used for music
| production in the 90s.
|
| I already had an 1040 ST(FM) before it, but the Falcon 030 was
| really nice because of it's integrated DSP and the faster 68030
| of course. It allowed 8 track hard-disk recording integrated into
| MIDI sequencer at a price much lower than the alternatives like
| Macintosh Sound Tools / Pro Tools systems. You could even have
| some effects like reverb with the DSP (nowhere near todays
| quality of course, but good enough for demos).
|
| Basically one of the first affordable real DAWs.
| steve1977 wrote:
| Replying to my own comments because I missed the edit window...
|
| I just remembered that the Falcon was actually my first
| personal system with Internet access and a web browser. The
| browser was called CAB, I think some incarnations still exist
| for macOS. And you had to use some additional software for the
| TCP/IP stack, because TOS didn't have one. I think I was using
| something called PPP Connect, which only really worked with CAB
| and related tools, and an alternative stack called STinG.
| Detailed memories are vague though.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| I used iCab (the Mac port of CAB) for a few years in the
| early '00s since it had a very good balance of features and
| resource usage. It's still around but it's been rewritten to
| use WebKit so there's not really much point to it anymore.
|
| http://icab.de
| steve1977 wrote:
| I was using OmniWeb for a while, but basically the same
| thing happened to it ;)
| cwizou wrote:
| Same here, first computer I ever bought and connected to the
| Internet ! I think I had to fiddle some PPP settings back
| then (I think 94-95 ?) with the help of my local ISP to get
| it working (tech support was nice enough to entertain/help
| teenage me), but it all worked great in the end. I managed to
| boot it up a few years ago (it did have a VGA out via an
| adapter which helps a lot).
|
| At that point I can't quite remember if PPP Connect required
| MultiTOS/MinT/MagiC or not ? I think maybe only one of the
| stack did. I definitely remember CAB was the good/last
| browser option but it wasn't the first. Can't remember the
| name of the first one, or the email client though.
|
| It was also my first Linux computer, somehow, which I
| installed on a iomega Zip (SCSI ?) drive. I think it took 15
| minutes to launch X11 and at that point the whole thing was
| excruciatingly unusable.
|
| Also first computer I overclocked, a french company called
| Centek had made a tiny board that reclocked the 68030 from 16
| to 25 MHz. I looked it up and found their website here :
| http://centek.free.fr/atari/ct2/ct2_hist.htm
|
| Looks like the version I have (probably Centurbo 1 rev2 ?)
| overclocked both the CPU an the bus (which may or may not
| impacted the RAM ? Hard to remember). They made a few
| iterations, going up to 50 MHz.
|
| Many extremely fond memories of that machine in any case. But
| at that point the PC market was opening up and there was no
| going back.
| steve1977 wrote:
| > Also first computer I overclocked, a french company
| called Centek had made a tiny board that reclocked the
| 68030 from 16 to 25 MHz. I looked it up and found their
| website here : http://centek.free.fr/atari/ct2/ct2_hist.htm
|
| Oooh that brings up some memories! I remember that name and
| I know I had some overclocking card, not sure anymore if it
| was the CENTurbo II though or maybe the Nemesis/CENTurbo 1.
| I'm pretty sure it was not a CT60 or Afterburner 040, as
| those were probably above my budget. But now that I read
| about it, all those names ring some bells again ;)
|
| There was also something that allowed use of PCI graphics
| cards IIRC, but that might just have been the CT60
| actually.
|
| It was fun tinkering with all that stuff, what a contrast
| to todays unified RAM soldered everything computers...
| doop wrote:
| The Falcon was a nice machine (I still have one!) although it
| suffered from the characteristic Atari penny-pinching: still no
| MIDI thru port (on a machine which was otherwise amazing audio-
| wise - same DSP as the NeXT!) and while the new video modes were
| great, they used comparatively more RAM and were somewhat held
| back by the fact it still had a 16-bit data bus.
|
| The OS didn't take anything like full advantage of the hardware,
| but any serious users at the time would have piled on
| extensions/addons/replacements like MagiC.
| alexisread wrote:
| Massive penny pinching. The original design is here:
| https://mikrosk.github.io/sparrow/falcon_specification_19920...
| The 16bit bus limitation seems to stem from the RAM
| configurations - 2mb rather than 1mb would be the default
| config which cost more. As a result that kinda crippled the
| videl - only 16bit truecolour, lower clockspeeds on the CPU and
| videl, and slower ram access. 8 bit chunky mode was also
| planned, and a GPU - might have been the Jaguar TOM chip. I
| think MultiTos in ROM might have been planned at some point.
| parenthesis wrote:
| Some contemporary reviews:
|
| https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/atari-falcon-030
|
| https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/cubase-audio-atari-f...
| layer8 wrote:
| What's interesting about the Atari ST (and successors) keyboard
| that I hadn't noticed before is that the cursor keys are
| basically on the same height as the home row. This seems like it
| would me more ergonomic than the conventional placement at the
| bottom.
| TheAmazingRace wrote:
| Long time lurker here. Decided to create an account to respond.
|
| I actually used to own a C-LAB Falcon Mk II for a few years
| before I sold it off after the great tech layoffs of 2023 just to
| make ends meet. It was a really neat system... almost something
| of an anachronism, considering C-LAB pumped these out well after
| Atari bailed on computers in exchange for putting all their eggs
| in the ill-fated Atari Jaguar basket.
|
| To that end, I'm unduly impressed with the community around this
| computer. I've gotten more online help on the Falcon than I ever
| did on any other retro system I've owned in the past. The fanbase
| is clearly passionate. I even sent my C-LAB Falcon over to
| Centuriontech out in the Czech Republic, and he did an
| _outstanding_ job on a capacitor replacement job I needed done.
| The multilayer PCB made working with some of the components a bit
| tricky, especially for a soldering iron novice like myself.
|
| It's a real shame I had to sell it off, but bills needed to be
| paid, and I ended up making a profit on the sale, despite all the
| money I poured into repairs and cleanup of the system. Even with
| its dodgy software compatibility with older ST titles, it would
| have been cool to keep it in my collection for the long haul.
| sanity wrote:
| My progression was Atari 800XL, Atari 520STfm, then Atari Falcon
| 030 - then switched to a Linux PC in the late 90s. My parents
| most likely sold my old computers but a few years ago I
| reacquired an Atari 800XL for old time's sake.
| user2342 wrote:
| > By the end of the 80s, there were really only four major
| computer lines in the US. You had PCs (and their clones, of which
| there were many), Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga and Atari ST.
| For a short while there was also NeXT, but even with its big
| promises, great innovations and charismatic leader it didn't
| survive as a hardware platform.
|
| I rather see NeXT as a competitor in the market for Unix
| Workstations (Sun, HP, SGI, ...) and not as a competitor to the
| four mentioned (consumer) lines.
| mrkstu wrote:
| It was targeted at Universities, as a foothold customer, since
| it ended up too expensive for even prosumers.
|
| It ended up mostly finding uptake in custom apps in the Fortune
| 500 (and kept it toe-hold in universities) while it lasted as a
| hardware platform, and then in its OS only incarnation.
| rbanffy wrote:
| And, yet, every Mac these days runs a direct descendant of
| NeXT's OS.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Such a shame we didn't get BeOS but Jobs and Gassee did NOT
| get along.
| CharlesW wrote:
| And every iOS device!
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| We had an entire lab full of NeXT cubes at Purdue that nobody
| really knew what to use them for. I think they ended up
| giving them away after a couple of years.
| krs_ wrote:
| I never had any Atari computer back in the day, being born
| slightly after their heyday. But in about 2006 I became aware of
| the cool demoscene on these old computers and acquired a 1040
| STFM and Amiga A500 to experience them properly and to play
| around with. And even though it was before my time there's just
| something special to me about the 16-bit era of computing.
| Computers had a sort of character to them back then.
|
| I'd love to get a Falcon030 or an A1200 or something today but
| they're far more expensive nowadays than I think they're worth
| unfortunately, cool as they are. But I still have the STFM and
| A500 and I've upgraded/modded them as far as possible pretty
| much, and I do still turn them on from time to time.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| A quick check on ebay shows they're going for ~$2600 (that was
| one with 14MB RAM and an added SSD. ) so about what they cost new
| in constant dollars.
| Agingcoder wrote:
| I had a 1040stf back in the days, and waited for the falcon 030
| to happen. Amiga, i386, etc happened - I eventually switched to
| pc before the falcon happened.
|
| It sounds a bit cheesy , but I was much younger back then, and it
| felt like my team had let me down.
|
| Computer wars ! Sounds silly now.
| nynyny7 wrote:
| As a sidenote, there is even an open-source recreation of the TOS
| operating system for the Atari 16/32 bit computers called EmuTOS
| that is in active development to this day. It just had a new
| release a few days ago: https://emutos.sourceforge.io/. And this
| new release happens to have better support for the Falcon video
| chip.
| jsz0 wrote:
| There was a time when the Atari ST was the perfect home computer.
| It was cheap, easy to use like the Mac, and offered a 'next gen'
| 16bit gaming experience before any of my friends had a Sega
| Genesis. I continued to be a diehard ST fan until the exact
| second I first saw Doom running on a PC.
| pimlottc wrote:
| I thought this was going to be a retro-port of the classic Falcon
| 3.0 flight sim [0]
|
| 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_3.0
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-03-22 23:01 UTC)