[HN Gopher] ST Book, the Notebook Atari ST
___________________________________________________________________
ST Book, the Notebook Atari ST
Author : rbanffy
Score : 113 points
Date : 2024-10-24 21:57 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.goto10retro.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.goto10retro.com)
| firecall wrote:
| >Active-matrix was the much better, much more costly alternative.
| The difference being that passive matrix could not handle motion
| well, so it was easy to lose track of the mouse cursor if it
| moved across the screen too rapidly.
|
| For the kids today, this is why we used to have Mouse Trails in
| settings!
|
| I just checked on my Mac, and we no longer seem to have that
| option.
| majormajor wrote:
| I don't think System 7 or OS 8 had a trails option either. I
| remember seeing that only as a "fun Windows thing" back then.
| mrpippy wrote:
| It was an option in classic Mac OS, passive-matrix screens
| were an option on PowerBooks even into 1998's WallStreet
| PowerBook G3 (a machine which can officially run Mac OS X!)
|
| I can't find a screenshot of the control panel, but here's a
| video of a PB1400 with it turned on: https://www.reddit.com/r
| /VintageApple/comments/rohlp0/how_do...
| JayDustheadz wrote:
| Wiggle the mouse/cursor quickly and it'll enlarge the pointer.
| Makes it easier to locate it.
| numpad0 wrote:
| This didn't work with early LCDs; areas near cursor literally
| stayed blank for couple fractions of seconds. Wiggling would
| only make it worse, and negative space created could not be
| spotted either because UI was mostly blank in the first
| place(dark or light).
| msephton wrote:
| They're talking a modern macOS feature
| rbanffy wrote:
| Still difficult on wide multi-monitor settings.
| bartread wrote:
| I make the pointer bigger on both macOS and Windows.
| Unfortunately, at least on macOS, it becomes too imprecise
| for clicking if you max out the size, but I can't deal with
| hunting and pecking for my pointer so I do push it as far
| as I can.
|
| Probably stems from the days of using computers with much
| lower resolutions where the mouse pointer was therefore
| relatively large and easy to find. My Amiga 500 typically
| ran at either 320 x 256 or 640 x 256 (with rectangular
| pixels), but the mouse pointer was a 16 x 16 hardware
| sprite, which locked to the lower resolution IIRC, so it
| was always 5% of the width of the screen, and 6.25% of the
| height. This is absolutely enormous by today's standards,
| even with the mouse cursor enlarged to, not its maximum
| size on macOS, but its maximum useful size.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Interesting. And by now every platform has enough
| information to define the mouse pointer size in physical
| units rather than pixels.
|
| If anyone at Apple is listening, highlighting the screen
| where the pointer is (dimming the others) or just having
| the option of resetting the position to a known place,
| would work just fine.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| No but you can jiggle the mouse now and the mouse pointer
| becomes huge which is kinda a similar thing
| zabzonk wrote:
| I suppose these might have been attractive to very well-heeled
| musicians because of the MIDI ports, which was one of the reasons
| that the full-sized ST was popular with them.
| pavlov wrote:
| Yes, the mini-MIDI port on a 1991 laptop is truly unique.
|
| But probably there wouldn't have been much of a market for
| that. Computer-driven live music performance was still very
| exotic. Laptop jockeys were a decade away.
| piltdownman wrote:
| It was due to their rock solid MIDI Sequencing with the
| advent of the AKAI S1000 Sampler and the move away from the
| Amiga dominated 'Tracker' scene with the introduction of
| Cubase as primary DAW.
|
| Computer-driven live music performance was very much a thing
| long before 1991. The 'computers' in question were Analog
| sequencers using control voltages, and things like the
| LinnDrum providing click tracks to trigger sync. Roland
| expanded on this with the release of their TR-808 drum
| machine and sequencer in 1980, utilising a precursor to MIDI
| known colloquially as DIN-Sync or Sync24
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_sync
|
| This gave way with MIDI to the sequencing of outboard gear
| via a variety of hardware sequencers and computer/DAW combos
| - bringing us to the Atari ST and the first few generations
| of PPC and G3 Towers as we entered the true age of the PC
| DAW.
| bartread wrote:
| > Computer-driven live music performance was very much a
| thing long before 1991. The 'computers' in question were
| Analog sequencers using control voltages, and things like
| the LinnDrum providing click tracks to trigger sync. Roland
| expanded on this with the release of their TR-808 drum
| machine and sequencer in 1980, utilising a precursor to
| MIDI known colloquially as DIN-Sync or Sync24
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_sync
|
| On one level, I'm absolutely onboard with this perspective.
| On the other hand I think this is bending the definition a
| little bit too far. What we're specifically discussing here
| is using general purpose portable computers as part of a
| live performance.
|
| The Fairlight CMI falls into an interesting middle ground
| because, at least in theory, you could probably have
| created and run general purpose software applications on
| it. Would have made a pretty wild (and ludicrously
| overpriced) word processor or spreadsheet station. But, of
| course, the software it ran was all geared towards music
| production, and is a very direct forerunner of the kinds of
| music production software that would become increasingly
| available for general purpose computers.
|
| Definitely a wild and innovative time.
| piltdownman wrote:
| Definitely fair points re: the Synclavier and the
| Fairlight.
|
| That said, from memory I'm pretty positive there's a few
| 'sidenotes' in the era which would have utilised general
| purpose portable computers as part of a live performance.
| The UK synthpop acts cobbling together gear post-Depeche
| Mode's 1981 'Speak and Spell' Album, with stuff like the
| Alpha Syntauri setup for the Apple II used by Herbie
| Hancock and Laurie Spiegel coming to mind.
|
| https://www.vintagesynth.com/syntauri/alphasyntauri
|
| You then went even more niche, for the sake of academic
| argument, with the Amiga demo and modscene which often
| focused on the use of Tracker MODs for live performance
| and 'DJing' on COTS consumer PC hardware.
|
| I'd also eat my hat if there weren't Jazz and new-wave
| artists utilising the FM Chips in the early NEC and PC-88
| style line at the time - i.e. the natural progression of
| the chiptune scene going full polyphony and fidelity from
| the MOS chip in the C64.
| the-rc wrote:
| Zappa even took his Synclavier on the road in 1988. You can
| hear it all over the albums from that tour. It was almost
| certainly the most expanded (and expensive) unit on the
| planet. By 1991 it had an astounding 768MB of RAM.
|
| Speaking of Synclavier, Kraftwerk's crashed live in 1991...
| https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/kraftwerk/1991/philipshalle-
| d...
| piltdownman wrote:
| Synclavier was a serious powerhouse that straddled the
| analog/digital era - additive, digital, and FM synthesis
| with unique sampling features. They were lucky with the
| cross-pollination in the US University scene at the time.
|
| It was originally envisaged to be the 'Dartmouth Digital
| Synthesizer', borrowing the then innovative FM synthesis
| technology from Stanford which was eventually the basis
| for the Yamaha DX line of synths, with the DX7 being the
| indisputable king of late 80s popular music.
|
| That 24-bit, 50kHz sample rate and the AD/DA converters
| were glorious, but even the workflow and palette editing
| functionality were so unique and revolutionary that
| there's value in a full 1:1 software emulation. I've had
| a lot of fun playing 'guess the hit single' with the
| Synclavier and Fairlight emulations in the Arturia
| Collection
|
| https://www.arturia.com/products/software-
| instruments/syncla...
| the-rc wrote:
| Well, Jean Michel Jarre had 11 (eleven) Ataris on stage in
| 1990... but he'd always been ahead of the curve, e.g. having
| his own custom sequencer HW.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| The Atari ST wouldn't have been so onerous to bring on tour.
| Even the display wouldn't be the biggest/heaviest piece of gear
| a band would bring with them.
|
| Here we see Atari Teenage Riot using their namesake live (even
| in 2010): https://www.flickr.com/photos/clintjcl/5076088906
| classichasclass wrote:
| I've got a STacy. It's a tank, like the article says. On the
| other hand, it does have more typical ST expansion options.
| bitwize wrote:
| That is a... beautiful laptop. It looks modern. With a beefier
| CPU, display, memory, and disk, something in that case could be
| released _today_ and it 'd sell.
|
| Though it's edged out by the Amiga, the Atari ST was truly a
| thing of beauty in its day. My wife was pretty chuffed to hear
| that a model in the line has her name (of course, the STacy).
| shiroiushi wrote:
| >That is a... beautiful laptop. It looks modern.
|
| No, it doesn't. It looks _better_ in certain important ways:
|
| 1) the keyboard has real keys, not those stupid "island" keys
| that are all the rage now.
|
| 2) the screen has a taller aspect ratio, which is better for
| actual computing work, whereas laptops these days all have wide
| screens because of economies of scale with TVs and because
| people want to watch HD video full-screen instead of doing real
| work.
|
| This looks more similar to machines from the golden age of
| laptops, which was probably between 2000 and 2010.
| Moru wrote:
| I just bought the largest laptop I could find for work to get
| the vertical space. Turns out they don't make bags for those
| anymore though so I have a gigantic backpack that I have to
| squeeze in somewhere :-)
| WillAdams wrote:
| Yeah, the 16" Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 taxes modern
| bags to the point I've been putting it in a sleeve and
| double-bagging it in my overnight bag when traveling.
|
| I've been considering using an old ThinkPad briefcase I
| had, and did bring home a ThinkPad laptop bag which was
| surplus from work, and will probably use that in the
| future.
|
| Meanwhile, my work laptop (with much smaller, but almost as
| wide screen) fits in a sling bag.
| wiredfool wrote:
| I don't think so.
|
| Biggest non-modern tell for me -- the keyboard is at the bottom
| of the case and there's no wrist rest. That shift was about as
| drastic as the hw keyboard -> blank glass of the iphone
| transition: Pre powerbook, keyboards were at the bottom of the
| system. There were weird side mount trackballs, or trackpoints.
| Post powerbook 100/140/170 -- trackball in the bottom center,
| keyboard above that.
|
| Trackpads came later, but didn't really affect the overall
| layout.
| ptek wrote:
| Any one else remember going to the ATM machine with their Atari
| Portfolio to get some "Easy money" in the early 90s? ;D
| JodieBenitez wrote:
| John, is it you ?
| tomxor wrote:
| Affirmative
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| Automated teller machine machine?
| creativenolo wrote:
| At least with his Atari, he didn't need a PIN number
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| Allowing him to withdraw funds at a high rate of speed!
| aa-jv wrote:
| No, but I did use mine back in the day to write a ton of C code
| that made me lots and lots of money, recovering databases and
| such ..
|
| Still got it, it still works, and Turbo C still boots up just
| as quick.
| ptek wrote:
| Lots and lots of money sounds better than easy money
| aa-jv wrote:
| It was enough money, but I shouldn't have spent it all on
| computers. :P
| ptek wrote:
| Ahh the final question, is easy money better than enough
| money?
| ndiddy wrote:
| How was editing the source code on such a small screen? I
| think it was 40x8 or something.
| wkjagt wrote:
| I recently bought an Atari Portfolio that was in working order.
| But it stopped working pretty quickly and now only shows random
| characters on the screen. Too bad, because I was really looking
| forward to that easy money.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Never! It ran MS-DOS!
| shiroiushi wrote:
| Compared to the "island" keyboards that most laptop computers
| today use, the keyboard on this machine is a thing of beauty.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| Yep. And take note, Apple: Atari managed to include both
| Backspace AND Delete keys! Of course, so does everyone else...
| except Apple to this day.
| Moru wrote:
| My ASUS has a POWER-button where my end-button used to be...
| I thought we stopped mixing in power-buttons on the keyboards
| ages ago for obvious reasons.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| When Eject buttons became obsolete, the obvious thing for
| Apple to do was to finally put a Delete key there. But
| nope. For a while it was some weird "lock" thing, and now
| it is indeed a power button.
| icedchai wrote:
| Power button feels like the right move. Consider that
| backspace vs. delete is a non-issue for 99% of consumers.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| You really think people Backspace away old E-mails and
| files they want to delete (for example)?
|
| I wondered if everyday users noticed the omission. Then I
| was waiting for help in an Apple store and heard a woman
| come in and tell a salesperson that she and her daughter
| were happy with their new MacBooks, except for one thing
| they hated: the lack of a Delete key; she asked if there
| was a way to remap a key to be Delete.
|
| Backspace vs. Delete is a non-issue for 99% of consumers
| because they have those keys.
| bartread wrote:
| My Macbook Pro has a power key: in the top right, next to
| F12. I'm generally not a fan of them either although, in
| this case, it doesn't really cause me any problems.
| Findecanor wrote:
| The keyboard layout is really a variation of the Atari ST
| desktop layout. Backspace and Delete are in the exact same
| locations as on there.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| Which is just one example of how long this has been a
| solved "problem."
| wiredfool wrote:
| Apple used to use full mechanical keyboards on their laptops --
| the Powerbook 1xx era (with the exception of the 100) had
| wonderful keyboards. Good feel, good travel. Over time they
| flattened down, buy the ibook/tibook era they were super flat.
| Still mechanical, and popping the tabs at the top opened it up
| for memory/disk access. The downside there was that they were
| flexy, and not great to type on.
|
| The island keyboards came in when they put the keyboard base
| inside the aluminum case and screwed it in with 60 of the
| smallest screws you've ever seen. Pain in the ass when you
| needed to replace one, but _way_ more solid and better typing
| experience.
| transfire wrote:
| Sometimes I like to imagine a world where Commodore and Atari saw
| the writing on the wall. Instead of competing each other to
| death, while the IBM PC open architecture took off, they
| collaborate to create a joint open architecture of their own.
|
| How different might the IT world look today if we had had a
| deluge of Amiga/ST clones.
| guenthert wrote:
| Not sure. While the ST was an awesome home computer when
| released in the mid eighties, there was little, if anything
| truly innovative about it. It's rather true to its marketing
| slogan "power without the prize". W/o competition between Atari
| and Commodore, prizes would surely be higher, but then, what
| would be left?
| eftpotrm wrote:
| I wish Commodore had had a quarter of Apple's marketing skills.
| More powerful, cheaper hardware with a significantly more
| capable and extensible OS could have made the Mac a footnote if
| executed properly and would have supplied some interesting
| competitive pressure to the wider market.
| criddell wrote:
| I think about that as well although I like to imagine that both
| Atari and Commodore survived as did BeOS, RadioShack/Tandy,
| OS/2, and all the machines I've only heard about but never used
| (esp. the European machines).
|
| Although I suspect that even if all that stuff survived well
| into the internet era, the rise of web-based UIs would have
| lost everything interesting about each platform and rounded
| every corner to deliver the boring, ugly cross-platform
| software that is so popular today.
|
| I think only Evernote did a good job of cross-platform where
| they wrote a platform specific UI layer onto a common
| foundation that did all the work and communicated with the
| servers. Even that didn't last because eventually they also
| bought into Electron which is basically the gray goo of
| software.
|
| It's a bummer.
| krige wrote:
| Interesting to see that Atari did complete their notebook
| project. As far as I know (note: might be decades of internet
| tall tales), Commodore was also trying to get one rolling, but
| eventually gave up and released merely a small factor breadbox
| system, the A600, albeit shipped with ready support for internal
| hard drives, as well as the then barely standardized PCMCIA
| interface.
| drooopy wrote:
| Oh, man. An Amiga laptop would have been so cool to have back
| in the day.
| aa-jv wrote:
| If only SGI had built a laptop, too.
| Findecanor wrote:
| Some SGI engineeers did build only a prototype of an O2
| laptop -- with an ergonomic keyboard.
|
| However, there was a company called CRI that remade SGI
| Indy into thick-boy "laptops" for the military.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Are there any pictures of it?! I NEED those.
|
| Edit: found https://web.archive.org/web/20080330045629/ht
| tp://www.jumbop...
|
| and
|
| https://www.siliconbunny.com/silicon-graphics-laptops/
| aa-jv wrote:
| I often like to daydream of a world where some SGI
| engineer used a titanium casing to build the "SGI tiBook"
| instead of Apple, and we ended up in a world where SGI,
| not Apple, is the trillion-dollar computing company of
| the 21st Century.
|
| Of course, its just a fantasy, but somehow I feel like an
| SGI tiBook would've won over a lot of nerds, a lot
| faster, than Apples' variant did ..
| rbanffy wrote:
| I think it could be a lot worse than us running NeXT
| machines. The later top-of-the-line ones are even black.
| Imagine if it were HP-UX.
|
| Maybe the next MacPro will be a black cube.
| wazoox wrote:
| Some have built portable setups with an Indy and an Indy
| presenter. I remember 25 years ago someone showing off
| with such a custom portable configuration, with an Indy
| motherboard and PSU, a keyboard and track ball and an
| Indy presenter crammed inside a small metal suitcase,
| very chic (but required external power).
|
| Fake versions were made for the movies "Twister" and
| "Congo" but AFAIK these were completely fake (the actual
| Indy driving the screen was off camera somewhere).
| rob74 wrote:
| The fact that the Atari ST's standard display was monochrome
| helped a lot, as they could use a cheap (and power efficient)
| laptop display and still maintain compatibility with most
| applications. That wouldn't have worked for the Amiga of
| course...
| Mister_Snuggles wrote:
| I never used an Atari computer, nor did I know anyone who did,
| but I always wonder what the world would be like if Windows and
| macOS didn't "win".
|
| If Atari and Amiga had won instead, what would the world look
| like?
|
| What would the server world look like? Would there be some weird
| "Amiga Server Enterprise Edition"? Would servers just be Linux
| without any meaningful competition?
|
| Would Atari have shook the world by introducing a new CPU that
| resulted in amazing battery life compared to the Amiga
| competition? Would some of us be using AtariPhones? Would Android
| be a thing?
|
| Would retrocomputing folks talk about their Windows 3.1 boxes the
| way that Ataris and Amigas are currently talked about?
| lagniappe wrote:
| I think if Atari and Amiga won the world would have a lot more
| focus on the media side of things, the playful, graphical,
| musical expression would be more evident. I don't think we'd
| have spent as long in the beige-box era, and maybe we'd still
| have little colorful imacs running something Haiku-esque, with
| enlightenment on top and some breakcore tracker music on
| bootup.
|
| This is my fantasy, you're welcome to enjoy it while you're
| here and remember, no shoes on the couch.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _the playful, graphical, musical expression would be more
| evident._
|
| This was also the Mac's distinguishing feature at the time.
| It still is, so some extent. A lot of what drove mass
| adoption of home computers was that everyone wanted to bring
| the same computing environment, i.e. OS, they used at work or
| at school at home as well. This was DOS/Windows or System 7.
| analog31 wrote:
| One reason was being able to bring home "free" software
| from work.
| makapuf wrote:
| This was also OS/2 but this one didn't work so well.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| > Would there be some weird "Amiga Server Enterprise Edition"?
|
| I suspect Commodore's SVR4 port would have played a role:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Unix
|
| Likewise, Atari had a Unix port on the TT workstation:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_TT030
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| We also had (well, have) a Unix-like extension for the
| shipped TOS/GEMDOS/GEM OS in the form of MiNT/FreeMiNT, which
| went on to form the foundation of the official MultiTOS which
| unfortunately died along with the ST when Atari Corp died.
|
| It had/has a POSIX(ish) API, device files, mountable
| filesystems, pre-emptive multitasking, TCP/IP, etc. while
| still being able to run classic TOS binaries.
|
| You can run this in an emulator or on hardware still today
| and it still gets active development, under the GPL.
|
| e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOkDuLmgWFo
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| That looks like it would be a ton of fun to try. I wonder
| how that would run on my MiST!
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| quite well. Though it benefits from a faster machine with
| an 020 or 030 and more memory.
| TheAmazingRace wrote:
| If nothing else, it would have been nice to see Digital
| Research and Gary Kildall get the last laugh via Atari
| computers taking off.
| II2II wrote:
| It would have been a very different place.
|
| In the IBM compatible world, the clones drove down the price
| then drove forward progress. It is doubtful that much of a
| clone market would develop in the Amiga/Atari world since the
| parent companies were already competing against IBM compatibles
| on price. Without clones to break free (as happened in the IBM
| compatible world), there wouldn't be clones to drive forward
| progress. I'm not even sure cloning the Amiga would be
| practical. Apparently Commodore had enough trouble "cloning"
| the Amiga (i.e. developing higher performance, yet compatible
| machines). Without the clones driving progress, companies like
| SGI and Sun would likely still be in the picture.
|
| If Amiga/Atari domination somehow did happen, I suspect the CPU
| situation would be flipped around, with Motorola having both
| the incentive and finances to continue on with a fully
| compatible 680x0 line of processors and Intel chasing after its
| own equivalent of an 680x0-to-PPC transition.
|
| As for the retrocomputing thing: DOS/Windows 3.x nostalgia is
| very much a thing in today's world. In that alternate reality,
| they would likely be higher profile (as Amiga/Atari are today).
| bluedino wrote:
| I'd assume it would have been pretty similar but we'd be
| running on Motorola CPU's (or a descendant of them)
|
| The platforms would have needed to be opened up to clone
| builders to reach critial mass.
|
| Amiga was a lot like DOS/Classic Mac OS, single user,
| unprotected memory...we would have seen it added on to like
| Windows 3.x/9x, until a re-written version with the right stuff
| took over (like Windows NT/2000/XP did).
|
| Someone like Linus would have still likely written a UNIX clone
| and open-sourced it.
|
| The minicomputers and UNIX servers/workstations would have
| still hung around for a while. The real trick is the Amiga CPU
| and the rest of the hardware would need to keep getting
| improved, catch up in speed, reach 64 bits, SMP...
| foobiekr wrote:
| I am a huge Amiga fan, but the Amiga was going nowhere and was
| never going to win. The OS is just as terrible as classic
| Windows and MacOS from a reliability standpoint; yes not using
| a message pump for timeslicing was a really nice property but
| in most ways the design was _worse_ in terms of any hope of
| eventually getting memory protection in place.
|
| I love the Amiga - it represented a unique point in time that
| coalesced a lot of interesting technologies and people together
| trying to do something interesting - but it was as far from a
| technology that had long term potential as you could get,
| pretty much in every way.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Ironically, the Atari ST's OS -- much maligned as 'primitive'
| by Amiga users -- was not like this. It had a proper syscall
| mechanism through TRAPs -- so proper 68000 architecture
| memory protection entirely possible with user/supervisor
| separation etc etc -- and an event loop with message passing
| (tho rarely used). Later extensions to add unix-like
| multitasking (MiNT -> FreeMiNT) actually ended up fairly
| elegant, and memory protection is a possibility for some
| things.
|
| My understanding is that AmigaOS syscalls were basically
| JSRs?
|
| The original shipped OS was basically a fork of CP/M and PC-
| DOS-ish but GEM overtop of it showed more attention to
| cleaner architectural concerns, though it was never really
| used to its full intent.
| edwinjm wrote:
| Windows became big because it was the successor of MS-DOS, the
| OS for the IBM PC, which architecture became popular because of
| cheap clones.
|
| This wouldn't happen with Atari or Amiga.
| DowagerDave wrote:
| Atari HATED to share anything with people outside the company.
| The couldn't even help developers build software for their
| machines, let alone let someone copy & commoditize their
| hardware. The Apple II was incredibly open and extensible, and
| successful. Macs where not and never more than a minor player
| until computers shifted to a mobile, general consumer product
| and Apple out executed and leveraged their single ecosystem.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Interesting. I only knew about the STacy. I miss a real ST
| aesthetic here though it does have more in common with the PC
| Folio.
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(page generated 2024-10-25 23:02 UTC)