Atari Falcon 030 | Nostalgia Nerd
This. Is the atari falcon, one of the greatest computers, ever made but. Sent, for you people have heard of it it's almost like atari we're trying to keep it a secret. What. Happened and why, is that it's. 1989. The. Atari st range, has been in production for four years, but. Its traction into homes has, been limited, until. Now, with. New tempting, game bundles, appearing, in shops the, st FM has become an appealing, and cost-effective. Choice for bringing a true computer into. The home the. 16-bit, st, was far more powerful than these spectrums, and commodore, 64's, found, in most households, of the time and bundled. With a whopping 20 games the, sub 400-pound. Price tag was, a tantalizing. Temptation. However. Its hardware, capabilities. Still, lagged behind that, of the amiga 500 and, atari, knew, they'd need to do something, to keep up. The. First attempt to bounds for scales came, in B form of the Atari ST II an. Enhanced. ST which had been in development since, at least. 1987. Original. Specifications. Had detailed, a 640, by 240. Screen, resolution. With. 256. On-screen, colors a significant. Improvement. Over VST. However. On launch, of Obst had, an expanded, color palette from 512. To. 4096. It was, still restricted, to, Amiga 16. On screen, without, programming tricks. Really. The point has been missed it's, all very well having extra, colors but what's the use of you can't display more on screen on. The plus side additional, genlock support, for video editing was, added along with a blitter, coprocessor. Which put the machine more, on par with the amigas, graphical, capabilities a. New, PCM. Oh chip was also added to play back 8-bit samples, and somewhat, make up for the limited a wise sound chip found, in earlier models, although. The ste, was a moderate, improvement over, existing hardware. It's high compatibility, with. The original system was, if anything its, downfall, given. BST was far more abundant. Software, developers, stuck to making games for the original, machine rather. Than releasing titles, for the handful, of ste. Owners, some. Games did come with enhancements, for the ste but, most of these were half-hearted. And couldn't, tempt amiga owners and future. Amiga owners away, from their enhanced chipset. Capabilities. What's, more they mostly, arrived too, late to make an impact on ste, sales. Asmin, nineties began people were starting to focus their energy, and indeed. Money, on either, the amiga or a japanese, console, for gaming. But. In typical Atari, fashion, alongside, the ste, they, had also been developing, a number of other machines including. The TT and a, machine known as the Atari, transputer. The, transputer was a high-end workstation. Released, in 1989. With minimal, sales it ran on Helius, OS and was incompatible, with the ST range whilst. BTT although, intended, as a UNIX, workstation, would end up really as just a beefier, ST, with, TT standing, for 32 32, rather. Than B 16 32 obvious. T this. Is a naming convention because. Of the TT, also, has a 32-bit. Data bus paired, with a Motorola 6800. 30 CPU. Offering significant. Performance, improvements. Over previous machines. Both. Of these machines weren't, bad at all but they were expensive. And therefore pretty. Unsuccessful. Failing. To find a suitable market, niche mostly. They just weren't taken seriously, as professional. Machines and the TT was, too expensive to, be viewed as a suitable, ST upgrade. Luckily, Atari, were also sticking true to their brands origins, and a, number of game systems, were in the pipeline the. Atari handheld, Lynx had already launched, in September. 1989. And sales, were thankfully, ahead of their new desktop machines at the least the. Lynx was also a generation. Ahead of contemporary. Rival, handhelds. In terms, of technical specifications. Atari. Had also been developing, the Panther and with a nudge from ex Sinclair, research employees.
Martin, Brennan and John Matheson a more, 3d. Capable, console, called, the, Jaguar, the Panther. Was jeepers release first, in 1991. And lined, up to challenge console. Was like four Sega Megadrive in the, meantime it was down to the st and links, to carry the brand but. Times, were changing, and if Atari weren't careful, they'd, lose the home computer market entirely. In. Early. 1991. The atari lynx 2 was, launched, to try and boost sales whilst. Me panther console, was, dropped, so atari could focus on the jaguar, the, jaguars divert meant was moving faster, than anticipated, but. Atari, not being a company to have too few, pies on the table, they began another two projects, known, as sparrow, and falcon. Unfazed. By the lack of success of previous machines, Jack, Trammell the CEO, of Atari, corporation knew, that a new machine was required, to, compete with the Amiga and more, importantly, to Jack the, rising, dominance, of the IBM pc compatibl. 1991. Attempt, to break this market was to repackage, the ste, in a desktop case crammed, in some TT features, and sell, it as a business machine known, as the mega ste. Following. Suit with the mega st and mega st, 2 which, came some years previous, it, was cheaper, than VT t less. Capable. Member TT and somewhat. Of a backwards, step in, this area, of the market but. Like the TT it was still pretty. Unsuccessful, Atari, even, needed something better all they needed to change tact. The. Original Falcon specification. Was therefore intended, to blow other computers, clear, out of the water a powerful. Motorola, 6800, 40, CPU, was suspect, to be at its core a CPU. Which could easily compete. With, the abundance, of Intel, 386 processors. The. TTS, fast, RAM was also a consideration. For inclusion, along, with a fast expansion, bus and extensive. Upgrade, paths developed. By Atari in Texas, and are led by John Horton this, was a computer designed, to enter the PC, market alongside. This, Sparrow, was, more of an upgrade card, for VST, using, an as yet undecided. Motorola, processor, and lacking, the faster, bus and expansion. Options of the Falcon, this was being developed by Ataris Israel. Operation, led, by Marsha, gal and air da VL if we, step outside of, Ataris walls at this point knowledge. Of an upcoming Jaguar. Console, was, already public, but. There was also speculation of, a Jaguar, based computer. Floating. About sources. From Atari also, suggest there were plans to make the Falcon and the Jaguar, semi compatible, or develop, a Jaguar, card for a falcon at least but, Jack Tramel was against, the notion and pushed, for them to be unique systems, in. Late, 1991. Would-be Jaguar, computer, rumors quashed Atari. Seemed, to reluctantly, confirm, they were working, on a super, TT, machine called, the foul Caen incorporating. A motorola, 68000, 40, CPU, and a, possible built-in, cd-rom. This, was a machine of the average, Atari, users, dreams, but. This was, a short-lived. Dream, as only a few months after their admission, this, Falcon, was, pushed aside and, instead. The sparrow project, was stepped up to take its place and the, B divert the name of F x1 one.
Could Speculate, that this decision, was down to B dwindling, finances of, Atari, corporation, the. Sparrow used many existing, components. Making, it cheap and quick, whilst. For super TT Falcon, needed, further investment. And resources. Tricky. Especially when, the Jaguars development, was well underway. It's. Clear, from B sparrows, December, 1991. Revision. 10 design, specs, that this was the Machine destined, to be the Falcon we, would soon all know and love all, the, specifications, are present, as is the intention, to be a compatible. High-performance. Extension, of B Atari ST II, architecture. So. Aside, from the St book which would arrive in the UK early, in 1992. The new year had a seemingly, cleaner, plan, for Atari to, launch the, sparrow as their next computer and the, Jaguar, as a brand-new advanced. Console, it was. Around this point but companies, such as a magitek, who were working on Raiden. Dino. Dudes and. Road. Riot, for me now counselled atari, panther console were, asked, instead, to begin porting, code to, the sparrow, richard. Miller, was currently Ataris, president, of research, and development and was responsible, for leading the new projects, and was, apparently keen to make the sparrow into a system his mother could use stating. You can never underestimate, the, consumer, so, the computer, should, be just as good as the consumer CD player or television. The, specifications. Were been hammered out to, make it affordable. But capable. Sporting. A motorola, 6800. 30 16. Megahertz cpu. A, blitter. Graphics, coprocessor, at 16, megahertz offering 64, million pixels, per second, a DMA. Engine. Offering fast memory access to and from scuzzy, audio. Peripherals, etc. A Motorola. 5600. 132. Megahertz. Digital, signal, processor, unit and, an. Optional, Motorola 6, to. Floating-point. Mathematic. Coprocessor. Unit, of course, let's not forget the powerful. VY del video, controller, offering. 260. Mm. 144. Colors chunky. 16-bit, true color and various. Bit plane modes now. This all sounds reasonable enough that pretty awesome, in fact but, there is a small caveat, although. The video bus was, 32, bits wide the, main processor, bus is still only 16 bits, somewhat. Limiting for Falcons performance, but, from Ataris perspective, saving. Money at the same time still heavily rooted in the, esti specifications. Back. In reality Atari, might have been soldiering, on oblivious. To the nightmare, they were facing. But owners of VST were becoming rightly, concerned, about the dwindling supply, of games for their beloved systems, the, lack of content, aimed at their machine on TV, and the media and even for shrinking, size of their favorite, magazines, this, is from Jenny Smith who lives the King Edward Avenue Hastings, in East Sussex hi Jen she, says dear Andy and violet I'm getting fed up for watching computer shows that don't even mention my computer, I know you've got an Atari ST well we, do have one here in the studio and if you're an ST owner look out for some software reviews for you in later program companies. Like Special Reserve we're reporting, for ST game sales now, only accounted, for, 13%.
Of Their, orders, 20%. Down on the previous year and amiga. Games were out selling st iterations, by five to one in shops, like WH, Smith in, fact Commodore 64, game sales were, actually faring, better thanks. In part to be terminated, to bundle, but. Reassurance. Was provided. In the form of this new almighty. Machine, just. Around the corner. Throughout. 1992. News, on this new machine was, few and far between the. Other mention, tantalizing. Glimpses, of hope and numerous. Mentions, of the multimedia, future, provided, sustenance for, existing esti, owners, at, the height of summer the details were more forthcoming in, late July the first images of a new machine leaked, through to us courtesy, of ST user magazine, the. Sparrow prototype. Had now taken on the full falcon, persona, or at least adopted, its name as we, falcon --zero 30 and was, about to receive judgment, it, wasn't yet in the new colors Frankenstein. With a white keyboard, and Sparrow, card case with, the production coloring, still, undetermined. In fact the Eternals were still different, at this point sporting, only toss, 2.07. Ataris, operating, system and an, array of incomplete. Components. But, the question was had the cost-saving. Measures of atari produced. A machine good enough to satisfy the hungry, desires of st. Owners, was. This per machine we needed to carry the atari brand into. The late 90s with. Phrases, like better, sound capability. Than compact, discs true, color 16-bit, mode and the multitasking. Toss operating, system being thrown about the, signs seemed promising, in other, magazines there was talk of a high-density, floppy, drive, and that digital. Signal processor, which made the average atari fan moist, to, the touch game. Developers, even started, to air bare views I'll be, very interested in developing stuff for it I've, prayed, for this kind of move for a long time the. Only qualms, I have is the price of PCs is falling, all of the time us, gold would love to produce software, for such a sophisticated machine. However. We're going to wait and see what kind of price the machine has released at and which, other houses support it every. Other sound like a user stream but, Etheria have to be very clever to gain substantial support, the Falcon could be a monster. If marketed, correctly it. Must be pushed by Atari as a serious. Machine, Atari. Must not promote it as a games platform that, would be the kiss of death, for the machine. This. Mixed, but excited, bag of feelings was shared throughout Atari itself, and this, led to a war raging, between Atari, UK, and Atari Germany, over who would control development of the machine Atari. Germany, wanted befall Caen to be viewed as a serious, computer, at feelings, very much shared, by Jack and his son Sam, Trammell, however. Atari UK, wanted the Falcon to be poised for gaming, as well following, the st in its most successful domain. And providing. An upgrade path for gamers he might have always jumped, ship to the amiga or PC. Initially. Commodore was concerned, by, this new machine david. Pleasants, head of Commodore UK stated. When, we first heard about the Falcon, we were really worried as it was more powerful than amigas, up and coming machine the a 1200. Appearing. They were trying to go head-to-head with the PC, we, knew we had already won. In. The October. Issue of Atari ST user, Sam, Trammell even confirms that a falcon o 30 has, no interest, in going up against, the Amiga Atari seemed. To be going directly, for the throat of the PC, market, which was. A bold move to save at least, in. Any case Atari, Germany, had won the battle fears. But the falcon might detract from the Jaguar, had helped seal the deal and so, this is where we'd witness the initial launch at, the SiC düsseldorf, Atari, fair on the 21st, of August 1992. As. Well as a spinning, falcon display there was a lengthy, presentation, demonstrating. For graphics new, multitask, operating system and the, various, features enough. To make atari aficionados. Drool, from, here to kingdom come. If chancel hitted on anything if on two girls 606. And guys teach me, the, machines, exterior, was itself very modest looking mostly like a discolored. St, but, sporting, a multi-coloured, falcon. Badge. It. Seems atari were planning a completely, new case from, her following year but wanted to test the wind before committing, some. Felt it wasn't enough to stand out as a new machine and this lack of commitment in itself felt, a bit half-hearted.
And Concerning. Frankly. Very from a personal, perspective it, didn't, bother me there was something about that original, st case bathed in these new alien, colors which, made me just lust after this machine, and that, lust didn't, diminish so, i was over for damn moon to receive one myself, earlier. This year oh. Yes. Falcon. Hmm. Anyway. The. Machine was launched in France and the UK shortly, after Germany at the September, European, computer, trade show with, an entry price of $4.99 for. One megabyte model up to 999. Pounds, for the fully kitted version. Proving. Atari Germany, had won the battle and the Falcon was poised and ready to, be pitched as a serious, computer, to, rival, the PC. Now. That's not to say he couldn't but, for most part it was well ahead of PC. Hardware at the time but. The PC market was so strong, at this point it was nearly impossible to. Take it on in general, terms, coupled. With the Falcons hefty price tag there was a confusing, mixture, of raised eyebrows, sunken. Stomachs, and extreme, excitement of, a falcon o30 in. A situation. Strange, for, us Europeans. At the time the, USA, launch actually, followed, our own with, an unveiling at the Southern California, computer, fair on B 12 of September, and even. A fully kitted Falcon, was given away to, lucky entrant jason, spoor. The American, rollout would be a somewhat more subdued, affair, though indicative. Of be less than favorable success. Previous. Models had attained, in their, home country, regardless. With news and previews, spilling out left right and center anticipation. Was rife even. TV programs, such as bad influence, started, talking, about Atari, again why. Well, this might be one of the reasons why it's Ataris new baby the polkan it might have been waiting for this well, for. A couple of minutes including. A live demonstration, of this miraculous, machine it's. A brand new revolutionary piece, of equipment, so what's the new about it well inside. It's got something called the DSP. A digital, signal, processor. Andy, crane may have given a rather brief demonstration, but thankfully, we can go one better let's, take a look at my own model. Look. At this wondrous, machine, so many options and, so much potential. First. Up connectivity. The. Back looks familiar but offers a number of new options over the ST, over. Here is the DSP, port allowing direct access, to the DSP chip a 3.5. Millimeter stereo, out, 3.5. Millimeter, microphone, in a scuzzy. 2 port for CD, hard, drives and burr like a video, port allowing connection, to both standard, and VGA. Monitors, the, RF, TV, output also, still remains, a, 25. Pin parallel, port an rs-232. 9, pin serial connection, a local. Area network port. Power, socket, and of course the reset, switch on. The left side we've got the usual MIDI port cartridge. Port and enhanced, joystick, connections, the same you'll find on the Atari Jaguar then. On the right we have a high-density disk drive as standard. For all you sadists. Out there don't worry the standard, 9 pin mouse and joystick, ports still, remain tucked away underneath, the. You'll, note the fan, cutaway, next to it something. You of course won't see on an ST now. My particular Falcon also has a screen, I card, installed, allowing. For video capture but of course this, isn't standard, equipment, okay. To, start with I'll be connecting, up to an LCD VGA, monitor, for the best picture, quality. We. Get the usual Atari boot screen and this, one has a pre-installed, IDE, hard drive. Drivers. Are loaded and then we boot straight into the new multi toss operating, system. The. Gem desktop, has really taken an upgrade, this time around, and you. Can actually choose whether the machine runs toss or multi, toss, early. Machines didn't, actually have multi toss built into ROM so, they needed to load it from the hard drive assuming. You had a hard, drive model, you, also really need a reasonable, amount of RAM for multitasking. Thankfully. This machine has a whopping 14, megabytes which, is actually the factory, limit, rather. Interesting, levy multitasking. Features, of the new OS are actually derived from an ST operating. System extension, called mint, developed. By Eric R Smith, mint, originally, stood for mint, is not, toss, but.
Atari Simply, licensed, the software, told, the world that it now stands for mint is now toss and, provided. It as an alternative, kernel, to work alongside the new desktop, like. Vats where new OS was multitasking ready. We. Could spend all day exploring. But let's just cover some essentials. Ever, moment, we're running in 80-column. 256. Color mode which, gives us a resolution of 640, by 480, but. We can slip into a true color 40, column mode or, even use standard. Esti resolutions, for compatibility, the. Falcon can clearly Drive all of these through, the VGA monitor, without issue however. If we load up a program which dynamically, switches, to a resolution, outside. Of your monitors, range then, you might get an issue however. If, I plug into a standard TV through, RF, things. May be a tad more fuzzy, but, switching resolutions. Is no longer an issue the. TV isn't a great pairing with the Falcon and a, decent multi sync monitor would be far superior, but, it suffices for this example at least. You. Can't drive, a monitor, at the same time as TV, mode you should note as it runs slightly different resolutions, to compensate, but. I feel it's worth pointing out but we now have overscan, meaning, the entire picture can, fit in the screen doing, away with the huge borders, of the esti the. Falcon also has a built-in speaker so. You can hear sound, when hooked up to a VGA, monitor, even, without external speakers, or where it is quite, tinny. Using. The esti compatible, resolutions, of 320, by 240, in, colours 640. By 200, with 4 colors and 640. By 400. With 2 colors you can see most esti software, will work absolutely fine, on, this beast. We. Can use the original music maker for example, or even an, array of games found, with the esti power pack but, this, feels like a massive. Waste of. Power so. Instead let's try using some features of the DSP, that bad, influence, episode we were just watching the featured this clip of an D recording, and a, distorting, his voice using, the Falcon, you. Can do it from the CD or if you've got a microphone like this you, can do it from microphone, so I saw it just record something in Mary. Cruz, Mars, it. Play that back to make sure it's there and the thing Merry. Christmas. Now how can we improve that well it can do effects you can harmonize, if you also have to be reasonably fluent in German because this software so new but, the English program hasn't been written yet and I move, this.
Bit Save down a bit there and that. Much of my voice off, a bit like that play, it back and then, see if that improves my singing. Yeah. Well possibly, I remember it clear as day so. I thought, I'd try my own version using. Exactly, the same software, it's even in German, which is understandable. Given, this is a German, machine. So. First I'll need to record the, line. Seems. About, right, then. I'll apply some distortions. That's. One lifelong, dream, fulfilled. So, happy, days, of. Course the Falcon is capable, of even, more amazing. Feats, check. Out how fast it can run frontier, elite - for example. Compared. To it running on an ST you, can see this is how the game was always meant, to be played. Sometimes. His folk have also made some highly impressive demos, for. The hardware. Anyway. Let's. Get back to, the Falcon story. Impressively. Despite, reeling, back on their original design both. Technically, and aesthetically. Atari. Had created, something of magnitude. Offering. Audio video, and digital, processing. Capabilities, which, knocked a most competition, for six areas. The Falcon excelled in were also four kind of niches where, we saw ears really prick up with. Eager anticipation unit, started, appearing on shelves, in late, 1992. Alongside. The, predicted, price tag starting, from 499. Pounds, over, way to $12.99. For a fully kitted out harddrive, model however, due, to what Atari, called. Insurmountable. Quality, control, issues, it, wouldn't be until early 1993. That. Falcons, would ship in reasonable, numbers and, with, reasonable, quality, in the, US models, were on sale for under a thousand dollars but, dealers had to be signed up with a new agreement, meaning, of availability. Was painfully, restricted. But. Even as these machines, appeared Atari. Were yet again talking, about the launch of our old friend, a falcon. 0:40. The. Leftover, threads from the original Falcon project still, seemed to be crawling, along complete. Of a shiny case called. Via micro, box it was very likely a refinement, of a case they had hoped the, first machine, would have it. Looks incredibly, like a PlayStation. 2 and indeed. Is a source of Sony's inspiration. Even, being mentioned in Sony's, patent, application. There. Was even still talk of a cd-rom, kited, version making an appearance an idea. Which had been floating around for some years Atari. Had been trying to get in on the multimedia, experience. Since, the late 80s, would be doomed Atari, CD, AR 504, system designed, to plug into VST, with. Better timing Atari, could have led the pack in this area but like many of their projects, may seem to be best at just, talking, about them whilst pouring, money down the well in, essence, this was much like what they were doing, by announcing, a new Falcon immediately. After their current model went, on sale I'm. Sure they expected, it to be encouraging. For Atari, owners, but in reality it, just discouraged. Even the few people who could afford the Falcon from shelling out in the first place instead, they chose to hold off for a few months for this even better machine. By. This point, the Amiga 1200, had, also, landed, and was, kicking up a much bigger fuss, especially. With its established, amiga gaming, base eager. For those shiny, aga, graphics. But, this new machine is being sold on it's fantastic, graphics and colors apparently, it has up to 17.
Million Different, colors available, whatever. That means. Of. Course. It pushed the Falcon, was a more competent, machine than. The 1200, even, for gaming and despite, the squabbles, and the. 1200. Can disabilities. Thousand, on-screen colors from a palette of 16.7. Million yeah, maybe but. As in static ham mode the Falcon uses eight bits to store data for each pixel, giving. 65536. Animated, on-screen, colors, yeah. So the. 1200, has real multitasking. So, does the Falcon, Maruti, OS is a fully pre-emptive, operating, system with adaptive, prioritization. And inter-process, communication. But, all we need to do is look back at the ste, and CB, issue demand. If there's no demand, no games welcome. And aside. From Ataris. Miserable. Marketing, tactics, failing. To ignite the imaginations, of gamers, and their, core audience another. Reason for their lack of demand was, for price, people. Didn't, want to and indeed, couldn't, stump, up Neo Geo comparable. Dosh for such a high investment, risk, the. Amiga 1200 on, the other hand was, a hundred pounds cheaper and already, had a much wider game, library, you. Gave the Amiga and PC, inferno. That's. Not to say games didn't, come I remember opening up ST format, and seeing Robinson's. Requiem, from her first time and being, staggered. Here, was an open-world simulation. Game with a first-person view, running. On an Atari not. An Atari I could ever afford but. Of course I could dream whined. On 25 years vote, and that dream is reality, to. Go with my machine here in fact is a brand, new copy of Robinson's. Requiem, but, I'm going to open right, now and play. Oh, it's. On CD, I've. Only got a disk drive and, there we have yet another expense. Which, was just unobtainable. Of a typical gamer of the, early to mid 90s. But. Let's not forget Atari, Germany. Especially, weren't. Even pushing this machine for the gaming market this, was a serious, computer, and although, it was already carving, out a niche it, wasn't a very large one and much of it was still occupied by its older sister VST. In. The UK both Atari and its supporters, were, doing their best Atari. UK's, marketing, manager, devil still had managed, to encourage, games master to, feature her Falcon first of all why the new machines Atari, Falcon is famed at the home user as a revolutionary, new home computer, all-singing. All-dancing and. There was even the possibility of it being the games world phoning, computer, for, the new sky one series, small. Fish maybe but in fact Atari, UK, seemed, keen on still, trying to push the Falcon for, its gaming merits, there, was even news popping up of a new gaming control, pad especially former, machine similar. To the Lynx in layout that with 16, additional.
Programmable. Buttons of, course we all know what came to be of bet but, it's interesting to note that accessories. For now at least were. Being designed with both the Falcon and the upcoming Jaguar. In mind as. 1993. Pressed, on Falcon, news started. To die off and for. Most publications, it was business as usual, the, ST models were still on sale at the time and by, April the s TFM, had been slashed from, 249. Pounds to, 159. Really. As a last-ditch, attempt, to keep a format alive the, STA followed, shortly after, despite, price slash and denials, Atari. Had hoped ST models would sell some 150,000. Units by, the end of the year when. Quizzed about at Commodore UK's, manager, Kelly Sumner, didn't, show concern, and interpreted. The move as like. Where they didn't stock with a view, the thing altogether it. Wouldn't be long before Sumner, was proved right. The. Falcon continued, on sadly, no, 0:40, model came no, new case arrived in fact a very little really happened, by, the end of 1993, magazines. Were still trying to tell us the virtues, of this wondrous, computer, with, more advertising, actually, coming from third-party producers. Van, Atari itself. Replacement. Cases were popping up along, with CD, drives and other accessories, trying, to help the system limp, on it, was clear that many of these companies either depended. On Atari survival. Or were just diehard. Fans themselves. By. The end of the year bob guido general. Manager of Atari Europe claimed. Some, 14,000. Falcons had been sold with, around 4,000. Still in stock this. Slow rate of sale did, nothing to change prices, however and base, Falcom models were still priced at, 499. Pounds. Appearing, so what defiant, alongside, their, price slashed elders but. That new kid on the block was, starting to make some serious noise, Atari. Themselves. Were expecting, the Jaguar, to make some serious waves and were pouring all their time effort and indeed, money into, the 64 bit wonder console. Optimism. Was so high or more likely hope, but, Sam Trammell who had taken over the atari range from his father jack confirmed. They were planning, a check your computer. Proving. Yet again that, just when Atari corporation were looking focused, they, were still pouring ideas, and cash out quicker, than a shell suit on a slide. One. Promising, aspect, was Viteri had now jumped, on the marketing, bandwagon. Having, neglected this crucial, element of business for years even. During the Falcons launch. But. Jankura was now witnessing, big launch events and an, even bigger marketing, campaign, but, marketing, costs, money and unless, it came flooding back pretty, quick, the, business was in serious, trouble, it's. With this in mind but production a war machines above am a jaguar was massively, stepped, down this wasn't only worrying for atari computer, owners it was also a kick in the face for those who had just forked out for, a falcon. In. Early. 1994. Sam's words were we, couldn't spend enough money to give a falcon a significant, market share and pair to the PC we're. Continuing, to make computers, and we will provide the nest market set we're in, it.
Was A very important, decision for us to downsize, the company lower our risk in the computer business and, put ourselves behind, the jaguar by, the middle of 1994. The news was in Ataris. Net sales for 1993. Were twenty eight point eight million dollars compared, to one hundred and twenty seven point three million, for, nineteen ninety two to. Help keep the company going Time Warner increased, their interest in the firm and twenty, five percent to, twenty seven percent with, Sam remarking. As a result, of increased, spending for marketing, activities, and until, such times as shipments, of the Jaguar product Armada. Substantial. Volume we, do not expect to achieve profitability. Support. For the Falcon had now officially. Been, pulled and, everything. Was on the Jaguars, success. Users. Of the Falcon were left teetering, a new version of toss had, been in development but. Hadn't made it to official, release however. Toss, 4.04. Had, fixed numerous, bugs in the audio system and improved. Of running generally, the, problem was if you hadn't upgraded, to the new version already Atari. Weren't, going to help you meaning, third parties, were again picking up four pieces as we. Falcon lights began to dim surplus. Stock of systems would, gradually, fall in price suggesting. The end of the road. Then. In 1995. Something, happened something, promising. The. Music companies cielab decided, to buy up existing Falcon, stock and start, shipping model, as themselves, an optimistic, move which I clearly remember reading, about at the time. These. Designs, came in a number of variations, starting. With B mark one which was essentially, a standard, Falcon, followed, by the mark two offering. Some improvements. For audio professionals such. As accepting, line in audio, without the need of a preamp, and finally. The system ended with the Falcon, Mark X mounted. In a you rack case with plenty of space for mounting. And expansion. Options, cielab. Weren't the only German company getting in on existing atari technology, either. Jisub's. Had snapped up the TT specifications. To, create an upgraded, desktop, called the eagle, offering. Compatibility. With existing machines. But, providing, workstation. Quality graphics and audio, capabilities. However. These machines were, never going to revive a brand, and send, them belting, into houses across the country, instead. It just offered a small glimmer, of hope for atari, owners, pushing. Sales of a falcon hub buy another few thousand, curiously. At around the same time, the, amiga 1200 was itself being revived by Amiga, technologies, following. Commodores, own problems, one. Can only think that if Commodore, and Atari had, knitted together at the end there, still might be something, here today. Games. And applications would, still filter through to the Falcon even, tantalizing. Glimpses, of a future that could have been with, games such as substation. A doom clone finally. Arriving for ste, and falcon, machines but. For most Atari fans the once heralded computer. Was now a stranded. Ship becoming. Increasingly small. In a vast sea of other more, generic, machines, which, embraced, the multimedia age. That. Odd island, of dedicated, audio and video professionals, carried, on blissfully, still more, than content with what their falcons offered and they would do for some years but really, 1995. Marked, the end of the line it. Also meant that unique developments, never, published, their Falcon enhanced, version of the brilliant, obsession, pinball, game just, one of the many losses in this story games, like space junk, - were also dropped, from the Falcon and moved, to the Jaguar. It's, a sad fate, for, a machine which offered so much and had, so much potential, but as with all these commercial, failures there were groups of people who realized, how good it was and really, began to put it through its paces as, usual. It would be up to fans and hobbyists, to pick up the slack and trust. Me there's, a video there it is oh right, the. Falcon may not have a big cat name like the Jaguar but, it's at least has, the, same number of lives if not, more. Thank. You for watching my video on the glorious, a tiny Falcon I hope you, enjoyed, it I wish, to say thanks, to my patrons. Who contributed, voiceovers, for this video you guys were absolutely fantastic.
I, Also, wish to thank my other, patrons, you, guys for watching the, internet for being such an amazing resource, and, of. Course these, people over, on the left who helped out with this video in, other ways. So. I've got to say really, thanks. For watching have, a great evening.
2018-10-19 15:32
no
It wouldn't rewind during the premiere showing! :) Watched it late last night though when it had become properly published - fantastic!
I think this video is going to have good longevity as there are hardly any videos about Falcon on Youtube. This video is going to gather views long after the initial release. On that note, please do more videos about Falcon software and hardware. They don't need to be as high production value as this history video obviously was. I'd just like to see the bugger in action! Thank you for the great video!
I guess the biggest impact was that now 50% of comments are totally off topic. :)
+Lassi Kinnunen We'll end up with YouTube listings eventually.
i hate it. for live streams, okay, put them up for a while before, but this just looks like spam on my feed. if everyone starts doing it, it will make it difficult to see whats viewable..
+Spiraling Downward I will be too, can't be doing with this stuff.
I thought the premier feature was a huge success. Please ignore the entitlement and feel free to do this again :D
Great video as usual. I’ve yet to find the true benefit of the Premiere ... I guess for a multi-tasking youngster the chat with the creator while the video plays might be a plus but I doubt this channel demographics point in this direction. I (an old got) found it distracting and soon switched off the chat.
The PREMIERE feature is okay I suppose. Personally, I'm too easily distracted by the chat so I end up missing parts of the video. About 1/3 of the way into watching I just gave up and waited until it was available as a standalone video. I figure, especially for a video of this length, that a lot a research and effort went in to its production so I want to give it the attention that it deserves. This video is actually the perfect example! It was an amazing in-depth history of a computer that I knew almost nothing about that I thoroughly enjoyed watching and I didn't want to miss ANYTHING while trying to keep up with chat. Thank you NN for the awesome content!
Oh, I'd have really liked to have been part of this. Maybe not during office hours on a rainy Tuesday though.
Its shite. Good video though.
Ah balls, I wish I clicked it when I seen the pop-up. Next time!
Nostalgia Nerd if you do it again I’m gonna unsub. You’ve been warned
+rickyleeufc but then you're behind the chat. What's the point then? It's shit tbh
+Paul Galinsky just rewind it
STAWP!
Nostalgia Nerd - Can’t wait for this to be on YouTube like a normal video (sadly turning up to the premiere half way through just feels annoying!) HUGE THANKS for covering the Falcon!
Don’t mind the ‘it’ll be on at 9’ premier feature. Works for me.
Just don't ...
"we all get to watch it together, with chat. " Why would I want to chat with people while I'm watching a video? I'll just end up missing most of the video while chatting, or most of the chat while watching the video. I've had enough of this forced social crap. I'll watch the video later, and disable the chat, thanks :-)
Isn't that cosy ? The answer is no, as far as I'm concerned. And for several reasons: 1) This is similar to streaming. Streaming is restricted to people who share your time slot. I could view the video at any time, but I can't because it's not up yet! That's frustrating. 2) I'm using a RSS feed aggregator (Feedly) to keep up to date with my favorite channels and websites. Again, your video appears in my feed yet I need to keep it there for 5 hours until the video can actually be watched. Conclusion: I'm really not a fan. Just my humble opinion.
It's stupid. Don't do it again.
+Laurens de Bruijn Nailed it.
FIR- aw fuck it, never mind
personally i find this new feature annoying mainly the same reasons as others has said it is frustrating to have a new video pop up only to find out you have to wait for it
I think it can be a useful feature, but: 1) 3 hours is just too much (for a complete and finished video just like the majority of others on this channel) 2) so, it should be more suited for live streams.
Not a fan of this premier thing. Other than live streams, YouTube shines on "on demand". Plus, I will be at work when it premiers. :-(
I wont downvote as it is unfair to your channel - but my feedback is: PREMIERE is annoying. When I click on something in YouTube I expect it to play... imagine if half the vids you want to watch are PREMIERE... NN: please dont use the PREMIERE function in the future - release it when it is done.
Would be great if YouTube add a way to a put a trailer for the premiere when the video is still not available, I think that would make premieres more interesting.
This is like picking up a refreshing cold can of Cherry Coke, only to discover it's that zero sugar monstrosity. Never ever do this again, especially to a ex-Falcon owner which strangely enough was destroyed by a full can of Sugary Cherry Coke in late 1994...
Nostalgia Nerd LOL
+Nostalgia Nerd From my experience of YouTube livechats, someone will still try and say "first".
I think so far, what I have at least determined is this feature eradicates people who comment "First" on a video
kind of a tease I know but at least we know its coming and we can look forward to something.....who's bringing the beers?
Really annoying to have something show up in my watch list only to say come back later.
3:37 Is anybody commenting about the rainbow colored ribbon on the Transputer? I'm really triggered now EDIT: 26:37 Z and Y are switched on the keyboard?
100 Amiga fans disliked this :(
This is all starting to sound a lot like apple computers. It's funny how history repeats itself.
33:27 is that Bob Mills? (not the kid)
Spectacular. I really enjoyed this. Thank you.
Wow, 4:12, the magazine ad shows a Atari Portfolio and they call it Stacy (the STacy was a laptop style ST)
By the time the Atari Jaguar was released in Australia, the Pentium was already available at 100mhz and Doom was out, with a discrete graphics card, PC computers had already left Atari in the dust.
I live for these videos about older computer models. I love that developers are giving some love for these older systems =D
I love that micro pc desing
I got one of the early models of this baby for my 18th, with the broken scsi port fuck show, and wasted $2k on an external 200meg drive, that never worked properly and kept corrupting because of atari's fuckup and there was nothing I could do about it. they never released a fix and everyone who has one of the early ones got shafted. arseholes.
even had the 68882 math coprocessor for some stupid reason, early days of wank factor that I never used and paid a fortune for.
Mandela effect ? > I remember having Atari 1024 ST
i never saw an Falcon 030 anywhere in australia.
Why does this guy, at first glance, look like a soy faced NPC? I'll watch the vid and see if I detect weak SJW... after being overwhelmed with info, good vid man!
It really is a problem with someone being purely a hardware manufacturer. They need to keep making new products, which doesn't work for game platforms unless they are massive enough. Nintendo just needed to make a new bit of hardware every so oftenen to put their games on. They knew that if you release the snes it's not a good idea to say 'Next year we are releasing the snes 2 which will be loads better' That kind of thing looks good to shareholders, but looks awful to the people you expect to invest in one of your systems. Companies want to sell a new full price system every year, but no-one wants to upgrade every year. And people making games won't want to make games that somehow work with all these different specs. The PC only gets away with it because it's such a massive market.
This is your winning season in Jesus Christ name!
Great Job on the Video! Keep up the great work!
YES! This is EXACTLY what I come to Nostalgia Nerd for. I know these documentary pieces must take a phenomenal amount of work but they truly are the shining jewels of the channel. I enjoyed this video with English Muffins, Strawberry Conserve and a nice cup of tea.
Goddammit, why did I have to find this at 3:30am :/
The TT is gorgeous.
Great video—thanks! I think I’ll have to watch it again to really appreciate all the details and the work you put in. ☺️
I was an Amiga fan but I must say, I lament the loss of ATARI. They were the genesis of everything we know as home gaming. I jumped on at the end of their journey with the Jaguar. If they do pull off their latest retro modern console, I MUST buy it. Just because.
18:58 “Us Europeans” ... hey Brexit, are you still here? ;)
14:18 16 bits per pixel was referred to as “high colour”, with “true colour” reserved for 24 bits per pixel.
I am not the one who changed the meaning. You were the one who tried to claim (incorrectly) that 16 bits per pixel was true colour “back in the 90s”.
It is no matter if it is a "dead technology", what is matter is that you are changing meaning of the words and phrases.... it is utterly stupid thing to do.
Language is a live thing, but 16 bits per pixel is dead technology.
Thanks, I fix it! Btw Microsoft today call "High color" anything that is more than 8bit per RGB :D :D Language is live thing, but they could choose something new...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_color
Well... No. Back in 90s true color meant that there is no CLUT (color look up table or pallete) but rather every word (16 bit) represent directly color. Only two years later, when Microsoft made Windows 95, he started to call 24bit colors True colors and 16bit "high color". Before them, Apple call 24bit "millions of colors" in their Mac OS.
6:47 “Tack”, not “tact”. It’s a sailing term.
3:24 “TT” ... titter.
Does anyone have any idea why Jack Tramiel was against the idea of having a gaming console share most of the hardware design with a personal computer? I like the idea of designing a early 1990's games console with joystick connections and then design an expansion box that gives it mouse/keyboard/serial/parallel/MIDI/whatever. And if the marketing people say it's a good idea, put all that in a single computer box, if that's what it takes to get businesses to accept the product. What do you guys think?
27:12 Regarding Quake: The falcon is using the FPU there fo pre-calculations but does not suffer chunky to planar conversion slowdown like an amiga. Mind you, the falcon, in that example, is not using the sound processing for graphics (and it would not really work out in that example). It shares similarities with the amiga quake ideas. Really though, new amiga accelerators often have an FPGA on them even just to help the real processor along. The akiko is a gate-array and could be shoe-horned into some of the existing Amiga acclerators (which have a small FPGA on them already helping the real CPU). Elite2Frontier could be coded more efficiently on the amiga so as to avoid blitter-choking on upgraded CPU machines. The usage of FPU could precalculate Z-Buffer in software. Normally Quake on the amiga (even though it can have slow framerate) needs at least a 68040 (the FPU for which does not natively calculate transcendentals). I do however think that, even with a 68030 overclocked using a heatsink (possibly beyond 50MHz), as long as you had a fast FPU (say about 50MHz), you could run the quake engine (say to make simple low graphics mods in car racing games) as long as you had the akiko in the FPGA. Basically you might be able to get a 68030 beyond 60MHz. Mind you, a 68040 with (albeit stunted) FPU could work with the akiko. Really, an FPGA could also have a "better" akiko "pop into existence" as and when it needed it, on the fly. I think it would be plausible to "cheat" and have more than on akiko, or a different akiko appear in the FPGA. When FPGA chips (which are array architecture) are used to entirely mimic a CPU (which is a multiplier tree architecture), it is ineffiecient. I'm not referring to those. Mind you, it is good to know they exist. They can be useful. Shoehorning an akiko gate array into an existing FPGA which is merely on an amiga accelerator (containing a "real" CPU and FPU) should not be inefficient to do. It is _"an array"_ in an _"array architecture"._ It really should be doable. A problem for some boards though (like with a backport of that) could be the PCB printed itself. So getting a new one printed (like say from dirty PCBs or wherever else) would likely be worth the few quid, and some desoldering of all the parts. The RAM is a lot faster these days too on amiga accelerators.
Great video. Never had much exposure to the Atari machines. Also, what was that computer @ 34:10? Found it, said it ont he screen: FM Towns
Being primarily a console gamer, I love seeing this flip side to what was happening at the Atari computer division. Really fantastic TV length docu.
I've got an Atari Falcon still with original box. It's pretty rare.
14:45 fake Peter Molyneux quote. He didn't claim it would have wings, piss rainbows or shoot candyfloss out of the floppy drive.
wait this was live?
I have one of these. Are they worth anything? I heard they were rare.
I love my C-Lab Falcon. What a machine.
Next time, could you show something more on Falcon030? Maybe MP3 playback on 16MHz with multitasking...? :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycHGQQYoWZQ
why was there a german prompt whilst booting, but the OS runned in English???
Almost became a next Amiga didn´t it. But the amigahype was just too big, and A4000 was supposedly something there, however this probably more was it.
I used to shop at Special Reserve, stopping in on my way home on the train :)
04:45 Is that Toby Maguire?
*Diagonal* raster lines??
Was there a version with real wood?
Half-Life was actually based on the Quake 1-engine, not Quake 2
Fantastic essay! I remember first hearing about the falcon when I was doing my GCSEs, and being so excited that perhaps finally we could lord it over the Amiga pricks. I would go into my local independent computer shop and hastle them with questions about it. There indifference spoke volumes, and after many, many launch dates coming and going I finally gave up, and even became an Amiga prick too. But I'll always be an Atari boy, and seeing your face grin with glee at finally living your Falcon dream was pure magic
Up here in Glasgow at the time the Falcon alone could be had for 799 quid from Dixons, the Amiga 500 bundle was 349 quid with a pile of games, can you guess what one i bought to replace my Atari St. Lol
Great video but at 6:48, it’s “change tack”, not “change tact”...
I never understood what’s the big deal about Atari machines. No Atari machine ever stood out from the competition or made the history, boring, uncreative as if they were designed by insecure business granpas to entertain an user base made of gamers/creatives/developers/office employees whose needs they didn’t fully understand. When I was a teen very few aquaintances owned an Atari and we were all curling up our noses when it was mentioned. We all owned Commodore 64 and Amiga.
Music. MIDI. Studio.
Holy shit, that stand-up case looks like a PS2 haha.
The falcon is my holy grail. This video is superb by the way- the best falcon video on yt
**raises a glass from over yonder in the Commodore camp** A toast to the Atari Falcon, Atari ST, the Atari 8-bit micros, and all of their devoted owners of yesterday and today. Boy howdy, did our companies get run into the ground or what. But it was a wild ride while it lasted! Cheers!
An 040 based computer probably would have flattened anything 386. The 040 is more comparable to the 486 feature set wise, and by more comparable I mean the 040 blew anything Intel had at the time out of the water. I think it just came too late and didn't gain enough traction, and companies like Atari and Commodore- who would have shipped its flagship consumer CPUs into a wider market- falling apart the way they did is a good part of why. I really wish we lived in the timeline where the Motorola 68k line did better, stayed competitive and kept evolving along side Intel to this day.
It's a FALCON Richard
I bought my Falcon used in 1994 but stopped using it a couple of years later when the harddrive died. Found it in storage a few years ago and upgraded to CF-card storage and a 68882 math co-processor. Next upgrade will be a 14Mb memory module I think. I have very good childhood memories with my 1040STE and then the Falcon.
I remember lookung at the Falcon with envy when i bought my Atari 520STFM, i have always been an Atari fan having VCS then 800XL followed by an ST, i had mine for nearly 10 years before finally giving in and getting a PC in 2002. I miss those days of actually programming and recently bought an Atari 800XL with disk drive to relive myteenage years. Its such a shame the Falcon never caught on.
At 7:25 it looks like a prototype PS2.
I remember my guitar teacher had a Falcon in his studio, running Cubase. He ran his studio equipment with it through MIDI, which was like total and utter magic to me at the time.
Not at all the face I thought would be behind that voice. I now acknowledge my voice->face brain software is flawed fundamentally.
"for the best picture quality" and I have an image of a chimp with a crayon drawing frames go through my head and wonder if this isn't somehow overkill. :p
Great video like always. Just one question I would like to ask - What is that awesome piece of music you used at the very end?
I had an ST for years and wanted a Falcon so bad.
I fell in love with Falcon when it was announced. Alas, half a year later I got my first PC, as it dawned on me that the era of Atari & Amiga was gone, and Falcon just came too late.
for some reason your video won't play on my linux computer. I've tried firefox and vivaldi - mp4 and flash. the ghost of the falcon is trying to stop me i think.
A kickass historical review! You are the YouTube impresario of this particular genre.
Sequel video please.
Don't like the way you blur the focus on some shots. Makes it annoying to watch. Good otherwise
I should point out that the HAM8 mode of AGA is capable of animation, given enough processor power.
I remember reading about the Falcon after having had an Amiga 500 for at least a year, and I was ENRAGED and JEALOUS. But luckily, the AGA chipset outsold it and it disappeared without a trace. I never saw one in real-life.
What's the point of sticking to a system that has a tiny user base?
Just watched Jan Beta restore a MEGA ST. Love these machines, shame they didn't do well
I don't get this obsession with brand loyalty. I was loyal to Atari for years when I had my 600XL and 800XL, and when my parents offered to buy me a new computer, I foolishly went for the Atari ST without knowing the full specs of either it or the proper successor to the Atari 8-Bits, the Amiga. Brand loyalty cost my father £300 that day, and I swore that if a machine was crap, I would say so and not put up with it. I remember I had to do a lot of explaining why an Amiga was for me, but I got it in the end.
Seeing the Lynx again, it's almost the size of a Switch but with such a small screen. Yet, it had some pretty good software for its time, even if the handheld could barely put a dent on the Game Boy's success.
Peter Zetterberg of UDS (at 40:40) now works for Microsoft and was responsible for buying up Mojang from Markus "Notch" Persson.
A bitter sweet video, highlighting the plight of the 8 and 16bit brigade in the early 90's... but when it comes down to it, I look at it this way. Commodore and Atari were tired brands. When I came in to a bit of money back in 1993, I didn't even consider an Amiga or ST, I went straight to PC.
This was absolutely fantastic. I subscribed because of your system stories and missed them allot. Thanks Pete
so informative, such great machine from the past, thank you for making this documentary!!!
Awesome work! Was a pleasure to watch. But I'm still crying...
Awesome video!! Thanks for putting that together!! I would have done so many things different back then! I wouldn't have bothered with the Jag. Look how late Microsoft arrived to the console market with its XBOX! They should have just focused on the Falcon if money was limited. They needed to have completed the Falcon 040 with it's full 32bit architecture in its new case. Together good marketing I think most people would have then it considered more of a serious competitor against the IBM compatibles. What a shame!
This was really great! Doing these videos must give you a nice escape from having to play for José Mourinho
Awesome Video - thanks!
A very interesting video about the Falcon. I know Danielle Woodyatt and Richard Eddy (from my CRASH magazine days), and I was trying to decide if that was them (I haven't seen either of them for years) :D
Peter, I might be blind but I don't see information about this incredible ending track? Great (and lengthy) video, thanks a lot for your effort!
This is your most amazing retro-documentary! Well done! I love my two 1040STEs and my 520STF...
I'm pretty sure "17 million different colours available" means it has 17 million different colours available, past Andy.
Before I watch, the first thing that comes to mind hearing this name is DSP... I think it was the first home computer to feature one as standard. Now to watch the video. Yay!! Memory sound. (moist) ;) It was the Andy Crane clip I remembered!
Quick question on the Atari Ste and others from the early to mid 90's, are the games on these basically just Dos games? Like which stand out as only on the Falcon etc as games? Sorry if this is not the right video to ask this, also sorry if already covered and I am dumb and did not hear you state this. Thanks!
Really well made documentary, fun to watch from start to finish. Thanks for the video and the hard work.
I don't know if that planned newer case could look more like a PS2. Maybe Sony got the molds for it when the dentist tool company got the molds for the Jag.
Never owned an Atari (was Amiga fanboy), but it was interesting to watch nevertheless. **thumbs up**
Very interesting video! Well done. I gotta ask though.. the outro music.. What is it? It's a pretty smashing tune! :)
I had to double check that I wasn't watching Ahoy sans graphics... Great ... nay fabulous video mate. Thank you !
Wow you are truly clueless
what's with the very low volume music/noise whatever that's mixed in with your speech bits. very distracting
Interesting to see the schematics of the Atari Panther Shifter from my website as background imagery in the segment of the video talking about the (original) Sparrow...
It's such a shame that both Commodore and Atari were so damn disorganized back in those days. They were developing so many cool and profound devices, but shot themselves down. Great video!
Really, REALLY well researched and well made. Well done! :-)
"Bald Eagle Moly talking about Atari"
I always thought the ST line was complete ass, but the Falcon 030 caught my attention; there was a computer store in my neighborhood that was primarily an Atari shop (here in the US! Amazing, eh?). I thought it was at least as nice as my 030 powered A1200...but by then I was already thinking about jumping to the PC with this new "DOOM" game having been released...
I was gutted you kept skipping over the pictures of the Atari Stacy.. There's pictures at 3:20 and 4:13!! both times, no mention.. As an Amiga man, that was the machine to drool over.. Commodore never had a portable (since the SX64 anyway)
Oh hey, Ishar! I was just showing those games to an artist friend a few days ago, to give them an idea of what I'm going for, with my own dungeon crawler RPG! I'm developing my RPG for both Windows, and classic MS-DOS. It's a Mode12h game, so it'll have a 640x480 resolution, but only 16 colors. More than enough, for what I'm doing! I have no experience with any of the Atari computers, myself. I was a Commodore kid. (I started learning to program in Commodore BASIC, and eventually moved over to working in Pascal and Assembly, on an IBM machine.)
Love this... Thank you.. I bought my falcon030, ex demo, with (has) a broken lid 200 quid in 1992 or 3. Drove to London, from devon, to collect 16mb ram at a very low price of 100 quid, which it still has in it. Bought 65mb hard drive from an auction. Added a clock doubler to 32mhz... It's in need of some TLC, but I'm moving soon so I will have space to have my STFM, STE, Falcon030 and my BBC Master out and running.. great video.. made my day..
Nice :D Always wanted to know more about this, and can see why it fetches such a high price even today! I have a bad influence question though - there are televisions in the background at 34:01 you see the black ones with the sort of "accordion" look to the back of them, anyone know what these tvs were? I think I need one of these more than a falcon 030!
by 1995, PCs were soooo much more powerful graphics, CPU, and user interface wise, windows95 and the internet becoming really popular, full motion video games like myst, return to zork(the CD version), rebel assault 2, fps games like doom, etc.. the amigas and atari machines were like toys... it's like if you've seen ghostbusters 2, at the beginning when they'er doing the birthday party, the commodore/atari are like the ghostbusters, and the PC is like he-man...
Atari should have just developed an affordable PC compatible system for the home market that had good graphics and sound, then they should have sold expansion cards for the PC market that had the same graphics and sound capability so it would attract developers to make games and software compatible with their computers specs. a lot of people were just hanging on to their cheap C64s here in the US during that time and getting game counsels like the Genesis/MegaDrive, SNES for gaming. Atari STs/Falcons and Amigas were pretty rare, PCs were king.
damn, did that thing boot up fast.
21:36 - please retrobrite this splendid machine! On that topic, I used some kind of Atari system in the early/mid 90s at my dad's friend's house (they shooed me away with it so that they can indulge in wine, presumably) and I really want one again. I ended up being a PC guy, getting my start with a Deskpro 386/e (or /n?) but these alternative computers always tickled my fancy. Great job, I like these extended features!
At 5:42, how many of those stores are still around?
The sad fact that the writing was on the wall for both Atari and Commodore in the early 90s. The OEM PC market took off like a bandit and with good reason.
Not a secret to me. I used a falcon030 all thru the mid 90s
I was at the Glendale show, thinking about buying the Falcon (I had an ST and MegaST 4 at that point). But honestly, it was a very disappointing show. It so paled compared to the PC sales at the fairgrounds, that you knew the end was near. There was just no real excitement as in the years past, and you could tell Atari was struggling money wise. Keeping the Falcon in the all-in-one case compared to the booming PC design was a tragic mistake IMHO. PCs pretty much stunk feature wise, but you could keep upgrading them over time - something nearly impossible with the Ataris. Cheers to anyone who still remembers Fideonet and Fidodoor which I wrote for the ST/TT BBS community.
Nice video. Falcon just seemed very expensive for a machine with 16 bit bus and a maximum res of 640. Only the Motorola DSP is interesting.
I had a 1040ST and a TT... great machines.
What's the guy from SNL doing on a 90's TV show?
What a waste of time
Epic episode...excellent
*Changing 'tack', not 'tact'.. Like tacking in a boat is changing direction..
I was an Atari ST user. Bought a used Atari 520ST 1988. I was 12 and it was the first purchase i ever made. It took all my savings. And i used ST and then STE until 1995 when it was clear to me that Atari was dying. Bought a PC and was very disappointed in the "hackability" of the system. And this was in core the problem of the ST. From the start it was designed as a "static" and "final" system. The hardware was reduced down to the essentials. One standard chip used for multiple purposes and an OS bridging the gaps of the missing hardware. No expand-ability was planed in. No standard library for programming and no documentation of "best usage". This produced very hardware near programs. Programs optimized for the ST and the ST only. This was a problem later on. Old software couldn't be upgraded to use the better hardware and so newer hardware had to be compatible with the ST. Some small standard Libs and best usage guidance at the start of the ST could have made Atari survive. As i said i started off with an 520ST and nearly no "real" software and so i started to write my own. And i "peeked" and "poked" in the hardware until i got the results i wanted. This code was in no means portable. A floppy "expander" i wrote only worked on one machine. And there where thousands of hackers like me all over the world writing code specifically for their STs, with no consideration of portability. And this broke Ataris neck in the end. I learned first time of libraries and hardware drivers when i started to use Linux (late 1995). Man was that a change of paradigm for me.
blurry DoF and out-of-focus transitions really hurt this video. Difficult and painful to watch.
This is the content that got me into the channel, painfully well-researched mini-docs with a dash of irreverence in the presentation. Shine on you crazy diamond.
@12:10 I think I just heard a thousand Amiga owners chuckle.
That Demo looks like a posher version of 9 Fingers on the Amiga.
The Panther?? Wow never knew that was nearly a thing :) great video :)
Andy Crane and Bad Influence, and the snide remarks he used to make about the Amiga! Grrrrrr! Git!
25:13 - I was told that game was 'Bomboozle'? Was I wrong or is that a German version on the screen. Also that Image Works logo brings back some strained memories.
Commodore and Atari were directionless and both wasted money on bad projects and they both were to busy fighting each other as to see the Danger the of PC and Consoles
Amiga was much better than lame ST, STE SUCKED
Given all the chips at 11:52 it sounds like you're saying 'soldering on'
I remember seeing this in Sears catalogs around Christmas back then and thinking it looked amazing! Never knew anyone who owned one however.
awesome ! thanks a lot for this great great video !
I remember when a falcon arrived at the Silica Shop in Sidcup. Too little too late and still Atari talked the talk but deliberately crippled their machines
Had and STe upgraded to 2MB, dreamt of two things. A 40MB Hard disk and the new Falcon. Sadly neither was ever to be. Eventually everything has gone PC, and noone speaks of Motorola making CPUs anymore.
I remember when the Falcon launched. I was all ready to buy one and then they didn't show up. I remember hanging out on the usenet group comp.sys.atari.st (I think that's the name) and reading the rumors that they were stuck on a boat and weren't being allowed into America or some BS like that. I wanted to try to run a multiline BBS on it. After waiting 6 months I gave up and bought a 486 with 16 megs of ram and ran os/2 instead. I didn't see a Falcon till around 2005.
If this isn't worth a thumbs up, I don't know what is. Great video, excellent work!
Poor Atari, I loved my 1040St, I wish I still had it and the (cough cough) tons of games I used to run. One thing I liked about the early Atari days was the games. They don't hold a candle to today but they were still a lot of fun to play. If I had some spare money to blow there are still Atari's being sold on Ebay and I almost bought one. The only problem (if there is a fix I don't know anything about it) is what do you run it on as far as a display. Oh well, the days of Astroids and packman are over. Kind of sad.
I always wondered about the Atari Falcon!!! thank you for this video because it was amazing!!!! hope you can do more Bad Influence episodes or go over old BBC shows!!!
if it could run a Half Life demo on it, Doom should run at normal pace.
3:16 I like that the TT isn't even set up properly in it's own advert!
anyone else spot the ps2 design in there lol
Best computer ever made in my humble opinion. So many great ideas in one such a small machine. I wish it could had been a little cheaper and had better support from Atari. And good investment now, it gets more expensive every year.
What a load of old tos. Sorry. Not Sorry.
Well, that was bloody brilliant. And I'm not even an Atari fan. Thanks, NN!
Love the longer video format! Great stuff as always
Sounded like Ring modulation instead of Distortion.
"Change tack"
STFM FTW
heh. Seeing what the falcon consists of, it certainly explains the joke behind some people sticking falcon 30 labels on their heavily upgraded atari 8 bit systems. Granted, even with upgrades it's no Falcon, but with the combination of a Rapidus, VBXE and Ultimate 1 megabyte, the resulting frankenstein system is still a lot closer to being a Falcon than it is to even most of the actual 16 bit systems of the late 80's. For reference: Rapidus - CPU upgrade module; 20 mhz 65816, with ~1 megabyte of fast RAM - primarily for direct page use. Additional 35 megabytes of RAM just for the CPU, with the system's original 64k still accessible by other hardware. VBXE (or VBXL - same thing with an adapter for installation in XL machines) - Graphics chip that technically replaces GTIA, (but functionally replaces antic as well), although all original Atari 8 bit functionality is still accessible, it can also allow a few tweaks, such as true independent foreground and background colours in text modes, and the addition of colour mapping (similar to the c64) in 8-32 pixel increments. (also switches between high-res and high colour mode in the same period.) It also supports an overlay, which functions as a second graphics layer (akin to how 16 bit systems typically have multiple graphics planes) - this graphics plane has full alpha blending with the original GTIA/ANTIC stuff (including the minor tweaks), but can also function in it's own right, in either a 640x480 mode with 64 colours, or a 320x240 mode in 1024 colours (in both cases from a 24 bit palette) - these modes also include a vastly extended equivalent of ANTIC display lists (including multiple graphics modes on a single screen, multiple independent scrolling sections, reading from various parts of memory, etc. Like ANTIC but a lot more powerful. To round things out the chip has a blitter, (with transparency and/or alpha blending support), and 512 kb of it's own RAM. (sorely needed given the higher quality graphics. - but can also function as up to 256 kb of system RAM if you have no other RAM upgrades.) This makes it perhaps the single craziest upgrade I've ever seen for a 8 bit computer, and as you can probably guess from the spec list, while perhaps not quite a falcon, it certainly gives ST's and even AGA Amigas a run for their money, if not substantially outdoing them... Ultimate 1 megabyte - perhaps the least interesting of the upgrades, but it does round things out. - This provides a few utility features, but primarily it adds 1 megabyte of RAM to the system, and 4 megabytes of ROM for storing up to 4 different OSes for the system. Truly this makes for a strange, overpowered but a little bit unbalanced 16 bit system. It does of course still have a few notable issues even excluding the frankenstein nature of it, and all that implies. Sound has not been upgraded at all, and is still just the same Pokey chip the 8 bit ataris have always had. Storage is another issue, since you're still stuck with the same tape drives and 5.25 inch low density floppy drives the system has always had... Still, it's ironic, that nowadays, keeping those limitations in mind, probably the most powerful Atari after a Falcon is a frankenstein upgraded 8 bit system...
Out of the two systems, Amiga and Atari, I always was more interested of the ST. It has always appealed more to me from some reason despite I've always been more of a PC guy.
So... Atari were pretty good at repeating the Osborne effect it seems. The very thing that killed Osborne - announcing a new model before your first model is even available... Brilliant move, huh. XD
True. Partial. I personally saw "TrueColor" at Atari Falcon and it mean 16bit direct color mode. First time I saw "true color" to refer to 24bit was on Windows 95. Before that, I saw Mac with "millions of colors" referring to 24bit colors. I just checked: VESA define 16bit as High Color and 24bit as TrueColor in November 1994. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VESA_BIOS_Extensions It was not always TrueColor = 24bit, just like today HighColor != 16bit but rather HighColor > 32bit...
So what you are refering to?
I wasn't referring to that. I presume you mean, as per the comments there, where he says: /watch?v=WpwlZgQPCpk _"almost ideal for perspective correction and both simple and cheap to perform on a DSP or other RISC unit."_
If by 'sound processing' you mean DSP, you are wrong. Dougs Quake 2 engine port uses DSP for graphic processing.
Used by some channels, at least, to block content detection.
I never understood what’s the big deal about Atari machines. No Atari machine ever stood out from the competition or made the history, boring, uncreative as if they were designed by insecure business granpas to entertain an user base made of gamers/creatives/developers/publishers/office employees whose needs they didn’t fully understand. When I was a teen very few acquaintances owned an Atari (mostly because their dads thought they could use it to make some basic office tasks with it but they ended up in the hands of their sons as horrible gaming consoles). We all owned C=64 and Amiga, we were all curling up our noses whenever Atari was mentioned.
+᚛᚛᚛ Mr. Vyper ᚜᚜᚜ Atari was the defacto MIDI sequencer in studio's world wide during 80's and half 90's. Most famous sequencer software was Cubase for Atari.
Are you serious? Atari and good music have never been in the same sentence.
Yeah, that would be the tricky part. Apple didn't start shipping 040 based machines into the consumer market until... I think around 93? I believe it would have been possible a year earlier for Atari, but they would have had to go all in on the initiative.
Assuming, of course, that it could have been priced in a competitive way..
I wish I could send money back in time. I was age 11 in most of 1993 and would have profited so much of having a falcon with periphery and software. Instead I had limited access to an Atari 1040 ST FM without a printer and commercial software.
How do I stop that time train we're on?!? I want to get out!
LooooooL At 4:09 the Picture shows a Portfolio, but the subtext mentions the Stacy. The guy who wrote this article didn't know what he was writing about.
i had an ste, stfm and stacy (laptop). never did get my hands on the falcon though.
I used an Atari ST for many years (Publishing Partner, Word Perfect, and games) but it was never going to be considered a serious business computer in the US (except maybe the MIDI applications). I also had a Lynx for the kids to use. Atari was way ahead of others with the Jaguar and should have focused on games. 20/20 hindsight.
Great video! I love your stuff, I lived through the era of the Atari 2600 obviously until now and owned an Atari 520ST at launch. Watching videos like this allow me to re-live cherished moments from my past and I thank you for that. Keep up the GREAT work.
Fab video my family had the Atari STE when i was growing up, loved lemmings! love you video content the Falcon looks like a beast!
This is very enjoyable. Except the shitty accent used for Sexy Sam Tramiel's voice. =D
There was the Mega STE too.
Stonker of a video! Kudos Mr Nerd! I doth my cap at thee.
If you are going to beg for money at least have the respect to make more than a 2 minute effort with Wikipedia or casual web searching for your pathetic videos you fermented spunk bubble millennial twat. Factually wrong within 1 minute, a record for you!!!
1993, Intel Pentium was released while MC 68060 was late (1994), slow price drop and compatibility issues. Motorola had abandoned development of the 68000 family in favor of the PowerPC (RISC hype). 1995, Intel Pentium Pro (P6) was released with CISC-to-RISC core design, hence negating the RISC hype. Windows 95 was also released. Motorola should have integrated 68020 (similar IPC to 68030) with integrated 68881 FPU against falling price Intel 486DX and it's clones. During this time, PC S3 Trio SVGA chipset was cheaper than Amiga add-on card equivalent. The switch to PowerPC killed 68K desktop computer market and it's ecosystem.
The problem is that Atari just had a whole history stretching from probably when the NES came to the forefront, till all the way till 1995...Be it the ST, Lynx, Jaguar et all they all just could not compete against what Nintendo, Sega, and soon enough Sony were doing...and besides the Jaguar wouldn't have survived up against the N64...let alone the PS1...
So much better today building your own Windows machines with room for upgrades.
So, among other problems, Atari got hit by the good ol' Osborne effect.
Have you tried the Black Lotus demos for the Falcon, which really show, what the machine is capable of. You can see Video Captures of their demos on YouTubehttps://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+black+lotus+falcon+030
In the 90's I was promised a Falcon 030 if I got a particular grade in one class in school. Made the grade, never got the computer. Boy was I pissed...
Merry Christmas!
The Motorola 56001 was kinda cool, but even at that time it wasn't exactly the high water mark for DSP chips. Fun if you want to do a Fast Fourier Transformation in hardware, but they fell out of fashion when general purpose CPUs started doing DSP tasks.
Great retrospective.
Amazing video, bravo sir! I immediately went on ebay to look for falcons and found none. I then clicked show sold listings and saw the price they went for, poured a glass of famous grouse, tipped the glass and toasted my doomed dreams and wen't back to searching out Amiga mod's. Maybe one day!
It was a fantastic fun machine to have. Problem was that Atari had financial problems and the Falcon was of the last chances they had. They rushed the hardware execution, and made mistakes like choosing cheaper factories, lowering the yield.. This had consequences for the price. It should have been a bit closer to the A1200 in price. The delays in production and everyone's focus on the masses of PC software now being released were to become the downfall. It had a great hobbyist fan base of users and developers, I am proud to have been a part of.. There may have been too few commercial releases, but the Falcon "scene" made up for it. Especially stuff like DSP coding was like entering a whole new country.
"TOS or multi TOS" fnarr!
40:32 What beautiful monstrosity is that?!
It's good that they thought ahead and made it DarkSydePhil compatable with the DSP port.
I bought one new, put maximum ram in it and used logic audio to make quite a bit of music, it was a good machine
I want a clab rack falcon.
Erm Not first?
Back in the days I used to work in a computer store in Germany that had focused on Atari. When PCs got faster, had better graphics and sound and Commodore released improved Amiga models we felt left behind. It got harder and harder to sell outdated computers. The TT wasn't shipped for a long time after its announcement and when it was released the price was very high, about four times that of the ST. The STEs had minor improvements only very little software supported. Our boss was invited by Atari to see prototypes and came back with great news. "They're working on a new 030 model and an 040 in a tower cabinet." The 040 never saw the light of day and the 030 became the Falcon. It had inherited many annoying characteristics of the older models: No high screen resolution for professional applications, crappy keyboard, 16 bit architecture, slow processor. I bought a discounted TT for a third of the original price, added a VME bus graphics card and memory. My computer was faster than a Falcon and could display flicker-free 1120 * 870 pixels in 256 colors on a used 20" screen I bought for little money. A colleague who worked with the DTP software Calamus SL bought a graphics card with more memory which could display 65535 color at the same time in high resolution. We both left the Atari platform for now affordable Macs in 1994.
Never got why people rave about the Falcon040/Microbox design, it's a direct ripoff of HP's 9000 model 425 workstation: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/HP-HP9000-425-Workstation_26.jpg/1024px-HP-HP9000-425-Workstation_26.jpg
When I first heard of the Falcon 030, which was near the end of it being available new, my PC had a VLB video card capable of both higher resolutions and more colors at those resolutions. It also had a faster (IIRC 25 Mhz) 80486 CPU. Even worse for the Atari my PC was built of secondhand parts older than the Falcon and then current new PC stuff was even better. I looked at the specs on the sales flyer and said "Why would I want to downgrade?" Atari, Commodore and the rest of the companies who weren't Apple, IBM, or PC Clone makers failed because they kept up with their overly long development cycles of fully integrated computers instead of making motherboards with just the basics then having the fancy features modular on plug in cards. Then there was further increasing model and price variability (in the PCs) with socketed CPUs and offering different speeds on the same motherboard. Apple had socketed CPUs on many models but only rarely offered more than one speed choice in a model. Whenever they did have different CPU speeds in the 90's the faster option usually came at the discontinuing of the previous, slower, CPU. Had Atari followed the PC modular model *and* offered the full speed range of socketed 68030 CPUs *and* put all their fancy technology eggs onto one or two plug in cards - they would've had a system customizable from an affordable *competitive* price all the way up to high end. They also would've been able to introduce upgrades to plug in, replacing the originals. Discontinue an old package AND sell the new bits as upgrade kits to owners of previous models. Then they could've introduced new 040 systems, and sold the motherboards as upgrade kits. Apple and IBM did sell motherboard upgrade kits for some of their Macintosh and PS/1 and PS/2 systems. In Apple's case that sometimes included a major part of the computer's case due to moved/changed ports. Apple made a PPC upgrade for their Duo laptops that had display connectors for every type of disply used on all prior Duo models. The kit came with the mainboard and a new top case with trackpad, but you could used the original top if you preferred the trackball. I once bought for a pittance a stack of 386 PS/2 boards that had been pulled for upgrading to 486 boards. A while later I sold the lot to some surplus dealer as a decent profit. Atari and the rest just got stuck in the slower paced late 1970's and 1980's mindset where companies could take a while designing a new system, put it on the market and make bank off it for quite a while. But the 90's started seeing obsolescence of new hardware hitting in mere months. Atari etc just couldn't adapt quickly enough.
23:58 beware of gay music... You should skip it. My God is awful... German how nazi and full of shit. About the sound and effects they cannot be used nor the "music maker". Imagine trying a simple Deadmau5 track on that toy like sounding shit...
I can't believe you bought such a crap. Even a single color mobile phone has more computing power. Wow 14mb of Ram... The top limit that's tons of memory... Fuck it... Is a shit..
Atari sucked dick back then and even now as a memory still sucks dick. I hated everything about them from the name and logo to the os and case.
Falcon just had one thing that was a envy and that was the DSP!. But part from that NOTHING.
I have a working one, first time I saw Cubase Audio using the built in DSP kinda blew my mind.
I remember at the time really liking the look of the falcon. I think it still looks great today. Shame Atari messed up the marketing. Also they should of not wasted all those previous years releasing TT and STE etc and just gone straight to the falcon after the ST and pitched it against the Amiga. Thanks for the video, the effort you put into these videos is much appreciated
Your volume output seems a bit loud.
Fantastic job .. great production values too!
whats that awesome song at the end?
the Falcon had a lot of potential of Atari had the balls to really push it to the limit but they were way to meager in it's launch which destroyed any chance of it being a big success. It was a marvel in it's day sporting a huge amount of customability for that can satisfy the casual user as well as the enthusiast and I think that's what the Falcon should have been, something that everyone could use.
Editing dept! Get in here and do your job!
Atari taught me a helluva lot, both good and bad. The Atari ST - my first computer, and the one that convinced me to buy the Mac Classic! The ST was so badly hyped, designed and executed! Did your article even mention the Atari 130ST? The 260ST? Or how much they'd blather on about that Yamaha sound chip, unitl you got one, and realised what a Yamaha sound chip is NOT? There was nothing that Jack and Sam Tramiel wouldn't say or do - I always figured that Jack had mob ties - I bought mine under duress! Anyhoo - D'you think that whoever designed those function keys, actually used function keys? Didn't JT design it, himself? Did you get the sense that typing is not the primary goal for this keyboard, in general?
A-wkward T-emerity A-plomb R-idicules I-deas
Great video
18:53 so sad hearing you say "us Europeans" while knowing your country is about to leave :-(
Wow doesn't that disign look like Sony's Playstation 2 at 17:25. Or should I say the Playstation looks like that Atari.
23:50 what's that groovy thing?
Awesome video :) Will you be doing one on the Sam Coupe?
You absolutely aced this documentary! I love how you blend in your love for these computers with cold hard facts and nineties magazines and tv clips. Awsome! 10/10 would watch again!
Why is F10 in another color?
What's the computer at 00:39:48 ?
I remember how I jumped with excitation while reading about Atari music station development...
Excellent! I was a huge Atari fan back then... Still have my 800XL... Although I could never afford its successors, I still appreciated the brand. If only the Tramiels hadn't driven the company into the ground... It's like they were copying Sega's playbook by making new hardware obsolete as soon as it was released. Anyway, appreciate the effort of this, and all your Atari videos. Well done, Sir!
Don't get the wrong impression that this was somehow a competitive machine. This, after almost two decades of programming expertise and optimizations, will only run Doom as fast as a 386 two decades back. Now if this got a port of NeXTStep to go with it's DSP, then it would have been a very serious bargain bin workstation, but we can talk all day long about all the things that didn't happen. I must resist wanting it.
Great video! I had one in the early 90s until the early 2000s and it was the best computer for music production for a very long time (until Apple and Microsoft got their bag together, that is, which was in the late 90s).
Id forgotten just how much of a thing I had for Violet Berlin :D
It's the Philips "Your TV": https://www.zonebattler.net/2009/02/15/funde-im-fundus-14/
Loved this. I still have my Falcon and Jaguar. The Jaguar being bought only to play Doom. I was luck with my Falcon in that where I worked had some big 680xx server that used to run an estate agency and they let me cannibalise it when they upgraded. I ended up with 2 large for the day hard drives and a DAT drive for backups.
One of these appeared on eBay a few days ago. A rare beast.
The resemblance of the PS2 was the first thing I thought of when I saw that picture...
What's the song around 10:42?
A pity some billionaire didn't buy Atari and Comodore around 1991, merge them, fund a single R&D dept and launch a super machine that looked different and they could have captured the entire creative, games and much of the productivity market especially in Europe. They could have then done trade in programs and flooded Eastern Europe and Russia with ST's and Amigas and software to prime them for a few years before then folding them into the merged super machine echo system. That would have been something beautiful.
What a blast from the past. Thank you for a great video !
Cool video, just to let you know for the future - It's actually "change tack" not 'tact' so other language pedants like myself don't give you a hard time
I was one of the Amiga guys who looked down on Atari, which in retrospect...was kind of silly.
Yet another excellent video...I really enjoyed it
I had a Falcon, it replaced my old 1040ste. A great computer on paper but sadly lacking the software support that would have made it brilliant but then that can also be said of the ste as well. Still i am very fond of both these old boxes which were much nicer than the x86 markets offerings at the time.
amiga better! :)
Holy shit, isn't that Jack from commodore?!
23:55 What is that demo called?
Thanks
Apparently it's Lost Blubb from 1995.
nice work
The IBM PC clone wiped out Commodore, Atari etc. They should have made all of the parts interchangeable. As exmple Volkswagens made all there parts interchangeable and cheap. If you just make one model and not upgrageable it makes it obsolete. I love Atari and Commodore but on the IBM clones you could upgrade to whatever you want. I guess they didn't know that back then. My first IBM PC XT clone I could buy upgrade cards more ram bigger hard drive which blew away Atari as like Apple was a non upgradeable garden. That was frustrating to me. I don't really miss the old days when the computer wouldn't even connect to AOL on dial up but I like the video and remember my old Atari's. 8-)
That's an outright lie. Most processors required different motherboards (even if they claim compatibility) even if all you did was buy a faster processor, many MB either had no way of being setup for the faster processor or the BIOS wouldn't recognize the processor (couldn't update them, required a new BIOS chip) but lets disregard just that CPU and MB issue and go to HDD, what interface would you use ST506 / EIDE / IDE / SCSI (and other disc controllers) that's even if your MB had the port built in. If not then you would have to buy a card and hope it worked with the MB chipset and then set the correct jumpers on the card for the IRQ again that's assuming you bought the card with the correct interface 8-bit ISA, 16-bit ISA and later MCA, VLB or EISA. Shall we talk about RAM (I'm going to cut this short because I could run out of internet before I finish) Static or dynamic SIPP's, DIP's SIMM's, DIMM's what speed, what pin count, I could go on but I think I have pointed out how the "interchangeable parts" is bull. It only works if you knew what you were buying but how is that any different to how others were. BTW Apple II was highly upgradeable with 3rd party cards (it was SJ that decided the Mac should be incarcerated)
Atari should have spun off the ST division as a serious machine (I have said the same about the Amiga) and advertised heavily in PC magazines to show how much better their systems are.
In 1984 when Jack Tramiel took over Atari consumer division it was a totally different company. He fired most of the staff, stopped all R&D and rehired with a new direction with the ST being the 1st out of the new company. Jaguar should have been a much better machine, given a bit more time in R&D (it was incomplete on release) but this is typical for Jack, if you missed a deadline you would most likely be fired so engineers learned compromise even if it hurt.
Commodore/Atari should have crossed the beams and trapped he-man ;-)
By early 93 I had a Mega STE, but I could see the writing on the wall. The future was PC. Still, because I found a great offer I got an A1200 which I kept barely for a year. As much as I liked my Ataris and Amiga, the end was already here. Not so much due to hardware leaps of PCs, but software support.
The front cover art for Robinson's Requiem is taken from the Terran Trade Authority books from the early 80s. Specifically 'SpaceWreck'
299 Pounds. That's some phat Currency... :3
4:45 Spider-Man.
Loved my 1040 STE couldn't stretch to a Falcon
Good video. Interesting to see how Atari could have been as big as Apple are today. Perhaps if they had paired with IBM or Microsoft back then, things would be very different today. The Mac at the same time was just as impressive with the specs, but considered as a business computer, not a games computer, yet it was not cheap. Apple had secured good partnerships with the "big boys" in the industry.
@12:49 Did the Terminator 2 advert really say "I've returned" instead of some variant of "I'll be back"?? Such as "I be back" or "I told you I'll be back"?
Thanks for the video. I honestly didn't know too much about the Falcon. I did browse the machine on UK mags.
What an amazing video :O I was never into these old machines so I know nothing about it really. But it sounds like exciting times :P
Good ol' Atari ... once they get things right, they fuck themselves over :) Quite a shame in case of the falcon tho - it was a nice machine hardware wise, but sadly never had it's fair share of quality consumer software (I owned 3 at one point and sold them all off). Also small correction: The enhanced sound on the STE isn't a single chip, but two digital to analog converter chips - actually quite a minimalist approach to add digital audio but implemented kinda clever by adding DMA support (just like the soundblaster on the PC market made the adlib irrelevant).
Damn good job on this, guy. Nicely done.
I remember that Falcon and being pretty amazed by it. It was really the first time and only time until the Gravis soundcards came out that something sounded better than the Amiga audio wise. That DSP was dynamite. But yeah Trammell strikes again, good hardware lousy marketing.
PS2 upside down dejavu https://youtu.be/cBTXGgb__y4?t=1044 https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/WAkCKt2inWE4qpRW.huge
My personal acknowledgment of the Atari ST back in the day only manifested whenever I encountered an Amiga game that used only three voices for music. The only reason that ever happened was because it was ported from the ST.
It is so sad to see back all those big mistakes Atari made. Numerous types and models and non compatible with something else. If only one clever man would have been in charge of Atari! If only they would have made things modularly. One keyboard, one power supply, one box with all the connectors. There was so much money spoiled for nothing, not even for profit. One big blundering machine, that was Atari.
36:34 Is that Devolver Digital's Nina Struthers?
I always wanted a falcon maybe one day i can buy one .. ill have to beg my wife ;) lol --- funny enough i was involved in transputers tech back in the 80s it was ahead of its time
this is a awesome video and not about the falcon only and was very well researched
I am amazed how well this documentary is produced. I truly enjoyed watching!
wow... great to see Lost Blubb again...remembering the first time we saw the demo in 1995 (guess it was the Fried Bits in Bremen, Germany?) with STAX himself being proud of the cool music... we even had some Falcon Beer from Sweden :-)
This had nothing to do with Atari and Commodore being wiped out, its like saying the C64 could be upgraded with a new CPU or more RAM, budget computers were just that, still sold millions, PCs were big and expensive and you needed monitors, different markets, the PC didn’t wipe out Atari and Commodore, bad business decisions by both of them did.
Great video! I have a request. I really like Robinson's Requiem, but can't find a manual from original box. Can you link me or maybe scan you own? If possible.
i wonder if porn hub would even load up on one of them old tity computers hahaha! (See what I did there? hehe)
Jack Tramail came from Commodore so was he competing with himself with the Atari ST vs Amiga?
I had two upgraded Falcon 030 machines up until mid-2013, and I have to say they really are special and have a certain aura and magic. I mainly used it with SoundPool audio and Steinberg MIDI inferfaces, and Cubase Audio v2.06. The power and capabilities of this back in 1992 was significant, although the people I knew with them ended up returning to the ST, as they were more mature and stable at that time. I absolutely loved owning my Falcons though.
Lovely video! Very entertaining. Cheers!
We had one at the studio I used to work at. It was being used mainly for Cubase, and also as a controller for Yamaha Digital Consoles (DMP7s). It was quite the workhorse, as it was still being used on a regular basis as late as 2002.
(20:05) Ah - a retrospective look at a computer, with smooth jazz background music. Classy. This is why we like *Lazy Game Reviews* and *Nostalgia Nerd* YouTube channels.
Nostalgia Nerd: Hey how do you get that info at 40:32. I want my hand on that. Atari ST² looks so dam good. Would be nice if I have more info on the Falcon040.
I got a Falcon in my collection.
I don't know exactly what this computer is, but I do know I but one for $750 brand new in the box and before I was home from picking it up I had sold it for $1,500. It was a good day
Great video mate! Thanks
Sorry, but Amiga AGA was far superior and more capable of upgrade. The Falcon was lame, an ST with bits hacked onto it but still 16 bit bus. Pathetically crippled. If only the the Amiga 1200 had a DSP it could have been a success to this day, but instead Atari had to own on the idea by hacking it into their "super ST", and arrogant commodore thought they were too cool bend to a Lametari idea. In hindsight I think they were wrong, an A1200 with 32mhz 040 and 64mhz 56001 with optional 486DX processor for PC compatibility, minimum 16 megs of RAM, 24 bit 1024 * 800 chunky and planar video modes native, and possibly in built CD ROM in addition to floppy drive COULD, could, COULD have made the A1200 dominate to this day.
The Falcon was a machine I lusted over in '92, thanks in part to ST Format's coverage. At the time a friend and me were using the ST in the music Lab at school, as such we both got STE's which were a tad more affordable. Great vid!
He wanted to destroy commodore after being kicked out.
Great video :)
And https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBvbsPNBIyk&t=68m Priceless!!! :D
Yes, and he was 13 years old child... :D ... :D From Jack T. himself: "Commodore 64—25th Anniversary Celebration" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBvbsPNBIyk&t=52m
AWESOME video on the story behind the Falcon, I learnt so many things, thanks!!! As always, excellent editing and audio commentary, beautifully delivered with this superb voice of yours (love your accent!)
Excellent video! I'd love to see a follow up about third party accessories and software for the falcon
17:24 i wonder where they got the design idea for the Playstation 2, all joking aside if this image or design and the PS2 aren't linked somehow i'll be very surprised. 29:00 Guess i got my answer
Very well researched and presented.
You could at least get a Behringer 8500 microphone @ €30 or a Shure SM58 or sE V7 around €110.
i remember as a kid being in a big toy store when i was on vacation with my parents in belgium. (the store may have been in france just over the border though) they had a atari jaguar running bubsy the bobcat, that's the only time i've even got to play the jaguar, most stores in my own country (NL) would only have the game boy and snes displays. (which i didn't mind at all) nintendo seemed to push those in-store demo things a lot more here, the NES was actually not that popular, just like in the UK, most of us had c64s and amigas. but after the gameboy and snes, nintendo really took off
Falcon was some good features like his DSP or the 16bit color mode, but it has a big default: his 16bits processor bus.
You've done an awesome doco here. Thanks - I feel totally implicated in the story although I've an Amiga background. Cheers.
I had the 520ST with an upgrade to 1mb good machine, but when the A1200 came out I just had to have it lol and still have it with its blizzard CPU and 4mb ram upgrade bought back in the day.
great long documentary. watched with a beer. keep up the awesome work!!! wanted this as a kid.... any news on the Atari ST / Falcon clone? Firebee i think?
LONG LIVE THE FALCON !
Really love the channel and content it's beem awesome watching them and brings back alot of fond memories even though i didn't own or play some of these systems as i grew up in the early 90s its still awesome to see and learn about the history none the less
+Laurens Bruijn Nailed it.
+Paul Galinsky That's the killer for me. If you don't happen to be free to click on the channel at the very moment it starts then you can't see the beginning until after the whole thing 'airs' for the first time and becomes a standard YouTube video. This seems a retrograde step--even the BBC iPlayer (for UK viewers) allows you to select 'watch from the start' for programmes currently airing live. Are we really going back to the days of scheduled listings?
Dude, as an old Amiga-fan with no real interest in Atari I must say that I truly enjoyed this video! Learning all this (to me) new stuff and seeing the historical parallels to the Amiga hit me right in the heart. Sadly I've been having the realization that all the contenders in the home computer market were all really living on borrowed time vs. the PC, which is a sad, sad realization to say the least. Back in the days the future sure seemed a lot more colorful, but we've ofc gained an incredibly accelerated development from the PC platform itself over the past 20+ years. RIP old champions!
I enjoyed your video, Nostalgia Nerd. I hadn't enjoyed the implementation of voiceover for quoted text — voiceover that was either not your own or not professionally done. I feel the quality is too variable, in the talent and in the sound production. Beside this, however, I have never known much about ATARI computing technology and that whole experience. Your video gives me an impression that similar to other machines like the Sinclair models, the ATARI machines had an overall stronger presence outside North America. Things I am familiar with here in United States of America is of course the Commodore computer. Take care! Smile! Also, I really quite liked your little boy in the XBOX Duke controller video. I have shared it with my friends. Your child is very cute and we adore them! I also am thoroughly pleased and thrilled with how competent they had demonstrated themself to be. When asked to rate upon scales, they even perceived the possibility you could be asking the question about a different controller. A very impressive child for me, I feel! I like! Bless 'em! Happy seasons and happy end of year, 2018, Nostalgia Nerd. :)
I only ever seen one of these back in the day. It's specs were impressive, it was how the Amiga 1200 should have been before the cut backd on specs and chipsets. However, the Falcon came too late, the Amiga / Atari days had essentially finished and people had moved to the PC.
600XL all the way!!!
Another interesting video as always - good stuff. But I could have done without the extremely slow to focus effect throughout the video.
Wow! Listening to Andy Crane reading out almost a full address on air. Such trusting times in which I grew up...
If you want obscure look up the Atari Abaq. A long time ago I actually went for a job interview with the people who wrote the OS for it in Shepton Mallet. I didn't get the job, but I got a nice pub lunch out of them anyway :) Regarding the Falcon, I remember a guy from work who was mad into Atari and bought one and he loved it. I think he bought a Jaguar too. Personally I couldn't see what he was hoping would happen because Atari were clearly struggling at the time. I'd owned an ST but I guess I was ardently Commodore by that point even though they weren't far off from their own troubles. I still remember saving up for an A4000 and when the supplier told me CBM had jacked the price up I bought a PC instead. In hindsight this was an incredibly fortuitous decision.
It`s my opinion Atari would still be here today if they had stuck to making Consoles they could`ve rivaled Nintendo, Sega and the modern Console goliaths. Trying to be all things to all people.
I sooo wanted one of these. Am sooo glad I didn't get one, however.
BOB-BRODIE: Steel Talons was shown at COMDEX, along with a few other games that were already ported to the Atari Falcon030, like Raiden and Cyber Assualt. We've had a developer conference in the UK for the Falcon030, which is where an awful lot of entertainment software has been coming from. The Falcon was VERY well viewed by the major development houses. Especially because of the things they can do with the DSP chip. In several instances, employees of software houses were asking about getting a machine to start their OWN software company..." Also, It seems due to the poor exchange rates between the pound and the dollar by the time the Falcon launched in UK,Atari were 'forced' into slapping an extra £100 on the RRP, a move which took the industry by surprise,as they expected Atari to go with the Power Without The Price angle and save money by putting Falcon in the new casing. Atari UK defended the move by saying Falcon still offered greater vfm than an equivalent PC. Falcon Zero 5 coder interview: http://ataricrypt.blogspot.com/2016/03/operation-zero-5.html
The sad thing is, today, only those with deep pockets will get to test this rare beauty. These go for silly money, on ebay. The closet I can get to one is my 1040 STf, and they're not exactly common on ebay - more the 512, and STE models, being the more common.
Are you sure about the 64 million pixel per second rate for the blitter? The forums suggest that the blitter copies pixel graphics more slowly than the CPU. I found one website that states 64 MPPS, but I'd like to see the official hardware docs. The two hardware refs that I've seen so far talk about the DPS, but not the Falcon blitter.
Imagitec working on Panther? Not according to over 10 sources from Imagitec at the time, the likes of GTW, Unseen64 and myself have spoken to. Only Martin Hooley so far has made claims of Raiden, Dinodudes and possibly Daemonsgate on Panther. But he has gotten very confused over what the company had released on what. He swears blind Humans and Viking Child were released on Sega Game Gear, they weren't. Has given 2 different accounts for non appearance of Jaguar Freelancer 2120 (which doesn't explain why the PC CD version never appeared) and Space Junk (again doesn't explain what happened to the Sega Mega CD version). He also confused the producer with coder of Freelancer 2120 taking game concept with him, when he went to Rebellion. We need to hear from coders and artists who worked on Panther games whilst at Imagitec to give any claims credibility.
Regarding the decline of ST Game sales, glad you mentioned that. It's often reported that the ST was still strong here in UK by time Jaguar launched. .as you explained, it was anything but. Caspain Software stated Commercial game sales had reached P.D levels, by time they started producing titles. Prior to it's release, Atari were hyping the STE as an Amiga Beater in the likes of The Games Machine. Panther was supposed to launch alongside the Lynx (source Bill Rehbock), but Atari didn't have the resources to support 2 formats at once, put it on a lower priority (source Bob Gleadow). Prior to Panther you had Project Robin, Rob Zydbel trying to convince Atari to put the ST hardware in an XE case. Again, magazines like The Games Machine were printing news of The ST console or ST+ Atari had also previously announced the CDST to combat the Commodore CDTV..which never appeared.
One of greatest computer ever made? Amiga - yes, Atari - hell no!
Ahhh the Falcon. Seen on Gamesmaster TV demonstrating Space Junk,which was also planned for the Sega MCD. Falcon bombs,Space Junk moved to Jaguar CD. Jaguar bombs. Imagitec Designs Martin Hooley blames Atari for game never arriving.. Says nothing about why the SEGA version never appeared :-))
From the US perspective: prior to the Falcon launch, there were already add-on boards for the Atari ST line of computers which included Motorola 030 processor board with 32 bit ram, 68882 floating point co-processor boards, 80386 boards which would allow you to boot into dos mode. I had installed these boards in many computers for our customers and I installed a 25Mhz 68000 accelerator board with a floating point co-processor on my own machine to help in development of my own software. At one point, I was working with other developers of boards which included a DSP co-processor and a VGA adapter card for the ST line. Sadly, Atari's fate was sealed before the commercial arrival of the Falcon. San Diego had a large computer enthusiasts base back in the early 1990s and there was a convention which brought in thousands of people to see what was going on in the computer industry: PC, Macs, Amigas, Ataris, etc. And while it wasn't nearly as big as ComicCon is now, it was a large group. Atari had the opportunity to showcase their Falcon030 computer at our convention, but chose instead to show it off to 100 people at an Atari user group in Boston. I sold off my computers after that, realizing that, while the computers were competitive with the Amigas and Macs, the company was short-sighted and doomed to failure.
3:32 mandrill maze
I had the nearly all of the ST's and in the end the Falcon. I nearly bought the ST Laptop, but IBM had better laptops (386) and thus I sold all my Atari's, added some money and bought an IBM laptop for around 9000 USD. I did this because I wanted a computer on my travels... but I do miss the Atari Time... I spent a lot of money on them (also the many magazines).... Looking at your video... the Atari is still the best looking computer ever!
Jag wire Not jag you wha....
Very long winded and hard to watch, though I guess it's because I never considered Atari computers anything more than toys, like Matel. And, after watching this I can understand why. Hated the ST. Always glad I had an Amiga (well 6 of them to be exact.) Never regretted my decision.
Mate I'm watching many retro vids at the moment, but I swear blind yours are the best. Always a great balance of research, humour, enthusiasm, sarcasm, and passion. Even if the machine in question isn't of nostalgic value to me, I still watch it.
dog fuckers
Atari was such a crappy company. A crappy company that duped me into buying a Falcon 030. I so badly wanted it to be successful.
original ST sucked for games. might as well played on an apple 2 gs. the lynx was awesome because it was designed by former amiga people. atari screwed that up too. jaguar had some promise, but they screwed up the controller and too expensive for what you got.
Uhhhhhh, that Half-Life 2 demo bit deserved more than a few seconds!
Great mini documentary I have to say. I actually have a brand new falcon 030 in my garage which I never got round to using as I was still tied to using cubase on my ST at the time. I checked ebay the other day, and saw that the falcon 030 seems to be a bit of a collector's item now?
41:19 - NOBODY on the planet really cared about yet another pinball game. Those were the laziest games ever made.
Don Thomas, Atari: It was in 1983 that Warner Communications handed Jack Tramiel the reins of Atari. By this time, Atari was often categorized as a household name, but few households wanted to spend much money on new software and the systems were lasting forever. No one needed to buy new ones. That, combined with Warner's obscene spending, amounted to a *daily loss* of over $2 million. Atari was physically spread all over the Silicon Valley with personnel and equipment in literally 80 separate buildings; not considering international offices and manufacturing facilities. Mr. Tramiel took only the home consumer branch of Atari and forced Warner to deal with the arcade division separately. Within a few years, Jack took the company public, introduced an innovative new line of affordable 16-bit computers and released the 7800 video game system. To accomplish these miracles for Atari, Jack implemented his "business is war" policies. While people who publicly quoted his statement often felt that policy meant being extremely aggressive in the marketplace, the meaning actually had closer ties to Tramiel's experience as a concentration camp survivor. Of the 80 buildings in Sunnyvale, Santa Clara and Milpitas, almost every one of them were amputated from Atari's body of liabilities. The people, the work, the heritage, the history were fired or liquidated. Those who survived were unsympathetically required to fill in the gaps and while most tried, few actually found a way to be successfully do what a dozen people before them did. Atop the mountain, Jack pressed with an iron thumb. All Fed/Ex mailings were required to be pre-approved by one of a handful of people. "Unsigned" purchase orders went unpaid regardless of the urgencies that inspired their creation. Employees found themselves spending valuable time trying to find ways around the system to accomplish their jobs. Many of them lost their jobs for bending the rules or never finding a way to make things work. As horrible as it all sounds, it actually was the only way to protect Atari as a company and give it a chance to survive as it did and did very well. Jack's introduction of the 16-bit computer was initially hearty in the United States but it went extremely well in Europe. Europeans were not accustomed to "affordable" technology and although the Atari computers were not IBM compatible, it didn't matter because people could afford them. Jacks' private laugh was that the computers were sold at prices much higher in Europe than Americans were willing to pay. As a result, most of the machines made were being shipped to European destinations to capture the higher margin. This enraged the people in the United States that had been Atari loyalists. While waiting months for stores to take delivery domestically, international magazines were touting ample supplies. Those in the know within the U.S. became dismayed. The remainder never knew Atari was slowly abandoning the value of Atari's name recognition as it became easier and easier to forget some assuming Atari had long filed for bankruptcy. On a technical level, Atari 16-bit computers were designed beyond their time. For less than $1,000, consumers could enjoy "multimedia" before the phrase was ever really widely used. The icon-based working environment proceeded Windows popularity although the essential attributes of the two environments were very similar. MIDI was built-in and became an instant hit in the high-end music industry. Tasks were activated and manipulated with a mouse and the system accepted industry standard peripherals such as printers, modems and diskettes. With all the genius that went into the technology of the machines, very little of equivalent genius went into the promoting and marketing the machines. Mr. Tramiel was the founder of Commodore Business Machines. When he introduced the PET computer in 1977, Jack discovered he didn't have to call a single publication. Instead they all flocked to his door demanding an opportunity to see the product. News magazines. Science Journals. Business newsletters. Newspaper reporters. They were all there with microphone, camera and pen in hand. And they kept coming back. Adding a switch, announcing a new 4K application or signing a new retailer were all big stories the press wanted to handle.
You know, my memory of the early 90s is all about the PC with a little Mac thrown in (one of my friends had to buy a Mac for his college work). I had no idea Atari was still even on the radar at the time. Consoles I seem to remember were dominated by Nintendo and Sega, etc. Mandela Effect, maybe? I miss Atari; when I saw the giant Atari logo show up in Blade Runner 2049 it was a wave of nostalgia. The world of Blade Runner is awful, but Atari is still big in that world, so there is that at least.
Great film! I always lusted after Amigas so good to see more about the competition at the time.
I don't see the attraction with this MASSIVE retro push everyone was on, i remember systems from the 80's to 90's, they were f8cking DEPRESSINGLY bad, the graphics and gameplay used to be so bad on even great machines that i used to cry when i was a kid. Eveything was SAH*T back then, honestly, it was all just junk, so wtf is with everyone swooning over it aain now??? im so confused. Like s eriously, look aat that f*cking speedboat game.... wtf
Anyone else notice that was Toby McGuire in the Atari Lynx commercial?
A secret ? It was in game magazines. I remember I've read about a bit less that 30 years ago (I only remember I was still in high school)
I was a delivery driver during this time and remember going to a guys house and seeing a Falcon tower. I was mesmerized just seeing it. Glad I was able to see it running "in the wild" and would certainly buy one today had I the $$$. Edit: Oh wow 06:35 the article shown is mentioning STOS which I had and LOVED! This version of basic was so awesome and I have so many fond memories of it. I know the Amiga had a version of it as well. What I would do to be able to load up my old games made with this version of basic. Was so great for me as it had a sprite and music and can't remember what editor that would then allow you to call your easily built creations into your program. Seeing this bit of article talking about an update which allows you to use 3D vector graphics is something I didn't know existed. I can't seem to find out if it was actually release. Either way good times for sure.
Wow I’m just glad I didn’t live in the 80’s those Computers were shit... even my PC is better. “Ole Faithful” two years old with just a simple 1050 2GB graphics card... yep even my computer is better then those shits... fucking glad I live in this era of computing...
I need that outro music! Did I miss the source?
Snarky, recursive acronyms need to make a comeback.
At one time, I had three of these! I got a kick of you playing the Lost Blubb demo!
Are you sure it's not your lust for nazism? It is probably... unsub.
No listed source of the outro music used...
Disappointed there is no video on Atari 400 or 800 :(, though i barely remember the 400 was a lil young, but Atari 800 was first computer to get heavy use on.
Oh those ports underneath, never liked the location
Ahh good ol Special Reserve, i was a technician at Egham for a few years
Cool Falcon, never heard before. It's hidden gem. Though, no definitive Falcon game montage? Amiga has the best graphics in this branded non-IBM compatible PC war.
John Carmack I.D software: I used an apple IIGS for snes development (I am never, EVER, going to work with nintendo again), and I am suffering with an atari falcon for Jaguar work until I can port the tools to NEXTSTEP. I wouldn't turn away a mac based environment.
Jaguar developers really didn't like the Falcon : Adisak Pochanayon of High Voltage Software Well, after trying to program on a Falcon 030, I can tell you that they are quite terrible as a system. I am really glad that they moved the Jaguar development system over to the PC as the editor and shell don't crash on the PC. I myself use the PC to program the Jaguar as the stub doesn't have an Amiga interface and all my development tools are on the Amiga ;) The Falcon sits quietly almost never turned on except for when Atari gives us tools with no PC version - then I look at the Falcon version and recode it on the Amiga or PC as it will run 10-40 times faster on a real system.
@15:00 Is that Manjaro KDE in the corner there? That makes ME moist to the touch!
From: Alwin Stumpf @ ST To : All Subj: ATARI's future Dear ATARI users, I am sure you are aware that I am no longer working at ATARI Corp. Different personal and inner company reasons made me do this, not so easy a step. I understand the current German ATARI market is categorized as one of the strongest markets anywhere, and I am sure that makes it hard to understand why I left. I appreciate your feelings deeply. My decision to leave ATARI was strengthened as a result of it being decided to stop FALCON production because people noticed that the planned customers weren't ready to invest between 2300 and 3500 German Marks ($1300 and $2000). These persons would most likely buy a MS DOS compatible computer or even a Macintosh instead of putting a low end machine with very limited uses in their house. At this time however, a few FALCONS are being delivered to a few select, handpicked German dealers, these belong to the first production run and are without, as announced, MultiTOS. Instead, they are being delivered with the single tasking TOS 4.0x. The number of machines are limited and will be the only ones available for the time being. You most likely will not understand this unusual strategy, but why should we produce thousands upon thousands of FALCONS that can't be sold? The FSM-GDOS and MultiTOS production had to be stopped in the last minute because 1) a renegotiation with Mr. Eric Smith (copywrite) and 2) differences between ATARI and Bitstream. Naturally ATARI knows that MultiTOS, for the entire semiprofessional area, shouldn't be underestimated and that the MT project will be taken up again. The SUTRA project is still under high pressure development and should come out around the first of April 1993. The entire ATARI product line is still going to be 'fully supported' as much as possible, although the 68030 class of computers will have to be held back until it is believed they have a fairly good chance in the market. At this time, the need for powerful machines seems to be satisfied by the TT and ATARI is having it hard enough as it is. I hope I was able to give you a small picture into ATARI's future and I beg of you not to doubt in ATARI's credibility. Think positive! I wish you all much luck With friendly grusses Alwin Stumpf (former General Manager, ATARI Germany)
Team 17 talking of the Falcon: Unfortunately, the deciding factor is not how great a machine is, it's how much money you can make producing a game for it. The Falcon has a very limited user base, I'm afraid. We sold more than twice as many copies of our latest game for the Amiga (Alien Breed II) as there are Falcon computers out there.
one good thing about less color in those times is that those godaweful sweaters stand out slightly less
Man I get sad whenever I see Motorola's name - it's astonishing just how important Motorola was in the entire electronics industry down to chip design.... up till the legendary Motorola RAZR 2007 afterwards they couldn't keep up having lost 4billion between 2007-2009 alone. Blackberry is always talked about but Motorola more than blackberry should have been poised to transition to today's era. and they were American :( given the choice id rather Apple Qualcomm Motorola
A classic example of how to kill your profits and prestige of your brand by confusing your customers and investors by fragmenting the product line into endless variants of short lived models ala Sega (CD/32X/DUO/MODEL 2)
Thank you for this informative clip! It fills in alot of facts and events of ATARIs end of history I didn't know about. Up here the ST computers had no dealers when the Falcon was released. I never even saw the STE, TT or MEGA STs when they were released.I envy your powerful productive toy!
Indeed, had Tramiel taken the Atari ST to Commodore in 1985 and said, "If I launch this, we will both go out of business in 10 years. Instead let's merge the best elements of both machines, merge as companies." Oh well...
What fools... .they should have kept the Falcon going and building on its infrastructure. Its full potential was not even realized...
Hey, I just noticed u have the same speakers I do! :D
Really enjoyed the video. :)
I really had a soft spot for the Falcon 030 too. It ran so many home music studio at the time - people would bring their Falcon to bigger studios and it still had more than enough grunt and locked timing (esp with a second MIDI box) to control a master record session. This is a fantastic look back at the system - thanks tons for the vid!
Bad/lack of marketing often kills the best .
I was an Amiga guy back at this time, and therefore no fan of Atari... but this vid makes me sad for their missed potential. Praise to the Atari engineers!
Did you know...... The Saab 9000 used the same Motorola CPU in its engine management system as the Falcon. It was the first car ever in the world to have a 32bit engine ECU and had the same power as an "Actual computer".
This is so frustrating to watch for any Atari fan. It's clearly obvious what doomed the company: a complete lack of focus and a throw-everything-at-the-wall approach. Had Atari Corp instead focused on one or two machines, they would have done much better. And, as always, the desperate need to pinch pennies crippled their computers and videogame systems.
Cant stand the consoles, horrible. Specially the lynx, wtf! The ST machines however, looks very interesting.
Those Silica Systems ads hit me right in the nostalgia. My Dad used to have a shop in Sidcup near the shop where Silica ran their entire mail order business out the back of and that was where I got my 1040STE from along with most of the upgrades - 2nd floppy drive, 85MB hard drive, 2MB RAM upgrade and, most important of all, 4 inch extension cables for the joystick ports so you didn't have to dig around under the keyboard to plug in the joystick and mouse. Sadly by the time I had the kind of money saved up that could have paid for a Falcon they were long dead and when I finally replaced my ST it was with a PC. Still, my old ST still lives on at my parents' house. My dad used it for his company accounts for years so it's still there in case the taxman wants to look at those old records.
By the way those essential joystick extension cables are still available, someone on ebay is selling some new old stock ones
Atari had too many projects going. I’m not sure how the handhelds brought anything to the table. Even for games, computers are the superior platform.
27:48 Is that cinnebench?
Andy Crane.......Such a wanker!!!!!!!!!z
I went to WH Smith and asked for a 48K Spectrum. They were out of stock. Must be selling well.
Shave. It's not cool anymore.
Amazing video, even for an ex-amiga user ; )
Wow...a couple of things- this computer (16/32-bit) in 1991 was a freaking beast only out matched ony by the mighty Neo Geo MVS/AES. Can you imagine Atari getting it right and shipping a fully featured and properly spec'd Jaguar late 91-early 92? It would have been a slaughter. People were still very much pkaying their Nes cartridges back then.
You make such good videos.
If i had to pay £400 now for 3mb ram and a 65mb hard drive i think i'd be sick. Somebody needs to take out those dastardly RAM barons because they are still trying to milk that market today!
I had an Atari 1030 xe.
My wife and I sniggered every time you said TT and super TT *snort*
Maybe if they adapted to the marked and ditched the aging Motorola archi and jump on the 486 bandwagon, yet still with decent creative stuff like a good soundcard and all by default, they would still exist today along with dell, HP, PB and so on.
nope
By the time the Atari Falcon came out, we all already had Commodore 64's, Color Computers, TI-99/4a's, Trash-80's... and in the schools... Apple ][s. The membrane keyboard on the Atari 400 really fucked Atari for good out of the business like it did the Sinclair. Back then you bought computers for the keyboard. CBM Pet had already been through their membrane keyboard by the time the 8bit revolution went mainstream. Their Vic-20 was a hit because of it's keyboard. Nobody I knew bought an Atari computer, though there were a lot of 2600's around. I missed out on that, because we had Pong. So now you know why the Falcon didn't catch on... they had already missed out. If the Atari 800 had came out instead of the 400 first, maybe Atari would of had a chance. I bypassed the Amiga and Atari ST completely by getting my hands on a Macintosh SE. That thing was da bomb and obviously the future, even with it's monochrome screen and slow ass 17mb harddrive. It had MS word, Paint, and Hypercard. But most importantly, it's pixels were ... square. Perfectly square. Not rectangular. Not three color chromosome tubes making one pixel. Square. Which was a boon to learning how to make simple graphics in a pixel editor. Until the Macintosh, nobody really got that pixels were suppose to be square. Now we take it for granted, but back then, it was an obvious leap forward.
Interesting viewing. Great video
@nostalgia nerd just watched your video, went on ebay and couldn't belive my eyes: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Atari-Falcon-030-OVP-Top-Zustand/303032101012?hash=item468e1ee894:g:viMAAOSwa3lcP7Y6:rk:3:pf:0
Great video man, I enjoy your content
You know, for all of the issues Youtube has, I still support the platform because without it videos like this would never be made.
It's amazing these companies still fall for the same traps as the STe... Look at the PS4pro... Which no one I know of l actually owns. I look at it the same way as the developers: if I can already play exactly the same games on either, what is the point shelling out for the much more expensive upgrade just a few years later, when not every game will take advantage of it, and when I don't have a 4K TV? If I wanted to regularly spend on upgrades, I'd be a PC gamer instead.
Hello Nostalgia Nerd! Thank you for this great review of a famous system of my youth. The Atari ST/TT/Falcon community is still alive on http://firebee.org and has a new AtariST compatible HW platform. The new device is called Firebee and available from Medusa Computer in Switzerland. A group of die-hard ST supportes have coalesced to adapt and build a new Hardware Paltform around a Coldfire SOC and an FPGA for the custom chips. The hardware is supported by the old ST developer community and the tired old GEM Desktop has been replace with an exciting new desktop and a lot of the old titles run in a 68k emu or have been ported natively to the Coldfire. And the FPGA opens up even more exciting development possibilities.
2:08 if you type out seconds like this can hear hidden messages play each twice going backwards 2:07 2:06 2:05
2:08 2:09 2:10 2:11 play each twice or more from 11 to 8
One more i agree its the diffrence betveen the systems that was intresting, the taking over becane boring, and Apple tiday trying to revrite the history makes me feel ill.
A commetar! Atari Fakcon was released wirhout the multitasking OS, so i think the Amuga owners had until Falcon was uodated. To bad Aråtari then just cared about their ganesystens the Lynx and the kess succcesful Jaguar. Funny thing a Jaguar advertuse was run on the Falcon:-)
And yes at the time i bought the A1200, i trusted Commodore, and going to Falcon that was seriously much more expensive, no way. Turbocard for the amiga 1200 was soon floiting around and still today. AGA was to little to late for Amiga, i dont wabt tonsell mine but my Atari Falcon that i got the 14mb upgrade to and the newer multitasking OS its a damn good computer i think, the sound now was real stereo etc geen A1200 still had their four canal sound. Amigas iften was easy but exoensive to upgrade, Atari was not good at all there.
My Falcon as most had been used for serioysly music making, an outsude scsi HD to be able to be fast enough for that, i have that and a cd scsi that works with it. I dont want to sell it, it worjs with tft sceens, but its getting old:-( How ling will it work? I was at the time an Commodore man, hating Atari, today i see both have their good sides.
The 1mb version could not be used, stupid. The 4mb version was sold here in Sweden with a small internal hd or without, but i remember the price then was about 8000 crowns as you had to have a harddrive really, say it was like 800 pounds. I dont noone buying it over the Amiga, but it was a good machine i think, to bad the throthled it to be able to run some ST games. The DSP was powerful, and the one i have can play mp3s because of that. But for it ime it was too expensive and the time fore home computers as we cald them was running out, OC was not even considered. Here in Sweden and most Eurooe OC was not big and serisly expencive so here these kind if computers still had a place, but ut was the new 16 bit consoles that was the enemy and killed this kind of computers with a keybord built in.
It's a shame such an interesting platform died because the company was mismanaged into the ground...
It's all about that midi port!
I had one of these in 1986. It had an external cassette player that sounded like a modern day fax machine. It took a few minutes to 'load' games into the cpu. It was awesome. My brother and I had a great time. Kaboom was one of my favorite games.
Interesting machine. Too bad I never saw one in the wild when they were being produced. I ended up going from the Tandy CoCo to the Amiga.
Ok. Can anyone explain the footage of Darth Gimp at 33:24?
Beautiful stuff... Thanks heaps for sharing.
Holy shit, that Atari ST2 at 40:31 is SEXY AS F***
The Falcon is a beautiful looking computer. It's a shame that Atari did such a terrible job at marketing it.
I had a CD ROM in 92. In my 486DX50. Which I used (and got) for gaming. Plus a Sound Blaster, and a Thrustmaster Joystick. It wasn't that expensive. But I'm in the US. However, the Lynx and Jaguar, which I always wanted, _were_ very expensive, so I never got them. (and now that I have a Vita, the shine on the Lynx has worn off) This Atari seems really cool, and I've always liked Atari as a company. Shame they couldn't establish themselves as a serious computer company. That would have been cool. (or even for the Jaguar to have taken off, I was really rooting for them and hoping to see it gain traction)
Remember GEMBench?
I think I can see how it would be difficult to market something like the Atari TT. Just hearing you say it over and over. Yikes. Might as well call it the Atari Ding Dong Home Computer, not to be confused with the Atari TiTty.
I miss my Atari falcon, fighting with windows 10. I used it for programming (GFA-basic), music (Notator later Logic) and graphics.
The Atari ST was gold for music production.
If I am not wrong, these Atari's were critical in bringing music made on Cubase important. Cubase was the most important non Apple DAW for over 2 decades. These machines were hampered by not conforming to a standard OS, yet Cubase saw the value in them. I saw one or two of these in the 90s in major techno producer studios. Thanks for the whole story.
jewstick
i wonder if the atari st would have a continuation if atari where still alive. kinda like the dell xperion. speaking of which. do you know of angry video game nerd? seems like you two would make a great duo.
Ahhh, Andy Crane and Violet Berlin. That takes me back!
Definitely a cool looking computer.
It was expensive, otherwise everyone would had one
*SNIGGERS*
18:27 with captions idiot
They should have made their own GUI like Amiga.
dude, it's not MOSH, it's moshé
TV? Must be a quite bad monitor.
Double twist, somehow i've missed your video on this too
That pic of it in upright stance looked oddly similar to the PS2
I was an Amiga owner so I had little time for Atari. I didn't know anyhow with one which didn't help. I've mellowed now though!
So Tramiel trademark cheapness killed the awesome Atari Falcon that could have been. But even if Atari managed to make that Falcon, the thing is, it was over for home computers (Including Commodore). It was new era of x86 PC clones and game consoles. And with PCs getting new hardware almost all the time thanks to its modularity, it won with sheer numbers.It was like big, huge flaw that went over everything else. Of course, once the critical mass was attained, PC just took off leaving everything else in the dust of the history.
I had an ST, STe and then a Falcon... one of my favorite eras of home computing before I eventually got a PC.
I was surprised to recognise Tobey Maguire in that Atari Lynx advert! Now I want an Atari Falcon!
Isn't this basically a kind of poor quality copy of the Amiga? Atari never produced anything all that remarkable in my opinion. The 2600 was the only thing, and that was obsolete by 1983 - the NES came out in Japan in that year. It was primitive, but early and successful system, but by 1985 it was a toy system for little children for their first video game system. Atari never made anything great again after their first success, and a number of video games for arcades. Commodore, Apple, Sinclair, Adam, Colecovision - all wiped it out well before the NES was available. I give them credit for the 2600, but everything beyond that was inferior to everything else that was produced by other companies.
I had a C-Lab :)
Amiga was the god!
Really surprised so few people here knew about the Falcon. It was all over the press at the time and has been a sought after machine ever since.
Nostalgia Nerd No it’s shit
Holy crap Elite II looks incredible!
Atari's marketing people must've been pretty rubbish if they thought "TT" was a good name for a product.
Still have it in mothballs, never overclocked, with a gorgeous 350 MB SCSI drive in a shoebox I paid 500$.. what old times
Now have 6000 times more room on disk (2Tb) and 300 times more in RAM (12gB).. what's the point as I just needed 2Mb RAM and a floppy on my ST to edit my docs on vector files in Calamus..
Why is vat ? I don’t know mate I’ve never got my head round the tax system ....
The Atari STe didn't have 256 on-screen colours, only the palette was increased to 4096 from 512. On-screen colours remained at a paltry 16 like the FM before it. Edit: Ah, they restricted it to 16 colours on launch ok lol.
0:20 well, guess anyone in China won't be seeing this
Until recently, I dreamed about owning a Falcon since 1993, but the sad reality? There is barely any software for this amazing machine of possibilities and I never found one here in Canada...sadly. Here in Canada the machine did not even exist...marketing was mostly in Europe. I am also impressed that you found a Falcon, and you got to run Elite II on it... another fantastic video.
17:23 beta PS2 lol :P Now i know where Sony developers got the body style for the Original PS2.
As the 90s began, "people" were not starting to focus their money and energy on Amiga, people were starting to focus their money and energy on PC. If some Britons still hung on to the sinking ship of Amiga, that doesn't mean that focusing on Amiga was the worldwide trend of the early 90s. Not to mention that Amiga never was a worldwide success. Neither was Atari ST of course. C64, NES and PC were worldwide successes.
Had an 1040ST when I was a kid , with the 40mb hard drive (external scsi? shoebox) , external 3.5" floppy , the 1024 monitor and 2400 baud hayes modem. The Falcon was rare AF but my buddy's dad had one. TOS was pretty bad I have to admit, but the graphics and sound capabilities were def ahead of the time.
Ha Ha the $35 Raspberry pi 3 blows the dorr off this thing.
I thought I'd try out this new PREMIERE feature. I think the general gist of it is, we all get to watch it together, with chat. Isn't that cosy?