Another 68k based machine joins the collection

It’s an Atari STe this time. This one has 2MB’s of RAM (I think, not powered it on yet) and was the spare studio machine of a musician, who used it for Cubase 2 exclusively so is in pretty good nick unlike the Amiga 500+ I picked up last year and has barely any discoloration as far as I can tell.

I never owned an Atari computer back in the day, and all my mates had Amiga’s or PC’s so my first impressions are that’s actually quite well built. Which considering the reputation Atari had for cost cutting is somewhat surprising. The internal PSU and 4 x SIMM slots are a nice touch compared to the Amiga 500 but other than that the expansion capabilities are more limited (only a cartridge port on the side, no expansion bus for accelerators or boosters like the Amiga). In theory faster 68k series CPU’s could be piggy backed onto the 8MHz 68000 CPU, and there are a few booster kits around for that, but it sounds a bit hit & miss to if they will work well as there were quite a few minor differences between batches of machines.

Anyhow, I’m waiting for a video port and mouse adapter to arrive before I can power it up.

Here it is compared to my Amiga (which is badly yellowed and could do with a retro bright)

The transaparent box to the right is my MIST which is an FPGA which can work almost perfectly as both of these machines plus many others from the 80’s & 90’s. Behind that is my HP thin client which I use with FreeDOS and a parallel port OPL3 interface for some early 90’s DOS games.

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Very nice :slight_smile:

Wasn’t the Atari ST series the one with a built-in MIDI interface ?

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That Atari is in gorgeous shape, it looks way better than my 1040ST from when I was doing music production.

I have very few pics of it as it has been in storage for the last 10-15 years.

Here it is mid clean as I try and go through stuff

Yes, both in and out.

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Yes, this one was the spare machine in a backgarden music studio and was only used a small amount and speant most of its life in storage. Having said that I will (at some point) get the capacitors replaced plus a few other minor fixes. I’ve only needed to blow the dust off and give it a wipe down so really pleased with it.

@n3tizen his main machine also up for sale was a 1040 STf like yours. I probably would have bought it too but he wanted a lot more money for it. Understandable, as he was including the SM124 hires monitor and original Cubase and Notator MIDI expansion and software.

Amazingly it looks like MaxYMiser is still being kept up to date and fully supports the enhanced audio capabilities of the STe - woohoo, a whole 5 channels to play with for chiptunes :slight_smile:

http://preromanbritain.com/maxymiser/

Out of curiosity, how much was it being sold for?

I still have the OG monitor, and Cubase software for the 1040 STe and seeing as I am no longer using it … i have no idea what the market is like for these presently.

It’s still on ebay.co.uk for £410: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Atari-1040ST-8mb-Computer-with-Monitor-C-Lab-Notator-Dongle/143611849033?hash=item216feee949:g:vD4AAOSw5JBex6zP

I expect it’ll end up going for less or being split up - especially as it’s collection only.

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