4mb STFM with accelerator - was there an equivalent way back when?

[KyleB]

Certainly for A1200 accelerators are all over the place. But remember in the times these machines were current (85-92) an 8 or 14Mhz processor really was enough, even if it wasn't impressive. Even at the end you were spending over £1000 for a monochrome 68000 mac.

So where you see accelerators pop up is mostly where people hung on after the supply of new machines dried out. That trends heavily to Amiga because there was a lot of second generation machines out there, whereas most atari people never saw a falcon.

[DrF]

Certainly for A1200 accelerators are all over the place. But remember in the times these machines were current (85-92) an 8 or 14Mhz processor really was enough, even if it wasn't impressive. Even at the end you were spending over £1000 for a monochrome 68000 mac.

So where you see accelerators pop up is mostly where people hung on after the supply of new machines dried out. That trends heavily to Amiga because there was a lot of second generation machines out there, whereas most atari people never saw a falcon.

I agree with that, that's how I saw it, at the end point 1995/96 the writing really was on the wall PC's were falling in price rapidly and the ST/Amiga were being left behind even with mega money in upgrades a top end 386 low end 486 was starting to leave everything else behind in performance.

I had a choice a A1200 or a Pentium 200, I went with the Pentium and kept my A500+ at that point there was no point going A500 to A1200 it was over, I looked at accelerators, hard drives, cdrom, modem and the PC was a better financial offer. Also Amiga magazines were disappearing from shops and games sections in shops were shrinking fast.

ST/Amigas I think had a catch 22 situation there's no software/nothing to use the accelerators so why buy them?
There's no accelerators so why write software to use them if no one has them?

I think I got what I said, it be like that cause it do

Adding onto that unless it was some super special app that needed special hardware like the video toaster, everything was made for the lowest machine in the range, cant lose out on sales off the huge masses off low end machines floating about (STFM/A500)

[arf]

I don't remember seeing a lot of accelerator cards for the ST in magazines or anywhere else.[…]

I think the professional market was just lost out on.

For the MegaST there were plenty of accelerators advertised in ST magazines in Germany. The AdSpeed, the Hypercache, the GE, ... most of ’em 68000/16 with 16-32 KB Cache, some with empty socket for a 68881. But there’s been the Maxon 68020 booster, later the Hyper030. Plenty of options (I couldn’t afford back then).

Mostly programmers and DTP guys bought it. Musicians not so much, from my experience.

[KyleB]

I agree with that, that's how I saw it, at the end point 1995/96 the writing really was on the wall PC's were falling in price rapidly and the ST/Amiga were being left behind even with mega money in upgrades a top end 386 low end 486 was starting to leave everything else behind in performance.

I had a choice a A1200 or a Pentium 200, I went with the Pentium and kept my A500+ at that point there was no point going A500 to A1200 it was over, I looked at accelerators, hard drives, cdrom, modem and the PC was a better financial offer. Also Amiga magazines were disappearing from shops and games sections in shops were shrinking fast.

ST/Amigas I think had a catch 22 situation there's no software/nothing to use the accelerators so why buy them?
There's no accelerators so why write software to use them if no one has them?

I think I got what I said, it be like that cause it do

Adding onto that unless it was some super special app that needed special hardware like the video toaster, everything was made for the lowest machine in the range, cant lose out on sales off the huge masses off low end machines floating about (STFM/A500)

I don't know about that, definitely for productivity software the amiga market did move over to the bigger and better machines, Workbench 2.0 broke the back of the ones with bad habits, and anything after that just works. Until old chickenlips went under the game developers were moving over to AGA too, there's a lot of 1200s out there and people forget the CD32 was a genuine success in the little time it had.

But when you get to 1995, then it just hammers home that the old business of having one computer model last for a 5-10 year life cycle was truly, truly dead. It's a shame to be honest, really wasteful, but it was the industry's growth spurt.

[calimero]

I don't remember seeing a lot of accelerator cards for the ST in magazines or anywhere else. The most professional uses I ever saw a ST do back then was CuBase and TimeWorks DTP the popular setup was either 2mb or 2.5mb ram upgrade with a external disk drive and sometimes a MegaFile hard drive thing that was about it.

I think the professional market was just lost out on.

From which country you are?
ST was used by many professionals, there were lot of software for any kind of professional work.
Beside, some most important software of today starts its life on non-PC platforms so Atari, Amiga and Mac played important role in accelerating software progress. Only when PC got ussable Windows GUI, only then software was ported to it.
I have thread on atari-forum with list of programs but I have plans to move it to my website...
Anyway, ST was far more professional then PC back in 80s thanks to great software.

[DrF]

From which country you are?
ST was used by many professionals, there were lot of software for any kind of professional work.
Beside, some most important software of today starts its life on non-PC platforms so Atari, Amiga and Mac played important role in accelerating software progress. Only when PC got ussable Windows GUI, only then software was ported to it.
I have thread on atari-forum with list of programs but I have plans to move it to my website...
Anyway, ST was far more professional then PC back in 80s thanks to great software.

UK sadly
I used to do alot of art stuff on the ST/Amiga, everyone else I knew just played games, it's quite interesting that a lot of serious packages were eventually moved over to PC I guess marketing and the future.

I used to love TimeWorks and Neochrome was usefull too on the ST, I used PageSetter, PenPal, ComicSetter and DeluxePaint on the Amiga and i have no idea how many public domain apps, the PC I was very unimpressed with at the time

I still remember seeing a old Mac running a laser printer, printing a clip art mono pig and thinking this is the future