Atari 1040st emulator mac how to#
Atari 1040st emulator mac upgrade#
Atari 1040st emulator mac full#
Atari 1040st emulator mac mac#

To further this, I bought an Atari SLM804 laser printer in October 1989 for $1590, an amazing 300dpi printer that was very affordable for the time. I discovered desktop publishing and typography. I needed the extra memory for a new hobby which changed my career path. That is, unless you count installing MegaTouch Keyboard Springs under key to make them feel better when typing. I had help and this was my first and only hardware hack. I even had to use Fun-Tak to hold in a small fan I bought at Radio Shack. I upgraded my 1040ST to 4MB of memory ($687!) in October 1989 by cutting a hole in the RF shield and soldering in a Zubair Interfaces ZRAM memory board ($183).

Atari 1040st emulator mac full#

I bought a 1040ST for $849 from A&B Sound which gave me a full 1MB of memory and internal floppy drive.

Atari 1040st emulator mac upgrade#

By that point, prices and fallen and I decided it was almost as cheap to upgrade to a 1040ST as it was to hack in more memory.

Atari 1040st emulator mac how to#

I bought Laser C and taught myself how to program in C and eventually I ran out of memory.

Atari 1040st emulator mac mac#

The Atari was faster than a Mac, and if you really wanted to run Mac software, you could run it faster on an ST than on a Mac with an emulator. ItвЂ™s hard to believe now, but in the mid eighties, it was not apparent which operating system would win, or even that the field would narrow. Friends have sometimes asked me why I bought an Atari ST instead of a Mac. The CPU was an 8mhz 16-bit Motorola 68000. Not only did it have a GUI and mouse, it came with 512KB of memory and an external 3.5вЂі floppy drive. I was finally making some money so I bought the object of my desire, an Atari 520 ST. I think I bought this from CompuCentre in Winnipeg.ДЄtari 520ST (purchased 1988) and Atari 1040ST (purchased Jan 1989) This gave me 128KB of memory and a few improvements. Rather than saving up my pennies, I wasted what I did have buying aВ third Atari 8-bit computer, the 130XE. I wanted an Atari ST, a 16-bit computer with Digital ResearchвЂ™s GEM, a graphical user interface. TheyвЂ™re out of business now, but they didnвЂ™t give me the PaperClip word processor they were bundling with it and IвЂ™m still holding a grudge. I recall buying this computer at A&B Sound in downtown Victoria. Atari used a cylinder, probably due to cost, but the result was that the baseline of the letters never quite lined up. Prior to inkjets and lasers, the most common letter quality printing technology was the ball used in good electric typewriters. I also wrote a 40,000 word novel which I fortunately realized was crap before I subjected anybody to reading it.В The printer was a hoot. This computer had a whopping 64KB of memory which was plenty of space to write papers using AtariWriter, a pretty decent word processor. To the best of my knowledge, I was the only student at Royal Roads Military College with my own computer. I bought another 8-bit Atari computer, the Atari 800XL, an Atari 1050 floppy drive, and an Atari 1027 Letter Quality Printer. In my second year of university, I wanted a computer for writing assignments.

Basic was stored in a cartridge so you simply inserted the cartridge and typed B to execute the cartridge. The operating system was truly a Disc Operating System, because as you can see from this screenshot, your only options were disc functions. I spent many days writing my own games on the Atari 400. Pressing the button above the keyboard popped open the cover to reveal a cartridge slot. The mylar keyboard was a pain to type on but it looked cool. Unfortunately, the cassette drive was terrible and I had to save each program on three tapes to ensure I could actually reload it. This 8-bit computer with a 6502 processor sported 16K of memory (take that Vic 20 users!) and had great graphics for the time.

The 5.25вЂі floppy drive was too expensive for me. As soon as we returned home, I bought an Atari 400 and an Atari 410 cassette tape drive for about $1000. While on a trip to California, I spied a relatively inexpensive Atari computer in a mall and I found my first love. I wanted an Apple ][ but I couldnвЂ™t afford one. I remember writing a starfield graphics routine. The school had only two machines computers so IвЂ™d wake early so I could get time on a computer at 7am.

I was introduced to the Apple ][ in 1981 in the only computer class my small high school offered. ItвЂ™s been 28 years since I bought my first computer and I thought it would be interesting to write about my experiences.