THE ATARI STEE
THE ATARI STEE
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An exclusive report by Leon O'Reilly
Here's some red hot news about the future of the Atari ST! They will be releasing a spanking new Amiga-thrashing ST in the near future, and I will reveal its specifications. But first, read on.
Which is the king of the 16-Bits? This has always been a tough question with an answer hotly disputed by owners of different machines. It is a lot harder to resolve than the battle of the 8-Bits (Spectrum owners didn't tend to boast about their machines!!).
In the early days of the ST and Amiga, the ST was way ahead in terms of sales of computers and software production - there was a lot more software out for the ST than Amiga. Most people went for the ST simply because it was cheaper. Then Atari upgraded the ST to include a double sided disk drive and an improved operating system. The Amiga's sales were now level with the ST. The path was clear for either one of this company's to sprint ahead and capture a greater share of the 16-Bit market.
Atari made their move by announcing the imminent release of the STE. The specifications which were leaked to the press included:
- 8 Channel stereo sound
- 256 colours on screen
Of course these features were never included in the STE (though the TT has 256 colours on screen but only 5 channel sound). The STE did have the following advanced features:
- 4096 colour palette
- 2 channel stereo PCM sound
- Hardware Scrolling
- Blitter
- Genlock Capabilities
- Faster disk drive
- New DMA chip (That messes up hard drives!)
- Enhanced operating system
- Extra Joystick/Lightgun ports (That no-one has found the use of yet!)
As soon the STE was released, the ST's market began to disappear and the Amiga's sales rocketed. This doesn't seem to make much sense - an old ST with separate half meg drive and an operating system that had to be loaded from disk was perceived as better than the STE by the computer buying public. A lot of heavily biased articles in New Computer Express didn't help, they seemed to run a smear campaign against the STE with rent-a-quote programmers complaining about the lack of such essential items as a barrel shifting blitter. The fault wasn't with the computer but with programmers who are too lazy to make decent sprite routines and would prefer to have custom chips to do the majority of the work for them. The programmers who appeared in NCE in these articles just showed their ignorance and idleness.
Although the STE has been out for over a year, no STE- specific software has yet been released, though there are a few demos. A few games haven't been released on the ST because the programmers have claimed the ST 'Can't handle the scrolling' (It probably could if they wrote some decent Sync-Scrolling routines). The point is that the STE could've easily done justice to these games and arguably featured better versions than the Amiga lame-machine could.
Commodore haven't really upgraded the Amiga since its initial release and yet it has sold steadily and is now a market leader. There were problems with the original ST (nothing that a good programmer couldn't get round!) and Atari have on the whole rectified these with the STE (though they've got no praise for this).
If they hadn't rushed the release of the first ST's and put in the FM soundchip they were originally going to, things would be very different.
Over the last month things have been changing. Amiga sales are down, but STs are selling amazingly well - they sold three months stock of Family Cirriculum packs in three weeks! Now you can buy 2Mb STEs for ú329, I can see these sales really booming.
Atari still have a lot of catching up to do, but with the release of the STEE they should blow away the rest of the 16-Bit market. These are the features of this new computer from some very reliable sources:
- 1.44 Megabyte internal floppy drive
- 4 meg hard cards
- 16Mhz proccessor
- 256 colours on screen
- All TT graphics resolutions displayed
- 16 Channel stereo sound
- 64-Bit Jaguar technology used
- Extra Custom Chips
The 1.44Mb drive will be useful, it can read 720K and 360K floppies as well as high density disks. Imagine the demos that could be compressed onto one disk. Very long sample demos will also be possible.
The 4 Meg hard cards have been included to make the STEE compatible with ST book and the STyle (ST pad). This are also a large data storage medium!
The processor is a very nippy 16Mhz which really leaves the Amiga in the dust. And you thought 8Mhz was fast!
The STE can display all TT graphics resolutions so that means 256 colours on screen. There maybe other enhanced graphics resolutions...maybe 4096 colours on screen or more! The palette will contain at least 4096 colours and will most likely have more.
There will be an excellent 16 channel sound and the YM2149F will be kept in to give compatibility with the lesser STs. (Besides this old 3 Channel chip does more than produce sound, it helps control some of the inner workings of the ST.) 16 channel sound will be stunning - Amiga owners never stop bragging about their sound capabilities and they only have four channel sound!
The extra custom chips will control functions like sprites, sound, graphics etc. and should give the machine greater flexibility.
If this machine does retain these specifications, Atari have a winner on their hands. This machine doesn't only trample the Amiga into the ground, it gives the Archie a good run for its money, having better sound capabilities and much more software.
The STEE will be released in the USA in spring 1992 and will cost about ú450. This is future of the 16-bit home computer! Wow!
