The Amiga MIDI Myth - Atari ST vs Amiga War

[Bombadil]

I got a friend an Amiga with Notator software and a Yamaha sound module circa 1990. I was an impoverished student, and was quite envious of my friend (erstwhile bandmember and recording partner). It impressed the hell out of me.
And now I use the next, next, next, next gen. of that software.
The Amiga was great for games, too.

[vurt]

the only amiga i ever saw in real life, was thrown at me through a first floor bedroom window, at 3am.

[THE INTRANCER]

The Atari ST had some good CAD programs, and because of it's high resolution monitor, which was better than what the Amiga was able to provide until multi-sync monitors addressed the issue with flickering interlace modes. With, having a Mega ST for a year, CAD programs were about the only thing I found useful with having a black and white monitor, but it was the first home computer that I actually had a hard drive. With the Amiga, I simply had and still have dual floppy drives to manage software. To all intents and purpose's, the ST was a home PC. The first PC I ever used was an RM Nimbus at high school back in 1989 with a big blue login screen. Given that I still have to login sometimes to Windows 10, it seems everything has come full circle.

[donkey tugger]

Atari 1040ST, you f**king losers.

The PC vs Mac of its day...

I think you’ll find it’s Mac vs PC

Yeah.. the "underdog" who is a multi trillion dollar company must fight against the competition much ahead of its game...

Erm…alphabetical?

Just sounds better

I've got your bass here. Recant or I'll change the last word to 'toooory'.

tosserbass.jpg

[jens]

Atari 1040ST, you f**king losers.

The PC vs Mac of its day...

Pfft! Everyone knows the Amiga was better at everything except of those MIDI ports.

Yes, even the biggest computer magazine in Finland retroactively admitted Amiga being the better machine overall.

Pfft, Finland!

[revvy]

Atari 1040ST, you f**king losers.

The PC vs Mac of its day...

I think you’ll find it’s Mac vs PC

Yeah.. the "underdog" who is a multi trillion dollar company must fight against the competition much ahead of its game...

Erm…alphabetical?

Just sounds better

I've got your bass here. Recant or I'll change the last word to 'toooory'.


tosserbass.jpg

At least it appears to be ‘normal’ scale…

[donkey tugger]

[THE INTRANCER]

Anyone interested in retro computers and games should check out this weekly webcast on youtube, here's one on Amiga V Atari ST.

[syntonica]

The Atari ST had some good CAD programs, and because of it's high resolution monitor...

It wasn't just CAD, but text processing with page layout and design, plus a home laser printer. It was all bloody expensive, but still all together cost less than just the Macintosh, IIRC. And, you could then attach the converter, hook it to your TV and bash a few aliens on your downtime.

I think the Atari ST was the cheap everyman computer, while the Amiga appealed to the more geeky DIY crowd.

I don't know how Amigas handled MIDI, but the Atari was bare metal access capable of dead accurate timing.

On an amusing note, the only computer virus I've ever contacted was on my ST. I bought a magazine with a floppy and booted from it. Suddenly, my mouse pointer moved up when it should have moved down and vice versa. The magazine had sent out a virus on all of its disks that month.

There were two big Atari mags back then, but I don't recall which one did it...

[legendCNCD]

Amiga MIDI was also accurate, you had external boxes, but as we know if you chained those... timings!
The thing with Amiga was youd get 4 channels of 8bit 28khz or later 4 channels of 14bit 28khz sampler (Yes it could do much higher khz etc)

[donkey tugger]

I don't know how Amigas handled MIDI, but the Atari was bare metal access capable of dead accurate timing.

The, err, 'Car Boot Sale' edition of Cubase for the ST wasn't. Sometimes would make 'executive decisions' and move stuff about. Early AI I suppose.

[syntonica]

I don't know how Amigas handled MIDI, but the Atari was bare metal access capable of dead accurate timing.

The, err, 'Car Boot Sale' edition of Cubase for the ST wasn't. Sometimes would make 'executive decisions' and move stuff about. Early AI I suppose.

Wasn't Cubase dongled even back then?

I was a poor boy from a poor family, so it was Dr T's Tiger Cub for me. It was still $99 I didn't have...

[THE INTRANCER]

The Atari ST had some good CAD programs, and because of it's high resolution monitor...

It wasn't just CAD, but text processing with page layout and design, plus a home laser printer. It was all bloody expensive, but still all together cost less than just the Macintosh, IIRC. And, you could then attach the converter, hook it to your TV and bash a few aliens on your downtime.

I think the Atari ST was the cheap everyman computer, while the Amiga appealed to the more geeky DIY crowd.

I don't know how Amigas handled MIDI, but the Atari was bare metal access capable of dead accurate timing.

On an amusing note, the only computer virus I've ever contacted was on my ST. I bought a magazine with a floppy and booted from it. Suddenly, my mouse pointer moved up when it should have moved down and vice versa. The magazine had sent out a virus on all of its disks that month.

There were two big Atari mags back then, but I don't recall which one did it...

I think the Amiga was the ultimate desire, for those who could afford to have one because of its superior graphics and sound it could produce when compared to the Atari, and by the time Atari caught up in hardware terms, software development for Atari based software, had already dried up, leaving pretty much the Amiga platform carrying the torch for the remaining years as the consoles and PC platform began to get more powerful in terms of tech advancements. Despite the basic Amiga 1200 I had been outclassed by the dominant PC tech, I still used it for graphic design in HAM8 modes with Image FX and Photogenics besides Deluxe Pant 4 and Cinema 4D until 2001. When I had my Atari Mega ST, one of the first things I checked out was a disk with fractal landscaping, and although it was in black and white, it was at the time the most complex thing I'd had to play with on a computer. When I got my Amiga 500 and tried Vista Pro, the difference was night and day.

The Amiga had a vast range of peripherals it could use and from my own experience the connectivity I had with using a PSR330 and Yamaha DJX as a driver for Octamed, I found no issues in terms of midi timing with MIDI interfaces I used, until they stopped working for some reason.

Posted 22 hours ago...

[DAZZAXYXAX]

I owned multiples of both atari, stfm Ste, mega ste and falcon also amiga 1200 And 500, they were all good at different things, at Paris definitely better at Midi amigas better at sample handling but not necessarily quality but those artifacts gave it a special character. No need for a war I was more diplomatic, maybe I'm a spy in the now defunct personal computer cold war.lol it would have been nice to see where these platforms could have gone.

[Examigan]

In 1987 I bought an Atari 520 ST-FM that I upgraded to one megabyte of RAM. It was great for MIDI with my CZ-101 and DX21, and the games were good. I also bought a Megafile 30 hard drive for it. I had Master Tracks Pro for the MIDI sequencing.

Later on I ended up selling it so I could buy an Amiga 2000. I didn't end up using the Amiga for music, but I bought cool stuff for it like an GVP expansion card, Lightwave 4, DCTV and Opalvision. The games were great at the time and had the edge over the ST.

I recently inherited an Amiga 500 from my brother who passed away this year.