Lacto Checks Out Some Atari ST Demos

A wonderful 16 bit machine that also had quite a few cool demos for it. In this video I check out a couple of recent ones, including an invitation to a Demo Party November 28-30 2014!

The Atari ST was quite a big powerhouse back in the day, a huge 16 bit leap from the 8bit computers sporting more colours and in quite a few ways it shares genetics with the Commodore Amiga. Quite a convoluted story that eventually ended up in two quite distinct Motorola 68000 based systems. Some argue the ST is the ‘poor man’s Amiga’ others beg to differ. I love both machines actually.

Jay Miner, one of the designers at Atari, was not able to realize his ideas for a new 16 bit computer system and decided to leave Atari to start his own company in 1982. This company would later become known as the Amiga Corporation. At his knew company Jay continued to work on the 16-bit Lorriane system but he got into financial difficulties and Atari decided to give financial aid. In return Atari would get the exclusive use of the first, yet to be produced, model for the first year.

In 1984 Jack Tramiel (Founder and former CEO of Commodore) discovered that Warner Communications was intent on selling Atari and he succeeded in acquiring the Atari Consumer Division.

Tramiel proceeded to fire most of the staff right after acquiring the company. Tramiel discovered that Atari had made a deal with Amiga. A lot of Atari employees had left Commodore to start working with the new Atari Corp. This resulted in quite a bit of anger over at Commodore.

Commodore and Amiga found each other because of their shared dislike of Tramiel’s ways and decided to cooperate. Commodore bought Amiga and expected to be able to have all the rights to the Lorriane chipset. Tramiel filed a law suit agains Amiga (and thus also against Commodore – his former company) to prevent Commodore from using the Lorriane technology. This resulted in a lot of delays over at Atari but eventually the lawsuit was settled and Atari was able to produce the Atari 520ST in September 1985.

Commodore had already introduced its Amiga in July 1985, so it had a little head start. Both machines became incredibly popular.