ST Is Dead, Love Atari

These days, you can pick up an Atari ST computer for under £100, and its once‑guaranteed studio ascendancy is seriously threatened by the Mac and PC. Paul Ward checked out all the alternatives when upgrading his computer, and decided to stick with the faithful ST. Here he explains why.

There seems to be a great deal of doom and gloom surrounding the Atari ST these days. My clunky old 1Mb STM machine with external floppy drive has served me well for the best part of a decade, but recently I too started to succumb to the allure of a newer, faster machine and the exciting prospect of integrated hard disk recording. I looked at the possibility of the PC, Macintosh and Falcon as my next potential studio workhorse, and carefully sifted my way through the information packs and multiple magazine reviews.

However, it quickly became clear that (leaving aside the hard disk recording side of things for the moment) the amount of money I would need to spend in order to achieve merely comparable results to my old ST seemed unreasonably high. The newer operating systems place extremely heavy demands on the hardware they are designed to run on, to the point where the applications appear to play a very minor part in the scheme of things: "Well, sir, you really need Windows 95 to take advantage of the next generation of applications, so you'll be needing a 100MHz Pentium with at least 16Mb of RAM and a 1Gb hard drive..."

And what of the Falcon? Well, I have to say that I remain unimpressed by the quality of the audio from the Falcon's own outputs. And by the time a decent digital interface and separate audio outputs had been factored in, the costs were beginning to escalate alarmingly.

It was time to make some tough decisions. After sitting and chatting with myself over a couple of capuccinos, I discovered that I was misleading myself somewhat. OK, so we'd all like the added flexibility and increased audio quality of hard disk recording, but do we really need them? Sheepishly, I had to admit that I was the victim of techno‑lust!

The Needs Of The One...

Most of the music I make is played 'live' from my keyboards and sound modules. When guitar or vocal parts are required (probably in less than 50% of the pieces I produce), I record these to my stalwart Tascam 38 8‑track recorder, with MIDI synchronisation provided via an XRI SMPTE generator (God bless MIDI Time Code!). For much of the time, my Tascam remains unpowered, and as a consequence has a great deal of life left in it — at least as far as head wear and transport fatigue are concerned! Over the last couple of years, I've taken to recording 'acoustic' instrumentation into my sampler, saving versions as I go along until I either have the perfect take, or can build it from two or more nearly‑perfect takes. Either way, the end result then goes onto the Tascam. The quality may not be up to digital standards, but the tape tracks play a minor part in my own style of music — who would notice the extra fidelity on a distorted guitar overdub anyway?

So what did I do? Well, I went out and bought a new computer — an Atari STe! After a few phone calls to suppliers I eventually came across one, Keychange Music Services, who was not only prepared to help, but actually understood the thought process that had lead me back to the ST. After the exchange of questions, advice and information, I had a much clearer idea of what I needed.

Hard Times

I ordered a new 105Mb SCSI hard drive, plus the requisite specialised cable which allows the Atari to make use of it. As far as the hardware is concerned, there is very little in this setup to concern even the most timid of users. Simply connect the hard drive's power cable, plug the SCSI cable between the ST and the drive, and power up. Keychange were happy to format the hard drive for me, and there was nothing else for me to do other than install my application software. Due to restrictions in the specification of SCSI drives, the ST needs to be booted twice (just press the reset button) to allow the drive to be accessed. The automated solution for this is a program called Coldboot, which simply sits on a disk in the Atari's internal floppy disk drive and keeps on re‑booting the ST until the hard drive responds — whereupon the hard disk boot takes over. Slightly inelegant, perhaps, but no trouble at all once in place — just switch on and wait a few seconds.

The addition of a hard drive to the ST means much more than an improvement in saving and loading times. Tools and accessories that were hidden at the back of your disk box are now constantly at your disposal. The number of accessories or AUTO folder programs is no longer restricted by available space on a floppy disk, or by the necessity to copy the same programs across all of your boot disks. Your machine will be configured in just the way you like, and with the tools and accessories you specify, each time it is switched on. If, like me, you have always struggled along with floppies in the belief that, for an ST, a hard drive just 'wasn't worth it', the low price of adding one may also now come as a pleasant surprise.

Soft Solutions

An upgrade to 4Mb of memory came next, allowing me to plug in all those cute‑but‑not‑so‑little accessories and Cubase modules that I had always liked the look of but never had the capacity to include, for both memory and disk space reasons. I use an excellent piece of librarian/database software called Chameleon that enables me to not only hold SysEx data for all my existing instruments and processors (and search for them by name or criteria, such as 'soft', 'metallic', 'favourite', or the like), but also has its own programming language with which I can write SysEx transfer routines for any new equipment I acquire in the future. Chameleon happily co‑exists as an accessory alongside Cubase.

NVDI is a program that replaces many of the ST's screen handling functions with faster, more efficient code. Once it's in place, the difference is immediately obvious. Benchmark tests (written by SOS's own Ofir Gal, I should point out!) showed some of the ST's graphics routines running with a speed increase of more than 500%! Version 2.5 of NVDI is totally compatible with Cubase and makes much lighter work of moving around editor screens. NVDI gives the ST a much slicker feel, that belies its humble 8MHz processor speed. Installation is child's play — basically, you just copy one configuration file and a folder of system files to the root folder of your boot disk, move NVDI into your AUTO folder, and forget it!

Live And Working

My 'new' ST system is a thing of joy. The very simplicity of the hardware is its strength. I can forget about card slots, interrupts, IRQ settings and megabytes of disk storage space dedicated to keeping the operating system up and running (yes, I have trodden the PC route in my time!).

But the most important thing is that my combination of Atari ST and Cubase still do the job I require of a sequencer. Perhaps I'm delaying the inevitable, and forgoing the delights of hard disk recording in the meantime, but the prices of replacement systems are falling all the time. I can wait.

Of course, I'm sure it won't be too long before I again look at the possibility of upgrading to a newer machine, but in the meantime I have a system that works perfectly well and costs me precious little to maintain. Since the ST is a 'dead' machine as far as games‑players or business users are concerned, replacement STs go for a song (£60 seems to be the going rate for a 1Mb machine in my local free paper these days).

So don't despair of your Atari. If you're considering moving to a new computer, take a look at what you really need from your system and see if a couple of upgrades might be a better solution, at least in the mid‑term. I'm not here to tell you that you can turn your ST into a PowerMac, but you could provide yourself with a much better working environment than you have currently, for a relatively modest outlay. For myself, I think any new machine that does arrive in my studio in the future is now likely to have to share its living space with an Atari ST for quite some time to come.