I had been seeing this Atari 520 STFM in a local Cash Converters for a long while, it was starting to eat away at my soul as these things usually do. It was originally priced at £159, then reduced to £129, then eventually to £99. At that point I could take no more and made an offer which they accepted, I think they just wanted rid of it. It also came with the Tatung MM14SAE monochrome VGA monitor that allows the Atari ST to work in high res mode
The 520 ST which we have here has a Motorola 68000 processor running at 8MHz paired with 512MB of RAM
It supported three graphics modes, low res 320x200 with 16 colours on-screen from a pallet of 512. Medium res 640x200 with 4 on-screen colours, both of these modes could be used with an ordinary TV set or composite monitor
The final mode, called high res needed a dedicated monitor as it used higher scan frequencies and was 640x400, some VGA monitors could be used for this mode, however unlike VGA this mode could only display 2 colours on-screen, black and white, just like the early Apple Macintosh. This mode was mainly used for productivity software such as music production and word processing
Sound is taken care of by a Yamaha YM2149F which was a licenced varient of the common General Instruments AY-3-8910 with a couple of changes
The operating system is known as TOS (The Operating System) and the desktop is called GEM
Originally the ST was released in small numbers in April 1985, which beat the most popular Amiga 500 to market by a good two years and continued to 1993 when Atari moved all production to the Atari Jaguar
Earlier versions of the ST did not include the floppy disk and TV modulator and were known only as the Atari 520ST, and later versions came with more memory such as the Atari 1040STF/FM and/or enhanced graphics and sound like the Atari 520/1040 STE
The ST range went through more revisions and upgrades including portable versions, finally ending with the Atari Falcon
The ST range does look good and features a keypad, four cursor keys, and ten funky shaped function keys
The Caps Lock is in a strange place though, as are some of the other keys
The base has a cutout for the joystick and mouse ports, and also the model label
It's a silly place for these ports to be, although a couple of short extensions would solve the problem, but still
The rear of the computer has a mystery switch, and ports for a modem, printer, hard disk, second floppy disk, RF for a television, monitor, and a power switch with IEC mains socket as the power supply is built in, and finally a reset switch
This is not the original disk drive, you can see where the case has been modified to fit what I assume is a standard PC disk drive
The cutout is not the same as on the later STE
There are two MIDI ports and a cartridge slot on the opposite side
This ST came with a clear plastic cover which fits perfectly but is hard to take photos of
Normal power lead
This is the only disk that came with the ST. Cubase was a music sequencer programme. I don't know if this is for the ST as it doesn't boot
This is an adaptor for the VGA monitor
I was assured it was all working, so lets test it...
Annoyingly the mouse wasn't included and I don't have my Amiga/Atari ST switchable mouse to hand, so I had to use the keyboard to control the pointer.
Tip: Hold Alternate and use the cursor keys, Insert and Clr Home will work as the left and right mouse buttons
When the ST is connected but not switched on you get the image in the first pic, which looks concerning, but after the ST is switched on it goes full screen
Eventually it boots to a desktop. At this point I didn't know what the mystery switch was for
However the ST was booted with the switch in both positions, the only difference is there are no disk drives shown in one position, or the normal A and B drives in the other
I first thought the switch may have been a TOS select switch, so here are the about screens for both positions. They are both the same, so it's something to do with the disc drive, possible a drive A internal/external switch?
The screen mode is set to high and can't be changed unless you connect a different monitor or TV set
The drive recognises there isn't a disc in the drive
It sees a disc in the drive, but can't read it, i'm not sure if the disc drive is faulty, needs cleaning, or the disc is bad
So, if you accidentally delete something, you can't retrieve it? Is that right?
I - FOR without NEXT, 100:1