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Thinking of buying an Atari...

T

tokelokenem

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May 16, 2009
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Hello, I was thinking of getting an old computer from 80's or 90's. Would an atari be a good computer to buy? What computer from that era has a modem to connect online?
 
Well, most of us go with the first computer we learned on. You will need to figure out what you are interested in. Almost all the early 1980 type computers have some way to use a modem. Even my Osborne 1 has a modem on it.
 
Any computer with a serial port can be connected to an external modem (which used to be the only kind of modem there was).

If you're used to Windows-style computers, you might feel most at home with an Atari ST.
 
tokelokenem said:
What computer from that era has a modem to connect online?
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Hmm, online? Do you mean the Internet?

A modem on a vintage computer from the 1980s will not (in itself) get you onto the Internet. Modems those days were used for calling Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) and communicating with other computers via phone lines.

My apologies if you knew this already and by online, you meant simply connected via phone.

Tez
 
Thank you for suggesting the Atari ST. By saying online I did mean an internet connection and guessed that these early computers would be harder to get connected. Thanks for your help.

P.S. Is 19200bps really slow? Compared to dial-up on a modern computer? Could I download programs for the Atari ST once i got an internet connection?
 
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If you can get a dial-up connection at all? I have no idea what the support for SLIP or PPP is on the Atari ST, if modem pools of today still support those protocols.

On the other hand, chances are good that you could get an Ethernet interface and TCP/IP support so you could hook up a vintage computer directly to your home network. That is not exactly what you asked for, but much more practical and cool by today's standards.
 
Right. Every DSL account from ATT comes with a dial-up account, just in case the service is down. Not sure why-- has to be for when the servers go down, because both rely on the actual wires to connect them. If a tree falls in the woods on a phone line, everybody would hear it.
 
Atari ST Internet connection

Atari ST Internet connection

tokelokenem said:
Hello, I was thinking of getting an old computer from 80's or 90's. Would an atari be a good computer to buy? What computer from that era has a modem to connect online?
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Hi, I have gone online on an Atari ST with 1Mb RAM and a modem, but I found it to be *incredibly* slow, quite crash prone and difficult to do anything useful. Sorry if others have had better experiences.

mega.jpg


On the other hand, connecting my ST to a Linux box with a serial cable and using it as a terminal, it is great for email and text based web browsing. I can go onto telnet based bulletin boards, and download ST software.

The suggestion to use some kind of ethernet interface is a good one. My only doubt is that the bog standard ST is not really powerful enough. A later Atari model such as a TT or a Falcon would give better results if you can get hold of one.
 
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I don't know the ST scene, but an Ethernet interface should probably buffer packages. There are interfaces for much inferior computers like Commodore 64, which at least can run a text browser in Contiki (quite slow IIRC).
 
The ST's are great machine but they were never meant for today's internet. Whenever I hook up I have to go through my main machine and not send all the java, flash and extra stuff the ST doesn't deal with.

I still love them, they're much fun, even without a hard disk drive. Nice setup, too. How is the monitor connected??
 
I have some Falcon-on-the-web screenshots on my webpage. Just go to the pictures section to view them.

I think that an ethernet interface would be a better choice than a modem just because the standard ST does not have more than a 19200 serial interface.
They changed that to 38400 on the STe and to 115200 on the Mega/STe machines I believe.
The ethernec (or whatever you want to use) should be faster on all of them though.

On my abovementioned page there is a how-to about ethernec setup with STinG btw, just in case anyone happens to be interested.

Regarding Lynx:
I don't know if there's a Lynx version for MiNT, but I'm quite certain there's no version that's working under TOS.
 
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Monitor

Monitor

NathanAllan said:
I still love them, they're much fun, even without a hard disk drive. Nice setup, too. How is the monitor connected??
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Thanks, I was lucky someone locally donated me the Mega unit for free.

This is a Mono to VGA adapter, a guy in Poland still makes them and sells them internationally on eBay.
 
Chuck(G) said:
OT but it has me wondering...

How is it that an Atari TT or Falcon is considered to be a vintage computer, when 80486 PCs aren't? :confused:
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Macs that use the 68000 series processors are counted as Vintage with their own section and correct me if I'm wrong but didn't both of those machines use a 68000 series processor? I suppose they would count that way. A white box 80486 is WAY more common than either of those too. I don't think I've ever actually seen an Atari computer at all in person, just pictures of them so I suppose they could be called uncommon if you compared it to the bazillions of 486's out there.

My 2 cents anyway :rolleyes:
 
Vlad said:
Macs that use the 68000 series processors are counted as Vintage with their own section and correct me if I'm wrong but didn't both of those machines use a 68000 series processor? I suppose they would count that way. A white box 80486 is WAY more common than either of those too. I don't think I've ever actually seen an Atari computer at all in person, just pictures of them so I suppose they could be called uncommon if you compared it to the bazillions of 486's out there.
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Well 68K came after x86 and you can still buy 68K family members (see: ColdFire). Things with 68K family processors were more common than you'd think. Workstations (e.g. Apollo), Macs, *nix boxes (e.g. Plextor, Fortune). Heck, I've got two laser printers with 68Ks in them.

If it's the criterion that Atari isn't around any more (at least the entity making personal computers), well then, neither is Packard Bell.
 
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