SidecarT – Atari ST/STE/Mega Cartridge Emulator on Raspberry Pi Pico Steroids
sidecartridge.comSuch a major bummer that Atari restricted cartridge sizes to 128kB (not enough address lines for more). Really limits what can be done with that interface. Can't even hold a new TOS ROM (192kB).
Agreed, better to have been a full mega expansion bus as a cartridge port, to upgrade ram/cpu/graphics etc.
Would have also liked the blitter socket in every machine from the start (for a T212), Amy or at least a pwm on the dma, stereo output and low byte addressing for the video.
Yeah they really cut corners on the first couple generations that came out. RAM expansion was a PITA, and even though they knew they wanted to do the blitter later, they never made room for it.
But Tramiel never understood or cared about building a platform or backward/forward compatibility. It was about moving product out at rock bottom price and moving on. It was only once his sons started taking on more of the business that they made (some) smarter moves.
The first generation Mega ST was actually an amazing computer though. High quality mechanical key switch keyboard. Internal expansion bus, but still a compact form factor. The MegaSTe was more powerful, and did the VMEbus thing, but cut corners on quality.
The problem wasn't that he didn't care, but that he sunk his own private fortune made at Commodore into ATARI, and that ATARI was always teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. They never had enough money, it's amazing that they were able to produce anything at all! And the ST you describe was before Jack's time.
This is factually incorrect, which is why you were (formerly) downvoted. The ST was Jack's baby, the project he started (along with Shiraz Shivji, etc) after Atari Corp founding -- definitely not before Jack's time. In fact I believe prototype development started under another company name before Atari Corp was official.
Not to mention Jack was pulling same crap at Commodore, constantly pumping more and more pointless incompatible systems claiming to fight imaginary war against bottom of the barrel Sinclair (already going bankrupt at the time), Timex, TI, Tandy etc, all while Commodore was already commanding almost 50% market share https://jeremyreimer.com/rockets-item.lsp?p=137 with just one model (c64).