8 May
2003
8 May
'03
7:23 p.m.
"Hills, Paul" <Paul.HILLS(a)landisgyr.com> says:
That's a lot - it's not really a vintage machine, nor a particularly rare
one.
For Europe perhaps, but for the States you'd be wrong. That's actually a
low price, the US versions typically go for over $400. Why? Because they
were indeed rare over here. Later Atari Corp. computers saw very little
distribution over here, and much of the production was limited to
overseas. Which is why you can find plenty of Falcon's and TT's in Europe
and for auction on European Ebay sites. But those actually happen to be
the two *hardest* to find micro's here in the the US (which is what the
auction in question was for - a US version).
Probably the most common Atari Corp. computers you get over here are the
520ST and 1040ST, with the the STE and Mega's coming after that, and the
TT and Falcon the least common.
I still use mine as a MC56000 Digital Signal Processing
(DSP) testbed.
At the time, the ?500 I paid for it was a quarter of what I would have had
to pay to get a DSP experimentation card for a PC, and since I didn't have a
PC at the time it was a bargain.
In addition to that, I wrote a series of articles about DSP for the ST
Format magazine in the UK, for which they paid me ?500, recompensing the
computer's cost! Ha!
paul
That's cool, congrats. :)
The Atari Corp. computers, and the Amiga's had a much larger user base and
longer shelf life in Europe than in the US. By the time the Falcon was
being released for instance, IBM/Wintel (3.1 at that time) and Mac's were
considered "the market", the other companies were considered way way back
there somewhere and not for serious use anymore. Which is why companies
like Amiga tried to find niche markets for their technology (such as
latching on to video effects with Videotoaster stuff, or trying to get in
to the console market with the CD32 - which they originally intended with
the first Amiga). Atari itself decided to get out of the business within
a year of releasing the Falcon and just concentrate on consoles (it's
Jaguar).
Marty
ClassicGaming.Com
Atari Gaming Headquarters
www.atarihq.com
Museum of Home Video Gaming
www.classicgaming.com/gamingmuseum