Gaz Atari Bits

This is my elegy to what was for quite a few years the best home computer there was, the Atari STe. Sure, there were some very good alternatives around, I've nothing against the Amiga, BBC, Acorn, Apricot, Pet, Vic20, Dragon32, RML380Z, Spectrum, and even the little old ZX81 (I hesitate at ZX80 though), all had their good points... and bad. However, the Atari STe was just SO nice in comparison with any of these, mine for one was my sole home computer right up until only a couple of years ago, when its lack of memory and speed finally forced me to upgrade to an Apple Mac. I'd have gladly stuck with it if I could have improved it any more, but I'd already doubled the clock speed from 8 to 16MHz and boosted its memory from 4Mb to 8Mb. The almost mythical Atari Falcon was supposed to be a bit of an improvement, but I've never seen one. There were a couple of viable upgrade paths available (well, three), see below, but all seemed to have their heads stuck up their arses as far as marketing was concerned, and being unable to sell the things, disappeared. I tried to get a Milan, but couldn't find anywhere to buy one at the time. The Hades was at least on sale in England, but at such a ridiculous price you could buy a Mac cheaper. The Phenix sadly didn't even rise from the ashes and was never a commercial offering as far as I'm aware, only a few prototypes were made. So, pissed off with IBM and Microsoft for effectively killing off the small home computers like mine and mass-marketing their faster, bigger, but not nearly as nice PCs, begrudgingly, I got the only thing left - a Mac. : Like me - old, slow, lack of memory, case is a bit cracked, but still works fine and does the job.

	Atari - The Next Generation (or maybe not?)
Atari - Hellish fast! So fast, you can't buy one. Believe me, I've tried!
	Almost Atari - The French Connection (out of the ashes of the dead Phoenix rises a new baby, the Rio Red...)

Here are some of the more useful Atari related links I've found :-

The Atart Quick FAQ - Nicholas Bales - excellent source of info.
Uwe Seimet - author of HDDriver for Atari
Roy Golding - author of a guide to the Internet for Atari
STiK2 - Baldrick's STiK2
Gary Priest - author of GapFTP - excellent FTP client
Atari MIDI info. - Tim's Atari MIDI world
Elysium - various Atari hardware specs.
System Solutions - the last UK Atari dealer?
Little Green Desktop - PC and Mac Atari emulators, etc.
ST-Computer mag - an online magazine?
Classic Atari mag - and a German one?
MyAtari.net - online magazine, still going as at July 2002.
Atari ethernet - one way to get an Atari hooked up to other machines.