Still kind of cool I guess.
Still kind of cool I guess.
Do you recommend finding a working Atari? Are they still reliable in your experience?
Thanks!
There's another all-software ST emulator out there called Aranym:
It has its own all-FOSS ST-compatible OS distro, AFROS:
https://aranym.github.io/afros.html
Aranym is aimed at running ST GEM as well as possible on modern machines, for productivity apps and so on -- so it sacrifices absolute hardware compatibility in favour of performance and features like high screen resolutions.
I would love to see a bare-metal Raspberry Pi version of Aranym, to turn a spare Pi into the fastest maxed-out Atari TT030 ever. :-)
I get this may be transpiled to the web, but...
My hunch is that it's partially driven by mourning over increasing loss of deterministic "von Neumann computing"; so not pure nostalgia.
It doesn't matter the platform or if "only" in software / web or whatever it's just a great hobby to dabble with in general, especially when kids are getting into it.
The ZX Spectrum Next, Commodore 64 Ultimate and the likes, same as their OG versions are still great "bicycles for the mind" and a great intro to microcontrollers etc.
I'd personally be ready for an FPGA based "Mega Atari 800" or some such!
Personally, I don't do much nostalgia. I've built the PDP-11 clones and run v6 Unix again and (o dear lord) compiled world.c with BDS-C on CP/M and realized that the 70s and 80s kinda sucked, and that I really like modern computing
So without much nostalgia / betting on actual hardware the (partially ST community derived) MiSTer project is just great for this kind of stuff - I guess you know it - if you will a micro PDP-11 surrogate.
I haven't tried this core myself yet but I will eventually:
Time flies.
Hatari – Online Atari ST/STE/TT/Falcon Emulator
https://hatari.frama.io/hatari/online/hatari.html