SidecarT – Atari ST/STE/Mega Cartridge Emulator on Raspberry Pi Pico Steroids

SidecarT – Atari ST/STE/Mega Cartridge Emulator on Raspberry Pi Pico Steroids(sidecartridge.com)

37 points by nynyny7 2 years ago | 6 comments

Such 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).

alexisread 2 years ago | |

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.

cmrdporcupine 2 years ago | | |

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.