The Atari ST in 2016

So 2015 was an incredibly busy year for Kickstarter campaigns, in particular retro-based campaigns for computers and related content. We had numerous campaigns for Amiga, such as the Commodore: Amiga Years book campaign by Brian Bagnall; From Bedrooms to Billions: The Amiga Years documentary by Anthony & Nicola Caulfield; The Amiga 30th Anniversary Celebrations; The 1200 Amiga Case Remake Project by Philippe Lang; The Amiga inspired keycaps for mechanical keyboards by Loriano Pagni; and Uncle Art games music remake by Dave Lowe who did many of the top 80s Amiga and C64 games. And this was just for 16-bit! For 8-bit campaigns we had Growing The 8-bit Generation documentary (which has one of Commodore founder Jack Tramiel's last known interviews; Project Sidologie (Jean-Michel Jarre-style C64 music); Original C64 mould pressings; Generation 64 book; The Commodore 64 in Pixels by Chris Wilkins; The Oliver Twins book; and the ZX Spectrum Vega campaign on Indiegogo. A Last Ninja Kickstarter campaign was announced by original developers System 3 but it never happened.

Fast forward to 2016, and what happened? For some reason or other I get a big nostalgia bug and out of the blue being an Amiga 500 owner I'm just pining for an Atari ST computer and all things Atari ST related. Could it be possible because of the latest Jason Bourne movie (which features an Atari ST somewhere) that I get this bug? Or is it because of the latest Ghostbusters remake movie that I have this? I haven't seen either movies, but something stirs within me. Maybe it is because I am so tired of seeing slick realistic looking games being played nowadays or the modern console culture of 'Just hit start on the pad and play' that these things get to me. Or maybe because I realise the device is getting old (30 years now) and has a dwindling user (and software) support base that it appeals to me - if I don't help in restoring it some way or other, one day it will be lost in the anals of time. Either way it has been years since I had an Atari ST, and I'm aching to get one. I want to have a machine sitting in front of my screen, a mouse to play with and the sound and touch of sticking in a floppy disk, that brings me back to the whole idea of 'computing' (and not this modern idea of using your fingers to swipe on a screen - THAT to me is NOT computing).

So in the middle of July I start looking for an Atari ST online. And...luckily I find one.

Searching on eBay I found a pristine-looking 1040STE with 1MB RAM and a 720K (double sided drive) for around £240 from UK excluding shipping. The unit comes with an original box, power cables and a mouse. Perfect, just what I wanted. Now all I need is blank floppies, games and equipment to get me going...