Author: shalroth (wwwcache-a.lmu.ac.uk)
Date: 06-05-2001 19:14
That's the Atari community! We look after our own kind...
£210 is actually quite good for a Falcon...he didn't mention in the auction it was in mint condition, in the original packaging!! It also had a 524MB Hard drive, which was way expensive when it was new (although I suspect it was from a dead laptop). The list price of a new falcon with 1MB and no HDD was originally £499... Don't buy things new in the UK, £130 is way too much for an STFM. Browse through eBay, I got an STF for £30 and an STE with a mountain (literally!!) of software for £40 - I only bid on the software, and there was an STE with it! I even sold some of the software and made my money back!!
I've been trying to buy a falcon from eBay for over a year, the closest I got was a tower-case falcon in Germany with CD-ROM and graphics adaptor that closed at £300, which was a bit too expensive. My TT came from Germany, and that's in a tower too...some kind of pattern emerging...fine if you can read German and hanldle the keys being wrong. My Portfolio is from Germany too, but that wasn't in a tower!!
The Mega is a nice computer, I have a Mega 2, but they are quite 'closed' systems, they are very hard to upgrade and need a monitor to work properly (although you can make a SCART lead for your TV). The other problem is the OS version...Sorry Atari, but TOS 1.2 sucks beyond belief! Never use a Mega and a hard drive, you end up waiting 4 seconds for the write to finish! An STE would probably suit you better...there were some nice games (substation springs to mind, wolfenstein-type game) and these can be had dead cheap from eBay. My Mega cost £80 but I did get an SC1435 with it. Beautiful to look at though, and the best keyboard on any ST computer.
There's the Mega STE as well, although these are pretty rare. It's basically the same as a normal STE but in a TT style case with a 16MHz CPU, so a bit faster than a normal ST. That is easier to upgrade, it uses standard SIMMs like the STE, and has a SCSI interface for internal hard drives built in.
What's the power supply like in Oz? 220V or thereabouts? If so, you just need the relevant 3-pin IEC cable to power the computer. I'm not sure what TV system you use, if it's PAL then you should be able to use any normal TV with it.
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