PC Peripherals

PC computer equipment is available in it's multitude at dirt cheap prices, 
PC manufacturers may not intend their equipment to be used by Atarians but 
it still can be. In some cases a hardware adapter is needed, usually 
software is needed to drive this adapter or the two can exist 
independantly of each other.

PC cases and power supplies can be made to work with Ataris although this 
does require a bit of messing about it can be pulled off. In order to 
connect a PC power suplly to your computer a sort adapter is requires, 
this converts the PC type motherboard connector to an ST or Falcon type, 
these were reviewed in AC#13 and are available from ASP. Falcon and TT 
users are lucky enough to be able to connect SCSI hard drives to their 
machine almost directly. Although Mega STEs did come with host adapters 
these will only allow one device to be connected to them, at least 
according to some users. VGA and SVGA monitors can be connected to STs and 
Falcons although only the Falcon can use these in colour modes. The 
neccesary leads to connect an ST to a VGA monitor are available from ASP, 
Falcon adapters are available from a lot of places. IDE hard drives can be 
connected to the Falcons internal IDE bus. Legend also has it that AT 
keyboards can be connected to Ataris with the help of an interface, these 
are much more responsive the useless spongey thing you bought with your 
machine. PC mice are another peripheral that can be connected, the 
neccesary adapter is also available from ASP. I have a set of PC speakers 
connected to my Falcon right now, although they have no bass or treble 
controls on them which means the earth shakes every time I use the 
Falcon's sound. It may be neccesary to get a phono to inline headphone 
socket type connector to make PC speakers work with an STE though. Not 
forgetting everything MIDI can be connected to an ST, I have a friend with 
an effects pedal for his guitar that uses an ST and midi to control that.

In order to make a SCSI or IDE hard drive work with an ST a host adapter 
is required and some hard disk driver software. CBHD is a good hard disk 
driver, download it, it's better than many commercial offerings. It is 
also possible to connect SCSI CD ROMs via the neccesary driver software 
i.e SPIN or Extendos. Recased Falcon systems may be able to make use of 
IDE CD ROMs with the help of the SPIN driver. As previously mentioned, 
Falcons and TTs have built in SCSI ports and come with Hard Disk driver 
software.

And many printers can be used with STs although the lack of manuals makes 
the task of writing drivers difficult. NVDI 5 is the best bet for anybody 
wanting to connect a printer to their machine. It used to be possible to 
create your own printer drivers for NVDI 5 but this is no longer possible. 
It's a crying shame that you can't connect many other types of parallel 
devices to Ataris especially since the Falcon has a bi-directional 
parallel port. Mustek SCSI scanners can be connected to anything with a 
host adapter via Homa Systems' scanner drivers. Epson type ones can also 
be connected using the GT Look software.

Modems can be connected to the serial port and possibly ISDN terminal 
adapters too. Computers with a serial port can also connect serial mice to 
that, so if you have one spare and aren't using it for a modem then it can 
be put to use.

As you can see we aren't dead in the water for equipment just yet and 
won't be for a while. Hopefully USB ports will be available on the Tempest 
Falcon accelerator and the new Phenix computer, this opens up many more 
peripherals to users.

Matt Burton
iatemyass@hotmail.com