So, we are at almost 40 years since first Atari ST machines went in sale (1985) . And it was sold in pretty large quantity - I heard number of 8 millions. And it did not last long - until 1993 . Some stonger models appeared later - 1987 - Mega ST, 1989 - STE , then TT, Falcon, and even portable (Stacy) . And they were more-less compatible with original 520 ST with TOS 1.0 . That is something not seen much, if at all by 8 bitters earlier. Will not go in more historic details, that could take lot of space and time.
  Now still plenty of people using Atari ST family machines, or their clones . Good build quality resulted that some still work without (bigger) repairs . And myself repaired some - I worked as servicer for home electronic.  
  What is for what people using this oldies now ?  Playing old games, and even some new ones - they still appear, like 10 in 1 year. SW development, and in purpose to get familiar with it.
Or like machine for demonstration - for friends, on some exibition, meeting .
  I bought my first Atari ST in spring 1987 . Was in dilemma - Atari ST or then just released Amiga 500 - prices were similar, with same CPU , diverse video modes. attachable to monitors (special ones) and TVs . I was not so much interested for games, but for some programming, SW, HW development. It was clear that Amiga has better graphic, but OS was something new, not compatible with DOS at all.  Finally much better offer of SW for Atari ST decided. Of course, it was then 2 years already available.
  I had good experience with Sinclair Spectrum programming, mostly in Z80 ASM . And went that way with Atari ST and MC68000 CPU. I liked it because of more registers, more instructions and like. But it needed much more time to get really good in it. HW: I added external DS floppy drive some 4 months later, expanded RAM to 1 MB . Simple things. Designed/made EPROM programmer for cartridge port - I needed it for my computer repairs, and for upgrading TOS. That was good experience with something designed as read only.
 Wrote some floppy utilities - can DL them on this site.  
And of course hard disks became cheaper, more spread - in big part thanx to IDE models. So I designed IDE adapter, and bought used 40 MB IDE drive. Was good experience.
Went on switchable TOS - 2.06 and 1.04 - first one has added IDE autoboot code. Later used 2.5 inch drives in capacity range 80-160 MB. They did not need additional PSU .
 And then my PC era started. In big part because my work in small firm, where we used PC for administration. Atari went aside, but never for longer time.
New interest started with arriving of Atari ST emulators for PC . And for preserving my floppy collection - being aware of their limited life time. Of course used my imaging SW and some others (for PC). And it was stored on PC and on CDs .  Had only few originals, and I deprotected them, made to work from hard disk with Atari .
 So, I had pretty much experience, it seems most with storage.  Internet was big help too, of course. Before it magazines, some rarer radio programs were info sources. Communication little via magazines, snail mails, phone (not long distances) and BBS little later.
 And then Atari ST forums appeared on then much faster Internet , and better emulators - Steem in first place . I'm sure that it had big part in raised interest for good old Atari ST SW and machine, it's OS too . And some new OS variants for Atari ST(E), TT, Falcon appeared too - of course not from Atari .  Some were pretty demanding considering computer speed, RAM  size.  
  And here come differences between users, programmers/developers about what is really useful, worth of time and like .  I was never interested for accelerators. Especially not after 2000 - 1 GHz CPUs were on market, myself used such. What can achieve with old 680xx CPUs ? Like 40 MHz, with less efficient instructions (more cycles needed for same operation) and limited graphic, etc ? Not to mention that it was not cheap.  Developing SW with Atari ST .. ?  I went on developing with Steem, better said Steem Debugger - and it was really huge help for tracing, debugging, testing all kind of SW .  And could set it to work much faster than real ST(E) .  What was useful by some longer source code assembling.
 With nowadays PCs it can be like 100x faster than 8 MHz 68000 .  And was big help in assembling 900 KB long TOS source (disassembled S file - what took months to get flawless S source file) . Assembling it with Devpac would take on real ST (Min 4 MB RAM) like couple hourse. With emul. and fast PC few minutes.  And as it needed lot of corrections (my improved TOS) it saved me from days of assembling and long pauses.  
  Why I did not just use EmuTOS ? Well, simply, because they did not go on very good compatibility with old Atari SW - they wanted to make OS for oldie by some new norms, while old TOS was made decade-two before they were established.  And yes, Emutos has problems with plenty of original Atari ST SW, especially games. They published some test results, which are pretty misleading. My tests show that at least some 30% of  games have problems with EmuTOS . Or Spectrum 512, for instance, and I wrote about it on forums - exact reason.   And of course, people behind it did not like my opinion, approach. There were silly discussions at AF about programming - they don't like ASM, C is law, etc .
 I guess their teachers, professors had same attitude - C(++) is best, using something other on newer computer is silly. Well, it was partially so by DRI too, must admit.
  Silly discussions resulted in my ban from AF - just because they were in majority, they had some diplomas, so they know everything better.
 Imagine how it would be if Nikola Tesla  did  listen to his teacher in middle school in Kalrovac - when Tesla (in his teenager year) talked about electric motor with rotating magnetic field, without carbon brush, teacher said that such (brushy m.) is best what can be made.   Btw. I was some 6 months in Karlovac, and saw writing on that school wall, at door, that Tesla went there . And later he needed to go much farther ...
 My point is that things can be solved in different ways. And usually is very hard to predict which will be most useful, practical, economic, healthy ... Some can predict better, based on their knowledge, intelligence, even some practice. Some just force solution what is in their (narrow) interest - remember Edison ?   And so it with Atari SW/HW developers, game crackers, 'patchers' , forum staff ...  And it goes sometimes but some Atari ST people really too far, reaching extreme unfairness, spreading lies, preventing free talk, opinions. And of course favorising people in their narrow circle, crew ...  That's just not  helping real progress and good people relationships.  

   To be continued ....

PP, Dec. 18 2024.