I used to play it a lot when I was younger - I prefer the first one, though. There's a whole site dedicated to mods for both games, should be easy to find with a quick Google.
Borg ftw :-D
I managed to lose my disk for this but I still have the original. Unfortunately Armada 1 is old enough that it doesn't really scale well to modern resolutions.
I tried playing STArmada 1 not that long ago (on my current system) but as you said it doesn't really work. STArmada 2 works pretty good but requires a workaround for widescreen.
I have the discs for both games still but I found it easier to just 'obtain' a copy rather than bother finding them.