Atari ST

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The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was released by the Atari Corporation in 1985 and commercially available from that summer into the early 1990s. The "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", which referred to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals.

Part of the next generation of home computers, the ST battled against the Amiga for supremacy only for both to lose out to the PC. Never a direct rival with the CPC, the ST was seen as more of the next logical step to take in your home computing habit and no doubt many former CPC users made the jump to Atari's machine.

For its time, it was an interesting 68000-based computer. More affordable than the Amiga and Macintosh. 2.1 million units sold (USA only?) according to wikipedia, other sources claim up to 8 million units sold worldwide Source.

Atari ST

The Atari ST was released in 1985. Atari had intended to release the 130ST with 128KB of RAM and the 260ST with 256KB. However, the ST initially shipped without TOS in ROM and required booting TOS from floppy, taking 206KB RAM away from applications. The 130ST was never released and the 260ST was actually shipped with 512KB of RAM.

The case looks a lot like the 8bit Atari XE. It originally had an external PSU and an external single-sided (360KB) 3.5inch floppy drive. That resulted in games using single-sided 3.5inch floppies for a long time, even supplying two 360KB floppies instead of a single double-sided one.

In 1986, the Atari STF put the TOS in ROM and integrated the PSU and a double-sided floppy drive inside the machine itself. It was sold in 512KB and 1024KB RAM configurations.

A version intended for business users was also created in 1987 and named the Mega ST. It featured more RAM, a real time clock, a blitter chip for faster rendering and a detached keyboard.

The Atari ST is famous for being:

  • The first affordable modern computer: 16-bit CPU, linear memory, GUI, mouse, high resolution 640x400, 3.5inch floppies, hard drive connector. At much lower price than the Amiga 1000 or the Apple Macintosh.
  • A 16/32bit machine with an awful 8-bit sound chip. The Atari ST's YM sound chip is even worse than the Atari 8-bit's POKEY sound chip: POKEY music 8-bit Atari
  • A hardware Midi Port: this spawned a generation of Musician Geeks. And some Atari ST games did use Midi sound as an option. Source

In fact, Atari was certainly thinking, you get the YM chip to make some noise, you want better you get MIDI gear.

Trouble is YM is bottom of the barrel 'freebie' in the case and because MIDI is for professionals you are talking more than the cost of an Atari ST for a decent MIDI sound module so you are kind of stuck. The introductory price of the Roland MT-32 in 1987 was US$695 (equivalent to $1,920 in 2024).

The Atari ST is a paradox as it is inferior to the Amiga yet still considered better by many (the war still rages on nowadays):

  • It was easier to do work on Atari, while on Amiga a guru meditation (machine crash) was never far away.
  • Also the TOS was in ROM which means it could be used immediately on boot. And it didn't consume valuable RAM nor monopolize the floppy drive nor require an hard drive. And as the OS was immutable, less time was spent customizing it, freeing up more time to do productive work.
  • The hardware was also simpler to develop for compared to the baroque Amiga architecture.

The Atari ST was used widely in CPC software development (Cross Development) as it had many advantages :

  • Quite similar Video Resolutions : 320x200x16.
  • Possibility of a good GUI : easier, really.
  • Same Sound Chip : almost.
  • Quite powerfull to calculate sweet Data Compression (used in Xyphoes Fantasy)

Atari ST on the other WIKI


Atari STE

The Atari STE followed up in 1989. It was a lot closer to the Amiga 500 in performance, but still behind. It added these new features:

  • 4096 instead of 512 colour palette
  • Fine Horizontal and Vertical hardware scrolling
  • Blitter chip, same as in the Mega ST
  • Stereo 8-bit PCM sound using DMA, with variable rate (50, 25, 12.5 and 6.25kHz). The Atari STE can play Amiga MODs with higher quality than the Amiga's 28kHz rate limit. However, at 50kHz, it uses 60% of the CPU for software mixing. Source: High fidelity dreams (Atari STE demo)
  • 256KB ROM instead of 192KB, containing the TOS
  • Four 30-pin SIMM-slots, for up to 4 MB RAM
  • Extended and analogue capable joystick ports

The Atari STE failed to meet the expectations and was seen as a "too little, too late" effort. It showed Atari in a bad light, running after the Amiga and falling short.

The Mega STE was released in 1991 in 2MB and 4MB configuration. It provided:

  • a 16MHz 68000 CPU (software-switchable to 8MHz)
  • an optional FPU chip
  • a VMEbus slot
  • two extra RS232 ports (all 9-pin rather than 25-pin as previous models had)
  • a LocalTalk-compatible LAN port
  • a separate keyboard
  • a 1.44 MB HD floppy drive


Atari Falcon

The Atari Falcon, released in 1992, is the final personal computer from Atari Corporation.

The machine is based on a Motorola 68030 CPU @ 16MHz (4 MIPS), a Motorola 56001 digital signal processor @ 32MHz (16 MIPS) and a socket for an optional FPU.

It also includes a new VIDEL graphics chip which greatly improves its graphics capabilities, offering up to 768x480 in 16-bit truecolor graphics mode. And like the Amstrad CRTC chip, the characteristics of the display can now be defined precisely.

The sound system consists of four stereo 16-bit DMA playback and record channels.

It sports a realtime clock, a LAN port, a 1.44MB HD floppy drive and an optional internal hard drive. Atari adopted the IDE bus in addition to the SCSI bus for connecting hard drives and CD-ROM drives.

It was sold in 1, 4 and 14MB RAM configurations.

While the Atari ST was less powerful than an Amiga 500, the Atari Falcon was more powerful than an Amiga 1200.

A Falcon040 model was in the works, with a 68040 CPU and a case similar to the PlayStation 2. But Atari cancelled the project.


Links

16-bit

32-bit

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