Atari

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Nowadays, the Atari brand belongs to Ex-Infogrames.

Used to build 8 and 64 bits consoles (Atari 2600/5200/7800, Atari Lynx, Atari Jaguar), 8 bits computers, the famous Atari ST (16 bit) and less famous Atari Falcon (32 bit)

8 bit

Atari 8-bit family on the other WIKI


16 bit

The Atari ST was released in 1985. The case looks a lot like the 8bit Atari XE. It originally had an external PSU and an external 3.5inch floppy drive. Atari sold single-sided and double-sided (360KB / 720KB) floppy drives. The fact that a single-sided floppy drive option existed 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 integrated the PSU and a double-sided floppy drive inside the machine itself.

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.

These machines were famous for being:

  • Inferior to the Amiga yet still better (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 and it didn't consume valuable RAM. And as the OS was immutable, less time was spent customizing it, freeing up more time to do productive work.
  • A hardware Midi Port : this spawned a generation of Musician Geeks. And some Atari ST games did use Midi sound as an option. Source
  • used widely in Amstrad CPC software developments (mostly games ?).

Its use in CPC development (Cross Development) 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

The Atari STE followed up in 1989. It was a lot closer to the Amiga 500 in performance, but still less powerful. 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, and 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 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


32 bit

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

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

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

It sports a 1.44MB HD floppy drive. And Atari adopted the IDE bus in addition to the SCSI bus for connecting hard drives and CD-ROM drives.

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


Links

8-bit

16-bit

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