[Home]Atari ST

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The Atari ST was a computer system released by Atari in 1985.

The ST allegedly stood for "Sixteen/Thirty-two bit" which refered to the 16 bit processor with 32 bit registers. Other theories exist that ST stood for "Sam Tramiel" one of owners of the Atari corporation.

The Atari ST was a competitor to the Commodore? Amiga systems. This platform rivalry was often relflected by the owners and was most prominent in the Demo Scene.

Where the Amiga had custom hardware which gave it the edge in the games market the ST was generally cheaper and thanks to its built-in MIDI ports enjoyed success as a sequencer and controller of musicial instruments. In some markets, particularly Germany, the machine gained a strong foothold as a small business machine for CAD? and [Desktop publishing]? work.

Tech Specs

Later models included:

There was also some unrelased prototypes: Falcon 040 (based on a Motorola 68040), and STylus (palmptop)

Since Atari pulled out of the computer market (?and got bought by Hasbro?) there has been a market for powerful TOS based machines (clones). Like most retro computers the Atari enjoys support in the emulator scene.


Links

General

http://www.atari.org

Emulators

http://stonx.sourceforge.net


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Last edited November 6, 2001 2:20 am by Alex (diff)
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