Atari Is Shipping 520 ST Computer
Special to the New York Times
Published: July 10, 1985
SAN FRANCISCO, July 9— Atari Inc. has begun shipments of its 520 ST computer to distributors, a company official said. But it might take a week or so for the machines to reach dealers' shelves, according to James Copland, vice president of marketing, who added that Atari planned to ship ''well in excess of 25,000'' units in the next three or four weeks.
The machine's debut was originally scheduled for April. As late as last week, dealers were in the dark about when it would appear.
The 520 ST will sell for $800 with a monochrome monitor, 512,000 characters of internal memory, a 3.5-inch floppy disk drive as well as two computer languages, Basic and Logo. A version with a color monitor will sell for $1,000.
Inside the Atari 1040 STF
Happy Birthday, Atari ST Series
It may seem strange today, but there was a time when Atari made
cutting-edge computers. That's right--the company sold modern computers with
mice, MIDI inputs, hard drives, and high-resolution graphical user interfaces.
Atari released the first member of this advanced computer series, the Atari520ST, 25 years ago.
To celebrate the anniversary of this often overlooked but still
influential series of computers, let's take a peek inside the ST line's most
prominent model, the Atari 1040STf. With 1MB of memory and a colorful
interface, the 1040STf gave the Macintosh a run for its money.
Meet the 1040STf
Atari's first member of the ST line, the 520ST, relied on both an
external power supply and a floppy drive. The 1040STf, shown here, integrated
those two components into one case and upped the RAM to 1MB, launching for $999
in 1986 as a complete system with a base unit, a monochrome monitor, and a
mouse.
The ST series ran a windowing system known as GEM (Graphical Environment
Manager), developed by Digital Research. That, in turn, ran on top of an
operating system called TOS (Total Operating System). But, as with a Mac, the
user saw only a friendly graphical desktop--no command line here.
What Makes the ST Special
Just as the Macintosh platform quickly dominated the world of graphic
design, the Atari ST found its strongest niche in music production. That's
because Atari included two built-in MIDI ports with every ST shipped--a world
first for mainstream PCs at the time.
MIDI allows electronic musical instruments to control one another, which
meant that the ST could capture a performance, play it back, or generate a new
one from scratch. Atari ST machines saw widespread use for audio-production
work well into the late 1990s due to their stability and their excellent music
software. A few studios still swear by them today.
Atari never fully utilized the ST's cartridge port (shown here), but
third-party developers sometimes used it as a hardware expansion interface.
A Floppy View
The 1040STf shipped with a double-density, 720KB, 3.5-inch disk drive
that--thanks to the similarities between the ST's underlying TOS operating
system and MS-DOS--could read (but not write) IBM-format disks.
The last letter in the 1040STf name stands for "floppy,"
denoting the fact that the system shipped with a built-in floppy disk drive.
Its predecessor, the 520ST, used an externally attached, 360KB, 3.5-inch floppy
drive that increased cable clutter.
An Array of Ports
The 1040STf came equipped with an array of expansion ports along its
right rear side. From left to right: a serial port (for use with modems), a
parallel printer port, a hard-disk port, and an external-floppy-drive port (for
a second floppy drive). The hard-disk port used the proprietary ACSI interface,
an Atari-developed derivative of the common SCSI standard.
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... poglejmo kaj smo podalpski narodi pisali o seriji Atari ST.
Tako je revija 'Moj Mikro' pisala v novemberski številki, ne-davnega leta 1985 o računalniku Atari ST ...
Revija 'Svet Kompjutera' o Atari STE, december 1989
Atari Mega-STE in 'Svet kompjutera', april 1992
'Moj Mikro' in Atari Mega-STE, februar 1993
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... from 'Noć Muzeja' 2013 Serbia
Awesome Blog from 'AtariCrypt'
'ROCKABIT' Chiptune Music
Midi Music 1986
Awesome Blog from 'AtariCrypt'
'ROCKABIT' Chiptune Music
Midi Music 1986
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My Atari ST/E emulator Compilation is based on the Steem and Hatari engine.
STEEM: Atari 1040STFM only for Gaming with hundred's of Floppy images
HATARI: original virtual Replica of 16Mhz Atari Mega-STE with DMA-sound. Desktop experience version on Mono. More color and higher resolution are in progress ...
Atari Mega-ST with HDD for Desktop experience and App in Mono and resolution up to 1280*1024 res. on 32MHz CPU, 14-Mb-RAM, PSG sound.
My Atari ST/E emulator Compilation is based on the Steem and Hatari engine.
STEEM: Atari 1040STFM only for Gaming with hundred's of Floppy images
Atari STE with HDD for Gaming, Music and Demo's ...
Atari Mega-ST with HDD for Desktop experience and App in Mono and resolution up to 1280*1024 res. on 32MHz CPU, 14-Mb-RAM, PSG sound.
