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The Atari 520ST
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The Atari 520ST

Atari 1040STF with SC1224 color monitor
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Atari 1040STF with SC1224 color monitor

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

Contents

Overview

The Atari ST was a notable home computer, based on the Motorola 68000 CPU, with 512 kB of RAM or more, and 3½" floppy disks as storage. It was similar to other contemporary machines which used the Motorola 68000, the Apple Macintosh and the Commodore Amiga. Although the Macintosh was the first widely available computer with a graphical user interface (GUI), it was however limited to a monochromatic display on a smaller built-in monitor. The Atari ST was the first computer with a fully bit-mapped color GUI. It had an innovative single-chip graphics subsystem (designed by Shiraz Shivji) which shared the full amount of system memory, in alternating clock cycles, with the processor, similar to the earlier BBC Micro and the Unified Memory systems that have become common today. It was also the first home computer with integral MIDI support.

The ST was primarily a competitor to the Apple Macintosh and the Commodore Amiga systems. This platform rivalry was often reflected by the owners and was most prominent in the Demo Scene. Where the Amiga had custom processors which gave it the edge in the games and video market, the ST was generally cheaper and had a high-resolution monochrome display, ideal for business and CAD. Thanks to its built-in MIDI ports it enjoyed success as a music sequencer and controller of musical instruments among amateurs and professionals alike, being used in concert by bands such as Tangerine Dream and 90's UK dance act 808 State. In some markets, particularly Germany, the machine gained a strong foothold as a small business machine for CAD and Desktop publishing work.

The ST was later superseded by the Atari TT and Falcon computers.

Since Atari pulled out of the computer market there has been a market for powerful TOS-based machines (clones). Like most "retro" computers the Atari enjoys support in the emulator scene.

Origins

Tramiel Technology

At Commodore International, an argument involving Commodore's chairman and largest shareholder Irving Gould, and Commodore founder Jack Tramiel ensued over development of a new 68000 system, resulting in Tramiel's immediate departure from Commodore in January of 1984.

Tramiel immediately formed a holding company, Tramel Technologies, Ltd., and brought in a number of ex-Commodore staff to continue his project to develop a new, high-performance home computer. The team, led by Shiraz Shivji, considered "one-upping" the Macintosh by using a full 32-bit chip, namely the NS32032, but in talks, National Semiconductor couldn't supply the chip in the numbers or price that the project needed. In retrospect this proved to be lucky, as a prototype built on the NS32032 benchmarked slower than the 16-bit 68000.

The basic hardware design quickly "gelled" into a form that was almost identical to the ST that eventually shipped. The design was a combination of custom chips and commonly available parts in a highly integrated single-board design, fully equipped with standard and custom ports.

Amiga contract

Prior to the introduction of the ST, Atari had released two machines (the Atari 2600 console and the Atari 8-bit home computers) using custom graphics and sound chips. These custom chips allowed the 2600 to create the home gaming market and the 8-bit computers to make history by being the first home computer with custom chips.

Jay Miner, one of the original designers for the custom chips found in the Atari 2600 and Atari 8-bit machines, tried to convince Atari management to invest big money into creating a new chipset. When his idea was rejected, Miner left Atari to form a small think tank called Amiga in 1982 and set about designing this new chipset. He even made plans for using the chipset for a computer based on the more powerful 68000 CPU.

During development, Amiga had run out of venture capital and was desperate for a buyer, and the "Warner owned" Atari had paid Amiga to continue development work . In return Atari was to get one-year exclusive use of the design. Atari had plans for a 68000 based machine, code named "Mickey", that would have used custom chips, but details are sparse.

Meanwhile, Tramiel discovered that Warner Communications wanted to sell Atari, which at that point was losing about $10,000 a day. By May, Tramiel had secured his funding, and bought Atari (except AtariTel and the arcade division) for a very low price, in order to gain their overseas manufacturing and distribution network. One of his first acts was to fire most of Atari's remaining staff, and cancel almost all ongoing development. Tramiel also discovered the Amiga contract and decided not to assist Amiga with any additional funding.

The Amiga crew, having serious financial problems, quickly entered discussions with Commodore that led to them purchasing Amiga and cancelling Atari's contract with Amiga. Tramiel was furious, and the resulting court case lasted for years. Eventually, it settled out of court, with a brief mention in the Wall Street Journal that Commodore settled for an undisclosed amount.

The operating system

With the hardware design nearing completion, the team started looking at solutions for the operating system. Soon after the buyout Microsoft approached Tramiel with the suggestion that they port Windows to the platform, but the delivery date was out about two years, far too long for their needs. Another possibility was Digital Research, who were working on a new GUI-based system then known as Crystal, soon to become GEM. Another option was to write a new operating system in-house, but this was eventually rejected due to risk.

Digital Research was fully committed to the Intel platform, so a team from Atari was sent to the Digital Research headquarters to do the ST port themselves. Instead of getting proper specifications and documentation, the Atari members were simply handed the latest versions of the Intel 8086 source code and would port it to the 68000, sometimes more than once as Digital Research would give revisions over and over. A version, running on top of CP/M-68K, was available just in time for the January 1985 Consumer Electronics Show, where the ST was introduced.

TOS 1.0 with the GEM user interface
CP/M-68K was essentially a direct port of CP/M's original, mature operating system. By 1985, it was becoming increasingly outdated in comparison to MS-DOS 2.0; for instance, CP/M did not support sub-directories and did not have a hierarchial file system. Digital Research was also in the process of building a new DOS-like operating system specifically for GEM, GEMDOS, and there was some discussion of whether or not a port of GEMDOS could be complete in time for product delivery in June. The decision was eventually taken to port it, resulting in a GEMDOS file system which became part of TOS (The Operating System). This was beneficial as it gave the ST a fast, hierarchical file system, essential for hard drive storage disks, plus programmers had function calls similar to the IBM PC DOS.

Debut of the ST

The design shipped in June 1985 as the 520ST. The machine had gone from concept to store shelves in a little under a year. Atari had originally intended to release versions with 128 kB and 256 kB of RAM as the 130ST and 260ST respectively. However, with the OS loaded from floppy into RAM, there would be little or no room left over for applications to run. The 260ST did make its way into Europe on a limited basis.

Early models shipped with TOS on disk, but were designed with ROM sockets to make for easy upgrading to the future ROM based TOS. These became available only a few months later, and were included in all new machines, as well as being available to upgrade older machines. By late 1985 the machines were also upgraded with the addition of a RF modulator (for TV display), a version known as the 520STM.

Atari had originally intended to include GEM's GDOS (Graphical Device Operating System), which allowed programs to send GEM VDI (Virtual Device Interface) commands to drivers loaded by GDOS. This allowed developers to send VDI instructions to other devices simply by pointing to it. However, GDOS was not ready at the time the ST started shipping, and was included in software packages and later ST machines. Later versions of GDOS supported vector fonts.

On the plus side, the ST was less expensive than most machines, including the Macintosh Plus, and tended to be faster than most (external link: [price comparison]). Largely as a result of the price/performance factor, the ST would go on to be a fairly popular machine, notably in markets where the foreign exchange rates amplified prices. Indeed, the company's English advertising strapline of the era was "power without the price." In fact, an Atari ST and terminal emulation software was much cheaper than a Digital VT220 terminal, which was normally needed by offices with central computers.

Description

Housing

The 520ST was an all-in-one unit, similar to earlier home computers like the Commodore 64. By the time the 520ST reached the market, consumers demanded a "full sized" keyboard, including cursor keys and a numeric keypad. For this reason, the 520ST was fairly "boxy", generally oversized for a machine that one had to move around to adjust the keyboard position. Adding to this problem was the number of large cables needed to connect to the peripherals. This problem was addressed to some degree in the follow-on models which included a built-in floppy disk, though this addition resulted in the awkward placement of the mouse and joystick sockets to a cramped niche underneath the keyboard.

The case followed the Tramiel-Atari design of the era, being basically wedge shaped, with a series of grilles cut into the rear for airflow. The original 520ST design used an external floppy drive; the 1040ST-style case featured a built-in floppy drive. The power supply for the early 520ST was a large external brick while the 1040ST's was inside the machine. In addition the majority of the machines had keyboards with very soft tactile feedback—not as good as those on the IBM PC—with unique and strange rhomboid function keys across the top edge.

Atari 520ST ports
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Atari 520ST ports

Port connections

The ST featured a large number of ports mounted at the rear of the machine. Because of its bi-directional design, the Centronics printer port could be used for joystick input and several games made use of available adaptors that plugged into the printer socket, providing two additional 9-pin joystick ports.

Atari initially used single-sided disk drives that could store up to 360 kB. Later drives were double-sided versions that stored 720 kB. Due to the early sales of so many of the single-sided drives, almost all software would ship on two single-sided disks instead of a single double-sided one, in fear of alienating early adopters. ST magazines wishing to cater to the entire audience while still supplying a large amount of material on a single cover disc had to adopt innovative custom formats to work around this problem. Another sticking point was that while the Atari double-sided drive could read IBM-formatted disks, IBM PCs could not read Atari disks. This was a formatting issue that was later resolved by third-party software formatters and TOS upgrades (1.4 and higher).

STfm models

Atari later upgraded the basic design in 1986 with the 1040STF (also written STF). The machine was generally similar to the earlier 520ST, but moved the power supply and a double-sided floppy drive into the rear of the housing of the computer, as opposed to being external. This added to the size of the machine, but reduced cable clutter in the back. The 1040 shipped with 1 MB of RAM, and the same design was also used for the new 512 kB 520STFM, which replaced the earlier models in the market.

The 1040ST was the first personal computer shipped with a base RAM configuration of 1 MB, and when the list price was reduced to $999 in the U.S. it became the first computer to break the $1000/MB price barrier, and was featured on the cover of Byte Magazine. However, the ST remained generally the same internally over the majority of its several-year lifespan. The choice of model numbers was inherited from the model-numbers of the XE series of the Atari 8-bit family of computers. A limited number of 1040STF's shipped with a single-sided floppy drive.

Mega models

Initial sales were strong, especially in Europe where Atari sold 75% of its computers. Germany became Atari's strongest market, with small business users using them for desktop publishing and CAD.

To address this growing market segment, Atari came up with the ST1. First debuted at Comdex, 1986, it was received favorably. Renamed the Mega, this new machine included a detached high-quality keyboard, stronger case (to support the weight of a monitor), and internal bus expansion connector. The upcoming SLM804 laser printer would not come with a processor or memory, reducing costs. It would attach to the Mega through the ST DMA port and have the Mega computer render the pages. Initially equipped with 2 or 4 MB (a 1MB version, the Mega 1 would later follow), the Mega machines would complement the Atari laser printer for a low-cost desktop publishing package.

A custom blitter co-processor was to be included to speed the performance of some graphics operations on the screen, but due to delays it was eventually released on the Mega 2 and Mega 4 machines. Developers wanting to use it had to detect for it in their programs because it was not present on all machines. However, properly-written programs using the screen VDI commands could use the blitter seamlessly since GEM API was a higher-level interface to TOS.

Later models

For about the first four years, no major design changes in the ST platform took place as Atari focused on manufacturing problems and distribution.

ST enhanced

In late 1989, Atari released the STE (also written STE), a version of the ST with improvements to the multimedia hardware and operating system. The STE featured an increased colour palette of 4096 colours from the ST's 512 (though the maximum displayable palette of these without programming tricks was still limited to 16 in the lowest 320x200 resolution), Genlock support, and a graphics co-processor chip called Blitter which could quickly move large blocks of data (most particularly, graphics sprites) around in RAM. It also included a new 2-channel digital sound chip that could play 8-bit stereo samples in hardware at up to 50 kHz. Two enhanced joystick ports (EJP) were added (two normal joysticks could be plugged into each port with an adaptor), with the new connectors placed in more easily-accessed locations on the side of the case. The enhanced joystick ports were compatible with joypads from Atari's Jaguar console. RAM was now much more simply upgradable via SIMMs. Despite all of this, it still ran at 8 MHz, and the enhanced hardware was clearly designed to catch up with the Amiga.

The STE models initially had software and hardware conflicts resulting in some applications and games written for the ST line being unstable or even completely unusable (sometimes, this could be solved by expanding the RAM). To make matters worse, the built-in floppy disk drives could not read as many tracks on a floppy disk as the built-in floppy disk drives on older models. While this was not a problem for most users, some games used the extra tracks as a crude form of copy protection and as a means of cramming more data onto the disk, and formatting as many as 86 tracks on an "80-track" disk was a common space-expanding option in custom formatting utilities. Furthermore, even having a joystick plugged in would sometimes cause strange behaviour with a few applications (such as First Word Plus).

Very little use was made of the extra features of the STE: STE-enhanced and STE-only software was rare, generally being limited to serious art, CAD or music applications, with very few games taking advantage of the hardware as it was found on so few machines. Quality did, however, seem to substitute for quantity, as the coders who took advantage of the new abilities used them to their fullest.

The last STE machine, the Mega STE, was a STE in a grey Atari TT case that ran at a switchable 16 MHz, dual-bus design (16-bit external, 32-bit internal), optional Motorola FPU, built-in 3½" floppy disk drive, VME expansion slot, an AppleTalk network port and an optional built-in 3½" hard drive. It also shipped with TOS 2.00 (better support for hard drives, enhanced desktop interface, memory test, 1.44MB floppy support, bug fixes). It was marketed as more affordable than a TT but more powerful than a regular ST.

The 68030 machines

In 1990, Atari released the high-end workstation-oriented TT (32-MHz, 68030-based TT030). Originally planned with a 68020 CPU, the TT included improved graphics and more powerful support chips. The case was a new design with a integrated hard drive enclosure.

The final ST computer was the multimedia Falcon (also 68030-based, operating at 16 MHz, but with improved video modes and extensive custom chip provisions, particularly high-quality audio DSPs). The system reused the older 1040ST case to cut costs, disappointing many long-time users. Release in 1992, it was cancelled the following year.

Aftermath

In 1993, Atari cancelled development on the ST computers to focus on the Jaguar.

Following the exit of Atari from the computer market, Medusa Computer Systems manufactured some powerful 3rd-party Atari Falcon/TT-compatible machines that used 68040 and 68060 processors, based around multimedia (particularly audio, but also video), CAD and office uses.

Despite the lack of a hardware supplier, there is a small active community dedicated to keeping the ST platform alive. There have been advancements in the operating system, software emulators (for Windows, Mac & Linux), and some hardware developments. There are accelerator cards, such as the CT60 & CT63, which is a 68060 based accelerator card for the Falcon, and there is the Atari Coldfire Project, which aims at developing an Atari-clone based on the Coldfire processor. Milan Computer of Germany also makes 68040 and 68060-based Atari clones that can run either Atari TOS 4.5 or Milan Computer's MultiOS operating system.

Software

Music / Sound

The ST's low cost, built-in MIDI ports, and fast, low-latency response times made it a favorite with musicians.

The ST was the first home computer with built-in MIDI ports, and there was plenty of MIDI-related software for use professionally in music studios, or by amateur enthusiasts. The popular Windows/Macintosh applications Cubase and Logic originated on the Atari ST. Even today some people (such as Fat Boy Slim) are still using the Atari ST for composing music.

Music tracker software was popular on the ST, such as the TCB Tracker, aiding the production of quality music from the Yamaha synthesizer ('chiptunes').

An innovative music composition program that combined the sample playing abilities of a tracker with conventional music notation (which was usually only found in MIDI software) was called Quartet (after its 4-note polyphonic tracker, which displayed one monophonic stave at a time on colour screens).

Due to the ST having comparatively large amounts of memory for the time, sound sampling packages became a realistic proposition. The Microdeal Replay Professional product featured a sound sampler that cleverly used the ST cartridge port to read in parallel from the cartridge port from the ADC. For output of digital sound, it used the on-board frequency output, set it to 128 kHz (inaudible) and then modulated the amplitude of that.

In addition to the sound sampling functionalities, the availability of software packages with MIDI support for music composition and efficient sound analysis contributed to make the Atari ST a forerunner of later computer-based all-in-one studios.

Applications

Also popular on the ST was professional desktop publishing software, such as PageStream and Calamus; office tools such as word processors (WordPerfect, WordWriter ST and others), spreadsheets and database programs; and various CAD and CAM tools from amateur hobbyist to professional grade, all being largely targeted or even limited to high resolution monochrome-monitor owners.

Graphics programs such as NEOchrome, Degas & Degas Elite, Canvas, Deluxe Paint, and Cyber Paint featured advanced features such as 3D design, animation. One paint program, Spectrum 512, used palette switching tricks allowing the maximum number of colors to be displayed on-screen at once (up to 46 in each scan line - the STE never had a Spectrum4096, but other more minor applications filled this speciality niche, one even going so far as to trick the shifter into displaying a maximum 19200 colours).

3D computer graphics applications (like The Cyber Studio), brought 3D modelling, sculpting, scripting, and most important, computer animation (using delta-compression) to the desktop. Video capture and editing applications using special video capture 'dongles' connected using the cartridge port - low frame rate, mainly silent and monochrome, but progressing to sound and basic colour (in still frames) by the end of the machine's life.

Software development

The Atari ST had a wide variety of languages and tools for development. 68000 assemblers (MadMac from Atari Corp, HiSoft's Devpac), Pascal (OSS Personal Pascal), C compilers (like Alcyon C, Lattice C, Megamax C, Mark Williams C, GNU C, Aztec C), LISP, Prolog, Logo and many others.

The initial development kit from Atari included a computer and manuals. At $5,000, this discouraged many from developing software for the ST. Later, the Atari Developer's Kit consisted of software and manuals (no hardware) for $300. Included with the kit were a resource kit, C compiler (first Alcyon C, then Mark Williams C), debugger, and 68000 assembler (plus the non-disclosure agreement).

The ST came bundled with a system disk that contained ST BASIC, the first BASIC for the ST. However, due to its poor performance, users favored other BASICs, such as GFA BASIC, FaST BASIC (notable for being one of the few programs to actually be supplied as a ROM cartridge instead of on disc) and the relatively famous STOS, a cousin of AMOS on the Amiga, and powerful enough that it was used (with a compiler, opposed to its usual runtime interpreter) for the production of at least two commercial titles and an innumerable host of good quality shareware and public domain games.

Even novelty tools such as SEUCK were available.

Games

The ST enjoyed success in gaming due to low cost, fast performance and colorful graphics.

Notable individuals who developed games on the ST include Peter Molyneux, Doug Bell, Jeff Minter, Jez San, James Hutchby, Dimitri Koveos and David Braben. The first real-time 3D role-playing computer game, Dungeon Master, was first developed and released on the ST, and was the best-selling software ever produced for the platform. Simulation games like Falcon and Flight Simulator II made use of the enhanced graphics found in the ST machines, as did many arcade ports. One game, MIDI Maze used the midi ports to connect with other machines for interactive networked play.

See List of Atari ST games and .

Utilities / Misc

Utility software was available to drive hardware add-ons such as video digitisers. Office Productivity and graphics software was also bundled with the ST (HyperPaint II by Dimitri Koveos, HyperDraw by David Farmborough, 3D-Calc spreadsheet by Frank Schoonjans, and several others commissioned by Bob Katz, later of Electronic Arts).

There was a thriving output of public domain and shareware software which was distributed by, in the days long before public internet access, public domain software libraries that advertised in magazines and on popular dial-up Bulletin Board Systems.

Remarkably, a modest core fanbase for the system, supporting a dwindling number of good quality print magazines, survived to the mid 90s and the birth of the modern, publicly accessible internet as we know it. Despite the limited graphics, memory, and temporary hard storage capabilities of the system, several email, FTP, telnet, IRC, and even full-blown graphical world wide web browser applications are available and usable on the ST.

Screenshots

Screenshot of GEM (Desktop) Screenshot of Neochrome Screenshot of 1st Word Screenshot of STZip
GEM (Desktop) Neochrome 1st Word STZip
Atari/Digital Research (1985) Dave Staugas (1985) GST (1985) Vincent Pomey (1994)

Screenshot of Dungeon Master Screenshot of MIDI Maze Screenshot of Populous Screenshot of Xenon 2 Megablast
Dungeon Master MIDI Maze Populous Xenon 2 Megablast
Mirrorsoft/FTL (1987) Hybrid Arts (1987) EA/Bullfrog (1989) Bitmap Brothers (1989)

More screenshots can be found on the Atari ST Games page.

Technical specifications

All ST's were made up of both custom and commercial chips:

ST/STF/STM/STFM

As originally released in the 520ST:

Very early machines included the OS on a floppy disk (bootstrapped from a very small core boot ROM), but this was quickly replaced with (expanded capacity) ROM versions of TOS 1.0 instead (this change also removed any possibility for memory specifications below 512 kB, as GEM loaded its entire 192 kB code into faster RAM when booting the desktop). Soon after this change, most production models became STFs, with an integrated single- (520STF/512 kB RAM) or double-sided (1040STF/1024 kB RAM) double density drive built-in, but no other changes. The next later models used an upgraded version of TOS - 1.02 (also known as TOS 1.2). Another early addition (after about 6 months) was an RF Modulator that allowed the machine to be hooked to a colour TV when run in its low or medium resolution (525/625 line 60/50 Hz interlace, even on RGB monitors) modes, greatly enhancing the machine's saleability and perceived value (no need to buy a prohibitively expensive, even if exceptionally crisp and clear, monitor). These models were known as the 520STM (or 520STM). Later F and FM models of the 520 had a built in double-sided disk drive instead of a single-sided one.

STE

As originally released in the 520STE:

Later STE models had TOS 1.62 that fixed some major backwards-compatibility bugs in TOS 1.6.

Models

A number of machines were released in the ST family. Here they are, in rough chronological order after the original 520ST:

Other models

PC compatible

Transputer

There were also some unreleased prototypes: [Falcon 040] (external link) (based on a Motorola 68040, new case and slots), ST Pad (A4 (Letter paper) sized pen-operated portable ST computer, handheld and with an unlit monochrome LCD screen derived from the ST Book, forerunner of modern tablet PCs), and the STylus (Apple Newton-style palmtop).

Peripherals

Trivia

The standard 8x8 pixel graphical character set for the ST (the main in-ROM "font" for GEM, and text-mode TOS operations) contains, following all the standard numbers, letters, symbols and accented characters, four unusual characters. These can be placed together in a square, forming a basic but recognisable facsimile of the face of J. R. "Bob" Dobbs, the supposed founder of the Church of the Subgenius.

Jack Tramiel chose to include the Hebrew alphabet with ST's ROM character set because of his Jewish heritage.

Russel Hobbes, the cartoon drummer of the band Gorillaz, has an Atari ST in his room on the Gorillaz website.

The Fatboy Slim album "You've Come A Long Way, Baby" has an Atari ST in the large foldout picture of Fatboy Slim's studio.

Highly acclaimed IDM artists Mike Paradinas and Luke Vibert started out writing music on Atari STs.

Atari ST was used by Mike Oldfield on his 11th album, Earth Moving, released in 1989.

See also

External links

History

General

The machines

Free Emulators

(there are also commercial emulators)

Open Source Emulators

Software

Hardware

3rd-Party Manufacturers

Lists of links

References

 

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