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The ST started to conquer the world. Everywhere it appeared,
people were amazed. And they could not believe the price. For $599 you
were supposed to get a computer with 512K of RAM. But wait there is more.
It comes with a graphical user interface (GEM) like the Macintosh. Look
out IBM PC AT. Here is a powerful 16/32 bit machine which does not require
cryptic DOS commands.
 But people were doubtful. Did the new Atari have enough money left in the bank to get these miracle machines into production? Could they really sell them for those prices? Well, six months later Atari delivered. New Atari subsidiaries appeared around the world to share this powerful machine with everybody. Atari seemed restless. The 520ST+ appeared. One megabyte of RAM for the same price as the 520ST. Next were the SH204 hard disk and the 1040ST. This machine offered one megabyte of RAM and a built-in floppy disk. The 1040ST made the cover of Byte Magazine. Never did you get that many bytes for the buck. Atari, now led by Sam, Leonard and Gary Tramiel was turning around into a profitbale, growing company. The engineers around Shiraz Shivji, a former engineer at Commodore, were busy to create an entire family of ST computers. Rumours about new Atari machines did not stop. Two years later, it was again Winter CES, Atari started another revolution. It introduced the Mega ST and the SLM804 Laser Printer for $3000. Home desktop publishing was born. The Mega ST offered a more business like appearance. It came with a detached keyboard and an optional hard disk. The Mega ST came with 2 or 4 MB of RAM. Later, a one MB version was also made available. The ST computer line got very popular, especially in Europe. Nobody minded that the name Atari was associated with games. Atari got known there quickly as a company offering easy-to-use, powerful computing hardware. Another factor for its European success was that Atari had a great managment team in place. Names like Alwin Stumpf and Bob Gleadow come to mind. Programmers around the world loved the Atari ST. It was powerful and easy to program. Its built-in operating system, called TOS, was based on CP/M-68k. The graphical user interface, GEM, came like the under lying OS from Digital Research. Many programming language flavors were available for the machine which made it very popular in the acedemic world. STs were and are still used for a large variety of applications. From word processing to DTP, from spread sheets to data bases, from entertainment to music applications. Its built-in MIDI interface made it the machine of choice for musicians. By the end of the eighties ST users demanded an even more powerful system. Atari delivered the TT. But that is another story... |
| Model | Description |
| 130ST | Base ST with 128K of RAM. Was shown only a CES '85 and never made it onto the market. |
| 520ST | First ST that appeared on the market in summer of 85. Unlike the models shown at CES and CeBIT it came without an RF modulator. Also, it only contained a boot ROM. The OS was loaded from floppy disk. Atari shipped TOS in ROMs about half a year later. This ST was equipped with with 512K of RAM, initially 16K of ROM, 192K of ROM later and an 8 MHz 68000 CPU. It shipped with Logo and Basic. |
| 520ST+ | In the fall of '85 Atari showed the 520ST+ at a trade show in Germany and it was available there immediately. The computer came with an incredable one megabyte of RAM. |
| 260ST | Atari showed an 260ST with 256K of RAM and a built-in floppy disk which never shipped. In Germany, the 520ST was renamed 260ST after the 520ST+ and 520STM were shipping. (1986) |
| 520STM | Atari 520ST with TOS in ROMs and RF modulator. (1986) |
| 1040STF | Atari ST with built in floppy and one megabyte of RAM. (1986) |
| 1040STFM | Same as the 1040ST, but with additional RF emulator. |
| 520STFM | Same as 1040STFM, but with 512 K of RAM. |
| Stacy | Portable version of the 1040ST. Had a 20 MB hard disk built in. A one and a fourMB version was avilable. (1989) |
| MEGA ST | ST with detached keyboard. Came with one, two and four megabytes of RAM. Had also the BLiTTER chip for hardware bit blit operations built in. Offered also an expansion slot. Used TOS Version1.02. (1987) |
| 1040STE | Enhanced 1040ST. Offered 4096 colors instead of 512 and had also the BLiTTER built in and a stereo DMA sound engine. Used TOS Version1.06. (1989) |
| MEGA-STE | New version of the MEGA ST. Came in a grey TT housing and the 68000 was now running at 16 MHz. Also offered a VME Bus and a LAN port. Got an enhanced version of TOS. TOS 2.00 featured the new desktop which was introduced with the TT. (1990) |
| ST Book | Notebook version of the 1040ST. Processor was running at 16 MHz. A 40 MB hard disk was built in. (Late 1991) |
