New Arrival: Atari 1040ST

A new machine has joined the collection: an Atari 1040ST. The case and keys have yellowed heavily, and there are a couple of leads still plugged into the joystick and mouse ports, but the keyboard looks complete with all its keycaps.

// HISTORY

After Jack Tramiel left Commodore, he bought Atari's home computer division in 1984. The new company had the Atari ST on sale within about a year. Its name stood for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", after the Motorola 68000's 16-bit bus and 32-bit internals. In 1986 the 1040ST put the power supply and a double-sided floppy drive inside the case and doubled the RAM to 1MB. In the US it was the first computer with a megabyte of RAM to sell for under $1,000.

The ST and the Amiga became bitter rivals through the late 1980s. Later models included the STE, with a bigger palette and digital sound, and the Mega ST. The line ended with the Falcon030 in 1992.

// SPECS

// HOW IT WAS USED

The ST's built-in MIDI ports made it a favourite with musicians. Sequencers such as Steinberg's Cubase and C-Lab's Notator ran on STs in studios well into the 1990s. With Atari's SM124 monochrome monitor, its sharp 640x400 display also suited desktop publishing. At home it was a strong games machine, with titles like Dungeon Master, Starglider and Xenon 2.

// WHAT'S NEXT

Here's the plan before it gets switched on:

Progress updates will be posted here. For more vintage machines, see the hardware section.