Difference between revisions of "Atari ST line"
(Added Category:Consoles) |
(A fair bit of rewriting and expansion.) |
||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
| − | [[File:Atari 1040STf.jpg|thumb|An Atari ST showcasing the trademark GEM interface with solid green background]] The Atari ST | + | [[File:Atari 1040STf.jpg|thumb|An Atari ST showcasing the trademark GEM interface with solid green background]] The Atari ST was a microcomputer developed by Atari Corporation in the mid 1980's. It was announced in January of 1985, and released in June of that year. It runs on the Motorola 68000 CPU. The "ST" stands for sixteen/thirty-two, in reference to the 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals of the 68000 chip. It ran Digital Research's GEM (Graphical Environment Manager) on Atari's proprietary TOS (The Operating System). |
| − | The computer primarily competed with the Macintosh and the Amiga in most markets. | + | The computer primarily competed with the Macintosh and the Amiga in most markets. At the time, Macs were solely monochrome, and Amigas were solely color. The ST straddled the two worlds, offering separate color and monochrome screens, autodetected by the computer's display circuitry. The monochrome screen was excellent, quite high resolution for the era, and provided credible competition for the Macintosh at a much lower price point. It gained a strong foothold in the business and CAD fields. |
| + | |||
| + | It was popular in the music industry, as it was one of the first home computers to include a MIDI port. A wide variety of music composition programs were written for it. As a result of its ease of use and large software library, the ST is still occasionally used in music production today. | ||
| + | |||
| + | It was a reasonably competent gaming computer as well; the color graphics weren't exciting, but the simple architecture and relatively quick CPU gave it a fair bit of muscle. It came nowhere near the overall power of the Amiga, but was perfectly straightforward to program, where dealing with the Amiga's multiple independent co-processors was famously difficult. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Some of the most notable Atari ST games were Dungeon Master, Oids, Sundog, and Star Glider. | ||
==Emulators== | ==Emulators== | ||
Revision as of 16:40, 6 December 2015
The Atari ST was a microcomputer developed by Atari Corporation in the mid 1980's. It was announced in January of 1985, and released in June of that year. It runs on the Motorola 68000 CPU. The "ST" stands for sixteen/thirty-two, in reference to the 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals of the 68000 chip. It ran Digital Research's GEM (Graphical Environment Manager) on Atari's proprietary TOS (The Operating System).
The computer primarily competed with the Macintosh and the Amiga in most markets. At the time, Macs were solely monochrome, and Amigas were solely color. The ST straddled the two worlds, offering separate color and monochrome screens, autodetected by the computer's display circuitry. The monochrome screen was excellent, quite high resolution for the era, and provided credible competition for the Macintosh at a much lower price point. It gained a strong foothold in the business and CAD fields.
It was popular in the music industry, as it was one of the first home computers to include a MIDI port. A wide variety of music composition programs were written for it. As a result of its ease of use and large software library, the ST is still occasionally used in music production today.
It was a reasonably competent gaming computer as well; the color graphics weren't exciting, but the simple architecture and relatively quick CPU gave it a fair bit of muscle. It came nowhere near the overall power of the Amiga, but was perfectly straightforward to program, where dealing with the Amiga's multiple independent co-processors was famously difficult.
Some of the most notable Atari ST games were Dungeon Master, Oids, Sundog, and Star Glider.
Emulators
| Name | Operating System(s) | Latest Version | Recommended |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hatari | Multi-Platform | 1.9.0 | ✓ |
| Steem Engine | Multi-Platform | 3.2 | ✗ |
| SainT | Windows | 2.30 | ✗ |
| Steem SSE | Windows, Linux | 3.7.2 |
