The Atari 1040ST was introduced
in 1987. It is based on the Motorola 68000 16/32-bit microprocessor running at 8 MHz. The keyboard and motherboard
are included in one plastic case, as was its predecessor the 520ST. On the right side of the case is
a built-in
double sided, double density 720 kilobyte floppy drive.
The 1040ST comes standard with 1 MB of RAM and 196 kilobytes of ROM memory. On the left side of
the case are two 5 pin round DIN plugs for MIDI in and
MIDI out connections. There is also a 40 pin cartridge
slot for plugging in ROM and game cartridges. Under the
keyboard on this side are two 9 pin D-plug ports for
plugging Joysticks and there are two more 9 pin D-plug
ports, one of which doubles as a mouse port under the
front of the keyboard. The keyboard has 94 keys and have
an excellent feel to them.
On the back of the case going
from left to right is a standard 25 pin D-plug serial
port for connecting a modem, next an industry standard 25
pin D-plug centronics parallel port for connecting any
standard printer, next is an Atari hard disk port using a
19 pin D-plug, a 14 pin round DIN plug to connect an
Atari serial external drive, an RCA type plug for an RF
modulated video signal, A 13 pin round DIN plug to
connect an Atari RGB monitor, the on/off switch, and a
reset button.
The 1040ST has three video
modes: A 640 x 400 x 2 monochrome for text base programs
like word processors, a 640 x 200 x 4 color high
resolution mode, and a 320 x 200 x 16 color medium
resolution mode. The 1040ST has a pallet of 512 colors to
choose from, although on later 'enhanced' versions such as the
1040STe, introduced on November 13, 1989, the color pallet was increased to 4096 colors.
Although the video capabilities
of the 1040ST were good, its audio capabilities are where
the computer really shines. It has a built in sound
generator supplying 3 separate voices and also contains a
built in MIDI interface making it possible to connect
your computer to a variety of electronic instruments and
state of the art sound studio equipment. All for less
than $1000 dollars!
The OS was called TOS (some say for Tramiel Operating System) and is burned into ROM for
fast loading. The desktop was written by Digital Research Inc. and called GEM. This was a icon driven GUI similar to the
MS Windows
environment of that day.
This exhibit is a 1040STe, the 'enhanced' version
introduced on November 13, 1989, and is displayed with
an Atari SC1224 12 inch RGB monitor, an infrared wireless mouse,
and a Supra 20 MB hard drive. It was purchased locally
at a thrift shop and added to the museum on July 19, 1999.
