The Atari 520ST was introduced at the Winter CES
in
January of 1985. 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. It was originally bundled with
an external 400K single sided 3.5 inch floppy drive, mouse and
monochrome monitor for $799 and if you wanted an RGB
color
monitor you would pay an extra $200 dollars.
First a little history.
The 520ST was Jack Tramiel's response to Commodore
(the company he founded) stealing the Amiga from him in a last
minute bid to buy the company he was negotiating for. In January of
1984 the computer world was shocked when Jack Tramiel resigned
from Commodore and sold his stock over a disagreement with the
management arrangement with Irving Gould, the CEO of Commodore.
At about the same time Warner Communications Inc., the parent
company of Atari, was loosing money and wanted to sell the
unprofitable subsidiary. Seeing a great opportunity Jack bought Atari
and began to do what Jack did best. He immediately began to trim the
fat, he cancelled all the pending 8-bit computer projects and stopped
all work on the game consoles (he felt that after the video game crash
of 1983 that the video game industry was dead). He closed most of Atari's
factories and consolidated the ones he didn't, laying off thousands of
its workers. In the end the strategy worked, a leaner more efficient Atari
started to show a profit.
With the books finally under control, Jack now had time to assess Atari's
position in the computer world and its future. Realizing that the days
of the 8-bit computers were getting short, he began looking for a
replacement for his aging 8-bit computers that would carry the company
into the next decade.
As luck would have it, just such a replacement was made available to
him. A small silicon valley company called Amiga Inc. was
experiencing financial difficulties while developing a powerful game
console based on the new Motorola 68000 microprocessor
codenamed 'Lorraine'. Jack wanted the Lorraine
technology to create a new powerful computer to replace his 8-bit line
of computers and to compete head to head with Commodore. He new
that Commodore had nothing to match the Lorraine and
with it he could rule the home market and ruin his old company.
Unfortunately for Jack, Commodore also knew about the Lorraine
and in a last minute deal out bid Jack for ownership of the Amiga
Company.
Infuriated by this, Jack immediately ordered his engineers to build
him a 68000 microprocessor based computer from off the shelf
components to compete with the Lorraine, and he wanted it
finished before Commodore was done with the Amiga. Although the
finished product was not quite as powerful as the soon to be announced
Amiga computer, it wasn't far from it and Jack built it all
from stock parts, no special chips. He not only beat the Amiga
to market (by about 6 months!) he also did it at half the price. This
was vintage Jack Tramiel.
The 520ST came standard with 196K of ROM
and 512K of
RAM and could directly access up to 16 MB of
RAM
without bank
switching. On the left side of
the case there is a 40 pin cartridge
slot for plugging in ROM and game cartridges containing up to
128K. On the right side are two 9 pin D-plug ports for
plugging Joysticks. The keyboard has 84 keys including a numeric keypad,
cursor pad, and 10 special function keys.
On the back of the case going
from left to right is a Reset button followed by an On/Off toggle
button. Next is a round port to plug a 5 pin DIN
plug to supply
DC power to the computer from a brick style power supply. The next two
round ports are for the built in MIDI interface. Next to them
is an RCA type jack for a standard TV hook-up seen on most
computers of that era using an RF slide switch connector. A slide
switch is provided next to allow for choosing between channels 3 or 4
depending on which channel is free in your viewing area. A 13 pin DIN
port is next for connecting the 520ST to an RGB monitor.
Next is an industry standard 25
pin D-plug Centronics parallel port for connecting any
standard printer. Next is a standard 25 pin D-plug serial
port for connecting a modem, followed by a 14 pin round DIN plug to connect an
Atari serial floppy disk. Finally is an Atari hard disk port using a
19 pin D-plug.
The 520ST 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 520ST has a pallet of 512 colors to
choose from.
Although the video capabilities
of the 520ST 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). 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 was purchased at a local thrift shop and was added to the
museum on October 30, 2000. It was purchased with three SC354 floppy
drives and an Atari Mouse.
