Atari ST

Atari Corporation · 1985 – 1993

The Atari ST used the Motorola 68000 processor and launched one year before the Amiga at a lower price, dominating the European market for music production thanks to built-in MIDI ports. In Germany and France especially, it was the primary home computer through the late 1980s.

Jack Tramiel's Atari Corporation developed the ST rapidly after his departure from Commodore, releasing it in 1985 at a significantly lower price than the Amiga. The ST used the same Motorola 68000 CPU but with a simpler custom chip set (Shifter for graphics, GLUE for logic, ACIA for serial I/O). Where the Amiga's custom chips were purpose-designed for multimedia output, the ST's architecture was more conventional, with GEM — a licensed graphical user interface — providing the windowed environment. The ST's killer feature was its built-in MIDI in/out/thru ports, making it the music production computer of choice for professional musicians through the late 1980s. In recording studios, the Atari ST was ubiquitous as a MIDI sequencer host long after computers with superior general capabilities were available. Its game library, while extensive, was generally considered inferior to the Amiga's, though several titles — notably MIDI Maze, one of the first networked multiplayer games — used the ST's specific capabilities in ways the Amiga could not replicate.