The Atari ST is Coming (PCGH-Retro, July 9th)

…1985: IBM-compatible PCs and Apple’s Macintosh dominate the computer market. However, both systems are too expensive for use at home, so older systems such as the C64 or Ataris XL series are the main competitors on the home computer market. In between there is enough space for a new mid-range system that Atari is launching on July 9, 1985 under the leadership of Commodore founder Jack Tramiel: the Atari 520ST. The computer is housed together with the keyboard in a housing typical of home computers of the era, but offers a fully graphical, mouse-operated interface that is otherwise only available on the Mac – and in contrast to the first Mac OS, the ST -Desktop even colors.

Inside the first ST model is a Motorola 68000 with 8 megahertz and 512 KiByte RAM, a floppy disk drive and a monochrome monitor are just as standard as a MIDI connection for the first time – a good package that is offered surprisingly cheaply and the ST will soon into a successful computer for work, games and music. Digital Research is contributing the graphical interface, called GEM, after Microsoft suggested porting Windows 1.0 to the ST platform, which would have taken too long. And time is pressing, because only two months after the first ST, main competitor Commodore brings out a very similar computer, the Amiga 1000 with the same processor and also a graphical user interface. Irony of history: While the ST was developed by former Commodore engineers, the Amiga development team consists of former Atari employees and also worked on behalf of Atari.