Atari Means Business with the Mega ST

Announced at CES in January 1987, the Mega ST was Atari’s first attempt at creating full-fledged workstation for professional users.

There is some conflict as to whether these are called Mega STs or just Megas. I’ve seen both names used and even have seen labels with both names. I tend to use Mega ST as it is much clearer and sounds less like “Amiga”.

By this point, the timeline for the ST was:

It makes some sense that Atari would want to take the ST upmarket. Both the 520ST and 1040ST were largely mass-market product and sold with a thin profit margin. In order to continue to grow as a company, a product with a bigger profit margin was definitely needed.

Unfortunately the Mega ST had some issues with both its design and its market timing that hurt its chances. Let’s look at the design first.

The Mega ST takes the standard ST and puts it into a low-profile “pizza-box” case with an internal double-sided (720K) floppy drive and a detachable keyboard.

The keyboard was actually rather nice with cherry key switches. Sadly it retained the rather large key sizes of the earlier ST models, making typos too easy. It also had the connection for the mouse and joystick under the keyboard, which kept things neat and tidy but was a major pain to connect in the first place. The low profile of the case also meant that the disk drive slot would bump into the keyboard if the two were close together.

Overall, I’d say the keyboard is a solid B+ and it is a sought-after keyboard today for its reliability. This keyboard also works great with the Mega STE and I’d love to get my hands on one.

Other case differences include a built-in fan and a built-in battery-backed clock that ran on simple AA batteries. The fan was probably not really needed, but it likely improved reliability.

As far as technical specifications, the Mega ST did not have many advantages over a standard 1040ST. Its main improvement was that it had a blitter chip that could move data in memory around fast, which was great for graphics processing. The Mega ST was the first to include TOS 1.02, which was the first update to TOS in ROM and included several bug fixes.

Perhaps the biggest “innovation” was the RAM. The Mega ST was available with 2MB or 4MB of RAM, an enormous amount in 1987. This much RAM was a game-changer for developers and desktop publishing.

Lastly there was an internal bus connector slot, which ended up not really being all that important. The only thing I know that used it were some hard drive kits that would provide a way to squeeze the hard drive inside the Mega ST case. This points out a problem in the case design: it was just too short and didn’t have much room for anything else to be in there.

It would have made sense for Atari to sell an internal hard drive upgrade for the Mega ST, but instead they sold a separate external hard drive, the MegaFile, that you could place under the Mega ST. Modular perhaps, but more expensive and messier than an internal solution that would also not have external cables or a power supply.

By far the biggest technical limitation was that the Mega ST ran at the same speed at the 520ST and 1040ST: 8Mhz. The blitter certainly could speed up the display operations of some apps, but the Mega ST basically ran everything at the same speed as the older and much cheaper STs.

The Mega ST was often promoted in combination with the SLM804 Laser Printer as a complete desktop publishing solution for just $3000 to $4000. At the time this was touted as a full system at the same price as just the laser printer for a Macintosh.

I don’t recall seeing Atari specifically market the Mega ST to developers, but I suspect a lot of developers found the better keyboard and extra RAM to be worth the upgrade.

In general, I think Atari had a tough time selling such an expensive product. Even in 1987, the Atari brand was closely associated with video games and inexpensive computers. Trying to use the Atari brand for more expensive computers aimed at businesses was always going to be difficult. After all, many business would definitely balk at having the Atari label on their desks.

Although I never owned a Mega ST, my Dad did have a Mega ST 2. Since he also had the SC1224 color monitor, I would sometimes use it to play games. I remember hogging his Mega ST to play Dungeon Master quite often. I also remember that the keyboard was really nice and miles better than the one on my 1040ST. He also had an external hard drive, which he was able to place under the Mega ST.

The Mega ST was not a huge success for Atari. Although it was announced in early 1987, systems did not start shipping until late 1987 with most not shipping until 1988. The problem was the extra RAM. The Mega ST used 1Mbit DRAM, which actually had a significant price increase and shortage due to tariffs on overseas DRAM. This pricing problem affected the computer industry as a whole, but definitely hit Atari hard with its low margins.

It was about this time that Atari seemed to focus more on the European market, sending more product there instead of the US.

The Mega ST was eventually replaced by the Mega STE in 1991/1992. Looking back, I think everyone would have wanted to see something like the Mega STE in 1988, but that just wasn’t meant to be.

The Mega ST takes up a lot of space on a desk, is not easily upgradable and is no faster than a standard 1040ST.

I have a Mega STE and I prefer it in every way over a Mega ST, except perhaps the keyboard. So other than the keyboard, I don’t think Mega ST computer are in high demand today.

For more about the Mega ST, check out the review in ST Log #18 (April 1988):

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