During the 1980s and 1990s, I was never an “Atari Guy” (at least as far as computers go). At home, I had a 286 PC… and, at school, my days were filled with Apple II clones and 68k Macintoshes.
But, as years have gone on, I have found myself increasingly drawn to the Atari line of computers. Both the early 8-bit Atari systems… and, even more so, the Atari ST’s. I find those GEM powered beauties oddly fascinating and compelling.
Lately, I’ve been enamored with the Atari ST Book — a 1991 laptop that boasted 10 hour battery life, running on a set of AA batteries.
A beauty, right?
Sure, the screen is monochrome (with a resolution of 640×400) and passive (which means there’s a little bit of ghosting when things are moving around on screen) — which is certainly less than ideal from today’s standards. But it has so much else going for it.
Besides the whole “10 Hour battery life in a 1991 laptop” thing — which is awesome — the specs are, overall, pretty fantastic for the time:
68000 CPU at 8MHz
Up to 4 MB of RAM
Full size keyboard
16 bit Blitter Coprocessor
An internal hard drive (stock up to 120 MB)
And ports for connecting all the peripherals you can dream of
There’s no built-in floppy drive. Which means you’ll need some extra accessories to get data and software on and off of the ST Book. This is one of the concessions the team at Atari made in order to get the size and weight down.
There’s also no external video port. Which is somewhat of a bummer (as it would be cool to plug in a nice monitor to get color and faster refresh rates when not on the go).
Despite the drawbacks, this machine really calls to me.
The keyboard, the battery life, the overall aesthetic. All are something special. But, perhaps what intrigues me most of all… is that this represents the path not taken in the computer industry.
Despite the relative success of the Atari ST line, this would be the last laptop computer from Atari. Likewise, the desktop Atari ST line would end with the 1993 discontinuation of the Atari Falcon (another fantastic machine).
What would these computers have evolved into had they survived past 1993? We’ll never know, for sure. But we can still go back and enjoy them for what they were: Unique, powerful, and fun computers of the late 80s and early 90s… with a heck of a lot going for them.
Now if only I could find one in good condition that didn’t cost an arm and a leg…
