Atari Mega ST4

I have the main unit, keyboard, mouse, Megafile 60 and monitor SM124.

type computer
country USA
year 1987
os TOS+GEM
cpu MC68000
speed 8 MHz
ram 4 M B
rom 192 KB
graphic 640×400
colors 16
sound 3 channels
ports cartbridge, midi (in,out), Centronics, rs323, hard disk, Floppy, rgb, joystick, mouse

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The Atari Mega ST4 — The Professional ST

Released in 1987, the Atari Mega ST series represented Atari’s attempt to position the ST family as a serious professional workstation. The Mega ST4 — with 4 MB of RAM — separated the computer and keyboard into two units connected by a cable, giving users a desktop computer aesthetic similar to the IBM PC or Macintosh II rather than the integrated keyboard-and-computer design of standard ST models. With its VME expansion bus for professional add-on cards and optional Mega-STE upgrade path, the Mega ST4 targeted the professional creative and business market.

Professional Positioning

The Mega ST’s separate keyboard design was specifically intended to make it more acceptable in professional office environments where the standard ST’s integrated keyboard-computer design was seen as too ”game-computer” in appearance. The Mega ST looked more like serious business equipment, and combined with the optional Atari Laser Printer and ABAK hard drive peripherals, it could be configured as a complete professional workstation comparable to low-end Apple Macintosh II configurations at significantly lower cost.

4 MB of RAM

The Mega ST4’s 4 MB of RAM was exceptional for 1987 — at a time when 512 KB to 1 MB was standard, 4 MB enabled working with large documents, complex MIDI sequences with many tracks, and sophisticated desktop publishing layouts without the constant disk swapping that constrained lesser machines. This made the Mega ST4 genuinely practical for the professional music production and desktop publishing applications that were the ST platform’s strongest markets.