Atari 1040 STF, STFM
I have Atari 1040stf and two Atari 1040stfm main units, two
Megafile 30, many joysticks and mice.
type computer
country USA
year 1986 (stf) / 1987 (stfm)
os TOS 1.20-1.40 (rom), GEM-desktop
cpu Motorola mc 68000
speed 8 MHz
ram 1 MB
disk 3.5″ 720 KB
graphic 320×200 (16)
colors 512
sound Yamaha YM2149, 3 channel, 8-bit mono i/o
ports cartridge, joystick, rs323, centronigs, Midi in, Midi out, floppy disk, ASCI,
ST mono,ST color / RF (only stfm)
The Atari 1040 STF/STFM — The First 1 MB Home Computer
Released in 1986, the Atari 1040ST was a landmark machine in home computing history — the first personal computer to ship with 1 MB of RAM as standard at a consumer price point. The STF variant added a built-in 3.5-inch floppy drive to the original 520ST design, while the STFM additionally integrated an RF modulator allowing connection to ordinary television sets. The 1040ST’s generous memory made it significantly more capable than most competing home computers of the era and helped establish the ST family’s reputation as a serious creative tool.
The Jack Tramiel Vision
The Atari ST series was born from Jack Tramiel’s determination to build ”computers for the masses, not the classes” after his departure from Commodore in 1984. Taking over the struggling Atari Corporation, Tramiel assembled a team of engineers — many from his Commodore days, including chief designer Shiraz Shivji — and challenged them to build a 16-bit computer in record time. The result was unveiled at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in January 1985 and went on sale later that year, competing directly with the Commodore Amiga and Apple Macintosh at significantly lower prices.
GEM Desktop
The ST ran TOS (The Operating System) with the GEM graphical desktop — a point-and-click interface licensed from Digital Research that gave users a Mac-like experience at a fraction of the cost. While GEM was less sophisticated than the Mac OS, it made the ST genuinely accessible to non-technical users and gave it a significant advantage over the command-line interfaces of most PC-compatible computers of the era.
MIDI Revolution
The ST’s built-in MIDI ports — included as standard on every model — made it the dominant computer in professional music production throughout the late 1980s and 1990s. Sequencer software like Cubase, Notator (later Logic), and Cubase ran brilliantly on the ST’s tight, interrupt-driven architecture, delivering sample-accurate MIDI timing that PC-compatibles struggled to match. Many professional recording studios relied on Atari STs for MIDI sequencing well into the 2000s.