Mega STE

The Atari Mega STE

The Mega STE was released in 1991 and was designed to replace the aging Mega ST design. The enhancements found in this machine were mostly a mixture of features from the standard STE (from a software compatibility perspective) and the TT (from a hardware and design perspective).

Features

• Software switchable 68000 CPU speed between 16Mhz and 8Mhz, and switchable cache, for both performance and compatibility
• All STE features, including
  • 4096 colour palette, 16 colours on screen
  • 8-bit DMA Stero sound, output through RCA connectors
  • 30-pin SIMM slots for easily upgradable RAM
  • Genlock support.
• A much improved version of TOS, with versions from 2.0, 2.05 and 2.06 available in it's lifetime.
• TT style case with detachable keyboard and base which also acted as a monitor stand.
• Support for a 1.44Mb floppy drive, which was added to later models as standard.
• Internal SCSI hard drive support.
• Appletalk compatible network port.
• A VMEbus slot.

Models

There were three models available with 1Mb, 2Mb and 4MB RAM. The 1MB model lacked the high resolution mono monitor and built in SCSI hard drive.

Impact

• Insert information here, how much faster could it be than a normal STE, software made for it. Not a commercial success really? Anounced too close to Falcon, not cheap enough compared to Falcon

Programming Information

• Link to articles on how to switch CPU speeds with your program, Hardware registers etc

Magazine References

• ST Format, issue 38, p64-67