Atari ST Book

Announced in July of 1991, the ST Book is the roughly size of an A4 sheet of paper and weighs just over four pounds.  This was an incredible achievement for the time.  In comparison, Atari's previous laptop, STacy weighed roughly 16 pounds! 

Atari cut power usage on the ST Book down to a minimal, basing the technology on the never released ST Pad. The STacey's backlight used up to six watts whereas the ST Book's total consumption is only 1.25 watts.

Another design decision to save power was the lack of an external monitor socket, so the machine can only run in Atari's monochrome high resolution mode.  The Blitter chip was included.

There are a number of additional power saving features.  These features are standard in the laptop systems of today, but were groundbreaking Atari introduced the ST Book.  For instance, the system would shut down the hard drive when it is not accessed for several minutes.  The "blank screen" feature switches off the LCD driver after a preset time, and "shutdown" switches off the whole machine.  When the machine is "shutdown" nothing is lost as it features a "save and resume" scheme similar to the "suspend" options on the laptops of today.  That feature would bring you back to exactly where you were before the shutdown occurred.  This will also work if you close the lid while the laptop is in the middle of doing something.   Even if the batteries fail, and you replace them, the machine will still be able to restore your previous position for as long as several months.

Instead of using a mouse the ST Book used a device Atari called the Vector Pad.  This was sensitive disc set into the top right-hand corner of the keyboard with two buttons just below.  The case was a matte black with a distinctive rubbery texture.  The numeric keypad, standard on the ST's, was not part of the ST Book keyboard.  Instead, the numeric keypad is accessed by pressing the "Atari" key combined with certain keys on the keyboard which have the numeric values in blue.  It is also possible to connect a Mega ST style keyboard, or external numeric keypad.  The keyboard was said to be better than the keyboard on an ST. 

Atari was aiming the ST Book directly at the MIDI music market, and initially advertised in music magazines, although it would be fine for all other Atari software that runs in high resolution mode, such as word processors and desktop publishing software.

The ST Book didn't feature a built-in floppy disk drive.  However, it was possible to connect an external drive through a port on the back.  For moving files between the ST Book and a desktop system, file transfer software was built into the ST Book ROM.  The same software came on a floppy disk for use on the other system.  A file transfer cable was also included. 

It is estimated that around 800-1200 of these laptops were released in Europe.  Although many were sent to musicians in the US, none were sold through the distribution channel.

The downfall with this system was the battery.   Atari had issues with the batteries on this system.  For a period, the ST Book was shipped with an adapter that contained several "AA" alkaline batteries.   Needless to say, battery life was short.

Atari STBook:

CPU: Motorola MC68HC000 16-bit running at 8MHz.

FPU: None

DSP: None

TOS Version: 2.06 in ROM plus built-in file transfer software in ROM.

RAM: 1Mb or 4Mb.

Graphics: 640x400x2 on a mono screen.

Sound: 8-bit mono.

Disk Drives: External 720kb floppy drive. Internal hard drive.

Ports: ST Book expansion bus (works as cartridge (ROM) port with adaptor), mini MIDI In and Out/Thru/Thru ports, DMA/ACSI/floppy port, parallel (printer) port, serial (modem) port running at 38.4 kbps, external keyboard port.

Case: One piece notebook-style with integral LCD screen.

Release Date: 1992