It had all of the standard features of a stock ST, such as MIDI capability, serial/parallel/cartridge ports, etc. It ran all of the existing ST software. However, instead of Atari's existing one piece design for the ST series of computers, the Mega ST was packaged in a sleek desktop style case with a detached keyboard. The "mushy" feel of the original ST keyboard had always been a complaint of the ST users, and Atari certainly did their homework when they created the new Mega ST.

I am fortunate enough to own one of these systems along with an Atari laser printer, and it is by far, my favorite model of the Atari ST series of computers.

It took up an amazingly low amount of space compared to the desktop PC's of today. It also featured some expansion capabilities. The earlier 520/1040 ST systems didn't really have any room for expansion inside the case, and certainly didn't have any expansion slots on the motherboard. The Mega ST was different. The case was roughly 12x12, and stood 3 inches high. This left some extra room inside of the case, so there was room for expansion, such as an internal hard drive. There was also a new expansion slot. A number of expansion cards were developed for this slot. Most of the cards were designed to drive high-resolution monitors, such as the Viking Moniterm monitors used for CAD work.

This system also marked the first appearance of the Blitter chip. The Blitter is a graphics accelerator. On prior models of the ST series, many graphics functions, such as drawing lines, were done in software. The addition of the Blitter chip moved those functions to hardware -- which resulted in an amazing speed increase.

The Mega is a lean, mean, hot-rod of a computer, with plenty of memory, a dynamite display, and more power for a lower price than any other computer.

-- STart Magazine

A matching external hard drive was available, along with other professional peripherals, such as a laser printer. The laser printer was a unique example of Atari ingenuity. Atari was able to bring a 300dpi laser printer to the market at a substantial discount from the competition. How? Atari designed their SLM-804 later printer without any internal circuitry. In effect, the laser printers "brains" were inside the Mega ST. Since there were no real electronics inside the printer, except for the laser mechanism, the printers were much cheaper to produce. By the way, don't think that you are sacrificing anything by not having any processing power inside the printer. With the massive amount of memory (for the era) inside the Mega ST systems, along with print spooling software, the SLM-804 ran just as fast as the competition.

The Mega ST, combined with the SLM-804 laser printer, created a powerful desktop publishing system at a very affordable price. Many software companies jumped on the Atari bandwagon after the release of this system. As a result, may new desktop publishing applications (such as Pagestream) and professional graphics packages (such as DynaCADD) were developed for use on this system.

Another first for the ST line was a battery backed-up clock. Prior ST systems did not have any kind of battery for the clock, so you would have to set the time manually each time that you boot up, or purchase a 3rd party clock device that plugged into the cartridge port. The Mega ST systems had a battery backed-up clock as a standard piece of equipment, which made many Atari users happy. One interesting note about the clock -- on many other computers that featured a backed up clock, such as the IBM and Mac systems, the battery was proprietary, and required that you open up the PC to replace it when it died. The Mega ST systems used standard AA batteries for the clock, and they could be easily replaced through a trap door in the top of the case. It was a very clever design, and Atari made it easy for people to get batteries for the clocks -- even to this day.

One down side to this system -- like earlier models in the ST series, most of the IC's on the motherboard, including RAM and the Motorola 68000 processor, were soldered directly to the board. Chip sockets were hardly used on the motherboard of this system, which made repairs difficult.

Initially, Atari produced a 2 megabyte and a 4 megabyte model of the Mega ST. Later, a 1 megabyte model was released.

Graphics: 320x200x16 or 640x200x4 using RGB monitor, 640x400x2 mono monitor. Palette of 512 colors. Blitter chip.

Ports: Cartridge (ROM) port, MIDI In and Out/Thru, internal DMA/ACSI port, parallel (printer) port, serial (modem) port running at 19.2kbps, external floppy drive port, mouse and joystick ports and internal Mega bus expansion slot.