Atari MEGA STe Series


Atari Mega STe System

The Mega STe was identical in appearance to the Atari TT, except for a grey case instead of the TT off-white case.  It was essentially a standard STe system, with the "Newdesk" enhanced desktop, 4,096 colors, enhanced 15-pin joystick ports, etc.  However, the Mega STe also had a 40mb hard drive, an Appletalk compatible LAN port, and two 9 pin serial/modem ports.  It also included the VME Bus Card expansion that was on the TT. 

This system was aimed at the business market.   The addition of the LAN port and hard drive should have been attractive to potential business buyers. 

The two RCA-type jacks (left and right) let you attach external speakers for stereo.  These connectors lead to the STe's new sound chip that supports two-channel stereo output.

Rear view of the Mega STe system

In addition to higher quality sound, the Mega STe had enhanced color capabilities. Earlier ST and MEGA ST systems had a palette of 512 colors, or eight different levels of red, green and blue. The Mega STe supported 4,096 colors, or 16 levels of red, green, and blue. The increase in the available colors should have made a difference in such applications as paint programs and games The odd part was that you still only get 16 colors (in low resolution mode) on the screen at a time.

Another standard Mega STe device was the Blitter chip, which speeds up graphics. The Blitter chip had previously been available as standard equipment on the MEGA ST systems only. It was also available as an upgrade on other ST models.

Atari claimed that STe was backward compatible with earlier ST systems. That was true to some degree. For example, the 68000 processor was changed from a rectangle shape to a square shape. This means that any upgrade device that is designed to fit on top of the CPU, such as the PC Speed board, will not work with the STe.

Atari MegaSTe Series:

CPU: Motorola MC68000 16-bit running at 8 MHz or 16MHz.

FPU: Optional Motorola MC68881 or MC68882.

DSP: None

TOS Version: 2.05 in ROM or 2.06 in ROM

RAM: 1, 2 or 4Mb of RAM, expandable up to 4Mb.

Graphics: 320x200x16 or 640x200x4 using a RGB monitor or TV, 640x400x2 using mono monitor.  Palette of 4096 colors.  TV modulator.  Blitter chip.

Sound: 8-bit stereo.

Disk Drives: Internal 720kb floppy drive (early models) or internal 1.44Mb floppy drive. Optional internal hard drive.

Ports: Cartridge (ROM) port, MIDI In and Out/Thru, internal DMA/ACSI port, parallel (printer) port, serial (modem) port running at 19.2kbps, two serial (modem) ports running at 38.4kbps, LAN port, stereo out ports, external floppy drive port, mouse and joystick ports and VME expansion bus.

Case: Two-piece desktop-style.

Release Date: 1991