Ah the late 1980s, when super computers of the day would run out of memory trying to render a Reddit thread about Spongebob memes of today.
Unless you were very, very wealthy, you were unlikely to have had the 'official' professional design, music composition, or desktop publishing setup that was a several thousand pound Apple Mac kit.
No, you would have had this bad boy.
It's an Atari ST plus an Atari monochrome monitor.
Specifically, this is mine!
While the ST had several resolutions, including 640x200, with 4 colours, the monochrome monitor was much, much less expensive and had a single, higher resolution of 640x400 at 71.25 Hz.
In fact, the monitor set the current resolution, so software either had to support both both colour and mono, or more commonly would refuse to work with the 'wrong' resolution. Most ST games required colour and business/design/productivity software would be designed for monochrome.
You might notice the monitor was kind of small, but I like it and it works really well even today.
With this setup it was kind of the 'poor folks mac' - it earned the nickname 'Jackintosh' after Atari boss Jack Tramiel - but it really found its feet in music (due to the built-in MIDI ports) and CAD especially.
In some ways the ST was superior to the at-launch mac, at launch the mac had a top resolution of 512x342, and had less RAM. There was even a commercial Mac emulator for the ST which combined was still a huge cost saving over buying an actual Mac.
As a programmer, the ST in mono high resolution is a really nice environment to work with too.
The ST was also popular with people who wanted to bring their PC work home with them (STs can read disks formatted as DOS).
Remember, even in the early 1990s at the end of the Atari ST and Amiga era, much pricier windows PCs with the latest and greatest graphics card were being run at 640x480 most of the time. VGA was only released in 1987, and was super expensive initially, so many computers going in to the early 1990s were still running EGA.
The Atari ST was a workhorse and the 1040ST was the first computer to break the $1000 per megabyte price barrier. Perhaps even the first computer with one megabyte of RAM to sell for less than $2,500!
But, all that pales into comparison with the popularity of the Atari ST as a games machine.
Until the Amiga came down radically in price, the ST was the 16 bit computer to own. Until the 1990s most 16 bit games came to the ST first and then were ported over, with varying levels of success or care.
I would say it wasn't until Shadow of the Beast arrived, which was much more an Amiga technology demo than a stellar game, that the industry changed their approach. The addition of blitter and beefier sound technology in the STE and then more power in the Falcon were too little, too expensive, and too late.
Of course, once the Amiga came down to a more affordable price, it was game over for the ST. For a good few years the Amiga absolutely dominated in homes (though interestingly never reached C64 peak popularity), and then both were eaten up by the VGA+Soundblaster IBM PC compatible juggernaut. First Wing Commander, and later Doom. Nobody could turn that tide.
The Atari ST will still have a special place in my heart even so.
Posted Using INLEO