Atari ST Book

Summary

Atari introduced its first portable ST computer, the Stacy, in Europe in 1989. Its successor, the ST Book, was unveiled in March 1991 but did not go on sale until May 1992.

The ST Book is a lightweight and has a flat housing with a height of about 3 cm. It has no floppy, but a 2.5 inch hard drive with 40 MB and 1 MiB RAM, which can be expanded to 4 MiB at high cost. A monochrome LCD display with a resolution of 640 x 400 without backlight is installed, which improves battery life. An integrated sleep mode allows battery life of up to 10 hours. The battery is fully charged in record time of 1.5 hours. A “Vector Pad” serves as a mouse replacement.

The target group are professionals, which explains the introductory price starting from 3500 DM. The ST Book is of limited use for gaming because it has neither a monitor port nor a joystick port. Also the data transfer is complicated. With about 1000 sold copies the ST Book is very rare.