Atari Falcon030
Impressive, but too late to the party
The Atari ST computers first went on sale during the summer of 1985. That will be 40 years next year, which is a little frightening! The 80s were a crazy time for computers as there were many transitions with perhaps the two biggest being the transition from 8-bit to 16-bit computers and the transition from text interfaces to GUI interfaces.
There were also more companies making computers, at least at the start of the 80s. By the end of the 80s, there were really only four major computer lines in the US. You had PCs (and their clones, of which there were many), Apple Macintosh, Commodore Amiga and Atari ST. For a short while there was also NeXT, but even with its big promises, great innovations and charismatic leader it didn’t survive as a hardware platform.
When markets are young there tends to be lots of competition with many different participants (companies). But over time, as markets mature, companies consolidate or go out of business and then you usually end up with just a couple big players and maybe a third also-ran.
Today you can see this in the desktop computer world where the two big players are Windows and Mac. Linux is in distant third.
So looking back, it is obvious that neither Atari or Commodore would really be able to succeed in the long-term, although perhaps one of them could have become the 3rd “also-ran”1.
For a while, Atari really thought they could be that third choice and some of their late-model computers have some impressive innovations. With that preamble over with, let’s talk about the last Atari computer: the Falcon030.
Atari Falcon030
By 1992, the Atari computer line was rather dated. The Atari STE models did not significantly improve on the original design from 1985, only adding some extra colors (but not improving graphics modes at all), sound improvements and a few other minor things. The Atari Mega STE at least included a 16Mhz CPU, but it was still just a 68000 and really only ran noticeably faster when its cache when enabled.
The Atari TT was a 32-bit computer with a 68030 CPU, but that is a story for another day. It was too expensive to be a replacement for the ST.
However in 1992 Atari announced a new computer with a new name. This would be the Atari Falcon030. Like the TT it also had a 68030, but it ran at 16Mhz instead of 32Mhz. But it was more more than an ST with a faster CPU!
The Falcon had an all-new video chip, the VIDEL, which could output a wide variety of graphics modes. This was an impressive video chip for the time as it was fully programmable and could go up to some impressive resolutions with the addition of an external hardware clock.
By itself the Falcon had a palette of 262,144 colors and could display 2, 4, 16 or 256 colors at once. It even had a “true color” mode.
The Falcon had a maximum resolution of 640x480 in its default configuration, but 3rd party utilities (and those hardware adapters) would allow the VIDEL to go much higher, with some reporting 1024 resolutions, but 800x600 more typical.
The Falcon could output onto standard VGA monitors at the time, but it could also make use of the existing Atari ST color and monochrome monitors to make it easier for ST users to upgrade.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment of the Falcon’s hardware design was its case. In order to save money (apparently), Atari used the 1040ST one-piece case design. Other than switching to a different color scheme, nothing else was really changed. It still had the same mushy keyboard, same awkward function keys and still had the mouse port underneath the keyboard, making it hard to reach. Unfortunately, this case did not give the impression of a high-quality computer.
At least they were able to squeeze a hard drive in there, though. The Falcon030 could be purchased with an internal 2.5” IDE hard drive, also somewhat unusual for the time. Along with its internal power supply, this mean the Falcon was heavy, far heavier than it looked.
The port situation was improved over the ST with the addition of a standard SCSI port for external peripherals, such as other hard drives and CD ROMs. The Falcon no longer had the ACSI port, which I guess meant that it also could not work with the two Atari laser printers.
It also had a DSP port to interface with the other big hardware improvement: the digital signal processor, a Motorola 56001 DSP. This made the Falcon even more powerful than it otherwise would be with just a 68030. In fact, the Falcon could actually display JPEG images and play MP3, which was not something many computers of that era could do.
I mentioned earlier that the Falcon030 was announced in 1992, but unfortunately it did not ship in any significant quantities until 1993. Just a year later, Apple would being shipping Macs with PowerPC chips, Motorola’s 68K series of CPUs was effectively put on life support and Atari had exited the computer market altogether.
It was a hard sell for those still using STs to consider an upgrade to the Falcon030. At first glance, the pricing seemed great, starting at just $800 (about $1700 in 2024). But then you realized that was for a 1MB machine with no hard drive, which would likely be much worse than the ST you already had. Plus, by 1993 most computers came with a hard drive, even PC clones that would be around that price. Atari no longer had its “power without the price” advantage.
A 4MB Falcon030 with an 80MB hard drive was about $1300 (about $2700 in 2024) if memory serves. The Falcon could top at at 14MB of RAM for even more money (since a custom board was needed), which was a rather low ceiling. Also, 2.5” IDE hard drives were not common at that time, so larger sizes were not readily available and they tended to cost more.
The Falcon030 was also let down by its OS. Well, actually OSes as there were technically two. By default it came with TOS 4 on ROM, which was somewhat compatible with the TOS from prior ST and TT models. It was upgraded for 68030 support and the newer hardware and it did have some software incompatibility, which was to be expected.
However because many people relied on older software that did not get updates (because the published had either gone out of business or left the Atari market), any incompatibility tended to get people upset.
TOS also was a single-tasking OS that could not take advantage of this advanced computer. To remedy that, Atari came out with MultiTOS, a multitasking version of TOS, which was loaded from disk.
MultiTOS was impressive for its time. It was a preemptive multitasking OS, which was better than both Windows and Mac OS at the time2 with a slick 3D look to its UI elements. Windows would become partially preemptive with Windows 95 and fully preemptive with Windows XP in 2001. Mac OS would not be fully preemptive until Mac OS X in 2001.
But MultiTOS had even more incompatibilities with software that TOS 4 did. Older software that was not written for a multitasking environment could not really be expected to work correctly in such a drastically different OS, but it still upset people.
Be sure to check out the Atari Falcon030 brochure which attempts to tout it as a Personal Media Integration System, a term that really didn’t catch on.
Personal Thoughts
I did end up getting a Falcon030 around 2005 or so. At the time, retro computing was not a thing and older computers were not valued, so I was able to pick it up on eBay for around $300 or so. Imagine seeing that price today!!!
I really liked the Falcon030 video and graphics capabilities. It was really easy to connect it to a standard VGA monitor and is still easy to hook up to modern displays, unlike older ST computers.
I am fond of the 1040ST-style case, even if it was a poor choice for the Falcon. The gray color was cool, though.
Having the internal hard drive was nice and I did upgrade the one I had with a larger IDE hard drive and these days you can get SD card solutions for it.
There’s not excuse for that keyboard, however.
I’d love to have one today, but they usually go for $2000 and up on eBay and that’s more than I’m ready to commit to a retro computer at this point.
Keep reading with more about the Falcon030:
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I don’t really think that was likely, though. Making the hardware was difficult and expensive and an easy candidate to drop (like NeXT did),but and neither Atari or Commodore had good enough OSes to be able to pivot to being an alternative PC OS platform like Linux ended up being.
The Amiga had its preemptive multitasking OS since its inception in 1985.
As an old-school Amiga fan, this was really interesting to read. I never heard of this model, but I was aware of the ST line and even had an acquaintance in high school who owned one. Reminds me of the Amiga 4000. Released in '92 and a significant advancement on the earlier hardware (including the 68030 or 68040 CPU), but ultimately doomed to fail in the face of boring PC competition.
I loved the Falcon. I bought one the moment they were available in the UK. Having 4MB RAM and the hard drive felt like real power! And the 1.44 FDD too.
MultiTOS was a massive disappointment, but thankfully the Falcon was powerful enough that you could cram normal TOS full of desktop accessories that did loads of awesome stuff! From DSP mod/ym tune players to memory resident text editors. I loved the way you could create really nice desktop layouts with colorful icons and wallpapers :) I even had Fonteer as an AUTO app that changed the default font to the Mac one!
For me, it was a creative powerhouse and I loved making stuff on it. Some of the software was truly next-gen, such as NeoN and Apex Media. You're right about the choice of case, although to be fair Amiga did almost the exact same thing with the A1200.
Also, I've no idea if anything ever used the DSP port on the back :) I certainly had no hardware for it! But that SCSI-II port? That was sublime - with chained external Squirrel HDD drives, a CD-ROM and an iOmega Zip Drive. Plus of course being connected to a nice crisp SVGA display.
It lasted me for a good few years before the PC finally sunk its teeth into me. I still own a Falcon030, although it has been upgraded to 14MB, has a brand new PSU and has been re-capped.
Too little, too late? Yes, probably. Really, the STE should have been the Falcon hardware. But by then, the writing was on the wall.