I sold many MegaST desktop publishing systems as a value-added reseller in the Midwest, alongside the PC clones that I was selling. The MegaST paved the way for phenomenal DTP apps that came out of Germany such as Retouche, Didot Line Art, and of course, Calamus. I sold many copies of PageStream, which was available for the ST and Amiga, and a great competitor to the likes of PageMaker and Quark on the Mac.
I had a Mega ST2 and did not find it hard to mod. The motherboard had empty positions for another 2MB of RAM which I installed with the help of a friend. Compared to PCs of the era the Mega ST was much smaller, enabling me to carry it around as hand luggage for that upgrade. Typical 5 ¼" hard discs available at the time of the Mega ST's launch would have been too big to mount internally. I did install an internal hard drive much later which still required removal of the RF shield to fit. With a piggyback board for TOS 2.06 it would even boot from hard disc and run the multitasking MagiC OS. Piggyback boards (PAK68) allowing upgrades to 68020 and even 68030 and up to 64K fast RAM based on an article in renowned computer magazine c't were available in Germany (https://www.wrsonline.de/pak3.html - German).
The biggest advantage over normal st was its ability to use a graphic card. You could add an 19" display using huge 1280x960 pixels screen area for apps like Calamus. Also later graphics cards offered resolutions such as 800x600 at 65k colours, or 1024x768 at 256 colours.
Mega ST was popular in Germany where it was used by many printing bureaus with Linotronic film printers, cutters, cnc machinery etc.
Sure it was expensive, but still far cheaper than anything else on the market.
German software also was always professional quality. Apple once mentioned there were "well over 1 million potential ST customers in Germany" for MagicMac still in 1995 when it was demonstrated at their booth.
Mega ST, or Atari couldn't compete with Apple for sure in the long run even if there were tons of accelerator cards available from various developers, but the scene and the user base seemed to be very different compared to the US.
I remember reading about the Mega in an issue of Antic in 1987; that and the Atari PC were really meant for the small/home office enviroments. To compete in the same type of businesses as Apple & IBM (clones), they would not only need a differernt named subsidary (ie. Tramel Technolgies) but also a nation-wide support system like what Tandy did in addition to the Radio Shack stores for consumers.
I sold many MegaST desktop publishing systems as a value-added reseller in the Midwest, alongside the PC clones that I was selling. The MegaST paved the way for phenomenal DTP apps that came out of Germany such as Retouche, Didot Line Art, and of course, Calamus. I sold many copies of PageStream, which was available for the ST and Amiga, and a great competitor to the likes of PageMaker and Quark on the Mac.
I had a Mega ST2 and did not find it hard to mod. The motherboard had empty positions for another 2MB of RAM which I installed with the help of a friend. Compared to PCs of the era the Mega ST was much smaller, enabling me to carry it around as hand luggage for that upgrade. Typical 5 ¼" hard discs available at the time of the Mega ST's launch would have been too big to mount internally. I did install an internal hard drive much later which still required removal of the RF shield to fit. With a piggyback board for TOS 2.06 it would even boot from hard disc and run the multitasking MagiC OS. Piggyback boards (PAK68) allowing upgrades to 68020 and even 68030 and up to 64K fast RAM based on an article in renowned computer magazine c't were available in Germany (https://www.wrsonline.de/pak3.html - German).
The biggest advantage over normal st was its ability to use a graphic card. You could add an 19" display using huge 1280x960 pixels screen area for apps like Calamus. Also later graphics cards offered resolutions such as 800x600 at 65k colours, or 1024x768 at 256 colours.
Mega ST was popular in Germany where it was used by many printing bureaus with Linotronic film printers, cutters, cnc machinery etc.
Sure it was expensive, but still far cheaper than anything else on the market.
German software also was always professional quality. Apple once mentioned there were "well over 1 million potential ST customers in Germany" for MagicMac still in 1995 when it was demonstrated at their booth.
Mega ST, or Atari couldn't compete with Apple for sure in the long run even if there were tons of accelerator cards available from various developers, but the scene and the user base seemed to be very different compared to the US.
I remember reading about the Mega in an issue of Antic in 1987; that and the Atari PC were really meant for the small/home office enviroments. To compete in the same type of businesses as Apple & IBM (clones), they would not only need a differernt named subsidary (ie. Tramel Technolgies) but also a nation-wide support system like what Tandy did in addition to the Radio Shack stores for consumers.
Agreed.