After an amazingly short 6 months of of development time, the Atari 520ST was introduced in January 1985. It was available for purchase (in the US) starting in July 1985, almost exactly one year from when Jack Tramiel acquired Atari from Warner Communications.
Going from an idea to a shipping computer in about a year was impressive. But what was Atari to do next?
In 1986, they introduced the 1040ST, a computer with a then-outlandish 1MB of RAM at a starting price of $999. Although it was technically no different than the 520ST that preceded it, it was a better all-in-one design and breakthrough value. The 1040ST was the most popular of the ST models.
By about summer of 1986, rumors started appearing in magazines about Atari’s next-generation computer, which would be a powerful 32-bit beast with amazing graphics. This computer did not have an official name yet, but because the ST got its name from its sixteen/thirty-two-bit CPU, people assumed Atari would name its 32-bit computer the TT, for thirty-two.
This TT would remain a rumor for years. Presumably, the TT was first designed around the 68020 CPU, which had been launched in 1984. As a fully 32-bit CPU, it would have been a reasonable choice and is in fact the CPU that Commodore used with its Amiga 2000 2500 in 1987 1989.
Alas, the TT was stuck in development for many years. In 1987 Atari released the Mega ST computers, which put the ST in a more business-friendly case with a detachable keyboard, increased RAM and a blitter chip for improved graphics/memory performance. All good changes, but for the most part, overall performance remained mostly the same as the earlier STs. During this time, the TT was nowhere to be found, although rumors about it persisted.
Work on the TT took so long that the CPU was switched to the 68030, which was released in 1987. In the end, Atari never shipped a computer with the 68020, which some might say was a missed opportunity.
In fact, the Mega ST machines, since they were intended to be sold to businesses and power users, would have been ideal for the 68020 which would have helped justify their cost with improved processing power.
Eventually in the fall of 1989 at CeBit in Hannover, Germany, the TT was officially announced as a workstation for businesses and power users with the somewhat unwieldy official name of Atari TT030.
I’m sure they added the “030” at the end because a TT040 (using the 68040 CPU) was being planned, but that was never something that Atari released.
This announced TT used a 16 Mhz 68030 and advanced the ST line in several interesting ways, including: the GEM desktop, the case design, graphics modes, standard monitor port, internal hard disk, much more ports and greater speed, of course.
The TT never shipped with the 16 MHz 68030. Instead, it was quickly redesigned in 1990 to use a 32 MHz 68030. This TT became available in late 1990 or early 1991, depending on where you were in the world. US versions took longer to appear because of FCC certification problems.
Because the system had been designed around that slower 68030, it didn’t run as fast you’d otherwise have expected because it was limited to a 16 Mhz system bus.
Now let’s look at some of the TT advancements.
TOS and NewDesk
The TT had an updated TOS (the OS), of course. TOS 3 was introduced for the TT and it increased the ROM size from 192K to 256K. This OS update fixed things to work properly with 32-bit memory addressing, but it did have compatibility issues with older software that was written directly against the ST’s hardware design.
One more visual thing that was also included was an updated Desktop, affectionately referred to as “NewDesk”. NewDesk was not a dramatic improvement, but it did add the ability to put more things, such as programs, on the desktop. There were now keyboard shortcuts for most menu items, better icons and improved general usability of file management.
NewDesk would also be packaged with TOS 2 that was included with the Mega STE and made available as a hardware upgrade for older STs.
The “Wedding Cake” Case
The Mega ST case was a slim, two-piece design that looked professional, but it did not have native support for a built-in hard drive. Given the cost and power of the TT, a hard drive was a requirement. I’m sure Atari could have figured out a way to re-work the Mega ST case to fit a hard drive, but they instead opted to come up with an all-new and somewhat strange case design.
It is called the “wedding cake” case because it has a multi-tiered design that makes it looks like the computer sits on a base. It also visually separates the computer section from the hard drive section.
It is a unique and fun design, but it is also rather wide. Atari also decided to switch from their Atari gray (ST) and charcoal colors (Stacy, Portfolio) to go with yet another new color: white. Yes, the TT was white, the only Atari computer in this color.
It’s likely that white was to be the official color of the TT line to help differentiate it from the less-powerful ST, but since the TT only had one model, we’ll never know. There were rumors of a TT using a 68040 in a tower case, but that never materialized.
This case design was also used for the Mega STE, although Atari used the familiar ST gray color.
New Graphics Modes
Even with the introduction of the STE in 1989, the ST line of computers still had just three graphics modes: 320x200 with 16 colors, 640x200 with 4 colors and 640x400 in monochrome. Those modes were great in 1985, but not so great in 1990.
The TT kept the ST graphics modes for backwards compatibility, but added three new ones: 320x480 with 256 colors, 640x480 with 16 colors and 1280x960 in monochrome (which required a special monitor).
Like the STE, the TT also had a palette of 4096 colors.
Standard Monitor Port
One especially nice thing about the TT is that it used a standard VGA-style monitor port. It was able to output all its video resolutions (except the large monochrome one) to any VGA monitor.
Internal Hard Drive
The TT was not the first Atari computer with a built-in hard drive (that was the STacy), but it was the first one that required a hard drive. On the right side of the case was the hard drive section, which could be opened and accessed independently of the computer section.
In this section you could install a standard SCSI hard drive. It was certainly nice to see the TT adopt more industry-standard devices like this.
Ports
The TT added a couple additional serial ports, a SCSI port and audio output jacks, but otherwise kept the same ports that the ST had (no RF output, though). The TT also had an internal VME slot for adding expansion cards. This port was primarily used for adding graphics cards with even more resolution and colors.
Speed
A full 32-bit computer running at 32 Mhz sounds like a speed demon compared to the original 8 Mhz ST and it certainly was a lot faster. As mentioned previously, due to the system bus being 16 Mhz things were not quite as fast as you’d might expect, but the small 68030 cache helped with that somewhat.
RAM was also interesting. The first 4MB was treated as ST RAM and had access to graphics and DMA, which meant this RAM was accessed more slowly. Additional TT RAM (Atari provided a board with up to 26MB, although I believe the TT supported even more RAM than that) could be accessed much faster. You could tweak flags on apps to tell them to load into TT RAM for added speed.
Competition
The primary completion for the TT was the Amiga 3000 (also released in 1990) and the Macintosh II models, first released in 1988 with the IIx.
Both of these computers cost more than the Atari TT. The Amiga was introduced at about $3400 ($8400 in 2025) for a 16 Mhz version and could be optioned with a 25 Mhz 68030 for additional cost.
The Macintosh models were all significantly more expensive. The IIcx, which came out in 1989 and might be the closest spec, started at about $5400 ($14,000 in 2025) but was a 16 Mhz 68030.
At $3000 ($7400 in 2025), the TT cost much less and was (on paper at least) 32 Mhz. Unfortunately it was still expensive, especially for an Atari that had popularized the marketing slogan “Power without the Price”.
Atari did like to talk about offering Unix for the TT, which would turn the TT into something useful for schools and universities that could compete with the upcoming NeXT computers. But I’m not aware that the Atari Unix ever really shipped. I’m also skeptical that a university, at least in the US, would seriously consider the Atari brand. I did find some release notes for Atari System V:
It really seems like the Atari brand really held back their ambitions to move into the higher-end computer market. Atari still sold low-end video games and cheap computers at this point. It’s hard for someone that sees an Atari 2600 for $50 to also think it is reasonable to spend $3000+ on an Atari computer.
My Thoughts
I owned a TT for several months back in 2005 or so. This was the dawn of retro computing and I was able to pick up a TT on eBay for cheap, about $300ish as I recall. I was able to score an older 1TB SCSI hard drive for it from a local Macintosh repair shop which I installed and then loaded up with a bunch of software.
I really liked the white color of the TT, which contrasted nicely with the boring beige and grays of the era. I especially liked that I could hook a standard VGA monitor to it and get access to all the resolutions (except the large monochrome one). This was far more convenient than the usual multi-monitor setup needed with STs.
Unfortunately I did not keep my TT. I sold it on eBay (probably in the $600 range), but last I heard it is still in use today. The person that bought it reached out to me on LinkedIn a while ago, in a comment on a Goto 10 post I linked there, and let me know they had my TT (because they recognized my name from the NeoDesk installation I put on it) and have updated it a bit:
I just bought a VME card (Nova clone from frank.lucas) and a Mach64 ISA card with 2MB of RAM. GEM running at 1280x1024x8-bit is a different animal...
And I have on-order a Thunder/Storm/Lightning combination to give it 256MB of TT-RAM, a built-in IDE CF-card interface, and dual USB ports. The machine is going to be pretty awesome once all that is up and running. I’m 3-D printing an enclosure for the external video card as I type.
And here is some TT info from Atari ST User magazine:
Just a note - Commodore didn't use the 68020 in the Amiga 2000. It was used in the Amiga 2500.
Had the TT or the Amiga 3000/UX been more successful in the low-end UNIX workstation market, we could be in a very different world today. Such a shame.