The final home computer system offered by Atari was the Atari Falcon. This computer featured the Motorola 68030 processor, and it also came with a Motorola 56000 signal processor. The Atari Falcon, while in design phase was code-named the Sparrow.
The Atari falcon was only on the market for one year. Originally released in 1992, Atari removed the falcon from the market the following year in order to focus on their latest project, which was to be the Atari Jaguar. Although the Atari falcon had come with many great features, it was their patience in the development of the Jaguar that was to ultimately be the downfall of the system. In an attempt to rush the Atari falcon out the door, they had used a case from a previous model. This was a big mistake by the Atari Corporation.
Of course, the Atari falcon's performance was not the greatest. The reason for this was the fact that Atari had decided to place their 32-bit processor on a 16 bit data bus. The only reason they did this was to maintain compatibility with their previous Atari STE model. But of course Atari wasn't the only company at the time to make such a big mistake. The Macintosh LC computer was also done in the same fashion, but they did this to keep Atari from cutting into their sales.
This was an integral part of the Atari Corporation's history, as at the time they were also developing the next model Atari Falcon. This next release of the Atari Falcon was to feature a micro case, but unfortunately, the company decided to point all interests towards the Atari Jaguar. This micro case that Atari had designed for the next Falcon also played an important part in history of the Sony PlayStation 2. The Sony PlayStation 2's case looks surprisingly similar to the design of the Atari micro box case. As matter of fact, Sony referenced the Atari Falcon's case in the patent applications. Whether or not Atari sold the design to Sony, no one is saying.
What we do know, is that in 1995 C-Lab had bought the rights for the internal hardware design of the Atari Falcon. Once purchased, it began to produce their own version of the Atari falcon, their first release was the Falcon MK I. But this was less of a home computer system, and more of a piece of recording studio equipment. C-Lab's full intentions for the Atari falcon hardware, was that it was a perfect design to be utilised in audio recording studios.
Original Authors: Gobel Team (Nick)
Edit Update Authors: M.A.Harris
Updated On: 21/05/2008
