After Atari had released their eight bit computer systems, and determined that it was time to upgrade, they created a 16-bit family known as the Atari ST. For the final upgrade for the Atari computing system, you were able to access a 32-bit version. This 32-bit version was known as the Atari TT.
In an effort to stay competitive in the home computing business, Atari decided that they needed to upgrade to another processor. After looking through various choices of coprocessors at the time, Atari opted to utilize the Motorola 68020 coprocessor in their 32-bit computer systems. The previous version of the Motorola processor was known as the 68000, and was the processor which could be found in their 16 bit family.
The Motorola 68020 is considered to be the very first true 32 x 32 bit processor. This chip features a 32-bit bus, along with a 32-bit instruction. This chip was a lot faster than the 68000 due to the fact that the Motorola 68020 check was capable of retrieving a 32-bit value in about one cycle, whereas the 68000 required two cycles to fetch the same exact value.
While Atari was designing their TT on a computing system, Motorola released their 68030 chipset which Atari decided that they would use instead of the 68020. This new chip was considered far superior than the previous version. Although still basically a 32-bit chip, the Motorola 68030 also featured 256 byte on chip capabilities. This was a lot faster and it was considered a perfect choice for Atari's competition in the home computing market.
Upon choosing to switch from the 68020 to the new 68030 CPU, Atari ran into a couple of glitches. Of course the major glitch was the fact they had to maintain a backwards capability to the previous ST models; the motherboard had only been designed to handle a 16 MHz clock. The 68030 chip is unfortunately a 32 MHz clock.
Atari also had to completely redesign their Atari BASIC to their latest release of the two US 3.01. The new TOS 3.01 is designed to be a 512 Kb Rom.
By using the new 68030 chipset, this is where the Atari TT got its name of the Atari TT030.
The official launching of the Atari TT was in 1990 when it was introduced during the CeBIT convention. The system was first released at a price of $2995 and came with 2 MB of RAM, as well as a 15 MB hard drive. This unit was first released in Hanover, Germany and would not make it to the American market until the following year.
1993 was to mark Atari's exit from the computing industry. This is however not the end of the TT. There were several models of the TT that were utilised in the creation and development of the new Atari Jaguar gaming system.
The new Atari TT came with some great new options that had never been used before in an Atari computer system. Although there was never a driver, due to licensing issues, one of the options that came with the new Atari TT was the AppleTalk network port. This system also came with VGA graphics, and the first true SCSI port.
With the new Motorola 68030 there was no longer a need for a graphics chip, because the chipset was more than capable of handling the processing power necessary to drive the VGA graphics.
This was considered a final attempt within the computing market by Atari. Shortly after the doom of the Atari TT, Atari would also release the MEGA Ste along with the Atari Falcon030.The computing industry was now in the multitasking era, which was something that Atari was incapable of competing in. The year was 1993, and there was already a 50 MHz processor on the market. There was also some buzz in the computing industry about Microsoft's next big operating system, which would be released two years later.
The Atari TT was also released with a UNIX-based operating system. By this time, Microsoft was already in control of the market with their windows 3.11. The UNIX operating system was not as user-friendly as Microsoft Windows, and for the average user, the best option was to utilise the PC-based machines.
Original Authors: Gobel Team (Nick)
Edit Update Authors: M.A.Harris
Updated On: 19/05/2008
