ST Book

Atari STBook.

The STBook is a very rare computer from Atari. Only 1000 units were build and sold in US & Europe.

Announced July 1991, the ST Book is the size of an A4 sheet of paper and weighs just over four pounds (the Stacy weighed 15.2 pounds!). The price reflected the business orientation of the machine being over £1,200. In May 1992 Atari expected sales of up to 10,000 ST Books by the end of the year. It is unknown to me how many were actually sold, although if anyone knows, please email me! After the short battery life of the Stacy Atari cut power usage on the ST Book down to a minimal, basing the technology on the never released ST Pad. The Stacey's backlight used up to six watts whereas the ST Book's total consumption is only 1.25 watts.

Video

Youtube video of the ST Book

Gallery

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Specs

SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

• Motorola 68HC000 CPU running @ 8Mhz
• 32-bit internal data bus
• 24-bit external address bus enabling 16MByte of address space to be accessed
• 16-bit data bus
• 1MByte or 4MByte low power Pseudo-Static RAM
• 512K ROM
• Blitter Chip

EXPANSION CONNECTOR

• 120-pin expansion connector enabling access to the CPU bus

GRAPHICS

• 640 * 400 high resolution high contrast LCD screen

SOUND

• Three voice Programmable Sound Generator (PSG)
• Piezo Electric Speaker

STANDARD PORTS

• MIDI in, MIDI out
• RS232 serial port
• Parallel printer port
• Floppy drive/ACSI DMA port for optional 1.44 floppy, hard drive, CD-ROM, laser printer

DATA STORAGE

• 40Mbyte hard drive, 19ms average access time

MOUSE CONTROL

• Vector Pad mouse controller.
• Atari mouse can be connected via optional external keypad or keyboard

SOFTWARE

• TOS 2.06 in ROM
• Calculator, Diary/Calendar, Address Book built-in
• NewDesk Desktop and XControl Control Panel

DIMENSIONS

• 8.5 inches x 11 inches (A4) x 1.4 inches
• 215 mm x 279 mm x 35 mm compared to 208 mm x 259 mm x 24 mm for SONY VAIO of today!!!
• Weight 4.3 lbs (2 kilos) (SONY VAIO is 1.35 kilos)

POWER SUPPLY

• Seven AA battery pack (five to ten hour battery life)
• Optional NiCad and AC Adapter
• NiCads recharge in two hours whilst the machine is on or one whilst the machine is off
• AC Adapter also powers external floppy if connected

Magazine References

• ST Format, issue 34, p26-30.
• Atari ST Review, issue 01, 38-40.

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