Details
The TT featured a number of devices that had previously been unavailable for Atari Corp. systems. For example, an Appletalk network port (unfortunately, there never was a driver for it, maybe due to license problems), VME expansion bus, new VGA video graphics modes, and a true SCSI port. Existing ST features such as MIDI ports, a cartridge port, and the ASCI/DMA port were retained in this system.
One device that was left out was the BLiTTER graphics chip, which first appeared in the Atari Mega ST systems four to five years earlier. Apparently, Atari Corp. felt that the Motorola 68030 was enough power to drive the graphics, so one was not included.
A new version of TOS was developed for this system. An Atari Corp. version of Unix was also released (System V).
This machine marked Atari Corp.'s last big push into the workstation market. The MEGA STe and the Falcon030 were released after this system, but they weren't aimed at business quite the same way that this system was. The TT was doomed almost from the beginning. A 50 MHz 68030 was already on the market at the time, and the 68040 wasn't too far off. A 32 MHz Processor/16 MHz bus system just didn't sound powerful enough to the workstation market. Multitasking was the big buzz word in 1990/1991, and this system was not designed to handle it. Multitasking was offered by Atari Corp. in 1993, with the release of MultiTOS. This multitasking version of TOS took advantage of the TT's MMU, which offered multitasking as well as memory protection.
Another problem was that Atari Corp. didn't release Unix for the TT until mid-1992. By the end of that year, Atari Corp. dropped all Unix development. A special version of the TT, the TT/X, was designed to be a UNIX station. It was supplied with UNIX System V R4 and WISH (an extension of OSF Motif).
Read more about this topic: Atari TT030
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