• CPU: Motorola MC 68000 8 MHz
• RAM: 1 or 4 MB (no extension)
• ROM: 256 KB
• Text Modes: 40 x 25 / 80 x 25
• Graphic Modes: 640 x 400
• Colors: monochrome LCD display
• Sound: three channels, 8 octaves
• I/O Ports: Centronics, RS232c, Floppy Disk, internal IDE Hard disk, Midi In/Out, Dock Station connector
• Keyboard: full stroke keyboard
• Built In Media: One 2.5” disk drive
• OS: TOS + GEM

MESS currently supports for the STBook both cart dumps and disk images. The former are accepted in .stc format and use the “cartridge” (cart) device; the latter are accepted in .st format and use one of the two floppy drives, “floppydisk1” (flop1) and “floppydisk2” (flop2).

Also notice that the “printer” (prin) and the two serial ports, “serial1” (serl1) and “serial2” (serl2), are emulated as well.

This system requires full keyboard emulation to work correctly. At startup, full keyboard emulation mode is enabled by default. Whilst in full keyboard emulation mode, some key associated functionality may be disabled (like the ESC key for EXIT). The keyboard emulation mode is toggled using the “Scroll Lock” key (by default).

Different RAM configurations are possible for the stbook in MESS. You can switch between them, changing the -ramsize parameter. At command line, you simply have to add -ramsize ram_value, where ram_value can assume one of the following values

1m
4m (default)

The emulation of this system is Preliminary.

After the success of the Stacy, Atari presented a new portable computer: the ST Book.

It was a rather nice toy: very light, impressive battery life, MIDI ports, battery-saved RAM, etc.

The Hard Disk contains a small Null-Modem program to transfer files (very handy!). It has no internal floppy drive, the external floppy was a weird (and expensive!) unit that used the same interface as Atari's hard disks (ACSI).

Despite its interesting characteristics, and because of the deplorable commercial policy of Atari, it had no success and only about one thousand units were sold in Europe.

A word of warning: The cases & screen on this computer are VERY FRAGILE! Whatever you do, do not drop this computer, as it probably will shatter!

(info from old-computers.com)

• Atari STBook at old-computers.com