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Atari TT030
The Atari TT030, more commonly known as the Atari TT, is a member of the Atari ST family, released in 1990. It was originally intended to be a high-end Unix workstation, but Atari took two years to release a port of Unix SVR4 for the TT, which prevented the TT from ever being seriously considered in its intended market.
In 1992, the TT was replaced by the Atari Falcon, a low-cost consumer-oriented machine with greatly improved graphics and sound capability, but with a slower and severely bottle-necked CPU. The Falcon possesses only a fraction of the TT's raw CPU performance. Though well priced for a workstation machine, the TT's high cost kept it mostly out of reach of the existing Atari ST market until after the TT was discontinued and sold at discount.
The nascent open source movement eventually filled the void. Thanks to open hardware documentation, the Atari TT, along with the Amiga and Atari Falcon, were the first non-Intel machines to have Linux ported to them. However it was not until after the TT had already been discontinued by Atari that this work resulted in stable versions of the kernel and the GNU userland software to enable a fully featured operating system and software development environment on the machine. By 1995, NetBSD had also been ported to the Atari TT.
Atari Corporation realized that to remain competitive as a computer manufacturer, they needed to begin taking steps to exploit the power offered by more advanced processors in the Motorola 68000 series. At that time, the highest performance member was the 68020. It is the first true "thirty-two bit bus/thirty-two bit instruction" chip from Motorola. Unlike the 68000 used in the original STs, the 68020 is capable of fetching a 32-bit value in one memory cycle, while the older STs need two cycles.
The TT was initially designed around the 68020 CPU, but as the project progressed, Atari Corp. realized that the 68020 was not the best option for the TT. The 68020 still lacked some features offered by the next successor in the 68000 line, the new 68030. The new 68030 features built-in memory-management hardware that provide separate Supervisor, User, Program, and Data virtual memory spaces, and provides a 256-byte on-chip data cache.
When the decision was made to switch from a 68020 to a 68030 CPU, it presented a whole new set of problems. The original specifications for the TT's clock speed was 16 MHz, which was selected to maintain backward compatibility. The existing ST chips used in the TT (DMA and video chips for example) cannot handle anything over 16 MHz. Some software also has problems running at faster speeds. To make the system work with a 32 MHz 68030, Atari Corp. had to scale back their plans somewhat, and add a large amount of cache to the system. As a result, the processor runs at 32 MHz, while the system bus runs at 16 MHz. This is similar to the tactic employed by Apple with the ill-fated Macintosh IIvx and later employed by makers of PCs with an Intel 80486DX2 CPU which runs at double that of the system bus speed.
TOS 3.01 is the operating system that Atari bundled with the TT. It is a 512 KB ROM specifically designed for the TT. However, it does not feature pre-emptive multitasking. Another variant, known as TT/X, uses Unix System V R4 and WISH (Motif extension).
The TT030 was first introduced at CeBIT in Hannover, Germany and launched in 1990. It retailed for $2995 with 4 MB RAM and a 40 MB hard drive. The US release came the following year.
Hub AI
Atari TT030 AI simulator
(@Atari TT030_simulator)
Atari TT030
The Atari TT030, more commonly known as the Atari TT, is a member of the Atari ST family, released in 1990. It was originally intended to be a high-end Unix workstation, but Atari took two years to release a port of Unix SVR4 for the TT, which prevented the TT from ever being seriously considered in its intended market.
In 1992, the TT was replaced by the Atari Falcon, a low-cost consumer-oriented machine with greatly improved graphics and sound capability, but with a slower and severely bottle-necked CPU. The Falcon possesses only a fraction of the TT's raw CPU performance. Though well priced for a workstation machine, the TT's high cost kept it mostly out of reach of the existing Atari ST market until after the TT was discontinued and sold at discount.
The nascent open source movement eventually filled the void. Thanks to open hardware documentation, the Atari TT, along with the Amiga and Atari Falcon, were the first non-Intel machines to have Linux ported to them. However it was not until after the TT had already been discontinued by Atari that this work resulted in stable versions of the kernel and the GNU userland software to enable a fully featured operating system and software development environment on the machine. By 1995, NetBSD had also been ported to the Atari TT.
Atari Corporation realized that to remain competitive as a computer manufacturer, they needed to begin taking steps to exploit the power offered by more advanced processors in the Motorola 68000 series. At that time, the highest performance member was the 68020. It is the first true "thirty-two bit bus/thirty-two bit instruction" chip from Motorola. Unlike the 68000 used in the original STs, the 68020 is capable of fetching a 32-bit value in one memory cycle, while the older STs need two cycles.
The TT was initially designed around the 68020 CPU, but as the project progressed, Atari Corp. realized that the 68020 was not the best option for the TT. The 68020 still lacked some features offered by the next successor in the 68000 line, the new 68030. The new 68030 features built-in memory-management hardware that provide separate Supervisor, User, Program, and Data virtual memory spaces, and provides a 256-byte on-chip data cache.
When the decision was made to switch from a 68020 to a 68030 CPU, it presented a whole new set of problems. The original specifications for the TT's clock speed was 16 MHz, which was selected to maintain backward compatibility. The existing ST chips used in the TT (DMA and video chips for example) cannot handle anything over 16 MHz. Some software also has problems running at faster speeds. To make the system work with a 32 MHz 68030, Atari Corp. had to scale back their plans somewhat, and add a large amount of cache to the system. As a result, the processor runs at 32 MHz, while the system bus runs at 16 MHz. This is similar to the tactic employed by Apple with the ill-fated Macintosh IIvx and later employed by makers of PCs with an Intel 80486DX2 CPU which runs at double that of the system bus speed.
TOS 3.01 is the operating system that Atari bundled with the TT. It is a 512 KB ROM specifically designed for the TT. However, it does not feature pre-emptive multitasking. Another variant, known as TT/X, uses Unix System V R4 and WISH (Motif extension).
The TT030 was first introduced at CeBIT in Hannover, Germany and launched in 1990. It retailed for $2995 with 4 MB RAM and a 40 MB hard drive. The US release came the following year.