#midi

Dark Cathedral Midi (with pockets!) by @dobie

Atari Falcon (1992)

The Atari Falcon030 was unveiled in 1992 and was the last personal computer designed in-house by Atari Corporation. Its name comes from the built-in Motorola 68030 processor.

Hardware

CPU: Motorola 68030, 16 MHz (which was relatively slow even at the time)

DSP: Motorola 56001 DSP chip – one of its most important innovations, running at 32 MHz

RAM: 1 or 4 MB on the motherboard, expandable up to 14 MB

Graphics: up to 65,536 colors (16-bit True Color) at 320×200 resolution, or 256 colors at higher resolutions

Sound: 16-bit stereo audio system with outstanding audio quality thanks to the DSP

Operating System: Atari TOS 4.x (compatible with earlier ST machines)

Why Was It Special?

The DSP chip was its real strength: capable of real-time audio processing, MIDI, sound synthesis, and even audio compression – which was quite rare at the time

It was designed as a multimedia machine and found some success among studios and musicians

It was cheaper than a Mac or PC, yet offered comparable (or better) multimedia capabilities

Problems and Downfall

The 16 MHz CPU speed felt outdated at a time when the Amiga 1200 and PCs were running significantly faster

Atari was struggling with financial difficulties, and marketing and distribution were weak

Few software titles were developed for it, and developers largely ignored it