Micro Machines: Atari Falcon

Atari Falcon, or Falcon030 as it was officially called, was Atari Corporation's last product for the personal computer market. Housed inside the STE case, the only features distinguishing the Falcon from earlier ST models were darker grey keys and a rainbow logo. But just like the idiom says, it's what's inside that counts, and Atari's bird of prey truly was a beautiful piece of technology.

Atari Corp. flyer in Germany. Eclipse Software supported the Falcon with demos.

Falcon030 was a venerable multimedia machine, with true colour graphics, eight-channel digital sound, proper recording capabilities and full backwards compatibility with the ST family of computers. It had a fast digital signal processor that could handle approximately 16 million instructions per second and complex sound and graphics tasks. When Falcon's CPU and DSP worked together, it was even possible to listen to MP3 in real-time.

Unfortunately, Falcon030 did not take off. The computer was discontinued only a year after its introduction, and Atari shifted their focus completely to the video game console market. The music software and hardware company C-Lab, known especially for their sequencer program Notator, acquired the rights to the Falcon hardware in 1995 and released Falcon Mk I, Mk II and the rack model Mk X, which were all marketed towards music professionals.
 

Title photo © 2019 by Arne Bromann