The cost reduced 520STFM of mid 1993?

[oky2000]

I was looking through ST format and I noticed that in the May 1993 issue (no. 46) this was the scoop story. There was a new 520STFM that had motherboard revisions making 1mb a near impossibility BUT to be sold for £159.99 in the UK. (STE remains at 250 in the UK)

 

It effectively replaces the spot held by the C64 and Sinclair sales of 1991ish (my friend's girlfriend had got a C64 in 1991 I remember being told once which for me was odd with my A1200 and Megadrive and SNES) and I know some people will sneer (although not in this forum) but a PC doesn't really make sense for a kid at school in 1993 yet and there were plenty of Word Processors and Spreadsheets capable of small business/home use levels. I think the Amiga 600 was still £299 at this point but not sure if it had been dropped by then and only the 1200,/4000 and CD32 were being sold then by Commodore.

 

 

Apparently it was meant to go up against the SNES and Megadrive but as a "proper computer" for the parents to buy their kid, which is a LOT cheaper than a VGA 386 from even el cheapo Amstrad brand I guess. Apart from the removal of SIMM slots does anybody know what other features were dropped/lowered in specification to get it down to this price? Did it still have a 720k drive too?

 

Personally I think it is an amazing price, I bet Atari didn't make much profit but it can't be stock dumping a la 800XL if the motherboard etc were specifically changed to get it down to that price right?

 

 

[Christos]

I don't think the machine you mention was ever released.

[vattari]

Maybe a lot of the custom chips were surface mounted and in some cases combined, possibly as an improvement from the developement of the STE and/or improvements in the manufacturing process. Subtract the additional components from the STE, and it may well have been another example of the Tramiels squeezing the last dollar out of superseded technology (think XEGS)

 

 

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[atarian1]

I remember reading somewhere that this particular lot of 520STFMs were "found" buried in a warehouse in Finland(?). Why throw them out if they work? Just sell them at a giant fire sale!

 

Now, if they were surface mounted chips and stuff, then I believe vattari's theory more.

[oky2000]

The motherboard they mention may not have been manufactured but the £159 price was in all the adverts even half a year later so they must have been sold (bugger all free software though unlike the STE bundles).

 

At this time the STE was £250 but STE was not selling as very few games made effective use of STE enhancements unlike Amiga 600, which let's face it is essentially a culmination of the cost reducing of Amiga 1000 to 500 and features of 500Plus incorporated so this STFM I guess is Atari's version of that (A500plus chipset is a useless pile of rubbish unless you need 4 fixed colours at 1280x256 resolution doh!).

 

Interestingly the A300, project which became the A600, was meant to end up at £199 by 1992/93 to directly compete with SNES/Megadrive sales by tugging on the concerns of EU parents but still having some awesome games graphically and sonically to shut the brats up. At just £10 more than a SNES/MD for some parents it was worth considering in the EU, school Computer Science classes did not turn into MS Windows/Office training camps until this century. Also, copied games on disk are easy to get in playgrounds all over the land so I guess once your mate gets an ST and some awesome cracked games for the price of a chocolate bar you wouldn't feel too bad....you can save the money you would have spent on 5 full price ST games and buy a SNES/MD later anyway. Oh and Atari probably thought screw the software houses that never bothered to support the STE/Falcon if THEY don't make any money out of cost reduced 520STFM sales to new owners

 

I think the XEGS analogy is right in the sense you have the tech but need to get it out to a new market but at half the price of the competition this ST is probably really trying to do more like the Megadrive/SMS licensed consoles of Tectoy produced in Brazil STILL in production today ie open up the market to a new market segment untapped who can't afford the prices of latest tech (Xbox One currently the thing there so they do get current gen tech). Also the XEGS was financially viable only as Atari inherited massive stocks of A8 cartridge software (and they were cheaper to make than larger capacity NES carts I guess too) but there is no extra profit for Atari from additional software sales to back it up in this case.

 

(Basically what happened in Brazil would be like going into a shop today and being able to buy an Amiga or STE for £99 or less ie a third of the price of a Wii U/Xbox/PS4 slim etc TODAY and production of said machines had never stopped from 1985 until today).

[ParanoidLittleMan]

I was looking through ST format and I noticed that in the May 1993 issue (no. 46) this was the scoop story. There was a new 520STFM that had motherboard revisions making 1mb a near impossibility BUT to be sold for £159.99 in the UK. (STE remains at 250 in the UK)

Somewhere in those years C64 was sold for some 200 DEM in Germany. 160 GBP would be some 650 DEM in that time, what is by me just so-so attractive, considering that you could get 520 ST with DS drive for 1200 DEM in 1987,

They should not even thinking about releasing ST with less than 1MB in 1993. Memory prices were already pretty low then. 1MB near impossible ? Maybe if they made single channel MMU, what seems as very bad idea - to save 3 lines on chip is really pointless.

I don't think that it was ever in sales. Otherwise we would see some posts with photos of such motherboards. I tend to think that Atari considered that way, and adverts were to check is there interest on market. Doing new chipset is always big investment. And they judged that not going into. Certainly was not nicest idea to come out with something like that in 1993.

[oky2000]

Maybe the story of cost reduced motherboard was to cover their asses like you say if they found a cache of old STFMs which are very difficult to get to 1mb? I dunno but today I am picking up a huge stash of New Computer Express weekly magazines from that era so will see if anything around that time is in the lot and if they have anything about.

 

Atari made many claims to mags, like the Atari all in one Amstrad PCW8256 competitor that apparently existed but nobody ever saw either.

[Zogging Hell]

I think the story you are referring to was in ST Format (or Review, or both, not entirely sure), it was I think in a round up of the year style article and had interviews with some games producers regarding the price drop (most were unimpressed if I remember rightly). The gist was (as someone mentioned) that Atari reduced the price on the remaining STFM stock and flogged them cheap (this is much the same story as the STFM re-release after STe production stopped I believe). These STs were fitted with surface mounted chips so were more difficult (though not impossible) to upgrade the memory on. Basically Atari had realised the ST was a dead dug commercially from this point, and was using the price reduction as an excuse to sell off the remains of their stock.

 

I would say the STe has more in common from a 'why did they do it' point of view with the 500+ than the 600, both were released in the same time period and offered some extra features that weren't really used much and weren't a big enough upgrade to make a big difference. The Amiga 600 came later if iirc, sort of the same time as the 1200 and Falcon?