Games - Atari Falcon

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	Games - Atari Falcon

The Atari Falcon was Atari's final computer product, more specifically named the Atari Falcon030 Computer System. The machine was based on a Motorola 68030 main CPU, and had a Motorola 56000 digital signal processor (the latter distinguishing it from most other microcomputers of the era).

The Falcon was released in late 1992 and subsequently canceled in 1993 as Atari restructured itself to focus completely on the release and support of its newest product, the Atari Jaguar video game console. The Atari Falcon030 had many powerful features. Unfortunately, some misread the use of the 1040ST case as indicative of lesser performance, and thought a case more like the Mega STe or TT030 case would have been much more suitable for such a relatively high-end, expensive, product.

Apparently, Atari created a number of prototypes of the Falcon040 (based on the more capable deep-pipeline, FPU-including, Motorola 68040) but never got around to releasing them before the company's demise.

Shortly afer release Atari used the MiNT Operating system instead of TOS.

Specifications (Falcon030)

Processor: Motorola 68030 at 16 MHz with 256 byte cache.
FPU: optional Motorola 68882
DSP: Motorola 56001 DSP chip at 32 MHz.
Graphics: "VIDEL" video CPU.
* Palette of 262,144 possible colours.
* VGA resolution of 640 x 480 with 256 colours.
* 65,536 colours at 640 × 400.
* BLiTTER graphics co-processor.
* Backwards compatible with all ST resolutions.
Audio:
* 8 × 16 bit audio DMA channels at up to 50 kHz
* SDMA sound/DMA Co-processor
* Yamaha 2149 3 Channel Audio
Memory: 1, 4, or 14 MB of RAM with 512 kb ROM.
Bus Speed: 32 MHz.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Atari Falcon ]

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