3 ms·
Well, the 520ST was $799.99 for the monochrome computer, so it was quite a bit more expensive than the Atari 65XE at $99.99. If I remember correctly the 68000
by protomyth 9y ago
Well, the 520ST was $799.99 for the monochrome computer, so it was quite a bit more expensive than the Atari 65XE at $99.99. If I remember correctly the 68000 itself cost north of $200 in quantities, so it was impossible to stay in the old price range.
I remember a story of Commodore / Amiga trying to use the Amiga chipset with a cheaper processor. Of course they also tried it with a PA-RISC.
- rwallace 9y agoI thought the 68000 was down to something like $10 by that time? Given that, the price discrepancy is surprising, since the ST was intentionally a rather simple design. What exactly made the ST have to cost that much?
- cmrdporcupine 9y agoIndeed this article seems to indicate that the 68000 was $15 by 1984: http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/29/business/motorola-s-powerful-new-chip.html http://www.nytimes.com/1984/06/29/business/motorola-s-powerf... But 512KB or 1MB of RAM was really expensive then. Atari cheaped out a bit by running their RAM a bit over its spec, tho. There were a few custom chips in it too (the Shifter [video], the MMU, the GLU [logic], and DMA chip.