Atari Advert - January 1989

Atari released its first IBM compatible - the £400 entry-level 8086 Atari PC - in June 1987, although it had been previewed at the Atari show held in London during April.

Atari's chairman, Jack Tramiel - formerly of Commodore - had flown over specially to make an appearance at the show and explained the company's move in to the IBM-compatible market, saying:

"We aim to cover the total spectrum of business and we are now fully equipped to do this. People want an IBM clone because it's what they have in their office. If they want to buy them we are going to make them. It's not something I'm very proud of".

It was inevitable though, as the market was moving towards the standardisation that both the IBM PC and its Microsoft operating system offered, and one by one the "independents" were falling by the wayside.

Atari continued for a while though, releasing the imaginitively-named PC2, 3, 4 and 5 between 1987 and 1988, and its PCs remainined relatively popular in Europe.

However, after a few more attempts at non-IBM systems, including a Transputer workstation, the company exited the computer business and 1993 and retreated to its core games-console market^[1].

Like many clone manufacturers, it was caught in the no-man's land between the high end of the market where big corporate names like IBM, Dell or Compaq ruled the roost, and the hundreds - if not thousands - of no-name box-shifters selling bargain compatibles shipped in from the Far East.

However, back in 1986, Atari was seen as one of the last true renegades, with the scourge of the anonymous IBM compatible already apparent. Writing in May 1986's Personal Computer World, Nick Walker wistfully wrote:

"In recent months, the PC‌W office has begun to resemble the warehouse of an IBM PC-compatible distributor - with boxes of lookalikes arriving for possible benchtesting. Occasionally, someone will unpack one, set it up on a desk, declare 'Yes, it's a PC compatible' and a day later put it back in its box. If we are lucky, we might unpack a machine that's finished in brown instead of IBM grey, or perhaps will have an amber screen instead of the usual green. It's not the outdated PC architecture, or even the ancient, unfriendly MS-DOS operating system, but the sheer volume of practically identical machines that bores me. Consequently, any machine which breaks the mould of IBM compatibility, regardless of its merit, tends to generate more than its fair share of interest. One such machine is the Atari 520ST, which offers the processing power of a 68000, a Macintosh-like environment, a high-resolution monitor and a 3½" disk drive, all for £750. At least as far as specification is concerned, the 520ST has made other machines such as the IBM PC and the Apple Macintosh appear grossly overpriced".