Atari 260ST Story: TOS Floppy Boot Process, And How Much RAM?

The Atari 260ST. There's a lot of misinformation circulating about this model on the internet, including the "fact" that it was only released with 256K of RAM. But what's the real story behind this machine? Did it ever have 256? Did Atari even plan to release a machine with that little RAM? And what's that floppy-based TOS boot process all about anyway?

Join me as I find out!

Big thanks to Dan (AKA DJ Slope) from Slope's Game Room for helping out with this one: https://www.youtube.com/user/djslopesroom

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Relevant Links: My 260ST pickup video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4z7061OWJM Atari Museum 260ST page: http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/16bits/atari260st.html Atari ST Winter CES 1985 Announcement: https://youtu.be/ZcK4kCuYthA First Atari ST Book: http://www.atarimania.com/documents/FirstAtariStBook.pdf GEMDOS Reference Manual: https://archive.org/details/Atari_GEMDOS_Reference_Manual_Apr_4_1986/page/n1/mode/2up

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Chapters: 00:00 Intro 00:15 Previously... 00:59 Atari 260ST Rumours & Misinformation 03:08 Cleaning My 260ST 04:35 Removing The 512K RAM Expansion 06:59 TOS Version 1.0 (DE) Boot & Floppy Drive Tests 09:53 Downgrading From TOS To Floppy Boot ROMs 10:37 Floppy TOS Boot Demo & Tests 12:17 Xenon 2 Test With Floppy Boot ROMs 12:47 Was There Ever An ST With 256K Of RAM? 15:29 Why Was The Lower Specced ST Dropped? 16:27 Conclusions & Outro

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#atarist #retrocomputing #retrogaming ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLmC5jWXTP8