True to Tremiel's style, the Atari ST is a low-cost, high-performance machine.  Its moniker, "ST," stood for "sixteen, thirty-two," referring to its Motorola 68000 microprocessor with its 16-bit external data bus and forward-looking 32-bit internal registers.  Overclocked ever-so-slightly above its 8MHz rating, this processor was a preeminant powerhouse of the early to mid 1980s and brought, as the ad slogan said, “Power without the Price.”

The machine featured "The Operating System," commonly known by its acronym "TOS."  TOS was created by Digital Research based on their CP/M-68K OS.  It sported the first Graphical User Interface (GUI) in color, following the monochrome Macintosh GUI from the year prior.  Whipped up in an extremely quick development cycle of just 5 months, the machine was introduced at the Jan '85 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and remained in production until 1993.  It was well-positioned as a gaming computer with its processor prowess and strong graphics capability.

The system remained popular for years beyond its natural life, due to its built-in MIDI ports.  These made it a favorite among musicians for its ability to control and coordinate musical production equipment.  Fat Boy Slim, Duran Duran and many others composed with and featured these machines long after the Atari brand had vanished from the mainstream of the computer landscape.