The Atari ST-PAD "STylus" Pen Tablet

The Atari ST-PAD is a portable Atari computer which combined the Atari TOS operating system with PenOS features to allow a user to interact with the tablet using a special electronic pen instead of a mouse. The LCD is not backlite and uses the same Epson Custom Module (ECM) as the Atari STBook laptop. The unit is a 8Mhz 68000 CPU system with 1MB of memory, no hard drive is contained within the unit, instead high density RAM cards were to be used for storage, two custom card slots are located on the unit and well as a flip-up storage area for the electronic pen. Ports include external keyboard via RJ-11, serial, parallel and what appears to be an external bus connector.

















The units were a true breakthrough and if Atari had followed through and sold the unit to vertical markets such as inventory control, hospital patient monitoring and other markets they could have grabbed ahold of another niche market and placed a strong foot hold on it. Unfortunately the ST-PAD never made it to production and like the STBook and the MicroFalcon040 they would disappear from the Atari scene never to be seen again. The ST-Pad was designed and shown sometime around 1991 when Atari was just getting ready to shut down all computer operations and switch all efforts over to the new Atari Jagaur 64 video game console. Atari felt that it could no longer compete in the PC/Windows dominated computer market and simply gave up and moved back to video games.











