TECHNOLOGY
Atari Falcon030, the company's last computer, still draws hobbyist modders three decades on
Atari Corp.'s Falcon030 was released in late 1992 and cancelled a year later as the company turned to the Jaguar console. It is now one of Atari's most popular machines for hardware modding.
Image: Atari Falcon
The Atari Falcon030 was the last computer Atari Corporation made. Its codename was Sparrow. It ran on a Motorola 68030 main processor and also had a Motorola 56000 digital signal processor, a chip built to handle sound and similar data. Most microcomputers of that era did not have one.
Atari released the Falcon in late 1992. By late 1993 it was cancelled. The company was restructuring to focus entirely on the Atari Jaguar, its new video game console.
A more powerful follow-up never made it to market. Atari Corp. built a number of prototypes of the Falcon040, which used the faster Motorola 68040 processor. That chip is fully pipelined, meaning it works on several instructions at once, and it has a built-in floating-point unit for maths. The prototypes came in a small "microbox" case, but the machine was cancelled.
The source says the microbox case looked like the later Sony PlayStation 2. It could be run vertically or horizontally, just like the PS2. The source adds that the design is even referenced in the PS2 patent applications.
On the software side, Atari Corp. bundled the MultiTOS operating system shortly after release, in addition to TOS. TOS stayed in ROM, the machine's built-in memory. MultiTOS came on a floppy disk and could be installed to boot from a hard disk.
In 1995, the music company C-Lab bought the rights to the Falcon hardware design and started building its own versions. The Falcon Mk I was a direct continuation of the Falcon030, running TOS 4.04.
The Falcon Mk II fixed a number of shortcomings in the original design, making it better suited to a recording studio. These changes were unofficially called the "Cubase modifications". One example is that the machine could take line-level audio in without needing a pre-amp or mixer.
Today, the Falcon is one of Atari Corp.'s most popular machines for hardware modding. It has good expansion options, and several accelerators have been made for it. Some overclock the CPU, the bus, or both. Others swap in a Motorola 68060 processor.