Atari ST: A little bit more on MIDI

If we take a look at the Atari ST sound hardware outside of MIDI, then it should be noted that the Yamaha YM2149 chip fitted, capable of producing a 3 channel square wave sound, was always seen as a compromise and the Atari engineers were never completely happy with this sound chip, reason being is that the original plan was to develop and fit a custom AMY PSG (programmable sound generator) chip, but due to time limitations, the AMY was dropped and the YM2149 sound chip was fitted instead, urban myths suggest that as a compromise to the AMY chip being dropped, MIDI ports were fitted as a means to enhance game music via an external MIDI device, yet MIDI was something that was built into the design from a very early stage of development of the ST.

Another point to note about MIDI is that although Atari Corporation were aware of how the ST could be used as a music workhorse, then they did also expect more consumer adaptation with MIDI as part of the reason to include MIDI ports into the ST, was also the idea that it could offer a cheap, low cost, local networking solution, a choice of MIDI networking software was available, and this was quite an innovative low cost solution at the time, to be able to network Atari ST and TT computers together via a MIDI interface, but perhaps it didn’t gain the traction that Atari had hoped for in that respect.