That's true!! 128Kb in bank-switched chunks via a 3.5MHz 8-bit CPU vs 512Kb flat via an 8MHz 16-bit CPU meant that the cheap and nasty sound chip could at least be tortured a bit more on the ST to get something approaching reasonable! :-)
Going even further off topic: I have a (very battered) March 1986 issue of
Byte magazine, where the 1040ST was reviewed, and there's an interview with Atari's R&D president at the time (Shiraz Shivji). From the text...
We had a project here ... a chip called Amy. And the ST was designed to have the Amy. But the Amy did not happen... Amy was a chip that had 16 bits of information coming out. So you could have 96dB of range. What you could hear! Amy was a complete digital sound chip... We were going to have the Amy, and then it didn't happen... That's how the MIDI came in... So the Yamaha chip is in there just to give it the basic sound? Yes. Just the basic sounds you need.
So basically, Atari's soundchip design didn't work so it stuffed in an AY-3-8910 clone (Yamaha YM2149) and the MIDI ports to cover for it.
Oh well! The rest is history!
- Ali
P.S. That same issue has a full colour full page ad from Commodore for the Amiga 1000, as well as several for the extremely dull monochrome-screened CP/M machines and IBM PC compatibles of the time...
