It's not pretty or nearly as useful, but towards the "end" of its life, the ST had native Ethernet and TCP/IP<p>Here's a picture of a native session running (on sdf.org)<p><a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DG0_h-eU0AEFy_7?format=jpg&name=large" rel="nofollow">https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DG0_h-eU0AEFy_7?format=jpg&name=...</a>
>"In the following tutorial, I’ll describe how I connected my Atari ST to the Internet via using a cheap ESP8266 microcontroller as a WiFi-to-serial router – running at 19.2 kbit/s."<p>This is a great idea!<p>I don't own an Atari ST, but in theory this should work for any computer with an RS-232 interface, of course, non Atari ST computers would need their own SLIP-compatible software stack on the software side, but this article covers all that's needed on the hardware side for any computer with an RS-232 interface...<p>Anyway, brilliant and tremendously useful idea!
The 1040ST was truly one of the more flexible and malleable computers in it's day.<p>Connectivity between computers using MIDI Cables, for example was a regular way to play networked games.<p>I feel extremely lucky to be exposed to an entire lab of them in Canada and it did the right thing at the time - feed the imagination in ways 5-10 years ahead of it's time in North America that other machines couldn't quite do it.<p>If these kinds of machines had caught on in North America like they had in Europe maybe the world would look different.