The Atari Stacy is the transportable version of the Atari STf.
It has a 9" monochrome LCD screen which can only use the 640x400 graphic mode.
The other STF graphic modes can only be used with an external color monitor. It uses 12 small batteries and can be used for five hours.
It has the same internal SCSI interface as the Mega STe. Unfortunately it has no energy management. It was a bit big and heavy (more than 7 kg) and will be replaced with the Atari ST Book few years after.
The Stacy was developed to use batteries, and the large block in the design on the right side below the display was set to hold 12 'D' cell batteries, but Atari soon found out that this arrangement could only power the Stacey for just a few minutes. Production units had this compartment empty, with no battery contacts inside. Later 3rd party companies would sell rechargeable battery packs (nickel-cadmium in those days) which could be used to make this a true laptop, but the run time was still poor.
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Contributors: Steve Martin
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I own an Atari Stacy 4 upgraded to run at 16MHz which we thought was great at the time. I ran the office for an Atari software developer known as CodeHead Technologies in LA. I was also the last sysop standing in the Atari Roundtable on the GEnie online service. My Stacy is still operational, though I need to put a new hard drive in it. The main drawback was the rather dim display, but some people put tin foil behind it to brighten it up. The battery was actually a single motorcycle-type battery, so I believe 12v was what it ran on. They never lasted 5 hours. In fact, you could barely get through airport security on one charge. I have used it as recently as two years ago on stage to run my MIDI gear. The ST series was a great deal more reliable than a modern Windows PC as far as MIDI goes. If you move the mouse on a slow Windows machine, a MIDI file will slow down. No so on the Atari. The keyboard was very satisfying, probably the best Atari made. I'm looking for instructions on how to safely open the case. I also have the Atari Falcon 030. It did hard disk recording before Windows was invented right out of the box. VGA, SCSI II and AppleTalk-style ethernet were built in, too. I can also connect it to the Internet. Not many machines of that period can do that.
