Editing Atari ST (section)

===The operating system===
With the hardware design nearing completion, the team started looking at solutions for the [[operating system]]. Soon after the buyout [[Microsoft]] approached Tramiel with the suggestion that they port [[Microsoft Windows|Windows]] to the platform, but the delivery date was out by about two years, far too long for their needs. Another possibility was Digital Research, who were working on a new GUI-based system then known as Crystal, soon to become GEM. Another option was to write a new operating system in-house, but this was eventually rejected due to the risk.

Digital Research was fully committed to the Intel platform, so a team from Atari was sent to the Digital Research headquarters to work with the "Monterey Team" which comprised a mixture of Atari and Digital Research engineers. Atari's Jim Tittsler was Atari key OS engineer overseeing "Project Jason"  (aka - The Operating System) for the Atari ST line of computers.

CP/M-68K was essentially a direct port of CP/M's original, mature operating system. By 1985, it was becoming increasingly outdated in comparison to MS-DOS 2.0; for instance, CP/M did not support sub-directories and did not have a hierarchical file system. Digital Research was also in the process of building a new [[DOS]]-like operating system specifically for GEM, '''GEMDOS''', and there was some discussion of whether or not a port of GEMDOS could be completed in time for product delivery in June. The decision was eventually taken to port it, resulting in a GEMDOS file system which became part of [[Atari TOS|TOS]] ('''The Operating System'''). This was beneficial as it gave the ST a fast, hierarchical file system, essential for hard drive storage disks, plus programmers had function calls similar to the [[IBM PC]] DOS.