[GrryDucape]

MS Windows of some 3.x variety was apparently the original selected GUI for the Atari ST, intended to be running from ROM… however, MS couldn’t apparently get it to fit in less than a couple of megabytes, hex dumps of the code would show a hell of a lot of redundant x86 stuff in there, like references to hercules drivers and all manner of bloat that they couldn’t strip. They seemed to be disassembling the binaries to translate to 680×0 assembly and kludging it that way rather than from source, which was always rumoured to be a complete mess for the early windows versions. Anyhoo, apparently Trammiel got pissed at MS for lack of progress on shrinking and refining it and went with a version of GEM instead.

[wk_end]

Windows 3.0 came out in 1990, whereas the Atari ST came out in 1985, so that story definitely doesn’t check out. Windows 1.0 came out in 1985 (though still much later than the ST) so maybe it was that?

[SmellyGeekBoy]

I just wanted to add that the TOS ROM chips in the Atari ST were 192KB in total which is an order of magnitude less than what Windows would require. I'm assuming GP is thinking of another machine (maybe the TT / Falcon?)

[laumars]

Not the OP but I wonder if he's thinking of Windows 1.0? Wikipedia does describe Microsoft approaching Tramiel[1] but the details differ from what the OP suggested.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_ST#Operating_system