Atari Mexico and the Atari 1040 STe+

A little known branch of Atari was the Atari Mexico office established some time after Time Warner bought Atari. Spanish translations of manuals and even games took place there. These were shipped to stores in Mexico and nowhere else (Polyvox and CCE had exclusive rights in South America). But the most mysterious thing came from this little office. Many Atari 1040 STe+ prototypes were found there. Installed on the mother board along with the usual 1040 STe hardware were an AMD 286 CPU and an IDE controller with hard drive. These prototypes could boot into IBM compatible mode or Atari STe mode. Both modes used the same memory, hard drive, and peripherals. The result would be a 286 IBM compatible that used comparatively inexpensive Atari memory and peripherals (except for the IDE drive).