Jack Tramiel is poised to do what many would have declared impossible - take the corpse-like Atari and turn it into one of 1985's hottest computer companies. The machine that will do it is Atari's ST.

The 68000-based ST is a child of first-class pedigree - born of Atari's engineers. Tramiel's swashbuckling marketing style, and Digital Research which provided it with one of its outstanding features, the GEM desktop environment.

Reaction in the US is very favourable, especially in the light of Atari's position last year - dead on its feet after an onslaught from Tramiel's Commodore.

Richard Frick, product manager of the ST range at Atari's US headquarters, revealed the level of support growing for his machines. To date 38 development systems have been sold and there are orders for another 75.

More impressive is the list of software companies working on ST products. Heading the roll is Microsoft which has produced much of the best software for the Macintosh including the superlative MSBasic 2, Word, Chart and Multiplan. Frick says Microsoft will convert its range of Mac software to take advantage of the ST's colour display.

Atari is working on a number of businesslike programs and will probably produce two of each - an entry-level version and a full-featured version.

But it's not all work and no play. Several of America's top games companies have taken the ST to their hearts. Among them are Sublogic, renowned producer of flight simulators; Spinnaker, one of the leading educational software houses; graphics specialist Penguin Software; and Microprose, several of whose games have been brought to Britain by US Gold.

Last but not least, adventure king Infocom said: "We intend to have the whole of our product line available for the ST at launch."

In Britain, GEM gets a muted thumbs up from software houses. They're waiting to see how GEM sells, if Atari can deliver the goods, and how the machine is received.

Some British software houses are already coding applications for GEM.

Lotus has still to release Jazz on the Macintosh and a spokesman said: "There are no plans to produce software for GEM".

Thorn-EMI's UK offices were non-committal over plans for GEM, but the company is "very interested" in Atari's ST. In fact, its first GEM product will be for the ST. This will be conversions of the company's Perfect range of software from its American arm, Thorn-EMI Inc.

Compsoft, publisher of Delta and Domino, is currently using GEM in-house. A spokesman said: "Nothing else provides as much help to the programmer," and added that a couple of pieces of GEM compatible software should be available this year.

Even in the US there are one or two dissenting voices, largely favouring the Commodore's 16-bit Amiga machine over the ST. Broderbund said it was converting several titles for the Amiga but had no plans for ST software.

Electronic Arts, publisher of Archon, MULE and One-on-One, said some titles would be available for the ST but "the main thrust of our hardware support this year will be for the Amiga".

Many observers anticipate a battle royal between the two but the signs seem to favour Atari at the moment. Scheduling for deliveries of the Amiga is open to question (see story on facing page) whereas Atari looks on target to start shipping machines at the end of April.

Atari's critics - Sir Clive Sinclair among them - didn't believe the company could produce the hardware on time, or that Digital Research could implement GEM on the 68000 this soon.

DR, however, took a neat shortcut by hooking GEM onto CP/M-68K which has been available for some time. When the ST was announced much was made of the Tramiel Operating System, but tucked away in the small print of the brochure is the line "TOS is a trademark of Digital Research". Obviously DR was ready for the ST before anyone thought.