It's not pretty or nearly as useful, but towards the "end" of its life, the ST had native Ethernet and TCP/IP

Here's a picture of a native session running (on sdf.org)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DG0_h-eU0AEFy_7?format=jpg&name=...

>"In the following tutorial, I’ll describe how I connected my Atari ST to the Internet via using a cheap ESP8266 microcontroller as a WiFi-to-serial router – running at 19.2 kbit/s."

This is a great idea!

I don't own an Atari ST, but in theory this should work for any computer with an RS-232 interface, of course, non Atari ST computers would need their own SLIP-compatible software stack on the software side, but this article covers all that's needed on the hardware side for any computer with an RS-232 interface...

Anyway, brilliant and tremendously useful idea!

The 1040ST was truly one of the more flexible and malleable computers in it's day.

Connectivity between computers using MIDI Cables, for example was a regular way to play networked games.

I feel extremely lucky to be exposed to an entire lab of them in Canada and it did the right thing at the time - feed the imagination in ways 5-10 years ahead of it's time in North America that other machines couldn't quite do it.

If these kinds of machines had caught on in North America like they had in Europe maybe the world would look different.