I bought a 1040ST not long after they came out in 1986. I got the system unit, the color monitor, a mouse, GEM/TOS disks, and that was it for about $1500. Software titles were scarce but I was eventually able to pick up the Megamax C compiler. To be effective with it you needed to have a second floppy drive or the pricey SH204 20 Megabyte (yes, megs!) external hard drive.

Megamax C was a K&R style single-pass compiler that had libraries to access the special features of the Atari like the MIDI port.