That same buddy of mine helped run a BBS with that Atari 1040ST. He still has the old machine in a closet; he says that he has turned it on and that it still works. He has moved beyond it though - he and his wife are computer geeks and they created a wireless LAN for their house. He also turned his Mac G4 into a Linux machine...
I got rid of my Ataris quite awhile ago. I did keep using my circa 1990 Atari ST stuff until around 1996 though. Wrote my first book on it. (Book didn't sell.)
I had a monitor for the ST that I loved. Could view a full page, so it was great for typesetting newsletters. It was b&w, so I'd switch between that monitor and the color one.
Also had an emulator that'd let me run Mac software.