Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!olivea!uunet!bu.edu!m2c!crackers!crackers.clearpoint.com!daveg From: daveg@prowler.clearpoint.com (Dave Goldblatt) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit Subject: Re: What is an Atari 400?? Message-ID: Date: 1 May 91 15:41:35 GMT References: Sender: news@crackers.clearpoint.com Reply-To: daveg@prowler.clearpoint.com Distribution: comp Organization: Clearpoint Research Corp, Hopkinton MA 01748 Lines: 61 In-reply-to: achilles@unixland.uucp's message of 1 May 91 16:28:53 GMT -=> On 1 May 91 16:28:53 GMT, achilles@unixland.uucp (David Holland) said: [...] DH> O The Atari 400 has a BASIC interpreter available on pop-in DH> cartridge. Short of assembler, I'm not sure what other languages DH> are (or were) available. Ummm... OSS had a number of languages, including an improved BASIC (BASIC A+) and Action! (a cross between BASIC, Pascal, and 6502 which compiled). Other languages available were FORTH (in both disk and cartridge), Pascal, C, Modula-2, a micro-COBOL, and I think a FORTRAN kicked around for a while.. DH> The Atari 400 has a big brother, the Atari 800. This machine DH> has a full travel keyboard (in place of the 400's membrane type), DH> and came with 32KB memory as opposed to the 400's 16KB (someone DH> please correct me if I'm wrong). You're wrong. :-) Both the Atari 400 and the Atari 800 shipped with 16K of RAM. You could easily expand the 800, though, because it had a number of (damn! I can't remember how many -- four total, I think) slots which the OS cartridge, memory cartidges (often 32K), and the occassional 80-column adapter could plug into. The 400 was more difficult, since it involved prying open the case, and using bare boards. DH> Peripherals are attached to these two machines in daisy chained DH> fashion, sort of like SCSI devices (is this correct?). One DH> device was plugged into the processor, the next was plugged into DH> the first device, and so on. Well, they were daisy-chained, but I wouldn't call 'em SCSI.. :-) You could put up to four 810 drives on one computer (possible device IDs on the drive), along with hanging off an 850 I/O interface, which provided you with four serial ports and a Centronics parallel printer port. There was also the (in)famous Atari 410 tape recorder/player. DH> These two machines had some really fantastic video game software DH> available. I do believe that the modern Atari home video game DH> machines have their heritage in the 400 and 800. Well, sort of, in that the Atari 65XE game machine was initially released as an updated 64K version of the 800.. The 5200 used a (very) similar chipset (as indicated by the fact I had a couple of games someone dumped off a 5200 cartidge and ran on an 800). I can't remember what the 7800 had in it, although I would suspect it was similarly based. They were good little machines, though -- right on the cutting edge for a while.... -dg- -- "Look, folks, you can't save everyone. | Dave Goldblatt [daveg@clearpoint.com] Just try not to be living next to | Software Engineering (Subsystems) them when they go off." | Clearpoint Research Corporation - Dennis Miller | 35 Parkwood Dr., Hopkinton, MA 01748