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From: dont@tekig1.UUCP (Don Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari
Subject: Re: atari expansion news
Message-ID: <1604@tekig1.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 5-Apr-84 22:20:20 EST
Article-I.D.: tekig1.1604
Posted: Thu Apr  5 22:20:20 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Apr-84 05:35:35 EST
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 14

X
     Isnt this the same guy who described the Cobol cartridge to plug into
the atari, last april issue?  The whole thing was a joke, and I think the
very last line of the article said so.  The basic situation is that using
the 19.2k baud provides a serious upper limit on the I/O rates.  This is not
as bad as might be expected, as most micros are obtaining about 5k baud even
when using a parallel interface, if you dont believe it, time downloading
about 20k bytes into the box and see what happens.  The floppy firmware is
just not tuned for the real speed that the controller can support.  There was
consideration of a parallel interface to the atari line, but looking at the
advantages, the idea was shelved.  (This was an independent hw outfit.)
To upgrade the current drives would require ripping out the disk controller
card in each drive and replacing it, not a cheap option.
Don Taylor