This is an article about Various Atari 8-bits. Taken from the newsnet system. Transferred by Mike Blenkiron. Tidied by Dean Garraghty (in the very early hours of the morning, very tired, nearly asleep, but it's for the Atari so it's worth it!!)¢-----------------------------------¢¢Hmmm. I can't believe that in this newsgroup, there are still wrong answers, or at the least, incorrect ones.¢¢For the most part, the information is alright, but here is another clarification from someone who has been there from the start.¢¢The Coleen and Candy machines (Atari code names for the 400/800) came out around 1979.¢¢Here are some facts about the 400 - 16k RAM. Not user expandible. Of course you found hacks making keyboards and expanding one to at least 1Mb - 10k ROM. Almost all peripherals worked, except it's pretty hard to do any programming with DOS loaded in the computer. This was more of a computer if you couldn't afford an 800. And if anyone has 1982 copies of COMPUTE!, you'll see why Atari sold alot of 400s with the 410 Program recorder. 810 disk drives were around $450...¢¢The 800: Originally shipped with only 16k, the latest version came with a full boat 48k. Early versions had a slot door with a couple of catches to keep it shut. Since the last 800s came with 48k, they screwed them shut. The slots: Using 16k RAM boards (I even found these gems at Sears as late as 1987- still at $100 each!) you could plug an assortment of boards to get the full 48k or so, depending on your budget. For those with less cash, they had 8k boards. The Operating System was on a single 10k board, I speculate that they might make upgrades, and they were to be swapped. Better than a disk based system, and better than a hard wired in system. Didn't pan out...¢¢There were various third party products that plugged into a slot, one so that you had 80 columns among others.¢¢The 400 had one cartridge (8k) slot, the 800 had two. Originally to accomodate two cart programs (which never materialized) the right slot was unused with one exception, Monkey Wrench that had among other things, a monitor. One that might have made a two cart (16k) program, Microsoft Basic II.¢¢The 1200XL had improvements over the 400/800, but turned into an interim machine. Some improvements were great, but weren't carried into the 600/800XLs, and some were dogs.¢¢The 600/800XLs were newer versions of the 400/800, but had a parallel expansion bus, and the 600XL (16k) could be easily expanded to 64k with the 1064 cartridge. These machines have AtariBASIC built in (the infamous Revision B- last ones had Rev. C) and remnants of the 1200XL OS.¢¢The 65XE and 130XE were the Tramiel Atari versions of the 8 bit machines, the 65XE had Revision C AtariBASIC, but no Parallel Bus. The 130XE had 128k bank-switched, and had the parallel bus in a different configuration.¢¢
