This article is from the Cleveland Freenet and talks about the XEP80.¢-----------------------------------¢Article name: XEP80 Review.¢Author's name: John Castravet¢Cleveland Freenet Atari SIG¢Telnet: freenet-in-b.cwru.edu (129.22.8.38)¢By Phone: (216) 368-3888¢Type "go atari" at any menu.¢-----------------------------------¢¢¢Reprinted from the Pandora BBS (614)-471-9209¢¢¢XEP80 Review¢by John Castravet¢¢I have waited a long time for the release of the XEP80 card for the Atari computers. For all of this time I kept on feeding on various speculative articles that appeared in ANALOG Computing and Antic, The Atari Resource. All that talk about a built-in 16K or 32K of memory, increased horizontal resolution that would have made the 8 bit GEM a possibility.¢¢Finally, a few days ago I have received mine via UPS. And was I disappointed. Well, no 32K memory built-in, not even 16K.¢¢The horizontal resolution is still kept at 320 in graphics mode, while in text mode a matrix of 5X9 including descenders makes itself barely noticeable. That means that text looks almost the same as any good public domain 80 column simulator software in the public domain and on most bulletin boards. Well, maybe a little better. All this on a monochrome monitor. On a color monitor the quality is somewhat less, but the difference is not dramatic. If the signal is fed into the luminance input of a monitor with separate luminance and chroma inputs, versus the composite NTSC input of a color monitor, the quality is a little better with the former monitor. But still the picture is white on black. Oh, yes, or black on white.¢¢There was a hand written note in the package attesting to the fact that only software that uses the legal CIO vector to the E: and S: devices will work with the XEP80. This sounds like passing the blame to software authors. Of the little software that's left and supposed to be working with the XEP80 (software that does legal screen or editor access), most of it will still not work, at least properly. Why? Gone are all the features that made the Atari computer a superior 8 bit machine. Features as Display List Interrupts, Vertical Blank Interrupts and Player/Missile Graphics are all gone. They probably went to join the SETCOLOR and DRAWTO commands. All these are still accessible in the 40 column mode, but... Also gone is the <BELL>, CHR$(253) sound.¢¢The above mention note also said something about having to readjust the horizontal hold of the monitor. I had to readjust the vertical hold, while the horizontal hold just moved the picture to the right of the screen to bring in the 2 characters that were otherwise missing. The display is supposed to be 80 columns by 25 lines. A simple count revealed that it displayed about 74 columns by 23 lines. Now, this cannot be a problem with the monitor itself, since it displays the standard Atari video output in 40 column by 24 lines with ample amount of border around. Even when the 25 line from ICD's RTime 8 is displayed there is still border left on the top and bottom of the picture. So the XEP80 is over-scanning. Incidentally, forget about the familiar time and date display if you are using SpartaDos and RTime 8.¢¢Then there is the built in printer interface. I wonder how many Atari users out there who own a standard printer (parallel Centronics) do not have some kind of Atari 850, ICS's P:R Connection or some other type of printer interface. This feature alone will not probably make somebody look into the XEP80 more deeply. They might as well stuck on the front of the box an LCD watch, the type that one is used these days on seeing on almost everything.¢¢In conclusion I view the XEP80 more like a gimmick.¢¢Atari should have used the parallel port instead of the joystick port, and design it in such a way that it keeps up with the reputation the Atari computers have gained based on their graphics capability. It should have also a separate chroma/luma output as well as the composite NTSC one. Before I build some kind of a switching box, I would have to do quite a lot of plugging and unplugging of video cables.¢¢It is true, Atari makes great computers, but when it comes to peripherals you should better look at somebody else's product line. Just look at the Percom, Indus and Rana disk drives, drives that support true double density and were available before Atari introduced their own "double density" 1050 drives. Now they came out with the XF-551. Isn't it a little too late?¢¢Luckily for third party developers like ICD, OSS and Batteries Included, or just simple, regular computer hackers, who made possible 256K, 576K and even 2Meg available, we have one of the most powerful 8 bit machine there is. We, Atari users brag about our systems everywhere, trying to attract new people, while Atari comes out with something like the XEP80 or even the XE GS (a full fledged 65XE computer without the keyboard that sells for more). Come on Atari, give us a break.¢¢Let's just hope that the XF-551 drive and the SX212 modem are worth their while.¢¢
