24 Nov
1998
24 Nov
'98
1:48 p.m.
Aaron Christopher Finney <A_Finney(a)wfi-inc.com>
wrote:
I finally got an ATR8000. Man, I dreamed of having one of these every
night, reading the SWP brochure until it literally fell apart. Every time
I went to buy one on ePay, someone would come along and push the price
*way* beyond what I wanted to pay. Anyway, I just got one for $60 (I know
many of you think that's still ridiculously high, but I've been waiting
~12 years for one of these things) that came with a giant stack of disks,
manuals, and cables. The usual CP/M stuff; Wordstar, Supercalc, etc.
Unfortunately, I'm at work and have to wait a few hours before I can try
it out.
Well, at least now I will stop harrassing everyone who posts to the list
about picking one of these things up for $5...
How about the ATR Co-Power II? The one I found recently has an 8088 and
256K RAM, so I presume it was intended let an Atari run MSDOS. It looks
like it dates from around 1984. Can you comment a bit more on the history
of these ATR second processor cards and do you happen to know how many
different types they eventually made?
Arlen Michaels amichael(a)nortel.ca
24 Nov
24 Nov
2:54 p.m.
On Tue, 24 Nov 1998, Arlen Michaels wrote:
How about the ATR Co-Power II? The one I found
recently has an 8088 and
256K RAM, so I presume it was intended let an Atari run MSDOS. It looks
like it dates from around 1984. Can you comment a bit more on the history
of these ATR second processor cards and do you happen to know how many
different types they eventually made?
As Homer would say, "Mmmmm....Co-Power II...."
(drool)
This is an ATR8000 with a CO-POWER upgrade board. Like you said, it was
an 8088 upgrade with 256k RAM and let you run MS-DOS and CP/M-86. In CP/M
mode, you could use the extra memory as a RAMdisk. It wasn't just for the
ATR8000; they also made them for Kaypro, Osborne, Xerox, Zorba, and
Bigboard. Retail price circa 1985 for the CO-POWER-Plus board (is this
the same as the original CO-POWER-88 upgrade?) was $495 for the 256k
model, $575 for the 512k model, $655 for the 768k model, and $735 for the
1024k model. It came with some neat features, like programs to transfer
files between CP/M and MS-DOS disks, MS-DOS screen drivers, and
auto-recognition of the CP/M machine's printer/modem ports.
As far as I know, the 8088 upgrade was the only upgrade commercially
available for the ATR (I heard about some homebrew HD interface stuff). If
anyone has any info on any other upgrades/hacks, I'd love to hear about
them...
For 1985, this thing was pretty damn cool. For under $1200 (the ATR800
itself was $399) you added a high-speed serial port and a 64k buffered
parallel port to your Atari, gained the ability to use virtually any
floppy drive (even 720k 3 1/2"), got a CP/M computer with 64k ram
displayed in 80 columns on your Atari screen, and an IBM-PC with a whole
meg of RAM! Plus, you can use it as a stand-alone computer by hooking up a
terminal to the "Computer-In" SIO port, no Atari required!
What an I saying...this thing is pretty damn cool in *1998*...
I got a bunch of price-lists/product brochures with this one, and will
scan it all and make it available in the next few days for anyone
interested. BTW, does someone have the actual owner's manual for it? Funny
enough, with all these books and papers, the only thing I am really
missing is the honest-to-god owners manual. A scan or copy of one would be
much appreciated.
Aaron
3:31 p.m.
On Tue, 24 Nov 1998, Aaron Christopher Finney wrote:
On Tue, 24 Nov 1998, Arlen Michaels wrote:
Well, I do not know about how the SWP Co-Power was on the Atari, but on
the Kaypro it was MSDOS compatible. However, if the application made
direct (PC) BIOS calls it would crash. So, in that sense, it was not PC
compatible.
- don
How about the ATR Co-Power II? The one I found
recently has an 8088 and
256K RAM, so I presume it was intended let an Atari run MSDOS. It looks
like it dates from around 1984. Can you comment a bit more on the history
of these ATR second processor cards and do you happen to know how many
different types they eventually made?
As Homer would say, "Mmmmm....Co-Power II...."
(drool)
This is an ATR8000 with a CO-POWER upgrade board. Like you said, it was
an 8088 upgrade with 256k RAM and let you run MS-DOS and CP/M-86. In CP/M
mode, you could use the extra memory as a RAMdisk. It wasn't just for the
ATR8000; they also made them for Kaypro, Osborne, Xerox, Zorba, and
Bigboard. Retail price circa 1985 for the CO-POWER-Plus board (is this
the same as the original CO-POWER-88 upgrade?) was $495 for the 256k
model, $575 for the 512k model, $655 for the 768k model, and $735 for the
1024k model. It came with some neat features, like programs to transfer
files between CP/M and MS-DOS disks, MS-DOS screen drivers, and
auto-recognition of the CP/M machine's printer/modem ports.
As far as I know, the 8088 upgrade was the only upgrade commercially
available for the ATR (I heard about some homebrew HD interface stuff). If
anyone has any info on any other upgrades/hacks, I'd love to hear about
them...
For 1985, this thing was pretty damn cool. For under $1200 (the ATR800
itself was $399) you added a high-speed serial port and a 64k buffered
parallel port to your Atari, gained the ability to use virtually any
floppy drive (even 720k 3 1/2"), got a CP/M computer with 64k ram
displayed in 80 columns on your Atari screen, and an IBM-PC with a whole
meg of RAM! Plus, you can use it as a stand-alone computer by hooking up a
terminal to the "Computer-In" SIO port, no Atari required! What an I saying...this thing is pretty damn cool in
*1998*...
I got a bunch of price-lists/product brochures with this one, and will
scan it all and make it available in the next few days for anyone
interested. BTW, does someone have the actual owner's manual for it? Funny
enough, with all these books and papers, the only thing I am really
missing is the honest-to-god owners manual. A scan or copy of one would be
much appreciated.
Aaron
donm(a)cts.com
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2 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
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A_Finney＠wfi-inc.com -
Arlen.Michaels.amichael＠nt.com -
donm＠cts.com