kek@mgweed.UUCP (Kit Kimes) (11/19/84)
[] Several people have commented on the new Atari prices, although even the Wall Street Journal confirms these to be the new regular prices, not just a one time deal. As for future products, several sources, including the WSJ states that Atari will announce 2 new variations for the 800XL. One will have 128K of memory built in, using bank switching. Atari will also have a 16 bit and a 32 bit machine next year. The 800XL's and the 16 bit machine should be shown at the Winter CES in January. The 32 bit machine might be announced but probably won't be available until late spring or summer. The big machines will use a new operating system called TOS (Tramiel Operating System) that has been developed by the same company that developed MDOS. In other news, Bill Wilkinson (of OSS fame), in his regular Atari column in December COMPUTE!, passes on some interesting information. It seems that Microbits is developing both a parallel floppy disk drive and a hard disk system for the 800XL. It can not be used with the older systems since it takes advantage of bus out the back. Preliminary speed measurements indicate that you may be able to read/write over 40K bytes per second to and from the disk. This would certainly make playing graphics adventure games tolerable! No announced delivery date yet because development work isn't finished. It appears, though, that both hardware and software manufacturers are developing renewed confidence in Atari, so we should see even more exciting announcements next year. Happy Computing.. Kit Kimes AT&T Consumer Products Montgomery Works Montgomery, Il. 60538-0305 ..!ihnp4!mgweed!kek