benw@pyuxn.UUCP (10/27/83)
About the TRAK Atari drive, the following information is from
Trak's own literature:
There are three Trak drives for the Atari, the AT-1, AT-D1 and AT-D2.
The AT-1 is a double density drive that includes some nice bells
and whistles such as an LED track indicator, touch sensitive switches,
and write protect and density indicators. Upgrade kits include a parallel
printer interface with a built in 4K print buffer (upgradeable to 16K)
The AT-D1 is a SINGLE density drive with the above buttons and such,
but INCLUDES the 4K print buffer. You can upgrade to double density
and to a 16K buffer.
The AT-D2 is the top of the line, and includes the double density AND
printer buffer.
By the way, the double density is TRUE double density (176KBytes), unlike
Atari's new 1050 drive. Also, the Trak drives, like the Atari drives,
have a serial port to allow chaining of a cassette recorder, etc.
The most interesting thing about the Trak is it's "Turbo" software (their
name, not mine!). With their software (optional, I believe), the drive
reads 16 tracks at a time into the printer buffer (if it is not being
used for the printer, presumably) and the drive is intelligent enough
to look in the buffer first for a requested track. Trak claims speed
increases of up to 18 times any other Atari drive.
Other features include quicker shutdown time than the Atari drives
(4 seconds vs 8 seconds) and automatic self diagnosis, using a 1/2
second long built in diagnostic program. Diagnostic reports appear
on the screen or the printer. The drives are also about half the
size of the Atari 810's.
I have seen an ad for the Trak AT-D2 and, if memory serves, it
was about $380 dollars (no operating system with it. If you want
to use double density, I suppose you need OSA+, which Trak has
told me is completely compatible with the drive).
BY THE WAY,
my office partner has had an order in with Micro Mainframe for their
dual double density Atari drives since March, and has still not received
his order. They keep telling him that they are about to ship, but
some problem or another keeps cropping up. Has anyone out in netland
actually RECEIVED a Micro Mainframe Atari drive? Has anyone had
similar problems? We would be interested in hearing about them.
Ben Weber pyuxn!benw
Western Electric @BTL, PY