gdtltr@vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Gary D Duzan) (06/27/89)
Turbo 816 Review
----------------
I paid $114 for version 1.1. It took a little over a week to get here
including a delay for my check to clear the bank. Installation isn't bad. If
your ROMs and CPU are soldered in, you need to desolder them and solder in
sockets. There is also one wire to solder from the CPU socket to another chip.
That is about it. There is a dual PROM (old OS/new OS switch) option which
requires piggybacking the two OS chips (quite messy, I avoided it).
I am currently running WITHOUT the T-816 installed. Reason: it doesn't get
along well with my ICD MIO. It works to some degree, but the RAMdisk frequently
gets corrupted and the R: device has some problems at times. I will be
contacting DataQue within the next couple of days to see if anything can be
done to remedy this problem. There is mention in the (minimal) documentation
of this and other problems and that they would work on them.
From what I could tell when the T-816 was installed, there will be little
advantage of having one until T-816 specific software comes out. I couldn't
detect much increase in speed in most cases (though BASIC programs ran a bit
more quickly). Programs written for the T-816 will be more compact and run
faster. The Turbo-OS looks pretty good. There are a few problems such as a
slightly different handling of Shift-Control sequences, but overall a very
good job. Most software I tried worked perfectly.
The bottom line is: if you want immediate satisfaction, the Turbo 816 may
fall short expectations. However, the future for this product looks very
bright. If you are looking to the future, buy one now and send a signal to
DataQue that you are interested in the future expansion. Otherwise, I would
suggest that you save your money.
Gary Duzan
Time Lord
Third Regeneration
Atari Enthusiast Extreme
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