jhs@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA (01/20/88)
I saw an ad in a recent Antic from a place that sells used equipment. They had the 800XL for about $64 as I recall. I don't have the address handy but can dig it up if you can't find it. New ones are still available and are under $80 in any case. Your friend might be smart to just buy a new one. Computer Mail Order or Electronic One are probably good sources. CMO: (800) 233-8950, E/O: (614) 864-9994. By the way, when you say "destroyed", do you mean he ran over it with the family pickup truck, or is it physically intact but just no longer working, for some non-obvious reason. If it's the latter, I might be interested in acquiring it for fixing up or spare parts. I'd be willing to pay a small amount for it, which would perhaps offset the cost of the replacement one. Get back to me if your friend is interested and I'll give you a phone number. -John Sangster
P4O@PSUVMA.BITNET (02/03/88)
I have a atari 800XL and run a small BBS system up in the Scranton,Pa
area. I have the 800Xl with the Newell 256K Ramdisk.
Although I think it is a great machine CMO seems to differ.
Computer Mail Order no longer carries the 800Xl series.
I tried to get one for my friend. I had to call over 20
stores to find one. Atari no longer makes them so maybe they
finally run out of them
Patrick O'Toole
Worthless Worthington Penn State Campus
njd@ihlpm.ATT.COM (DiMasi) (02/06/88)
> Patrick O'Toole writes: > I have a atari 800XL and run a small BBS system up in the Scranton,Pa > area. I have the 800Xl with the Newell 256K Ramdisk. > Although I think it is a great machine CMO seems to differ. > .... > The 800XL was (and yes, still is, as are the "old" 400 and 800) a great machine. But, what don't you like about the XE machines? The difference that most people in net.land complained about when the XE's came out (as I recall) was in the keyboards. Some people prefer the feel (or whatever you call it) of the XL keyboards to the XE. Also, the console keys on the XEs are harder to see and in a different place (which, I admit, caused my wife and I a little trouble until we got used to them. "Coloring" the first letter of each console key's name with a different-color marker on each keytop seemed to help us adapt to the console key "transplantation"). Even if you don't like the new keyboards (which we did, once we got used to them), the XEs are otherwise superior (in my opinion). Note for example, the "complete" video hookups on the monitor output jack, that is, BOTH luma AND chroma are actually wired! This means, that on a 130XE, you can get the best resolution available from any (un- hacked-on) 8-bit Atari on a compatible monitor (e.g. the recently readily available Commodore 1802C). The extra 64K of RAM (a bit less if you talk to/read Bill Wilkinson et. al.) in the 130XE is no piece of dogdoo either, especially if you have a DOS that supports a RAMdisk in that extra memory (BTW, the OMNIVIEW 80-column chip from CDY [where has he moved to?] supports that RAMdisk with any DOS as long as the DOS isn't hiding part of itself in the "old" XL 16K bank, ala DOS-XL in extended mode). (Granted, a 64K RAMdisk is not huge, but better than no RAMdisk at all! Now if I only had time to program again...) And there is some commercial/PD/? s/w that uses all that memory also (like Synfile XE, though I'm not sure what it uses it for; buffers I guess). (I won't even go into the OS and BASIC changes [improvements, mostly] to the XEs, mostly because I don't know that much about them :-). Anyone else care to take over here?) So, what you think? Was the 800XL better than the XE machines? I don't feel that way. How about the rest of you 8-bit users? Nick DiMasi Uni'q Digital Technologies (Fox Valley Software subsidiary; ^ working as a contractor at AT&T Bell Labs in Naperville, IL) ( | this is an accent mark, supposed to replace the dot over the 'i')