Knisely@his-phoenix-multics.arpa (04/10/84)
When Atari announced the XL line a year ago, there was an expansion card box to be available. It was to have the capability to handle a number of expansion cards connected to the parallel bus. It WAS real, not a joke -- and has been dropped. See the discussion in Info-World of two weeks ago and about 4-5 weeks ago. The CP/M box was also real -- product literature with descriptions and pictures of the prototypes handed out at CES -- and it's dead, too. Atari currently has no product to use the parallel expansion bus on the 800XL that I know of, and only the memory expansion for the 600XL. Third party companies seem to be taking a wait and see approach, ie: will the XL sell well enough to keep Atari in business in spite of themselves? The comments on the "serialness" of the Atari drives is accurate, but one *potentially* interesting possibility was omitted. The 1450XLD machine, still alive officially but barely, has/would have had a built in drive which appeared to be a 1050 with a new controller to allow it to be hooked into the parallel bus. The second empty slot is/would have been wired for a second drive for expansion. The drive is also supposed to be double sided, so it might not be a 1050 at all, despi e appearances. I wish I could figure out what this company has in mind -- there has been so much largely untapped potential in the Atari line all along. It justs frustrates me that they persist in marketing it like it was only a games machine! .... sigh .... Dick K.