sumit (11/03/82)
Did you here anything about Atari discontinuing their 400 and 800 models? The replacement for the 400 will be named 600,and for the 800 , the 1000. The major difference is going to be single board construction. There is some local debate about whether the 600 will have a "real" keyboard or not. Anyway the prices are expected to match with the Commodore machines. Someone told me that the current sale of the 400 model is suffering from the introduction of the VIC-20, and that VIC is saleing about 70,000 a month! I personally HOPE that Atari will reduce the price of the Disk Drives( Commodore ones are selling for as little as $315). Or they should shove in two thin-lines in that ungainly drive cabinet for the current price. I reason for my hope is I cant decide whether to buy a far east Apple clone or an Atari. The point in favour of Apple is fxxx(stxxxx) software, of course. The best thing to do probably is wait till Xmas, when the new models should hit the market. The new Atari game machine seems to be a 400 without the keyboard.
cutler (11/03/82)
Atari told the retailers earlier in the year to expect an ATARI 600 which was described as a 400 with a real keyboard. I don't know if the 600 is still going to be released or not. The new video game (5200) is going to be (actually you can buy it now) a 400 without keyboard, with special controllers, with a stripped down OS and identical (or maybe improved) hardware. Ben Cutler decvax!yale-comix!cutler
MRC@SU-SCORE.ARPA (08/08/83)
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@SU-SCORE.ARPA>
MY sources (who I believe would rather not be identified) say
that Atari is in the 9th hardware revision of the 600 and it STILL
doesn't work. The problem seems to be unreliability due to overheating.
I can't believe that the 600XL and 800XL will be out by October,
even if they got it working today there would still be a substantial
lag time.
My source also informs me that Atari would like to sell the 600XL
for under $100. The intent is to have a cheap Atari computer once
again the way the $80 400's were, but to make money on it. Perhaps
they are making it too cheap and cutting corners on their engineering...
-- Mark --
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