Atari 1400XL

[GasMonkey]

I am looking to find the Atari 1400XL for my collection but can never seem to find it. Were there many of these machines made?

 

S

 

 

--

http://VintageAtari.com

http://VintageSega.com

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[mimo]

no

[mrnukem]

Very few were made and the ones that were never really made it to the market. I believe any of the 1400XL series are considered prototypes. (Any other vintage Atari Sages please correct me if I am wrong)

 

You can learn more here :http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/8BITS/XL/1400xl/1400.html

[GasMonkey]

Very few were made and the ones that were never really made it to the market. I believe any of the 1400XL series are considered prototypes. (Any other vintage Atari Sages please correct me if I am wrong)

 

You can learn more here :http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/8BITS/XL/1400xl/1400.html

 

Thanks, I actually thought they made a few of them for public release. Most articles I found on the 1400XL were not clear or seemed hearsay...

[JokerCPoC]

I am looking to find the Atari 1400XL for my collection but can never seem to find it. Were there many of these machines made?

 

S

 

 

--

http://VintageAtari.com

http://VintageSega.com

http://VintageNintendo.com

Only a handful of prototypes ever existed, some with cases, psu and keyboard, Some just a populated motherboard, I had bought one of the latter ones, equipped It with a 1200XL case, psu and Keyboard, tested It and eventually like a really stupid dumb dumb, sold It. It's the rarest of the rare now, Somewhere If It still a 1400XL in that modified 1200XL case as It has a full PBI bus interface too(hole cut by hand in the back for the PBI). I know where I could lay My hands on a 1200XL maybe, But I emailed the guy and I've seen no reply, So I assume that ones been sold already. So I'd just have to get an 800XL and put up with Its keyboard which of course is better than a 400 and Its stock keyboard.

[Tempest]

I've got a 1400XL circuit board, but unfortunately that's all it is. I've always wanted to see if I could build a 1400XL using a 1200XL case and some 1400XL specific parts from a friend, but I'm afraid that that is probably beyond my skills.

 

Tempest

[mos6507]

They aren't all "prototypes" per se. They made a sizeable number of finalized boards for the 1400 series that were meant to be assembled in the first run of production units but they were almost all dumped in the landfill ala E.T. So what's out there are the lucky survivors, like the one I have.

[peteym5]

Wasn't the 1400XL refined and made into the 130XE? I know they were looking to put a modem and floppy inside, but I think someone there realized it probably wont be wise since the technology for modems and disk drives were improving. If you put in a 300baud modem even in '84 would have been impractical because faster modems were coming onto the market. Also including all this stuff would have made an Atari much more expensive and you have to consider the competition of the time. Probably one of the smarter decisions made when Jack Tremial took over. Atari was already loosing money because of the '83 video game crash and loosing the price war to Commodore. Thats why you did not see the 1400XL and versions make it to market.

[+kheller2]

I believe the 130XE comes from the lineage of the 800XL-F(reddy). The 800XL-F was a 800XL using the custom Freddy chip from the 14xx designs, and I say designs because their were a few projects. From a motherboard view, you have at least a 1400, a 1450 and a 1450 TONG board.

[Bryan]

Wasn't the 1400XL refined and made into the 130XE? I know they were looking to put a modem and floppy inside, but I think someone there realized it probably wont be wise since the technology for modems and disk drives were improving. If you put in a 300baud modem even in '84 would have been impractical because faster modems were coming onto the market. Also including all this stuff would have made an Atari much more expensive and you have to consider the competition of the time. Probably one of the smarter decisions made when Jack Tremial took over. Atari was already loosing money because of the '83 video game crash and loosing the price war to Commodore. Thats why you did not see the 1400XL and versions make it to market.

 

Nope. The 130XE is simply the first XL/XE with a bank-switching RAM upgrade built in. The 1400 and up were a separate fork in the line that was killed off. The thing that made them distinct were the modem, speech synthesizer, direct floppy interface (1450) and PBI interface which was the only part that survived in later models.

[peteym5]

When the 1400 and up were being developed, Atari was being clobbered by Commodore and the probably is why these systems never made it. Atari was hurting to the point that Warner sold them to Jack Tremial. This 1400xl seem to be a 800xl in a larger case, does not have much extra for game and graphics applications. The speech synthesizer was really the only thing special available to programs. Honestly do you think putting in a proprietary modem and floppy disk unit be a wise ideal? If this floppy disk interface hooked to PC style drives, it might have been worthwhile, but Atari probably would make it so you can use their stuff and soldered everything to the motherboard. The modem was only 300 baud and you know faster modems were hitting the market. Could the modem be removed and replaced with a faster one? Those are things you have to ask. To be honest I am not overly impressed with this design.

Edited December 18, 2007 by peteym5

[Bryan]

When the 1400 and up were being developed, Atari was being clobbered by Commodore and the probably is why these systems never made it. Atari was hurting to the point that Warner sold them to Jack Tremial. This 1400xl seem to be a 800xl in a larger case, does not have much extra for game and graphics applications. The speech synthesizer was really the only thing special available to programs. Honestly do you think putting in a proprietary modem and floppy disk unit be a wise ideal? If this floppy disk interface hooked to PC style drives, it might have been worthwhile, but Atari probably would make it so you can use their stuff and soldered everything to the motherboard. The modem was only 300 baud and you know faster modems were hitting the market. Could the modem be removed and replaced with a faster one? Those are things you have to ask. To be honest I am not overly impressed with this design.

Atari found themselves torn between two business models. The target for the 800 had always been Apple, and Atari was looking at ways of making crossover machines that would combine home office capabilities with the improved graphics and sound of the A8 line. Atari was never able to match the marketing genius of Apple, however. Then the 64 came out and suddenly the market shifted to cheap hobby boxes. Atari probably made the right decision to slash all the features and release the 800XL/600XL to stay on store shelves a few more years.

[Curt Vendel]

Not really...

 

The XE's evolved from the 800XLF - which was an 800XL with Freddie chip and Basic C was redesigned into the 900XLF which became the 65XE (in fact I have several early 65XE's that have 900XLF motherboards in them.) The 130XE was a 128K version of the 65XE which an ECI connector which was a lower cost version of the XL's PBI connector. The US 65XE's came without any ECI connector and it was an uproar from user groups that there was no external expansion that caused Atari to add in the ECI on the 130XE and the later 65XE's.

 

 

 

Curt

 

Wasn't the 1400XL refined and made into the 130XE? I know they were looking to put a modem and floppy inside, but I think someone there realized it probably wont be wise since the technology for modems and disk drives were improving. If you put in a 300baud modem even in '84 would have been impractical because faster modems were coming onto the market. Also including all this stuff would have made an Atari much more expensive and you have to consider the competition of the time. Probably one of the smarter decisions made when Jack Tremial took over. Atari was already loosing money because of the '83 video game crash and loosing the price war to Commodore. Thats why you did not see the 1400XL and versions make it to market.

[Curt Vendel]

I always felt it was a mistake for Atari to have gone after the bottom feeder computer market. It had graphics and sound that were far better then the Apple, it was much more user friendly with its SIO connections. Atari needed was a higher end model with expansion slots and a detachable keyboard (two keyboard models would've been nice - a simple included version and a separately sold upgraded version with a numeric keypad and independent arrow keys)

 

It would've been far more competitive with the Apple at that point and could've then went to 3rd party companies like Bit-3 and Austin Franklin to develop 80 column and RGB cards for the newer computer.

 

Atari had the right idea for the XL's later on and with the 1090XL expansion box, but they needed to do a computer with the slots built in, no built in modem and voice synthesiser which were neat items, but totally unnecessary - the 300 baud modem was coming out in 83/84 when 1200 baud modems were becoming cheaper and more popular and instead of hardcoding a 300 baud modem, having a modem card would've been better.

 

 

 

Curt

 

When the 1400 and up were being developed, Atari was being clobbered by Commodore and the probably is why these systems never made it. Atari was hurting to the point that Warner sold them to Jack Tremial. This 1400xl seem to be a 800xl in a larger case, does not have much extra for game and graphics applications. The speech synthesizer was really the only thing special available to programs. Honestly do you think putting in a proprietary modem and floppy disk unit be a wise ideal? If this floppy disk interface hooked to PC style drives, it might have been worthwhile, but Atari probably would make it so you can use their stuff and soldered everything to the motherboard. The modem was only 300 baud and you know faster modems were hitting the market. Could the modem be removed and replaced with a faster one? Those are things you have to ask. To be honest I am not overly impressed with this design.

Atari found themselves torn between two business models. The target for the 800 had always been Apple, and Atari was looking at ways of making crossover machines that would combine home office capabilities with the improved graphics and sound of the A8 line. Atari was never able to match the marketing genius of Apple, however. Then the 64 came out and suddenly the market shifted to cheap hobby boxes. Atari probably made the right decision to slash all the features and release the 800XL/600XL to stay on store shelves a few more years.

[Bryan]

I always felt it was a mistake for Atari to have gone after the bottom feeder computer market. It had graphics and sound that were far better then the Apple, it was much more user friendly with its SIO connections. Atari needed was a higher end model with expansion slots and a detachable keyboard (two keyboard models would've been nice - a simple included version and a separately sold upgraded version with a numeric keypad and independent arrow keys)

 

I think Atari missed the window to offer a premium-priced product. The 800 wasn't very well established and the 64 was offering most of the same features and getting all the press. Atari either needed an all-new product or to slash prices. I've always wondered why they tacked all these features onto the 8-bit rather than improve the core hardware. Maybe they'd lost too many of the engineers who understood the product.

[Curt Vendel]

The engineers were there, in fact many complaining on numerous times they wanted to do more. It was marketing who kept demanding "CR" models (Cost Reduced) and kept chasing the downward trend. It was the price war of the computers and their constant cost reductions that brought them down in line with the video gaming consoles. At that point, a combination of bad software titles, a glut of cartridges, prices of consoles and computers in the same area that created a mixture for the onset of the video gaming crash.

 

 

Curt

 

I always felt it was a mistake for Atari to have gone after the bottom feeder computer market. It had graphics and sound that were far better then the Apple, it was much more user friendly with its SIO connections. Atari needed was a higher end model with expansion slots and a detachable keyboard (two keyboard models would've been nice - a simple included version and a separately sold upgraded version with a numeric keypad and independent arrow keys)

 

I think Atari missed the window to offer a premium-priced product. The 800 wasn't very well established and the 64 was offering most of the same features and getting all the press. Atari either needed an all-new product or to slash prices. I've always wondered why they tacked all these features onto the 8-bit rather than improve the core hardware. Maybe they'd lost too many of the engineers who understood the product.

[Bryan]

The engineers were there, in fact many complaining on numerous times they wanted to do more. It was marketing who kept demanding "CR" models (Cost Reduced) and kept chasing the downward trend. It was the price war of the computers and their constant cost reductions that brought them down in line with the video gaming consoles. At that point, a combination of bad software titles, a glut of cartridges, prices of consoles and computers in the same area that created a mixture for the onset of the video gaming crash.

 

It's clear that Warner didn't get it. They had bought this videogame cash-cow and didn't understand R&D and how fast the technology market moves. You either are the next wave, or you get clobbered by it.

 

Anyway, my point was that either Atari needed serious R&D to compete in the high-end arena or they needed to make cheap hobby computers and try to sell a million like Commodore.

 

At what point did Miner & Co. leave to start Amiga?

[Goochman]

IMHO, Warner/Atari never reached out to teh 3rd party world and lost their edge in the Arcade arena - when the most popular apps/games are not being released on your computer/console no one wants to buy your products. You think the C64 wouldve been as popular if EA and other major publishers didnt produce titles for it?

 

The Jag faced a similar demise - when a kid got one for XMas in '94 or '95 the parents had to return it as the popular Sony/Nintendo/Sega games werent avaible for it........

[peteym5]

I think between the Apple II, Commodore 64, and Atari 800XL, the 800XL is probably a little better. Having a faster clock speed, and a better operating system. The Atari 8-bit systems are probably a little better graphics than the C64, with the color palette and DLI abilities. If they got the 800XL out sooner at a lower price, it might have dominated.

 

Problems with Atari under Warner was they were seriously mismanaged by people who did not fully understand the computer technology and this new growing market. Plus I think they were getting greedy and corrupted. They did not want to pay the game programmers royalties and they left. The engineers wanted to make better things happen but were under the pressure of making it cheaper and people like Jay Minor had to leave.

 

When it comes to the video game consoles, I now think the 5200 was a POS. It was not directly compatible with the 8-bit computer even though it had the same chipset. Had different cartridges and joystick ports. I do agree with the statement that the XEGS is what the 5200 should have been, but was on the market way too late.

 

When Atari started loosing tons of money and Warner sold a large share to Jack Tremial, they were already a dying company. I am not say Jack was any better, but he had to take measures to save the company. I say his mistake was holding out on the 7800 and not doing more with the 8-bit. He tried to pull Atari too far from the video game market and concentrate everything into the ST (68000 based) systems.

 

I wished Atari continue to port their arcade games onto their home computers and maybe the simpler ones on the 2600. Some of those 2600 titles like E.T. and the Pac Man port sucks big time. Many people probably felt the same way I do and too many abandoned them. Yes, they could have let more 3rd party companies come in and make better games.

[eric_ruck]

You can visit a 1400XL at my house. I have a fully working one with a case, the only thing I'm missing is the 1400XL badge. I also have the lab cartridge of Telelink for it that I let KVendel dump years ago. They keyboard is acting wonky, I'm hoping it just needs the connector reseated. Haven't looked yet.

 

I bought this years ago, before my kids were born, and I haven't seen one for sale since. The person I bought it from says he fished it out of a dumpster. About the only way I'd part with it is if it were in trade for something cooler, and I don't think there are too many things that qualify.

 

It's actually not my favorite "Atari thing" that I shouldn't have. At one point I bought an Atari APX Star trophy from eBay. I wanted to win one of those very, very badly when I was a kid. Apparently one of the recipients left it at the award dinner, and the brother of the person who eBayed it was working as a waiter there, and grabbed it. No idea whose it should be, it doesn't say. I suppose if it did say I'd have to track them down and offer it back.

 

Eric

[+Allan]

You can visit a 1400XL at my house. I have a fully working one with a case, the only thing I'm missing is the 1400XL badge. I also have the lab cartridge of Telelink for it that I let KVendel dump years ago. They keyboard is acting wonky, I'm hoping it just needs the connector reseated. Haven't looked yet.

 

I bought this years ago, before my kids were born, and I haven't seen one for sale since. The person I bought it from says he fished it out of a dumpster. About the only way I'd part with it is if it were in trade for something cooler, and I don't think there are too many things that qualify.

 

It's actually not my favorite "Atari thing" that I shouldn't have. At one point I bought an Atari APX Star trophy from eBay. I wanted to win one of those very, very badly when I was a kid. Apparently one of the recipients left it at the award dinner, and the brother of the person who eBayed it was working as a waiter there, and grabbed it. No idea whose it should be, it doesn't say. I suppose if it did say I'd have to track them down and offer it back.

 

Eric

 

Any chance of you taking some nice pics of trophy?

 

Allan

Edited January 3, 2008 by Allan

[RedBeard]

It seems to me that Atari went backwards a few too many times. The VCS was getting long in the tooth; technology moves fast and it was already several years old. The 5200 was a decent follow - up, but with joystick issues and non - VCS compatibility (out of the box, no extra $), it was doomed.

 

So they're working on the 7800, right? Getting near something decent and modern. But then canned it (only to release it far too late), after giving up the market to Nintendo. Speaking of Nintendo, Atari had the opportunity to BE the name on that system, too... they were offered the distribution to the NES (nee Famicom) and passed it up!

 

Okay, they were too busy making a go of the XL lineup, trying to be a computer company, perhaps. Again, no. Eight bit was on the way out, people knew it. They made the kind of poor decisions as outlined above. Just no way to compete against C=64 by that time.

 

They decided to concentrate on the 16 bit side, but they had the Amiga chipset in hand and let that go. Well, at least they made the ST line well. So the ST was selling across the pond and in the music industry (including Donny Osmond!), they could have continued to capitalize on that. So they made the Falcon, good start. Then did they immediately place it in a Box & External Keyboard professional edition for power users / DTP? No. But surely they made a portable version to continue the MIDI and music scene market share... Well, sadly, no.

 

At a time when they could have concentrated on the computer side, they dropped all that to concentrate on a video game machine again! Aaargh! I love the Jaguar, okay, but it was the wrong decision.

 

Businesses can survive a couple bad moves. But constant bad moves, they can not. The market (especially technology) will eat them up.

 

<>< RedBeard

 

P.S. Just to show that the bad decisions weren't all used up, even the disk drive manufacturer they were sold too was lame, some third rate nonsense. Oy.

[mos6507]

Atari had the right idea for the XL's later on and with the 1090XL expansion box, but they needed to do a computer with the slots built in, no built in modem and voice synthesiser which were neat items, but totally unnecessary - the 300 baud modem was coming out in 83/84 when 1200 baud modems were becoming cheaper and more popular and instead of hardcoding a 300 baud modem, having a modem card would've been better.

 

In Atari's defense, the modem WAS a daughtercard that plugged into a socket kind of like a really early version of AMR.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio/modem_riser

 

So in theory they could have offered an upgrade down the road.

[mos6507]

At what point did Miner & Co. leave to start Amiga?

 

I think they were all gone by some time in 1980. Atari never recruited anyone of their stature to replace them even though they had more than enough money to wave around. The best engineering they got came from GCC, who were nothing but coinop piraters who Atari rehabilitated. Talent comes in unpredictable ways.

 

The odd thing is that the R&D going on in the coinop division was consistently state of the art and it's unfortunate that there wasn't more overlap between divisions. Maybe because coinop was doing mostly vectors that it was seen as incompatible with consumer. Hard to tell.

[mos6507]

they were offered the distribution to the NES (nee Famicom) and passed it up!

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Atari never ever should have released the NES even if it had the opportunity.

 

The 2600 and the 8-bit/5200 had established an aesthetic for themselves in their sound and video. The Atari 7800, although not created by Miner's team, is close enough in architecture to those machines to feel "Atari". The NES, on the other hand, has a different pixel aspect ratio, different palette system, different sprite system, totally different sounding audio, and different controller pinouts. Meanwhile, the guts of the system were hardly more powerful than anything else of that era. It was the huge ROM sizes and the mapper hardware in the carts that made the NES look more powerful than it was, and only years after Atari evaluated it.

 

Internally within Atari HQ, the idea of a company oozing with cash and R&D projects left and right (most of which to become vaporware of course) stooping so low as to take a foreign console and slap their name on it must have been a tough sell, and rightfully so. Had Atari taken this and put its label on it and released it, there would be a considerable backlash because it was so unfamiliar and be transparent to the consumer as a cheap-shot desperation move.

 

Not a great analogy, but it would be kind of like how Mattel bombed on the Aquarius. The Aquarius did suck anyway, but at the same time it was a completely different architecture from the Intellivision and was unlikely to appeal to their existing userbase, unlike the Coleco Adam which was a superset of the Colecovision. The Adam also failed, but not so much because Colecovision fans rejected it as too different.

 

You could say Atari needed a shot of creativity, but that was mostly is a SOFTWARE problem, not a hardware problem. And we all know what happened to Atari's best programmers. Out the door just like their hardware designers.

 

Nintendo's success is predicated on the void left by Atari Inc. collapsing. So the resulting battle between the 7800 (as birthed reluctantly by Atari Corp.) and the NES was never an even fight. Not even close.

 

(BTW, I'm also one of those who is not a great fan of the Atari ST because of its lack of architectural connection to earlier systems. I'm aware I'm probably on the minority on that one.)