It's a small ATARI world - RAMBIT!

[+therealbountybob]

A small Atari tale...

 

After spending most of my adult life living in the relatively small village of Thurlby Lincolnshire I remembered seeing when I re-read the Page 6 mags last year that there was a company called RAMBIT in Thurlby. I thought I remembered the address but wasn't sure as it was The Green which was the bit in the village that isn't just a single street... anyway... I'd been keeping my eye out on a particular house as I did my regular local walks but never saw anyone there until Sunday, when I'd been dropped off at the local shop after watching a mates son play football... So armed with a pint of milk and a flask and several extra cups I looked at this lady who was standing outside the front of the property and (resisting the temptation to blurt out RAMBIT!) said I had an Atari (hoping she wouldn't call the police) and explained and she smiled and called her husband down from a ladder (replacing guttering) who was Mr.Davidson (I think) who was indeed the person behind RAMBIT - they were the turbo load hardware mods for the cassette drives...

 

Unfortunately he had recently got rid of his atari stuff (though he still has his notes / paperwork); I hadn't the heart to ask if it was thrown away. He was probably in his 60s now and had lived in the village for 40 years (when it was a little village before us city folk had runined it - he didn't say that!) I explained that I ran the high score club and there was still great support for our little machines... He wasn't a computer user now and didn't use the internet at all. Makes me wish I'd done this 10 years ago, but better late than never. He and his wife live in a house dating back to the 1800s (though he's extended/renovated it) and they are waiting for some decent weather to do a hot air balloon ride that has been cancelled several times! Up Up and Away

 

Was wondering if anyone here used their products or knew him?

[Fox-1 / mnx]

Same as with you.

 

I know the RamBit Turbo as I saw it advertized in a non-Dutch Atari magazine (must be Page6/Analog I think) but never had one. It was briefly noticed once in a Dutch magazine in an article about a software-based turbo loader (Kees Beekhuis) and that's about all I know about RamBit.

[Tickled_Pink]

Nice story. Would be interesting if it was possible to make copies of his notes to see if there was anything of interest to the community. I certainly remember the ads.

 

Good to see that they seem to have done alright for themselves.

[+therealbountybob]

Nice story. Would be interesting if it was possible to make copies of his notes to see if there was anything of interest to the community. I certainly remember the ads.

 

Good to see that they seem to have done alright for themselves.

Next time I see him I'll ask him if I can take then and get them scanned in somewhere

[Tin_Lunchbox]

A small Atari tale...

 

<text clipped for brevity>

 

He and his wife live in a house dating back to the 1800s (though he's extended/renovated it) and they are waiting for some decent weather to do a hot air balloon ride that has been cancelled several times! Up Up and Away

 

Was wondering if anyone here used their products or knew him?

 

That's a great story, thanks for sharing it. I wasn't familiar with Rambit, I take it to be some circuitry that speeds up cassette-tape loading on the 410, the 1010, and whatever the other ones were. That's a nifty mod, but to me the niftiest yet would be a mod that allows loading from various places on the cassette, like a disk drive. In other words it would have some kind of smart rewind/fast forward capability. I guess no-one ever did that.

[+orpheuswaking]

I have the Rambit Taskmaster disk that I got from them via mailorder

[kixs]

I used Rambit extensively back in the days. Me and my brother even made some circuits for XC12. It was great to fit 20 games to cassette. I sold my Atari stuff in 1991 when I switched to PC's. A few years later I've seen the first emulators emerge and then realized that selling it was a mistake. Now I have it again, but just can't find the one that is without faults.

 

Yeah I have nice memories of Rambit.

[RambitDescendent]

Rambit was created by my dad, yes seriously 

I spent much of my free time playing hundreds of "fast" loaded games on the Atari.

Surname was close, but not correct 

[djmat56]

I currently have a Rambit upgrade installed in one of my 1010s. Did upload a video a couple of years ago of it loading a game from tape that was only ever released on Disk - Master of the Lamps.

Fond memories back in the day loading games so quickly.

[Fred_M]

I have a Rambit in my 1010 too. I bought and installed it myself back in the day. It was a wonderful piece of engineering. I remember that Micro Discount (Derek Fern) sold commercial tapes with the Rambit version on the b-side.

 

More information can be found on Atariwiki, I created this page many years ago: https://atariwiki.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Rambit Turbocharger for Atari Datarecorders

[pseudografx]

On 1/24/2012 at 7:23 PM, Tin_Lunchbox said:

 

That's a great story, thanks for sharing it. I wasn't familiar with Rambit, I take it to be some circuitry that speeds up cassette-tape loading on the 410, the 1010, and whatever the other ones were. That's a nifty mod, but to me the niftiest yet would be a mod that allows loading from various places on the cassette, like a disk drive. In other words it would have some kind of smart rewind/fast forward capability. I guess no-one ever did that.

In former Czechoslovakia, there was a tape recorder "KZD-1" that could be interfaced with various computers including Atari, which could do exactly that. Here's a quick translation from this site:
https://pmd85.borik.net/wiki/KZD-1&setlang=en

Quote

"The KZD-1 cassette tape data recorder was manufactured by the ZPA Košíře cooperative and was used for fast data recording by sequential access. The medium used was a standard cassette tape, which had to be formatted before first use. The mean recording and reading speed is 48 cm/s, 96 cm/s for block seek, while the transmission speed itself reaches 10 kbps. Two versions were produced, the first in a table-top design for 230V mains power, the second (labelled KZD-1P) in a panel-mounted (built-in) design, requiring power from an external source (+5V, +15V, -15V, +12V)."