Peripheral names

[Bryan]

I was thinking about the A8 peripheral names:

400 series: 410

800 series: 810, 815, 820, 822, 825, 830, 835, 837, 850

 

It's interesting how the naming makes the 410 seem like it's 400 specific. Also, it's obvious that 10=storage, 20=printer, 30=modem, and 50=misc. expansion. Why was 84x reserved? The joysticks were CX40's so maybe 40 was for alternative input devices. Of course, the paddles were CX30's, so....

 

EDIT: Perhaps the '40s and '80s were being skipped to avoid confusion with the leading number (that is, so there would be no 440, 480, 840, or 880).

 

Anyway, 50 became disk storage in the 1000 line, because of the problem created by the 410/810 and 60 and 90 became expansion. The 1060 was a CP/M module and the conveniently named 1064 was a RAM upgrade.

 

Were any other number decades used for something? Obviously the XE naming scheme blew this all up.

[+mytek]

The 410 was the poor man's disk drive. So I guess the thinking would be if you bought a 400 you were too cheap to buy a real disk drive. Whereas if you bought the 800, money was no object and you'd go for the 810 or 815 disk drive to complement it. Of course I'm just making all this up

 

- Michael

[+DrVenkman]

I was thinking about the A8 peripheral names:

 

400 series: 410

800 series: 810, 815, 820, 822, 825, 830, 835, 837, 850

 

It's interesting how the naming makes the 410 seem like it's 400 specific. Also, it's obvious that 10=storage, 20=printer, 30=modem, and 50=misc. expansion. Why was 84x reserved? The joysticks were CX40's so maybe 40 was for alternative input devices. Of course, the paddles were CX30's, so....

 

 

Yeah, and the Trak-Balls were CX-22, CX-53 (for the 5200) and CX-80, and the Touch Tablet was the CX-77. Can't remember what the Numeric Keypad or Light Pen were off the top of my head. I don't think input peripherals had much rhyme or reason except for two digits.

[+Stephen]

 

Yeah, and the Trak-Balls were CX-22, CX-53 (for the 5200) and CX-80, and the Touch Tablet was the CX-77. Can't remember what the Numeric Keypad or Light Pen were off the top of my head. I don't think input peripherals had much rhyme or reason except for two digits.

Back then, it was probably the number of grams of pot smoked plus coke snorted on the day when it was time to name the new item.

[Dmitry]

The original Atari 400 with 8k couldn't boot DOS, so it'd be strange to market a disk drive to the Atari 400 crowd. Now, I guess later versions came with 16k and could run a disk drive.

 

The original 800 - I don't recall how much memory it had, but since it was always expandable, would make sense to market a drive there. Why those Atari 800 folks even had CPM expansions and 80 column cards and hard drives. What didn't they have.

[+Larry]

The very first 800's also had 8K, then 16K, then jumped to 48K. (I don't recall it being offered from the factory with 32K or 40K).

 

I don't remember if the 810 disk drive was actually available when the Atari 8-bit was released. Perhaps someone else does? I didn't buy an 800 until 1982, so I was not a "pioneer." My 410 was disasterously unreliable, so I ordered an 810 after just a couple of months.

 

-Larry

[BillC]

CX-75 = light pen.

CX-85 = numeric keypad