Anyone Know What This Is?

[Mendon]

Saw this auction and it contains a cartridge I haven't heard of before or know anything about. Anyone know what this is or seen this before?

 

Educational System Master Cartridge

 

Mendon

[deathtrappomegranate]

This, I think, was a joint project between Atari and another company.

 

The deal was that you would load the cart, which would then control the cassette deck to play back audio that went with the on-screen visuals.

 

Quite an advanced concept for the time. I believe that there are more than two dozen cassettes that were made for this. I have a couple somewhere.

[Mendon]

This, I think, was a joint project between Atari and another company.

 

The deal was that you would load the cart, which would then control the cassette deck to play back audio that went with the on-screen visuals.

 

Quite an advanced concept for the time. I believe that there are more than two dozen cassettes that were made for this. I have a couple somewhere.

 

Very interesting. Gonna do a web search and see if I can find more info. Never heard of anything like that before.

 

Thanks for the info, Death!

 

Mendon

[oesii]

The deal was that you would load the cart, which would then control the cassette deck to play back audio that went with the on-screen visuals.

 

 

Don't the Atari Foreign language tapes do something similar without a cart? Or is it more advanced?

[belboz]

The deal was that you would load the cart, which would then control the cassette deck to play back audio that went with the on-screen visuals.

 

 

Don't the Atari Foreign language tapes do something similar without a cart? Or is it more advanced?

 

I know the foreign language cassettes control the cassette. They would pipe the tape recorder audio of the person speaking certain phrases and control playback when appropriate.

 

I remember using that as an "in" into getting an Atari 800 way back in 79 or so when I was a kid. My parents got me the spanish cassettes. Didn't help me a bit since I immediately started programming on it and playing games (and typing them in from magazine listings).

 

Later I took Spanish in High School and learnt about as much in two years of spanish!

[oesii]

lol, funny you used it as an "in" to get that Atari. Have you seen that commercial which as the little boy learning French on the Atari 8bit in order to speak to his French grandparents, classic

 

I have the Spanish, German, and French tapes, need to pick up Italian for my set.

 

Qualcuno?

[Curt Vendel]

Saw this auction and it contains a cartridge I haven't heard of before or know anything about. Anyone know what this is or seen this before?

 

Educational System Master Cartridge

 

Mendon

 

That was Atari's first cartridge for the 400/800 line.... the Atari 410 tape recorder (and following 1010, XC11 and XC12 recorders) had a very unique feature, they were dual track tape players.... Software could load in sections on one track while audio prompts, music and so forth would play on the 2nd track.

 

They created 16 Education series packages for the cartridge, 4 foreign language packages, then there were other packaged like States and Capitals, European Coutnries & Captials and other dual track programs...

 

It was a very understated feature of the Atari's and really should've been pushed more, the education strengths that the Atari's had with that one feature alone could've really boosted their penetration into the educational markets.

 

 

Curt

[+davidcalgary29]

Actually, I believe that that's the cartridge released by Dorsett Corp. out of the licensing agreement they had with Atari. Atari's educational cartridge was released first, but I don't think that Dorsett got into the act until '81 or so.

 

Like Belboz, my parents justified the purchase of my 800 on the basis that I'd use the educational tapes to help me with my studies. I recall that I actually did use them, and was (sort of) impressed by the high-quality audio contained in most of the tapes, but noted that there was often something of a disconnect between the topic being discussed and the graphic being shown...and that the crude graphics were sometimes garbled.

 

I think that I still have a complete set of the "math" and "chemistry" tapes.

[Callipygous]

The 16 educational tapes were developed by Dorsett and marketed under the Atari brand name. This was in 1979-80. Soon the two companies agreed to desolve the arrangement. I don't know the reason for that. It may have been sales or the fact that Dorsett soon had dozens of titles. Dorsett then came out with their own cartridge, as David says. It is the same as Atari's CXL4001. I've never known what the Master cartridge actually does exactly. There seem to be almost as many different labels for Dorsett's D4001 as there are carts. For the record here is a list of the cassettes:

 

CX6001 U.S. History

CX6002 U.S. Government

CX6003 Supervisory Skills

CX6004 World History

CX6005 Basic Sociology

CX6006 Counseling Procedures

CX6007 Principles of Accounting

CX6008 Physics

CX6009 Great Classics

CX6010 Business Communications

CX6011 Basic Psychology

CX6012 Effective Writing

CX6013 not released

CX6014 Principles of Economics

CX6015 Spelling

CX6016 Basic Electricity

CX6017 Basic Algebra

[deathtrappomegranate]

The 16 educational tapes were developed by Dorsett and marketed under the Atari brand name. This was in 1979-80. Soon the two companies agreed to desolve the arrangement. I don't know the reason for that. It may have been sales or the fact that Dorsett soon had dozens of titles.   Dorsett then came out with their own cartridge, as David says. It is the same as Atari's CXL4001. I've never known what the Master cartridge actually does exactly. There seem to be almost as many different labels for Dorsett's D4001 as there are carts. For the record here is a list of the cassettes:

 

CX6001 U.S. History

CX6002 U.S. Government

CX6003 Supervisory Skills

CX6004 World History

CX6005 Basic Sociology

CX6006 Counseling Procedures

CX6007 Principles of Accounting

CX6008 Physics

CX6009 Great Classics

CX6010 Business Communications

CX6011 Basic Psychology

CX6012 Effective Writing

CX6013 not released

CX6014 Principles of Economics

CX6015 Spelling

CX6016 Basic Electricity

CX6017 Basic Algebra

 

Thanks for that listing!

 

It was a very understated feature of the Atari's and really should've been pushed more, the education strengths that the Atari's had with that one feature alone could've really boosted their penetration into the educational markets.

 

I agree. This is the sort of audio-visual learning aid that has become much more popular recently.

 

In the UK, schools mainly bought the BBC computer, and the Research Machines RML 480Z, neither of which had anything of this level of sophistication (even although these machines were introduced much later).

 

The 2-track feature of the Atari cassette machines was very cool, and very under utilised.

 

I suppose that, at a time when Atari owned half of Silicon Valley, they just saw games as the way forward. And it might have been, if it wasn't for those meddling kids (who developed third party software).