My adolescent fantasies FINALLY fulfilled!

From: Aaron Christopher Finney <A_Finney_at_wfi-inc.com>
Date: Tue Nov 24 22:54:42 1998

On Tue, 24 Nov 1998, Arlen Michaels wrote:

> How about the ATR Co-Power II? The one I found recently has an 8088 and
> 256K RAM, so I presume it was intended let an Atari run MSDOS. It looks
> like it dates from around 1984. Can you comment a bit more on the history
> of these ATR second processor cards and do you happen to know how many
> different types they eventually made?

As Homer would say, "Mmmmm....Co-Power II...."

(drool)

This is an ATR8000 with a CO-POWER upgrade board. Like you said, it was
an 8088 upgrade with 256k RAM and let you run MS-DOS and CP/M-86. In CP/M
mode, you could use the extra memory as a RAMdisk. It wasn't just for the
ATR8000; they also made them for Kaypro, Osborne, Xerox, Zorba, and
Bigboard. Retail price circa 1985 for the CO-POWER-Plus board (is this
the same as the original CO-POWER-88 upgrade?) was $495 for the 256k
model, $575 for the 512k model, $655 for the 768k model, and $735 for the
1024k model. It came with some neat features, like programs to transfer
files between CP/M and MS-DOS disks, MS-DOS screen drivers, and
auto-recognition of the CP/M machine's printer/modem ports.

As far as I know, the 8088 upgrade was the only upgrade commercially
available for the ATR (I heard about some homebrew HD interface stuff). If
anyone has any info on any other upgrades/hacks, I'd love to hear about
them...

For 1985, this thing was pretty damn cool. For under $1200 (the ATR800
itself was $399) you added a high-speed serial port and a 64k buffered
parallel port to your Atari, gained the ability to use virtually any
floppy drive (even 720k 3 1/2"), got a CP/M computer with 64k ram
displayed in 80 columns on your Atari screen, and an IBM-PC with a whole
meg of RAM! Plus, you can use it as a stand-alone computer by hooking up a
terminal to the "Computer-In" SIO port, no Atari required!

What an I saying...this thing is pretty damn cool in *1998*...

I got a bunch of price-lists/product brochures with this one, and will
scan it all and make it available in the next few days for anyone
interested. BTW, does someone have the actual owner's manual for it? Funny
enough, with all these books and papers, the only thing I am really
missing is the honest-to-god owners manual. A scan or copy of one would be
much appreciated.


Aaron
Received on Tue Nov 24 1998 - 22:54:42 GMT