On Tue, 24 Nov 1998, Aaron Christopher Finney wrote:
> 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!
Well, I do not know about how the SWP Co-Power was on the Atari, but on
the Kaypro it was MSDOS compatible. However, if the application made
direct (PC) BIOS calls it would crash. So, in that sense, it was not PC
compatible.
- don
> 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
>
>
donm_at_cts.com
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Don Maslin - Keeper of the Dina-SIG CP/M System Disk Archives
Chairman, Dina-SIG of the San Diego Computer Society
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Received on Tue Nov 24 1998 - 23:31:27 GMT