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Side note here, the Atari 800 was my first computer, and I absolutely loved every minute of it. Thanks for all your work and ingenuity, they gave me a good star

Side note here, the Atari 800 was my first computer, and I absolutely loved every minute of it. Thanks for all your work and ingenuity, they gave me a good start on a career in technology. One question: why didn’t the Atari 800 ever take advantage of the double cartridge ports?

kabdib 7y ago
My understanding was that the second cartridge slot was not a very well thought out thing. I think there was one cartridge made for it (some debugging tool?) That port cost a lot of money per unit; Atari's early efforts were not very well cost reduced. If they'd been more aggressive about cost reductions (and improving I/O speeds) they might have done much better in the market against Commodore. Instead we got more unclear hardware directions (the 1200XL's "Help" key was a prime example of the hardware group just not caring about or talking to the software folks), even more expensive machines, and a bunch of work being done by outside contractors instead of inside staff because it was easier to build empires that way. The 7200 game machine (developed by General Computer Corporation in Cambridge, IIRC) was a surprise to most of us, for instance, and not a good one.
unwiredben 7y ago
There were a few third-party cartridges that extended Atari Basic and used the second cartridge port, the most famous being Monkey Wrench by Eastern House. (http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-monkey-wrench_17607.html http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-monkey...). See this post at AtariAge about the motivation (https://atariage.com/forums/topic/71760-atari-400800-left-cartridge-what-does-it-do/?tab=comments#comment-3181158 https://atariage.com/forums/topic/71760-atari-400800-left-ca...): "According to Joe Decuir, the original idea Atari had for the 800 was that software would come with the base program (LEFT cart) and the add-on content (RIGHT cart). This way you could keep expanding an educational program with new lessons, for example. Plus, having the software in ROM would reduce the RAM requirements of the computer since nothing needed to be loaded. RAM quickly came down in price and many of the advantages of such a complex cartridge arrangement went away ."

kabdib 7y ago

My understanding was that the second cartridge slot was not a very well thought out thing. I think there was one cartridge made for it (some debugging tool?) That port cost a lot of money per unit; Atari's early efforts were not very well cost reduced. If they'd been more aggressive about cost reductions (and improving I/O speeds) they might have done much better in the market against Commodore. Instead we got more unclear hardware directions (the 1200XL's "Help" key was a prime example of the hardware group just not caring about or talking to the software folks), even more expensive machines, and a bunch of work being done by outside contractors instead of inside staff because it was easier to build empires that way. The 7200 game machine (developed by General Computer Corporation in Cambridge, IIRC) was a surprise to most of us, for instance, and not a good one.

unwiredben 7y ago

There were a few third-party cartridges that extended Atari Basic and used the second cartridge port, the most famous being Monkey Wrench by Eastern House. (http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-monkey-wrench_17607.html http://www.atarimania.com/utility-atari-400-800-xl-xe-monkey...). See this post at AtariAge about the motivation (https://atariage.com/forums/topic/71760-atari-400800-left-cartridge-what-does-it-do/?tab=comments#comment-3181158 https://atariage.com/forums/topic/71760-atari-400800-left-ca...): "According to Joe Decuir, the original idea Atari had for the 800 was that software would come with the base program (LEFT cart) and the add-on content (RIGHT cart). This way you could keep expanding an educational program with new lessons, for example. Plus, having the software in ROM would reduce the RAM requirements of the computer since nothing needed to be loaded. RAM quickly came down in price and many of the advantages of such a complex cartridge arrangement went away ."