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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. (htt
by 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 ."