Atari XL Computers
Peripherals

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The XL systems were the marketed by Atari shortly before the takeover by the Tramiel family.  Here is a look at some of the devices that Atari released for use with the XL computers.

Atari 1050 Floppy Drive - This was the floppy drive released with the XL line.  It was a single sided drive.  Atari hadn't designed a double density drive yet, despite the fact that 3rd party companies like Indus and Rana already had double density drives for the Atari systems.  This unit shipped initially with DOS 3.0, which used a strange "density and a half" format that was completely incompatible.  Later, the drive shipped with DOS 2.5, and upgrade of the existing DOS 2.0s. 

Atari 1010 Tape Drive - Tape drives had always been a cheap alternative to diskette drives.  This was a much smaller unit than the previous Atar1 410 drive.

According to Atari specifications, these recorders load/save data at roughly 600 baud, and store approximately 100k bytes on a standard 60 minute audio cassette.   The tape drive also had a three digit counter, and a four track record/playback head with a digital (data) channel, and an audio channel.  The audio channel allowed special tapes to play music while loading a program.

There were two different versions of this drive.  One used a tape mechanism from Sanyo, and the other used a tape mechanism from Chelco.   Both of the 1010 units are identical, except the PAUSE and EJECT buttons have been reversed.

Atari 1030 Modem - This was a direct connect 300 baud modem.  This device came with 3 telecom applications:  AModem, DiskLink, and T-Scope. 

Atari 1025 Printer - This was a 9 pin, 80 column tractor feed dot matrix printer for the XL line.  It used an older style spool ribbon despite the fact that most of the printers of the era (Epson, Star, etc.) had already moved on to the newer cartridge style ribbons.

This printer was made by Okidata.

Atari 1020 Printer - This was the only color printer that Atari ever released.  There were others on the drawing board, but this one was the only one to hit the market.

The Atari 1020 Color Printer featured 40 column printing, and used 4 color pens to create up to 256 colors.   The printer was small and quiet.    It came packaged with AtariGraphics program.  One of the nice things about this printer is that it required no special drivers.   This printer was made by Alps.

Atari 1027 Printer - The 1027 was a nice little unit.  It was an 80 column letter quality impact printer for the 8-bit line.   It used a pressure feed mechanism that used standard typing paper fed manually one sheet at a time  The 1027 design uses five wheels on a spindle, each wheel containing characters. These spin over the paper, stopping to press against the ribbon and paper after receiving the proper codes.  The great advantage was that the printer cost somewhere under $300, which was cheap at the time.  The 1027 really was a typewriter-quality printer.  It also plugs directly into an 8-bit Atari computer, and did not require fancy interfaces or cables. 

On the downside, it would take over 7 minutes to print a full page.  The dot-matrix printers of the same era could do the same in under a minute. It only accepted one piece of paper at a time.

This printer was made by Alps.

Atari 1029 Printer - This was another 80 column dot matrix printer for the XL line.  This particular model used a 7 pin print head, and was identical to the Commodore MPS-801 printer, except for the Atari interface, of course.  It was available for a short period of time in Europe, but was never sold in the U.S.

Atari 1064 RAM Expansion Unit - To the best of my knowledge, this was the only "Atari Produced" product that took advantage of the Parallel Bus Interface (PBI) on the XL series computers.  Atari did have other products in development to take advantage of the PBI, but none of them ever hit the market.

The Atari 1064 module was designed specifically for the Atari 600XL computer.  (This product would not work on the other systems in the XL line.)  It gave the 600XL a memory boost.  It added 64k of RAM to the existing 16k of RAM in a 600XL, for a total of 80k. 

The module does have a passthrough port at the rear.  This would allow additional Parallel Bus Interface (PBI) devices to be attached to the back of the unit.

Oddly enough, this unit is an off-white color, and doesn't quite match up with the color scheme of the other XL series devices.

Atari Touch Tablet - This was another good idea by Atari.  You would draw on the tablet using the attached stylus, and the image would appear on the screen.  This was marketed towards kids, and artists.  The unit was bundled with graphics software called "Atari Artist."  Sorry for the awful photo.

Atari Trak-Ball Controller - This was a home version of the trackball used by Atari arcade games.  It is almost identical to the trackball marketed for the 2600, except it has the same color scheme as the XL systems, and larger fire buttons.  This device was typically used for games such as Missile Command and Centipede.

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Atari CX-75 Light Pen - This is a smaller and lighter version of the Atari CX-70 light pen that was available for the 400/800 computers.  The light pen was the predecessor to the modern day mouse.  It was supposed to be used as a pointing/touching device for on screen buttons, menus, etc.  It was felt that this would be a good device for integrating computers and inventory control systems.   Drawing/drafting applications were possible too.  The light pen was yet another cutting edge technology that Atari made available to the masses.