UK launch prices 
Atari 800 £600  
Atari 400 £300  

1982 Price cuts  
Atari 800 £400  
Atari 400 £200  

1987  
Atari XE £120 

• Tech Specs 

Atari 400  
16k RAM  
'touch sensitive' keyboard  

Atari 800 
48k RAM  
1.8 mhz 6502 processor  
'Real' keyboard  
255 colours, 16 max  
graphics: 11 text/graphics modes  
sound: 4 voices, 3 other parameters, 5 octaves  

Atari XL range 

Atari 600XL

 

1010 Datacassette Unit

The XL range was Atari's first attempt to update their ageing 8bit range. The first computer in the series, the 1200XL, was never released in Europe and the 600XL was underpowered and had only a limited impact in the crowded British computer market.  

The 800XL, however, had more success. The computer was far more capable than the earlier Ataris, and although it never sold anywhere near as many units as the Spectrum, Commodore 64 or BBC, the 800XL was respected amongst the gaming community.  

Atari 800XL with 1050 Disc Drive

Atari 130XE 

Atari 130XE

The 130XE heralded the end of the Atari 8bit line. In an ST style case, and with a 'softer' style keyboard, the 128k 130XE was an impressive machine, but as it was released at the time when games players were eagerly counting their pennies in anticipation of the new 16bit machines, reaction was muted.  

Atari XE  

Atari XE

Cut down console version of the 130XE   Keyboard expansion and cassette datacorder available   64k RAM   Compatible with most 8bit Atari computer cartridges

• History 

A range of amazingly capable machines that suffered due to Atari's poor pricing policy. In the UK, the original 800 and 400 didn't stand a snowball's chance against the far cheaper British machines.  

Games too were pricey - as the Ataris were only ever minority computers in the UK, most software was imported from the US where games players were prepared to spend far more for their latest blast. An additonal problem was that British users, weaned on the Spectrum or ZX81 were used to using Cassettes as data storage and resented paying out extra for disc drives, thus missing out on many of the more impressive games from the US.  

• The Software 

Scans kindly provided by Nick Hayday. Visit his web site.

• How do I emulate this? 

MacOS  
Rainbow (shareware)  
web: http://www.cityscape.co.uk/users/jx91/emulators.html  

PC  
Rainbow 95 (shareware)  
web: http://www.cityscape.co.uk/users/jx91/emulators.html  

Xformer (freeware)  
web: http://www.halcyon.com/brasoft/  

XL-it 
web: http://myst.slcc.edu/~markus/cgi/dl.cgi  

• People 

Jeff Minter/Llamasoft  
Paul Woakes ...coming soon  
• Links to Atari WWW Sites