Since the end of 1983, Atari 600XL owners (and there are thousands of us) have been forced to deal with that dreaded demon of 16K machines: the ERROR 2-OUT OF MEMORY prompt. Frustration would set in. Then the back issues of ANALOG would be searched furiously for compression techniques which would save every single "bit" of space. Maybe, with a little luck, the program could be made fit into 16K. Well, 600XL owners take heart. The first in a series of memory expansion packages has appeared. Now your 600XL can be transformed into a member of the smart set, with 64K of RAM. (Well, not really 64K, but more on that later.)
Microbits Peripheral Products has won the race to be first with a memory board, and it has some nice features and some not-so-nice drawbacks. Most importantly it is readily available with a list price of $149.95.
The price is the first drawback of this product. My 600XL only cost me four cents more at $149.99. This price will be firm until Atari or another company makes a comparable unit. So what do you get for your investment of this week's grocery money? You get a suspiciously large box covered by the familiar dark blue MPP sleeve. Slip the sleeve off, open the box, and, sure enough, white foam! Carefully lifting the foam, you find the usual promos for more of MPP's products, a warranty registration card, and a single instruction sheet. Finally you see the unit itself and begin to understand why the box is so big.
The MPP memory board is fully l" thick, 3 1/2" wide, and 7" long! The unit is completely sealed except for the connector which clearly slips into the parallel bus on the back of the 600XL. Here is another drawback. For the money, why isn't there a duplicate card edge connector on the back edge of the memory unit? Once plugged in, it occupies all of the Atari bus with no further optional connections available.
A few warnings should be mentioned at this point. First: don't lift the 600XL with the expander plugged in! It is heavy and will most likely snap off at the bus. The unit has no firm support and flops very easily. Second: never insert or remove the board with the power on. If you do you stand a chance of losing your memory! Finally: don't try to open the case. It is firmly sealed and tampering with it will break it! I guess MPP doesn't want us to know how little (component-wise) is packed into this large, heavy unit!
If you're like me, you don't own a computer desk, and usually use your child's tea table as a desk. In this case, I recommend you cut a piece of 3/8" plywood (1/4" is too flimsy) 12" wide by 18" long, sanded it, stained it and set my 600XL with its memory board attached onto this tray. Now I can lift my computer without fear of breaking off the board, by simply lifting the tray.
After all these criticisms, do I have any positive observations? You bet I do! My 600XL finally has enough memory to effectively run peripherals like printers, disk drives, modems, etc. This makes the criticisms minor and easy to accept. The installation instructions are concise and well written, and cosmetically the board fits in fairly well with my 600XL.
![[Picture of Microram 64K board]](microram_64.jpg)
Microram 64K Memory Board
Now, a note about what exactly 64K means to a 600XL. It means 37902 bits of available RAM while using the built-in BASIC. Machine language programs up that availability to about 52K, but Atari and others have promised us many new software products to take full advantage of the available RAM. I'm waiting with excitement.
So after all is said and done, do I recommend you buy MPP's memory board? Yes. If you can afford its price and feel it's an acceptable trade-off for increased RAM, go buy it. If your wife, girl friend or mother refuses to let you spend the grocery money on "more K's," then wait a bit. I'm sure more of the same from other sources is on its way, and surely for less money.