Hardware add-ons for the Atari have
been few and far between in this country with little being imported
for fear of incompatibility and little interest being shown by British
Companies. Suddenly, a new company, W. E. Electronics has produced
four add-ons for the XL computers with the promise of more to come. So
far produced are a cassette interface to allow ordinary cassette
players or hi-fi decks to be used for storage, a printer interface, a
speech synthesiser and a 32k RAM expansion for the 600XL. Let's take a
look at each in turn.
CASSETTE INTERFACE
The unit is quite compact and plugs
into the serial I/O port of the computer and then, via a choice of
leads into either a standard portable cassette recorder or a Hi-Fi
stereo recorder with provision for remote control of the cassette
motor if the recorder allows this. Programs can be loaded or saved in
the normal way and the unique Atari 'sound track' facility is
retained. Using a non-Atari recorder means that you will initially
have to experiment with volume levels to ensure successful recording
but once this has been mastered, the settings can be left or noted for
future use. Good results can be obtained but the use of a non-Atari
cassette does tend to be a bit fiddly. Obviously the unit is aimed at
those owners who have had troubles with their Atari Program Recorders
(and there are many) who will no doubt be willing to put up with a
little more inconvenience in order to successfully load and save
programs. The price is £19.95 which is perhaps a little high and you
need to specify which type of cassette you intend to use.
PRINTERFACE
Interfaces for printers are generally
very expensive so this one at £33.95 may look attractive. Again the
unit is very compact and plugs into one joystick port via a very short
lead with 2' 6" of ribbon cable to the printer. The design works
well on the XL models although it is difficult to use on the 400 and
800 as it sticks out at the front of the joystick ports. The main
drawback to this type of printer interface is that it is software
controlled and requires to be booted each time it is used. A boot
cassette is provided for this purpose although the full source code is
provided both in the documentation and on the cassette enabling anyone
familiar with machine language to amend it for disk use or, more
adventurously, use the interface to drive other devices. The interface
works well with all the normal BASIC print commands and is a full
8-bit allowing graphics dumps to be performed on a suitable printer.
Whilst it is compatible with AtariWriter there would be difficulty
using it with a printer driver which itself needs to be booted up for
use. If you have a limited system and cannot afford the price of a
printer and an interface, the Printerface would no doubt suit you. The
penalty for the saving in cost is the inconvenience of booting up each
time and some limitations such as mentioned with AtariWriter but it
should provide the means to access a printer at about half the cost of
a normal interface.
SPEECH SYNTHESISER
Speech synthesisers for 8-bit micros
are not greatly sophisticated and require considerable programming to
be able to achieve good results. They are however great fun and you
can spend many interesting hours perfecting programs, trying different
spellings and timings to achieve quite good results. The
W.E.E. synthesiser is allophone
based which mean that it produces individual speech sounds rather than
full words and therefore has an unlimited vocabulary. All you need to
do is string different sounds together by poking a couple of locations
with a number which represents a particular sound. You need to
understand the construction of speech and a comprehensive set of notes
is provided for this purpose. These need to be read fully and then
kept for reference to get the best results from the synthesiser. A
cassette of demo software is provided which includes three programs
which can be listed out to show you how to write programs of your own.
The first program is the complete alphabet. The second is a
demonstration of words and the third a simple children's game of
guessing numbers. The speech on these is quite recognisable but could
be improved with further programming.
I tried the unit out with a ready made
program allowing sentences to be typed in and found that the results
were good although words occasionally needed to be spelled in a
different manner, for example doubling or tripling letters for the
correct emphasis. This could however be incorporated in the program
and the right combination will be found by experimentation and
practice.
Many people think that you can buy a
Speech synthesiser, plug it in, type a question and get an answer! It
is not that simple and you do need to know how to program (not
necessarily on a complex level) but, with patience, the W.E.E. Speech
Synthesiser will give you hours of enjoyment. The unit works well, is
adequately documented and is a cheaper alternative, at £38.95, than
those originally available from the U.S.A. Perfect for the late night
compulsive programmer who gets a bit lonely!
600XL RAM EXPANSION PACK
At last a RAM expansion for the 600XL
which is cheaper and, hopefully, easier to get hold of than Atari's
own. Not much you can say about a RAM pack except that the unit is
fitted upright instead of out flat which makes it more compact and
that it works well as a RAM expansion. Note the word expansion
for, unlike Atari's 64k module which is a complete 64k memory, the
W.E.E. RAM pack adds an extra 16k or 32 k. What this means is
that some (a very few) programs which switch out the XL operating
system will not run. Fortunately these are quite rare and you may not
have any problems. If you write your own programs or use magazine
programs you should never have any problems and the overwhelming
majority of commercial software will be alright. We have had one
attached to a 600XL for a couple of months and it has performed
perfectly. You still get the same amount of user RAM as on an 48k 800
or an 800XL. Prices are £52 for a 16k expansion (which may be
upgraded) or £66 for a 32k pack.
Further details of these products can
be obtained by sending a large s.a.e. to W.E.Electronics, 19, North
Street, Emsworth, Hants.
NOTE Certain prices have been
reduced since this review was prepared.
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