Atarimania Forum

My understanding is that about five dozen prototypes were made, although I don't know how many survived.

A while back I heard of a guy named Strong, who apparently had five of these!

Wasn't there an official production run of 100-150 units? I heard they were very expensive to manufacture and assembled by hand.

--
Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

Well, I know that it appeared briefly in Atari catalogs and was advertised by a couple of retailers ($1600 IIRC), but I don't know whether it actually went into production.

Where are the 815s? Curt Vendel should own one, maybe John Hardie too.

I know someone else who owns one

deathtrappomegranate wrote: A while back I heard of a guy named Strong, who apparently had five of these!

Ah, now that you mention that name I remember the guy (has a huge hardware collection) - but I didn't know he has five of these 815 units...

Atari Frog wrote:Wasn't there an official production run of 100-150 units? I heard they were very expensive to manufacture and assembled by hand

That's the story I heard ... I think I read it on Curt Vendel's site.

atarimania wrote:I know someone else who owns one

A collector from France?

no YOU !

atarimania wrote:no YOU !

I still cannot believe it

Me too

If at any point any of you wish to part with said rare 815 drive, contact me,
name your price.

I seem to remember reading that at the time atari were going to release the 815 (just before the 4/800 launch) Atari entered into a joint agreement with a disk drive manufacturer and peripheral company PERCOM to agree on an ATARI disk drive standard

Unfortunately because Atari didn't launch the 815, atari's support for the standard was 'lukewarm'


Atari disk drives using the Atari manufactured standard only support the single and 1050 density format (and double/double sided double dens. for 551's), although the DCB is supported by the Atari o.s, very few Atari software publishers supported it

Atari disk drives using the PERCOM manufactured standard supports all densities except 1050 enhansed density (the only expception being the indus gt which supports 1050 enh. denisty) all percom drives incl. indus/trak data/rana etc supports the DCB

there is a 'third' standard which although follows the 'PERCOM' standard, the format for all densities and sector/interleave layout is different

Thge third standard was adopted by the manufacturers of 3rd party 810/1050 drive upgrades, i only ones i know that follows the percom standards are

Happy (810 and 1050)
Lazer/Hyperdrive etc
The Chip
USD/U S Doubler
Super Archiver/ Super Archiver 2 (1050 and 810)
The 1050 duplicator
IS Plate 1050

the european equivalent to the happy/lazer etc mods (the speedy/super speedy 1050) i am not sure if that supports the percom standard as the upgrade doesn't seem to accept or recognise the USD format (which is common in the above upgrades)