815 disk drive

Post by **deathtrappomegranate** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 5:33 pm

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!

Post by **Atari Frog** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 7:07 pm

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

Post by **deathtrappomegranate** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 7:11 pm

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.

Post by **atarimania** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 8:12 pm

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

I know someone else who owns one

Post by **deathtrappomegranate** » Mon Sep 13, 2004 10:22 pm

Post by **Andre** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 8:15 am

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?

Post by **atarimania** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 11:47 am

no YOU !

Post by **Andre** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 12:59 pm

atarimania wrote:no YOU !

I still cannot believe it

Post by **atarimania** » Tue Sep 14, 2004 2:13 pm

Me too

joeventura · Post by **joeventura** » Wed Sep 27, 2006 12:20 am

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

carmel_andrews · Post by **carmel_andrews** » Thu Oct 19, 2006 9:51 am

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)

815 disk drive

815 drives