Atari 810
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The Atari 810 is the official
floppy disk drive A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined w ...
for the Atari 400 and 800, the first two models in the
Atari 8-bit family The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE, ...
of home computers. It was released by
Atari, Inc. Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and home computer company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Atari was a key player in the formation of the video arcade and video game industry. Based primarily around the Sunny ...
in 1980. The single-density drive provides 90 kB of storage. The 810 has a data transfer rate of 6 kbps in most cases and a number of reliability issues. Third-party enhancements such as the Happy 810 address these problems as do replacement drives like the
Indus GT The Indus GT is a -inch floppy disk drive that was introduced by Indus Systems in 1983 for the Atari 8-bit family. It was later released for the Apple II and Commodore 64. On the Atari, it was widely regarded as the best drive of the era, with ...
with more storage and other features. At the same time as the 810, Atari announced the double-density Atari 815, allowing 180 kB per disk, with two drives in one case. It was never put into full production. The 810 was replaced by the
Atari 1050 The Atari 1050 was a floppy disk drive for the Atari 8-bit family home computers, released in June 1983. It was compatible with the 90 kB single-density mode of the original Atari 810 it replaced, and added a new "enhanced" or "dual density ...
with the release of the XL series machines in 1983. It was replaced in turn in 1987 by the XF551 with a double-sided, double-density 360 kB mode.


History


Atari vs. Apple

The machines that emerged as the
Atari 8-bit family The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE, ...
had originally been designed as part of a project to develop a driver chipset for a new
games console A video game console is an electronic device that outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home consoles, which are generally placed in a permanent location connected to a t ...
. During the time the chips were being developed, the
Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...
became very popular and propelled
Apple Computer Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...
into one of the largest
initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
s of its era. Atari, recently purchased by
Warner Communications Warner Media, LLC ( traded as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City, United States. It was originally established in 1972 by ...
, had placed
Ray Kassar Raymond Edward Kassar (January 2, 1928 – December 10, 2017) was president, and later CEO, of Atari Inc. from 1978 to 1983. He had previously been executive vice-president of Burlington Industries, the world's largest textile company at the tim ...
in the CEO position in March 1978. He decided to redirect the chipset to the emerging home computer market to take on Apple. One of the key reasons for the
Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...
's success was the
Disk II The Disk II Floppy Disk Subsystem, often rendered as Disk ] '', is a -inch floppy disk drive designed by Apple Computer, Inc. It went on sale in June 1978 at a retail price of US$495 for pre-order; it was later sold for $595 () including the Di ...
, introduced in June 1978 at the very low (for the era) price of $495 () plus the interface card. The interface was based on a system
Steve Wozniak Stephen Gary Wozniak (; born August 11, 1950), also known by his nickname "Woz", is an American electronics engineer, computer programmer, philanthropist, inventor, and technology entrepreneur. In 1976, with business partner Steve Jobs, he c ...
had previously built while working at
Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
to control a
Shugart Associates Shugart Associates (later Shugart Corporation) was a computer peripheral manufacturer that dominated the floppy disk drive market in the late 1970s and is famous for introducing the -inch "Minifloppy" floppy disk drive. In 1979 it was one of the f ...
SA-400 floppy drive.
Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur, industrial designer, media proprietor, and investor. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple; the chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar; a ...
went to Shugart and asked for a stripped-down drive mechanism for $100; Shugart responded by shipping them 25 prototypes of a new model they called the SA-390. Woz's controller then provided the bits that Shugart had removed, allowing two drives to be controlled by a single card. The resulting system operated at 15 kbps, making it faster than any of the competing designs of the era.


New design

The new Atari machines faced the problem that the
Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...
(FCC) had recently introduced standards to deal with the profusion of systems that connected to televisions that were causing significant problems with interference. The new rules were extremely strict, requiring a lengthy and costly testing suite to be run against any new product and anything that connected to it. Apple avoided this by not connecting to a television; instead, a 3rd party sold the required
RF modulator An RF modulator (or radio frequency modulator) is an electronic device whose input is a baseband signal which is used to modulate a radio frequency source. RF modulators are used to convert signals from devices such as media players, VCRs and ...
and thus Apple didn't need testing. Atari was determined to make a plug-and-play system that connected directly to the television, like the
Atari VCS The Atari 2600, initially branded as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS) from its release until November 1982, is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977, it popularized microprocessor- ...
. This precluded the idea of having
expansion slot Expansion may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * ''L'Expansion'', a French monthly business magazine * ''Expansion'' (album), by American jazz pianist Dave Burrell, released in 2004 * ''Expansions'' (McCoy Tyner album), 1970 * ''Expansio ...
s that could be connected to external equipment, like on the Apple, as the openings would be difficult to shield property to avoid RF leakage. This led to the introduction of the SIO
serial bus In telecommunication and data transmission, serial communication is the process of sending data one bit at a time, sequentially, over a communication channel or computer bus. This is in contrast to parallel communication, where several bits are ...
, a system that allowed devices to be daisy chained to a single port. Using a cable made shielding to the required levels much easier, but also required the external devices to host the interface circuitry that would normally be placed on an
expansion card In computing, an expansion card (also called an expansion board, adapter card, peripheral card or accessory card) is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an electrical connector, or expansion slot (also referred to as a bus slo ...
inside the machine. This drove up the complexity and cost of the external devices. To offset this as much as possible, Atari used discarded MOS 6507 chips from the VCS production line. Atari had long relied on Signetic's 6507s being rated for 1 MHz but most of them actually being able to run at a slightly higher 1.1 MHz that the VCS worked at. Some of the deliveries invariably didn't hit 1.1, and those were otherwise useless and thus essentially free. Atari's drives entered the market almost two years later than Apple, giving them time to take advantage of the rapid improvements taking place in the industry. Most notable was the entry of several other manufacturers to the drive space, including
Alps Electric is a Japanese multinational corporation, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, producing electronic devices, including switches, potentiometers, sensors, encoders and touchpads. The company was established in 1948 as Kataoka Electric Co., Ltd. and ch ...
and Micro Peripherals Inc (MPI). Atari arranged a deal with MPI for their mechanisms and designed their own controller to drive it, combining the 6507 running at 500 kHz with a standard FM encoding drive controller, the
Western Digital FD1771 The FD1771, sometimes WD1771, is the first in a line of floppy disk controllers produced by Western Digital. It uses single density FM encoding introduced in the IBM 3740. It is packaged in a 40-pin DIP."The FD1771 is a single-chip floppy disk f ...
. In spite of these efforts, the resulting drive was still more expensive than the Disk II, listed at $599 when it was introduced in 1979. It also had the disadvantage of running more slowly than the Disk II; although the underlying SIO bus was running at 19.2 kbps, the effective data rate was generally around 6 kbps, compared to about 15 kbps for the Disk II. This is one reason the machine was never considered seriously in the business market; applications like
VisiCalc VisiCalc (for "visible calculator") is the first spreadsheet computer program for personal computers, originally released for Apple II by VisiCorp on 17 October 1979. It is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hob ...
were not competitive with the Apple II when run on the Atari or
Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...
. In a 1982 review for a third party replacement, ''
InfoWorld ''InfoWorld'' (abbreviated IW) is an information technology media business. Founded in 1978, it began as a monthly magazine. In 2007, it transitioned to a web-only publication. Its parent company today is International Data Group, and its siste ...
'' described the 810 as "noisy, slow and inefficient by today's standards, and it had some reliability problems" and then described the sounds as "At times it almost seemed sick, the groans and creaks were so intense." Brian Moriarty, writing in the ''ANALOG Computing'' magazine, described it as having "notoriously poor speed regulation" in maintaining its non-standard 288 RPM, while Garry Francis noted in ''Page 6'' magazine that the speed would tend to drift over time, causing disks written at different speeds to become unreadable without adjustment. This led to a number of small programs, like Snail and Drive RPM, that would test the speed of the drive in software in order to aid the user in adjusting it back to 288. Initial units shipped with
Atari DOS Atari DOS is the disk operating system used with the Atari 8-bit family of computers. Operating system extensions loaded into memory were required in order for an Atari computer to manage files stored on a disk drive. These extensions to t ...
1.0, sometimes known as DOS I. This was replaced by DOS 2.0S in 1981.


815

While the 8-bit machines were first being introduced, the first MFM double-density drive controllers were appearing, allowing the same disks to store twice as much data, 180 kB. Early advertising for the new machines often showed the 815, which combined two drives in a single case and used MFM encoding. The price was listed at $1,495. For reasons unknown, the 815 was never produced in quantity. Small numbers were hand-built using Tandon drives during 1980 and a few shipped to customers starting in June, but full-scale production never began. It continued to appear on company price lists for the next year, with the last known reference being Atari's internal price list of 24 August 1981. To support the larger storage capacity, the drives used a modified version of DOS 2.0, 2.0D. The controller was custom and only supported MFM, making the 815 incompatible with disks used in the 810.


Third party upgrades

Third parties exploring the capabilities of the 810 system soon demonstrated that the 19.2 kbps speed of the SIO communications could be easily doubled. It was later revealed that the speed was not a limitation of the SIO port, but the maximum speed of the
logic analyzer A logic analyzer is an electronic instrument that captures and displays multiple signals from a digital system or digital circuit. A logic analyzer may convert the captured data into timing diagrams, protocol decodes, state machine traces, a ...
available in the lab where it was being developed. Best known among the many products was the Happy 810, introduced in 1982. It added a buffer able to cache one entire track of data, and along with the associated Warp Speed software, increased read performance about three times, making it very competitive with the Apple II. The performance and reliability problems with the 810 also led to a thriving market for third-party drives like the Rana 1000 and
Indus GT The Indus GT is a -inch floppy disk drive that was introduced by Indus Systems in 1983 for the Atari 8-bit family. It was later released for the Apple II and Commodore 64. On the Atari, it was widely regarded as the best drive of the era, with ...
, along with a wide selection of replacements for Atari DOS. Combining one of these drives with a replacement DOS offered higher performance and often true double-density support. As the double-density format had been set with the 815 in 1980, these drives used that format as the basis for their disks as well.


Replacement

In April 1982, Atari began the process of designing improved version of the 8-bit series, then referred to as the Sweet 8 and Sweet 16. Changes to the plans led to only one of these designs being released as the 1200XL. Containing "no true innovations", the most notable change was the introduction of a new
design language A design language or design vocabulary is an overarching scheme or style that guides the design of a complement of products or architectural settings, creating a coherent design system for styling. Objectives Designers wishing to give their sui ...
from Regan Cheng using off-white and black plastics will brushed metal overlay on switches and other fixtures. This led to the introduction of a new line of peripherals that matched the styling. Initially this included the
Atari 1010 The Atari Program Recorder is Atari's dedicated magnetic tape data storage device for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers. The original 410 was launched along with the Atari 400 and 800 machines in 1979. The 1010 was a smaller model in ...
cassette deck A cassette deck is a type of tape machine for playing and recording audio cassettes that does not have a built-in power amplifier or speakers, and serves primarily as a transport. It can be a part of an automotive entertainment system, a part of a ...
, the
Atari 1020 The Atari 1020 was a four-color computer plotter sold by Atari, Inc. for the Atari 8-bit home computers. The 1020 was based on a plotter mechanism manufactured by ALPS. The same mechanism formed the basis of several other low-cost plotters pro ...
plotter, and 1025 printers. When the 1200XL was introduced at the Winter
Consumer Electronics Show CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event typi ...
in December 1982, there was no sign of a new floppy drive. One reviewer noted that when he went looking all he could find was the "old model 810 clunkers", and speculated that "we will be seeing a new drive from Atari within the next half year". This prediction came true; when the 1200XL finally reached the market in June 1983, it was accompanied by the new
Atari 1050 The Atari 1050 was a floppy disk drive for the Atari 8-bit family home computers, released in June 1983. It was compatible with the 90 kB single-density mode of the original Atari 810 it replaced, and added a new "enhanced" or "dual density ...
. It offered the new "enhanced" or "dual density" option that improved formatted capacity to 130 kB, although it was some time before DOS was upgraded to support it. The 1050 quickly replaced the 810 in the market.


Description

The 810 case was designed by Roy Nishi and Russ Farnell. It used identical C-shaped sections for the top and bottom of the drive, with rings embossed into the case where rubber feet were adhered on the bottom during assembly. This meant the feet on one drive were naturally positioned over the empty rings on the top of the drive below it, providing sturdy stacking. The front of the case had the power switch, similar to the one used on the computer and most other peripherals in the line. The unit drew about 20W, so it was normally turned off when not in use. Two LED lamps indicated that power was on and when the drive was being accessed. The back of the case had two SIO ports to allow daisy-chaining, a ring jack for the external
power supply A power supply is an electrical device that supplies electric power to an electrical load. The main purpose of a power supply is to convert electric current from a source to the correct voltage, current, and frequency to power the load. As a r ...
, and two pin switches to select the drive number from 1 to 4. The drive saw a series of improvements over time. The original 810 had problems with speed regulation and also had marginal ability to distinguish between clock pulses and data on some disks. Starting on 1 September 1981, all new 810s were built to the "DS" standard, for "Data Separator", identifiable by a small sticker. These versions added an External Data Separator Board which plugged into the socket for the FD1771 chip, providing more separation between the signals and improving read reliability. It also attempted to address the motor control speed issues, which required the Side Board to be replaced and the voltage of the circuit to be increased to 12V. As the original 9V power supply was retained, the conversion required more power to provide a second 12V output, increasing average use from about 20W to 30W. The upgrade was offered to owners of earlier models. In November 1981 a further upgrade was offered with the C-version ROM. This modified the sector layout during formatting to improve reading performance, as much as 20% on average. Like the DS, the C-version ROM was also offered to existing owners. From February 1982 the line switched to the "810M Analog" version. This added an entirely new card, the Power Supply Board, which included a
tachometer A tachometer (revolution-counter, tach, rev-counter, RPM gauge) is an instrument measuring the rotation speed of a shaft or disk, as in a motor or other machine. The device usually displays the revolutions per minute (RPM) on a calibrated anal ...
that finally solved the speed problems. It also replaced a number of components in an effort to improve reliability. The original MPI mechanisms used a unique drive door mechanism. The door slid vertically and was sprung to hold it normally open, in the upper position, revealing the drive slot behind it. A handle-like extension on the front of the door allowed the user to pull it down to close it, which latched when reaching the bottom of its travel. A button unlocked the door, causing it to flip open. In November 1982, the drive mechanism switched from MPI to a new mechanism from Tandon, which was known as the "810T Analog". The main external difference was that the former push-and-lift door was replaced by a simpler turn-to-open latch. The drive was otherwise the same as the 810M. The disks were formatted with 40 tracks, or 48 tracks per inch, with 18 sectors per track, for a total of 720 sectors per disk. Each sector held 128 bytes, for a total storage of 92,160 bytes/disk (90 kB). Later models with the C ROM, and a number of 3rd party upgrades, used a staggered sector layout to reduce seek time and improve read performance as much as 30% over the original layout. The drive ignored the alignment hole, and thus did not need the two-hole "flippy disk" to use the second side. It did respect the write-protect notch, so using the back side of a disk required another notch to be punched or one of the many updates that allowed the notch to be ignored.


Notes


References


Citations


Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * {{cite journal , last1=Tekla , first1=Perry , last2=Wallich , first2=Paul , date=March 1985 , title=Design case history: the Commodore 64 , url=https://spectrum.ieee.org/ns/pdfs/commodore64_mar1985.pdf , access-date=2011-11-12 , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210221142724/https://spectrum.ieee.org/ns/pdfs/commodore64_mar1985.pdf , archive-date=21 February 2021 , journal=IEEE Spectrum , publisher=Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers , oclc=888477014 , pages=48–58 , issn=0018-9235


Further reading


Atari 810 Disk Drive Operators Manual
Atari hardware
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