The Atari 1200XL Fiasco – By Paul Lefebvre

Summary

The Atari 1200XL was the third Atari 8-bit computer. Announced in late 1982 and available in early 1983, it was designed as a replacement for the Atari 800, which was becoming increasingly expensive to produce, and to serve as a better competitor to the upstart Commodore 64.The 800 had several motherboards and a heavy case with lots of metal shielding, both of which made it impractical for Atari to lower its price much without losing money.It made a lot of sense for Atari to have a more powerful computer with a simpler design. Originally, this computer was apparently going to be called the Atari 1000 (which is why all the XL peripherals start at 1000), but for some reason the name 1200XL was chosen. 1200 is 400 more than 800, so it does fit from a progression standpoint, and I suppose “XL” does make it sound better and fancier.The 1200XL came with 64K of RAM and a sleek new case that looked more modern. The 1200XL actually looked like something from the 1980s, unlike the chunky 1970s-style design of the 800 and other 8-bit computers.The case design really is well done. Even though the 1200XL itself flopped, its case design was also used for the 600XL and 800XL and it still looks great today. This design might just be the best looking 8-bit computer design.Compared to the Atari 800, the 1200XL had several notable changes besides its case design.The 1200XL had a full 64K of RAM. The Atari 800 had a maximum of 48K of RAM. Although the extra RAM looked good on the spec sheet, it was not readily accessible. The 6502 CPU could only access a maximum of 64K memory and that included both RAM and ROM. This meant that for most apps, available RAM was unchanged.There was now only a single cartridge port and it was on the left side instead of on the top. There were very few cartridges made for the 800’s 2nd cartridge slot, so this was not at all surprising.The joystick ports were also reduced from four to two and were moved to the left side as well. Again, very few games (M.U.L....