

The new model used the black/white/silver styling of the new machines and was assigned a number in the new 1000-series device numbers. The release of the 600XL and 800XL in 1983 led to the system being repackaged in a much smaller form, the 1010. This was replaced by a somewhat smaller and more rounded unit around 1981 using a new mechanism from Transtek or Chelco Sound in Hong Kong. It was a relatively large unit and was unique among the line in that it featured a metal carrying handle that slid out from the front of the unit. The original 410 used a Japanese mechanism by Bigston.
TURBO TIME ATARI SERIES
The original 400 and 800 models, released in 1979, were housed in robust beige colored plastic cases and a series of computer peripherals were released to match this design. The left audio channel could be used to send audio through to the television speaker, which could be used to provide music during the loading period, or in program-controlled computer aided instruction systems.
TURBO TIME ATARI DRIVER
The driver included separate formats for binary data and more complex data that required longer to process it. The system's device driver supported a packet-based format with checksums for error detection, as opposed to lacking any error detection or using whole-file checksums. The drives had several features not commonly found on other platforms. In some markets, where the Program Recorder was the only cost-effective storage solution, software-based high-performance modes were developed that operated more than three times as fast, and as much as four times as fast with simple hardware modifications. In the end, its rate was roughly double that of the formats used by the Commodore Datasette or the TI-99/4. The data rate was nominally 600 bps, but the simple error correction and short gaps between the resulting packets lowered this somewhat. Slight variations of all of these models were also introduced from time to time. XC12 of 1986 matched the XE series and was sold mostly in eastern Europe and South America. The 1010 was a smaller model introduced to match the styling of the XL series released in 1983. The original 410 was launched along with the Atari 400 and 800 machines in 1979. The Atari Program Recorder is Atari's dedicated magnetic tape data storage device for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers.
