The Black Box

The Black Box is an add-on board for the Atari 600XL (64kB), 800XL, and 130XE 8-bit computers. It is a T-shaped board that plugs into the PBI port of the XL computer, or the ECI and cartridge ports of the 130XE. Connectors for both types of computers are built into the Black Box, so no adapter boards are necessary. A cartridge port is available on the board itself for 130XE users, since the board plugs into the cartridge port. The board is 12 inches wide and 3 inches deep, sitting back 3 inches from your computer. It has two switches, two push-buttons, and a set of DIP switches on the top.

The following is a brief list of the Black Box  features:

* RS232 serial port with built-in handler

* SASI/SCSI hard disk bus

* Parallel printer port definable of printer IDs 1-8

* 64k Printer spooler using XE memory or optional BB memory

* Text or Graphics printer dump of most screens

* Hard disk floppy drive emulation (Single or Double density)

* 512 byte sector support for large hard disks

* 96 entry partition list for ease of drive manipulation

* Configuration menu allowing manipulation of drive numbers, swapping drives, write protection, and density (hd only)

* All hard disks may be write-protected with the flip of a switch

* Ultra high speed disk I/O with modified 1050s, Happy 810s, and all XF-551 floppy drives

* Built-in machine language monitor allowing you to see the program counter and registers, change them, disassemble memory, and search for bytes

A separate product for the BB  is The Floppy Board, a floppy disk interface. This will permit the connection of 'bare-bones' 3.5 and 5.25 inch floppy drives, without the need for a special controller. Because this interface board will be on the computer's parallel bus, the data transfer rate will be MUCH faster than that of even a floppy drive in high speed mode!

Black Box Manual       Black Box Utilities