The Atari 835 Direct Connect Modem

         The Atari 835 direct connect modem was a welcomed product for Atari computer users who wanted to connect onto on-line services, Bulletin Board Systems or other on-line systems.     The Atari 835 required no special interface and plugged directly into the Atari SIO bus along with all the other Atari peripherals.   The Atari 835 did not require the expensive Atari 850 Interface module like the Atari 830 modem and other 3rd party modems required.

        The Atari 835 modem came with Atari Telelink II which was a cartridge based ROM program that plugged into the Atari 400/800 computer to use the Atari 835 modem.   It offered auto-dial which was wonderful (no more manually dialing the same number over and over becuase of busy signals) and also it had a truly unique and powerful feature.   The Atari Telelink II cartridge could store 2 most frequently used telephones numbers in the ROM cartridge itself.    Even to this day, the 2 telephone numbers which were stored in one of the Atari Historical Society's cartridges from almost 15 years ago is still in-tact!!!

        Chemical bank and Atari worked together on designing an all-in-one On-line banking system called PRONTO(tm) which used a custom ROM cartidge that brought up a Pronto dial-up screen and using an Atari computer with the Atari 835 modem (later the package included the newer Atari 1030 modem), Atari users could perform on-line banking.