The Network 216 and Monitor 16
 

 
 
 
            While many people never saw or heard of this device, it was exceptionally useful for classroom situations.   I've only seen one school that ever used it and it was right here on Staten Island, New York.    The network consisted of 4 Atari 800's, 1 Atari 810 and 1 Axiom Dot Matrix Printer.

            The Network 216 and Monitor 16 were made by a company called Wolsten's Computer Devices, Inc. which was in East Orange, New Jersey.   The company has long since disappeared.     The network worked as follows:   scanned all active Atari computers and requestion and action, it automatically skipped unused computers.   Up to 16 computers could be fully booted with a standard Atari 810 disk drive in under 3 minutes.   Using the Monitor 16, two way individual communication between the Master station and one of up to 16 computers could be done.   Master station could visually monitor each individual computer screen and communicate privately via headphones to the user for assistance.    The original price for the Network 216 & Monitor 16 package was $1995.00, just the Network 216 was $1695.00, later on they introduced a smaller Network 24 which had one 4 network connection available to share up to 4 disk drives and 1 printer.