Strange Atari 8bit cart looking attachment with Dongle

[Shinju]

Anyone know what this piece is? There are no numbers or markings just a MADE IN THE UK on the back.

 

[+Roydea6]

It looks like a printer interface. I have an ALPHASYS printer with an SIO plug for a thermal printer, that looks close to that. I would have to pull it out of storage to verify, but it might be...

[31336haxx0r]

It may be for those General Electric thermotransfer printers. I'm not sure, though.

[Fuji-Man]

Probably a printer interface for an Alphacom thermal printer. Nice find!

[arizvega]

WOW COOL!!!

[mimo]

Think I have one of those boxed with instructions. Ill try and get some time to dig it out.

[Shinju]

Thanks!

 

I got a pretty nice lot of C64 and Atari stuff yesterday, this was in the box with the 130xe. Bummer I didnt get a thermal printer with it

[mimo]

Nope, I found a Laskeys Joy Print which is a strange device that interfaces the Atari to a Centronics printer through two joystick ports

and a xetec Graphix AT device, it is built into a cart shell but actually plugs into the sio port

the first Atari release from a company known mainly for Commodore products, is a "smart" interface box that enables your printer to produce hard copies of Atari special characters-even inverse-exactly as they appear on screen.

 

Now you don't have to LIST programs to disk, LOAD and RUN special lister software, wait for the printout, then LOAD your original program and start debugging with printout in hand. Instead, you just type LIST "P:" right from BASIC. The printout is faster than any of my lister programs, because the Graphix AT has its own microprocessor with supporting ROM that contains the Atari character set in printer format.

 

if anyone wants them just pay the postage, I will never use them

Edited February 27, 2013 by mimo

[thorfdbg]

...a xetec Graphix AT device, it is built into a cart shell but actually plugs into the sio port...

 

Probably for the records: The 850XL also had that - a mode where it printed special characters as graphics following ESC-P, so most printers could actually use it. It also had ESC-sequences to switch between the various modes. I'm not quite sure whether the inventors actually considered the fact that the ESC-code to switch modes could be actually part of the graphics to print, though...

[Fuji-Man]

Ok. A Big Blue 80 column thermal printer. I'm pretty sure.

 

Probably a printer interface for an Alphacom thermal printer. Nice find!