130xe expansion port question

mjlescord · May 24, 2002

what devices were designed for the expansion port? what hard drives will work with the expansion port, and will they block my cartrage port? thanks for the help!

Gunstar · May 24, 2002

The only commercially available products were ICD's MIO board for attaching harddrives, 3.5" drives, Zip drives, etc. and generally had optional memory available for a printer spooler, and CSS's Blackbox which is essentially the same thing, but has a lot more add-ons available for it. ICD, as far as I know is out of business and if they aren't they no longer stock the MIO and if they did you would not want to buy from them as they have become dishonest thieves (they used to be reliable) and have ripped-off numerous people several years ago on the Atari Jaguar scene with pre-orders for a device they never made, but kept all the cash and we're talking about $100 apiece. SO NOT TRUST THEM. CSS, as far as I know, is still in business, honest, reliable and the Blackbox is much better anyway. You may find the MIO in the wild or on E-bay though...

As far as the cartridge port goes, I believe both products have a pass-through port so carts can still be excepted.

Both, IIRK, support scsi and other types of drives. But if you get the blackbox, it will let you know, even on their website (which I don't have off-hand, what drives it supports, and all other info you will need.

The fact of the matter now is that if you get an SIO2PC cable and A.P.E software, you can use your PC's hardrives, printers, modems, floppies, cdrom, etc. for your XE. It won't be as fast as a real hardrive connected to your XE, but it works a lot faster than a regular Atari drive and is a LOT cheaper in the long run, unless you don't own a PC and would have to buy that too.