The Atari 1200XL Fiasco
The Atari 1200XL was the third Atari 8-bit computer. Announced in late 1982 and available in early 1983, it was designed as a replacement for the Atari 800, which was becoming increasingly expensive to produce, and to serve as a better competitor to the upstart Commodore 64.
The 800 had several motherboards and a heavy case with lots of metal shielding, both of which made it impractical for Atari to lower its price much without losing money.
It made a lot of sense for Atari to have a more powerful computer with a simpler design. Originally, this computer was apparently going to be called the Atari 1000 (which is why all the XL peripherals start at 1000), but for some reason the name 1200XL was chosen. 1200 is 400 more than 800, so it does fit from a progression standpoint, and I suppose “XL” does make it sound better and fancier.
Design
The 1200XL came with 64K of RAM and a sleek new case that looked more modern. The 1200XL actually looked like something from the 1980s, unlike the chunky 1970s-style design of the 800 and other 8-bit computers.
The case design really is well done. Even though the 1200XL itself flopped, its case design was also used for the 600XL and 800XL and it still looks great today. This design might just be the best looking 8-bit computer design.
What Was Changed
Compared to the Atari 800, the 1200XL had several notable changes besides its case design.
The 1200XL had a full 64K of RAM. The Atari 800 had a maximum of 48K of RAM. Although the extra RAM looked good on the spec sheet, it was not readily accessible. The 6502 CPU could only access a maximum of 64K memory and that included both RAM and ROM. This meant that for most apps, available RAM was unchanged.
There was now only a single cartridge port and it was on the left side instead of on the top. There were very few cartridges made for the 800’s 2nd cartridge slot, so this was not at all surprising.
The joystick ports were also reduced from four to two and were moved to the left side as well. Again, very few games (M.U.L.E. being a notable exception) used all four joysticks ports.
The keyboard layout was the same for the main keys, but Reset, Start, Select and Option were all moved to a function key row along the top. In addition, several actual function keys were added. The 1200XL is the only Atari 8-bit computer with them. A Help key was added and it was retained in the later XL computers.
Strangely, the Break and Inverse keys were also moved out of the main keyboard and to the function key row.
Somewhat surprisingly is that BASIC was not built into the 1200XL. It still required a separate cartridge, unlike every other 8-bit computer of the time.
Perhaps most significant was that the 1200XL had an updated and slightly larger ROM (from 10K to 14K). This larger ROM included a self-test mode that appeared when you turned on the 1200XL with no cartridges. This replaced the “Memo Pad” in the Atari 800. There was also an international character set and changes to some OS ROM APIs to handle the extra RAM and keyboard features.
In the February 1983 issue (Vol. 1, No. 6), Antic Magazine had an overview of the 1200XL. They called it “sleek” and said this about it:
The 1200XL is close to being the "super system" some might be expecting. I think it is as much ahead of the competition as the 800 was in 1979. Atari has plans for a full line of new peripherals and software for the 1200 — disk drives, printers, modems, voice synthesizers, etc. I think the Atari community will be pleased with the 1200, and that it is an attractive tool for the serious programmer.
ANALOG Computing covered the 1200XL in Issue 10. Their review is slightly more in-depth, but is still positive.
I didn’t notice that either review mentioned the price of the 1200XL, which ended up being about $800 when it released in January 1983.
What Went Wrong
That all sounds pretty amazing, right? So what went wrong?
There are two main issues the 1200XL had at the time: compatibility and price.
Compatibility
The ANALOG overview I noted above did mention some compatibility problems. Most notably, the Letter Perfect word processor would not run on it. Letter Perfect was probably the most popular word processor for the Atari computers at the time, so this was a big deal. Reports of other software incompatibilities due to the ROM changes would start to come out once the 1200XL was actually released and got into user’s hands, hurting its reputation.
This was probably the thing that upset most people. The fact that Atari didn’t bother to really test popular 3rd party software, such as Letter Perfect, upset a lot of users. And if they did test it, but did not give LJK (the makers) any heads up that an update would be needed is also not great.
A hardware incompatibility that was only found out after units were released was the lack of +12v power on the SIO port and limited current on the 5V line, preventing some peripherals from working, usually ones without their own power supplies.
Price
That debut price also completely missed the market. The Commodore 64 had been introduced at $595 in August of 1982 and had rapid price cuts. Starting the 1200XL at $200 more than the C64 was at its launch and probably double the price it was selling at the time was a big mistake.
The introduction of the 1200XL caused sales of the 800 to increase as by then it was selling for much less than the 1200XL and worked with all the currently available software and peripherals.
Peripherals
I’ll also add an extra opinion. It looks to me like the newer XL-styled peripherals did not appear alongside the 1200XL. That meant people had to use the old, 70s-style brown peripherals with their fancy new computer. That was not a great look.
Basically, the rollout of the 1200XL was indicative of the problems Atari was having at the time.
Quickly Discontinued
In what was becoming a pattern for Atari, the 1200XL was discontinued in June 1983 about six months after it was introduced (the Atari 5200 console from 1982 was also discontinued rather quickly). To replace it, the 800XL and 600XL computers were announced at CES. These computers were much more reasonably priced, had built-in BASIC and became the most successful Atari 8-bit computers.
Atari did also announce 1400XL and 1450XLD, but those never shipped. They are worthy of their own article.
The 1200XL Today
Today the 1200XL is highly regarded and sought after. Since it was so short-lived, it is quite rare. Buying one today can cost several hundred dollars. But it’s not just a collectable; it’s actually useful! The keyboard on the 1200XL is pleasant to type on and is probably at least as good as the original 800 keyboard. The keyboards on the 800XL and 130XE are notably worse. With a slight modification to the motherboard to fix the power issues of the SIO port, you can get peripheral compatibility back. You can even replace the ROM OS with something more compatible.
Software compatibility is not as big a deal today, however. The early compatibility issues were solved over time with software updates and software released from late 1983 onwards generally worked fine. For older stuff that was never updated, you can always fall back to the Translator disk (introduced with the 600XL/800XL, but not available when the 1200XL came out) to boot into an older OS when necessary.
The 1200XL’s only real downsides are that it is somewhat large (compared to the 600XL and 800XL, although it is certainly much smaller than the Atari 800) and that it does not have built-in BASIC.
I have never used (or even seen) a 1200XL in person. If you have a 1200XL, please share some of your thoughts about it in the comments.
While the 1200XL never got a PAL version due to its short life and I never saw one until the mid 2010s, I had one shipped to Europe and converted it to PAL (plus some upgrades). I find it pleasant to look at and to type on but the recessed cartridge port is a bit inconvenient as several modern cartridges don‘t fit. While no longer that important the 1200XL wasn’t that attractive as an alternative to the 800XL as one might think as it lacked the PBI port. Personally I would have preferred for Atari to go with the existing Axlon „standard“ for switching extra RAM and keep the option to use 4 joysticks.
I had one, in fact I still have it packed away in its original box in the back of a closet along with a box of peripherals and software (that and an old Sega Genesis). I’m not sure why I kept it, moving it from apartment to apartment, house to house over the decades. I haven’t turned on the 1200XL since the 80s. I guess I’ve kept it for sentimental reasons. It was my first computer.
I had been interested in computers since the 70s (yup playing Pong on an arcade machine in California during a family vacation). Finally, around 83 I had graduated college and had a little money and saw it in a department store. It looked futuristic and cool and had the Atari brand.
My two strongest memories are playing games on it and learning to program. Yes, that includes the obligatory “Hello World” program. Now memory may be faulty (it has been decades) but I remember that I didn’t have any storage peripheral, so I had to write down my programs and type them in each time I wanted to use them. Maybe it eventually had a storage option but if so, I don’t remember owning one. That really hindered my programing interest at the time.
In terms of games, I know I had a bunch of games but for the life of me I cannot remember if they were the 1200XL or my second computer which was an early third-party PC. My memory is playing Pong, Seven Cities of Gold, MULE and so many others. I guess I could go and look to see what software is in the box. I do know that true productivity software had to wait until my second computer.
Anyway, since you asked, that is my memory of the 1200XL.