| The Atari 835 Direct Connect
Modem was Atari's second telephone communications device.
It was designed in partnership with
Racal-Vadic.
The modem was a significant upgrade from the Atari 830
Acoustic coupler modem. It did not require the Atari
850 interface, so for users just buying their first modem,
this significantly lowered the cost of the product since didn't
require the additional cost of purchasing the Atari 850.
The
second upgrade was that is was a direct connect modem.
This meant that the modem could be connected directly to the
home telephone line and then a regular telephone plugged in
through it so that it didn't require additional phone
outlets and wiring.
The
fact that it was a direct connect modem meant that the user
no longer needed to pick up the phone and manually dial the
phone number of another computer system. This could be
done through the terminal program and its auto-dialer
feature.
The Atari 835 came with a new
terminal program called Telelink II which had a unique
feature to it: It had onboard NVRAM that could store and
save up to 2 frequently dialed telephone numbers in the
cartridge and as long as the cartridge was used every couple
of weeks or so, the charge on the memory would be kept and
the numbers would continue to be saved for future use.
Atari and Chemical Bank would
work together to create an on-line bank service cartridge
for the Atari 835 modem to use on the Chemical Bank
Pronto
Electronic
Banking service that Chemical Bank invested $20 million in
creating.
Not too
long afterwards Citibank would also offer, on Diskette, its
Citibank Direct Access program to give users access its banking service
through the Atari computers using the 835 and other modems
that became available.
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