The Atari 400/800 LE Systems Command Center

LE Systems Command Center OS Board - Front

LE Systems Command Center OS Board - Back

The LE Systems Command Center was more than just an OS board replacement. It was a complete Bus extension device. It had 6 Bus slots on its massive board that plugged into the Atari 800 Slot #0 and stood above the 800 by more than 6" tall. IC's D, E and F are stock Atari OS ROM's. IC A is a 2732A EPROM (Binary dump provided) that contains the device drivers for the board.

Interface Board - Front

Interface Board - Back

The Interface Board appears to be the only specialized expansion board made for the LE Command Center. The Command Center slots appear to be compatible with the 800 slots so it is possible that the Interface Board could be directly plugged into the 800, but physically it does not fit. The Interface Board contains 2 NEC D8255AC-5 Programmable Peripheral Interface chips (Datasheet provided) that are normally used with 8080/8085 systems but apparently working equally well with the 6502.

Disk Master - Front

Disk Master - Back

While the Disk Master was the only card that the Interface board connected to (through a flat ribbon cable.) It is possible that the Interface board would have been versatile enough to have been used for other boards, possibly even hard drive controllers.

The Disk Master has a Zilog Z80A processor and a FDC 1791 disk controller chip on it. The board could control up to 4 disks per interface edge connector (the board had 2 of them) and could control up to 8 disk drives in total. (1 Drive for reading and 7 for copying to.)

So what was this whole systems purpose? The Command Center could've allowed many other new interface cards and adapters to have been made. The Disk Master system was designed for the Independent Software companies, which were many times 1-2 person companies, to be able to mass produce copies of their disk software for sale.

The Command Center, the Interface Board and the Disk Master represent a truly remarkable showcase of the Atari 800's incredible potential, in the hands of a capable engineer, to have far reaching capabilities and features.

If anyone has more information they would like to share on the LE Systems boards, please contact the Atari Museum: CLICK HERE

Content to be added, updated 3/15/2019