This is the last notice for the Ultimate 1541 version 2.

from 1541 Ultimate homepage:

• 184 Ultimate-II units shipped.
• The last few (5) will be shipped out tomorrow….
• If you paid after June 1, you will need to wait until the new production batch is finished.  (Refund possible..)
• New production startup in progress!
• Unprocessed payments will be processed before the end of the week (week 27). Please hold your payments until further notice!
• Question of redistributing the Free Xilinx tools within a virtual machine is under review by the legal department of Xilinx. If they approve, I can provide the planned virtual machine; if not, I will need to write instructions on how you can instal the tools separately.
• Last firmware version: 2.0RC4. Downloadable update available by end of week 28.

source: 1541ultimate.net

Luigi Di Fraia is working on version 3 of his DC2N. The DC2N is a digital replacement for the C2N datassette. With the DC2N you can read cassettes and transfer the data to a memory-card.

It is also possible to save data from a memory-card to a datassette. The DC2N is a stand alone system, what means you can do the transfers without a computer.

The newest version has USB support and uses a graphical screen to show the signal that is recorded. You can watch various videos of the DC2N on youtube.

source: commodore-gg.hobby.nl

Autopsy:

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from atarimuseum Homepage:

The Atari 1050 disk drive was Atari’s replacement to the Atari 810 disk drive. The new Atari 1050 disk drive matched the new high-tech, low profile line of Atari XL home computer systems. The original Atari 810 could hold single density data (88K out of 100K diskettes) which was standard.

The new Atari 1050 disk drives were DUAL-DENSITY disk drives and could use the older Atari 810 diskettes, but could also hold data in a new Enhanced Density mode of 127K. Although the standard for disk drives was 180K, this additional storage was welcomed by Atari users who bought the disk drives.

The only downside to the disk drives were their new version of Atari DOS: 3.0 which had compatibility problems with its earlier version: 2.0s Atari would later fix this problem with a very well designed and accepted and one of the most popular Atari versions of DOS:  2.5.

Up to 4 Atari disk drives could be “daisy-chained” together. Using Atari’s unique SIO bus (Serial I/O), each drive would connect to the next, forming a chain in which data was transferred. Although slower then other I/O buses used on other computers, Atari’s SIO bus was a simple and convenient way for the non-computer literate to more easily add components onto their Atari computer systems (other brands of computers required internal cards, ribbon cables, complicated jumper block settings which were geared more towards the computer hobbyist crowd instead of the common individual with little computer knowledge).

The disk drive electronics and its mechanism were done by Tandon, the case design was done by Tom Palecki, formerly of Atari’s Industrial Design group. Tom was also responsible for the design of the Atari 1055 3.5″ disk drive which was never released by Atari, Inc. due to its sales in 1984.

source: atarimuseum.com