page_title: AtariLab
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: AtariLab / Description
caption_attribution_description: English: The AtariLab Starter Set came with the adaptor interface, a temperature probe, and software. The system is being used to measure the temperature of a glass of water.
context_page_description: AtariLab was a laboratory instrumentation system and related computer software for the Atari 8-bit family intended to be used in a high school science classroom setting. The concept was developed by Priscilla Laws, a physics professor at Dickinson College, and developed in partnership with Atari, Inc.. The AtariLab Starter Set with the Temperature Module was released in late 1983, and followed by the add-on Light Module in February 1984. Several other modules were planned for future release.
  The system was just coming onto the market when Atari was sold to Jack Tramiel and all development on the system ended. By this time the development company organized by Laws had ported the system to the Commodore 64 and Apple II. Small numbers of the Atari and C64 versions were sold commercially, but the Apple II version was never completed. The company went on to produce a professional version of the system for the IBM PC platform, which sold tens of thousands of examples and was a common piece of equipment into the 1990s.
context_section_description: The Atari computer's POKEY chip includes eight potentiometer ("pot") input lines, connected to eight capacitors and then in pairs to four joystick ports, each port containing two input lines. (Number of ports was later reduced to two in newer computer models). These lines were originally intended to connect up to eight paddle controllers. A paddle consisted of a potentiometer, whose two terminals would connect to the joystick port's +5V pin on one side, and a pot input pin on the other. Thus the paddle's setting influenced time it would take the capacitor to charge fully. POKEY would measure these times for each of the eight paddles, and present them as values (between 0 and 228) in its POT0-POT7 registers. Writing to POKEY's POTGO register would reset the chip's counters, allowing to repeat the measurement.
  The AtariLab hardware consisted largely of a single circuit board that broke out the pins in the joystick port into RCA jacks. The adaptor was about the size of a contemporary multimeter, and like those, had a stand on the back so it stood up at an angle on a desktop. The RCA jacks were color coded and matched the colors on the ends of the plugs on the probes. Setting up a probe required nothing more than plugging into the same-colored socket and then running the associated software, supplied on ROM cartridge. The only other feature of the adaptor was a red LED that indicated power was available, which was true whenever it was plugged in and the computer was turned on.
  The associated software had a variety of modes, including a real-time display and a recording chart. In the case of the Temperature Module, for instance, the system could display a thermometer showing the instantaneous temperature, or a strip chart continually recording the temperature over time. The system was controlled mainly through a joystick plugged into one of the other ports. Since the POT0-POT7 registers could also be read from Atari BASIC using PEEK commands, writing custom software for the system was a simple task.
caption: The system being used to measure the temperature of a glass of water.
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