1989 ANTIC AWARDS

For Atarian Achievement

For the 1989 Antic Awards, this magazine is proud to honor two of the energetic, imaginative companies that continue to lead the way in creating breakthrough products for the 8-bit Atari.

ICD

The March 1989 Antic cover featured ICD's SpartaDOS X slugging it out with Atari's own DOS-XE for the new 8-bit operating system championship. Despite many impressive strengths in the "official" Atari entry, our review concluded that third-party ICD's SpartaDOS X is the "ultimate" operating system for power users and hard disk owners.

SpartaDOS X ($79,95) comes on a 64K piggyback cartridge that's compatible with the Atari 800 as well as the XL/XE models. The Antic review also described SpartaDOS X as "the most advanced product released for the 8-bit Atari since ICD's own Multi I/O interface" --which won ICD an Antic Award in 1987.

1220 Rock Street, Rockford, IL 61101, (815) 968-2228.

INNOVATIVE CONCEPTS

Innovative Concepts' Easy-Scan image scanner shared the Antic October 1988 Cover with ICD's 8-bit/ST FA-ST hard disk. Easy-Scan ($79.95) uses a pair of fiber-optic light pipes to copy images from paper into your Atari's memory with a surprisingly accurate 256-level gray scale.

Innovative Concepts has established a solid reputation as a small company with an extensive line of 8-bit memory upgrades and related hardware enhancements. On the same day that these awards were being prepared, a box arrived at Antic with Innovative Concepts' three latest products--RAMdrive + XE-GM2, a 192K memory upgrade for the Atari XE Game System; RAM-Aid, a coldstart device for Ataris with at least 128K; and the XF35 Kit which converts the Atari XF551 disk drive to a 3.5inch drive with 720K capacity.

31172 Shawn Drive, Warren, MI 48093. (313) 293-0730.