I started life as a very young child.......... (is there really any other way to start a blog?)

I purchased my first 800 in 1982. I packed it up with the other 5 Atari computers and all things Atari for safe keeping in 1996. I would have never put it away except there seemed to be no shared enthusiasm for the Diamond GOS. For me, the lack of software was one of its strongest attractions. The Diamond GOS made the Atari almost a new computer. It took me 10 years to get to the point where I wanted to try some programing with the MAC/65 and here was a GOS sitting there with only a few programs.

I did get a a couple of programs running and uploaded to Compuserve. The shareware versions netted me $15. (P.S. I'm still accepting checks) Instead of quitting my day job I thought I would put some of my programming skills to work making my job a little easier. There were a lot of things about programming the Diamond GOS that made the transition to Visual Basic 4 less painful.

Well, I don't have to worry about a day job and I believe I'll have enough free time to try some more Diamond programming. It's been slow going. Its taken me 6 months to get my 130XE with a Transkey modification and a 1050 disk drive to the point where I am 60% confident it will boot up. I'm easily side tracked by the items I pull out of a storage box. Each item seems to have a story that longs to be told. I'll try to stay on point but if someone asks me a question.......don't blame me.

My next objective is to do a literature search and to look though my old disks for any information.

The rest is an item story that longs to be told. (I just wanted to warn you)

Back in 1992, when you walked out of the store with your new Atari 800 with 16k of RAM, you probably also had to transport a box of Atari BASIC, a 410 recorder and the whole reason you bought the computer – Star Raiders. Well back then Atari knew how to do it, 'cause after you spent your $1,000 they gave you a free plastic bag to carry it all in. Not just any old bag but a double walled plastic bag with Atari advertizing on it. I remember this 'cause part of that plastic bag got framed and hung over my IBM computer at work for many years. (If I can tell a story about the bag I brought my first computer home in, should I worry?)