bobotech

Oh wow, just remembered something, does anyone here remember reading the "fireside chats" that they had in the monthly catalogs/flyers?

I have a couple of TI 99/4a systems and even a PEB and matching monitor and about 90 cartridges. I have never fired it up. It is a system I never had and never played with so I really don't have much of a nostalgic draw to me unlike the Apple 2 or the TRS-80 which were systems I never had but used frequently in school so I would enjoy playing with them from my collection. It is like the Commodore 64, they were systems I never had and never had any exposure to and really didn't want so I really don't have that draw to play with them like I do other systems. On the other hand, I rarely ever saw the TRS-80 color computer at friends or anything but when I was a kid, I had the Radio Shack computer catalog which made me really want a Color Computer. So one of these days, I'm going to fire up the Coco 2 that I and will probably enjoy it for a bit. But I just never had the desire for a TI 99/4a but I wonder if I'm missing out on something.

Agreed. I don't entirely blame Frye, the deadline was probably the great majority is the dud but still its just sad to think what actually could have been done.

Something else surreal about this game. It was created as a labor of love and maybe some small payback if the author sells the games but think about Todd Frye and the 1 million dollar check he got for his horrid version of Pacman. The author did it mainly out of love of the system with no real goal of making serious money but Frye created his nasty version purely to get 1 million dollars. This version is worth FAR more than the Frye version.

I was into all the popular computer magazines of the old days but never heard of Popular Computers. Was it one of those business centric magazines?

This is wonderful and sad at the same time. Sad because it just goes to show what actually could have been done back when Pac Man was really released for the VCS. Imagine if this was the version released. You wonder if this really would have been a killer app that pushed the VCS even higher as the king of video games. Might have slowed down the time to the crash even? Looks amazing.

Could be caps? I would try replacing the caps in it before giving up on it.

I miss old RS. One of my old fond memories was being a kid back in the seventies and my mom taking me and leaving me at Radio Shack so she could go next door to work out at jenny craig or whatever it was called back then. I used to hang out there for an hour or so. This was back around 1977 when the Model 1 first came out. I don't think it was called the model one at the time? The store fascinated me to no end. I had a fair amount of radio shack electronics kits. Being 10 years old in 1977 meant you got to see the birth of the personal computer as we know it and grew up with it. I loved radio shack in the early eighties and to a somewhat lesser extent, the late eighties. By the early nineties, they were moving away from the hobbyist clientele to being a major audio/cell phone/etc electronics provider. That was when I stopped being fascinated by them.

Oh wow, that brings back memories of the nineties. Do you guys remember in the nineties places like grocery stores started selling public domain/shareware floppies. They had all sorts of shareware or freeware games and utilities on them. They usually were plain labeled floppies. For some reason, blue fonts on white labels sounds vaguely families. They had these cardboard floppy stands in the aisles

My entire Atari 8 bit collection back then. Traded it for a cool motorcycle but still, I would love to have my original systems back.

I think that the biggest disappointment that i remember in classic computing days was the TRS-80's lack of high res graphics. And also maybe Apple's super weird way of handling screen memory. My mind is fuzzy about this because that is going back 30+ years ago but I remember that Apples had a weird way with screen memory. Like a section of memory would write to the top 1/8th of the screen, then the next section of memory would write to the 3rd 1/8 section, and then next section would write to the 6th 1/8 section and so on until it started doing the 2nd section. it wasn't like the Atari which its continuous screen memory which made scrolling a snap. I didn't own either system, I just remember being disappointed that each one had their respective limitations. Also i was always disappointed that i didn't get an Ohio Scientific Challenger 4P. I remember thinking that screen resolution was king and that the 4P had higher resolution than other computers so i wanted one. Screen resolution was one of the reasons why I was drawn to the Atari computers, 320x192 was higher than other computes including the Apple 2.

I like the Vic-20 because its white but always hated the brown color of the c64. It just didn't look sexy like other computers.

I really never throw anything away except for crappy IBM compatible and undesirable Apple stuff over the years. I mean who the hell cares about an old Compuadd XT compatible? Eww. I have kept most of the apple stuff over the years but I abandoned a bunch of power pc crap like the Performa 6200 series of computers. They were crap and I didn't care about them and no one else does either. I have tossed away a lot of early to later pentium stuff and 386/486 era stuff. It really doesn't appeal to me and no one seems to want a 486 tower system just so they can play Wing Commander II on it. I never throw away magazines for the most part. I still have 6 or so Creative Computings from around 1976-1977 or so. However I did swap away my entire Atari collection back in the late eighties including the majority of my magazines. I only kept a few creative computings, my complete radio shack catalog collection that had ones from 1976 until they stopped doing them, and some other computer magazines but the Computes! and what not? They all got traded away. I do regret that. The only toy I had that became really desirable in modern times were the 2 cases of Star Wars cards I got in the late seventies. I think the whole case was like 9 dollars or something back then. I think they were these: http://www.collectorsalliance.com/v/vspfiles/photos/6456-2.jpg I gave away those cards to a friend back then. I didn't have any star wars toys of my own unlike my friends except for the cards. one toy that I remember having that I wished I still had was my FischerTechnik construction toys. I didn't have a lot but I had like 2 or 3 sets that I enjoyed. My parents gave them away after I moved out I believe along with my Legos. But as for actually tossing, the only things i toss are crappy nineties and early 2000's era obsolete computers that no one wants.

Funny how things change. I remember in the early eighties buying bulk 5 1/4 inch floppies at computer shows for something like 20 dollars. I think I got a stack of 100 for the 20 dollars. I have pretty much gotten rid of all my old 1.2m 5 1/4 floppies and have been buying 360k DD floppies that I see in the wild since the late nineties. I figure I have enough floppies to last me my lifetime since I will probably go the SIO2PC route.

I would love to find it but its buried deep in my collection. one of these days I will find it. Sounds like it will be easier to just find a 720kb 3 1/4" drive and mod that in.

I'm curious, is it possible to still upgrade XF551s anymore? I have an XF551 somewhere and bought one of those 360/720kb double drives in a single 5 1/4" floppy drive bay a long time ago with the intent on modding it. Copy protection is a non-issue for me, I have plenty of other drives to use for that.

Oh I really didn't mind Ben calling. He didn't call every day or anything. He would call like once a month or two. Just something a bit out of the ordinary but i also got the impression that he was somewhat lonely and liked to talk so i talked to him.

I'm betting this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Atari-8-Bit-CSS-Black-Box-PBI-Device-with-Power-Supply-and-BlackBox-Enhancer-/131230163790?pt=US_Vintage_Computers_Mainframes&hash=item1e8ded634e&nma=true&si=6ByX0spWwJdmrvpIC0eZDVfB2n0%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

Ben from Bravo Sierra is the only vendor I ever bought any classic atari stuff from outside of Ebay. Bought an 800 and some other odds and ends back in 2000 and everything went smoothly. He is eccentric but nice. The one thing that was unique about him was how he kept on calling me over and over for a while and emailing me constantly about buying new stuff. I didn't mind it, just the nature of the beast. Oh how it would be cool to win the lotto and buy out all of the big atari vendors and consolidate everything once and for all. LOL

The one thing that I seriously regret that I haven't admitted was dumping my case of Atari cassette tapes back around 1996. I had kept all my atari tapes that I made when i was a kid until 1996 when I got divorced and moved to Spokane, WA from CT. When I moved, I threw away a ton of stuff including the entire stash of my cassettes from the early eighties. Mind you I didn't have anything really original or valuable but sentimentally they were worth far more to me. I just felt that I would never use that "old crap" again. I didn't have anything that isn't really replaceable, it was mainly type-in programs from various magazines but there was some original stuff. I bet it would be easy to recreate that stuff nowadays having a much better keyboard and much better editors than back then but its still not the same.

I remember having an old full height 5 1/4 inch hard drive that was MFM on my old Compuadd XT compatible (my first IBM compatible that I got in 1989). I am pretty sure it was a Priam 160meg drive. Huge NOISY and hot running mother. I bought it from a computer show (MISS them!) in CT back around 1992 or so. The vendor had installed Disk Manager on the first partition, also known as Disk Mangler, LOL. Disk Manager was setup on the first 20 meg or whatever size the small partition and then it forced the rest of the MFM drive into RLL encoding. I think the controller was an RLL controller so Disk Manager was able to force the rest of the drive to work as RLL. The drive was so damned noisy. I ended up leaving the drive outside of the case on a shelf above the computer with a fan blowing on it. LOL

I'm jealous of all you guys with your original stuff. Nice job saving them all these years.

That's awesome! All it needs is a full keyboard and a composite mod and it would be nearly the perfect 400.

LOL, I specifically stated excluding any collector value and I should have also said excluding any nostalgia value. That is my key question, is there any reason why having something like the black box or mio is more desirable than a modern drive interface besides collector value or nostalgia.

I think that the black box or the MIO were the upgrades to have if you had an 8bit atari. My atari hobby goes in spurts. I will pay attention and collect for a while then put it away, a few years later, pull it out and play, then put it back and so on. I have been actively collecting atari 8bit since the late nineties. In the early 2000's, I think I remember hearing that the blackbox or the MIO were the devices to have so you could upgrade your atari 8bit system to its fullest extent. I think I might have even posted this topic a bunch of years ago but can't remember. But things change as time marches on so its still a viable question. Have modern 8bit upgrades finally surpassed the usability/desirability of those original upgrades EXCLUDING any collector intrinsic value! Of course I would love to have some of those original upgrades just because they were cool but that isn't the question here. I am mainly wondering if the old hardware still has functions that can't be emulated by modern upgrades? Also is the SIO2USB still the goto upgrade for connecting your A8 to a modern computer?