danwinslow Posted January 5, 2009 Share Posted January 5, 2009 Looking for what people think would be a good estimate of how many active atari 8-bit enthusiasts there are in the world. 'Active' I guess would mean that they have some actual hardware and use it at least occasionally. I personally have no idea what the number would be...if I had to guess I would say maybe a couple thousand to ten thousand? The ebay and CL activity would seem to indicate quite a few, although some would be be interested mostly in the 2600 scene...but let's say they count too. I know there are some very active groups yet in Europe...thoughts? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
olavese@online.no Posted January 5, 2009 Share Posted January 5, 2009 I would consider myself active, though not programmed anything lately. Still buy software and have a few real Atari's ... Take Atarian care Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted January 5, 2009 Share Posted January 5, 2009 (edited) Looking for what people think would be a good estimate of how many active atari 8-bit enthusiasts there are in the world. 'Active' I guess would mean that they have some actual hardware and use it at least occasionally. I personally have no idea what the number would be...if I had to guess I would say maybe a couple thousand to ten thousand? The ebay and CL activity would seem to indicate quite a few, although some would be be interested mostly in the 2600 scene...but let's say they count too. I know there are some very active groups yet in Europe...thoughts? Good question, I would agree ebay activity indicates there are still a bunch around, hard to tell how many. Hey Rybags, seems like you might have a better read on this one. Edited January 5, 2009 by atarian63 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MEtalGuy66 Posted January 5, 2009 Share Posted January 5, 2009 Well, I personally consider this site to be the "premiere" ATARI forum on the internet.. So you could probably take forum useage statistics from here and get some kind of rough estimate.. However, youve also got factors which concern how active the average Atari user is on the internet. There are still alot of old-schoolers around who maintain little or no "web presence" at all. I'd venture to guess that a good percentage of the ATARI 8-bit users who are active on the internet at least know of this forum, even if they dont read or post to it regularly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted January 5, 2009 Share Posted January 5, 2009 Well, I personally consider this site to be the "premiere" ATARI forum on the internet.. So you could probably take forum useage statistics from here and get some kind of rough estimate.. However, youve also got factors which concern how active the average Atari user is on the internet. There are still alot of old-schoolers around who maintain little or no "web presence" at all. I'd venture to guess that a good percentage of the ATARI 8-bit users who are active on the internet at least know of this forum, even if they dont read or post to it regularly. You are probably right, I went to the ACEC meeting( very,Very old Atari User Group) here in Columbus this year, nary a person there knew what AtariAge was.. Most were long time collectors. Funny since they have their yearly auction listed here. Someone there must know but is not sharing Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted January 5, 2009 Share Posted January 5, 2009 Well, I personally consider this site to be the "premiere" ATARI forum on the internet.. So you could probably take forum useage statistics from here and get some kind of rough estimate.. However, youve also got factors which concern how active the average Atari user is on the internet. There are still alot of old-schoolers around who maintain little or no "web presence" at all. I'd venture to guess that a good percentage of the ATARI 8-bit users who are active on the internet at least know of this forum, even if they dont read or post to it regularly. Yep, but there is also Abbuc + forum, atari-area forum, atari-online + forum, atari.cl forum to name just a few other sites... -Andreas Koch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwhyte Posted January 5, 2009 Share Posted January 5, 2009 I guess you can say I'm somewhat active... I do program my little grey system damn near daily... I am far to critical 99% of the stuff I do to ever release them for everyone to criticize... One day maybe... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nonner242 Posted January 5, 2009 Share Posted January 5, 2009 I guess you can say I'm somewhat active... I do program my little grey system damn near daily... I am far to critical 99% of the stuff I do to ever release them for everyone to criticize... One day maybe... I hear ya! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 I don't think there's many people in Australia who are "active". I'd define active as more than just owning a system, you should also be either actively collecting, playing or developing software or hardware on the machine. Sadly, in the developing sense I'd guess less than 5 here... I can barely be defined as active myself. I've got a number of little things on the go, of which I pop something up here occasionally. I have 2 games that I'd like to get going on someday and also have interest in developing a 3D engine. So far as collecting goes, I try not to call myself a collector but I do keep an eye out and pick the odd new system or game up occasionally. Of course, not necessarily everyone who's active is a member here, in fact I'd guess that there's probably a huge number of people around Germany and Poland who are diehard Atari 8-bit users or developers and don't come here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ataridano Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 You also have to factor in the number of people here and elsewhere online that either program or play games or have an interest in the system for whatever reason, yet don't own any hardware or have it stored away. Many probably use emulators, but technically speaking you asked how many people are actually using real hardware, so emulation wouldn't count. I'm not even sure if I'm active Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThumpNugget Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 ...and to make it more complicated a lot of people will stop for long periods of time and then "come back" for whatever reason. I went for about five years without unpacking my stuff and not doing much other than some casual web surfing to see if anyone was out there and judging the how active the "scene" was by looking at the comp.sys.atari.8bit group... Which seemed pretty dead other than the daily Bravo Sierra posts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+bf2k+ Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 ... by looking at the comp.sys.atari.8bit group... Which seemed pretty dead other than the daily Bravo Sierra posts. Amen... exactly why I quit reading that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adam242 Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 There are still alot of old-schoolers around who maintain little or no "web presence" at all. I'd venture to guess that a good percentage of the ATARI 8-bit users who are active on the internet at least know of this forum, even if they dont read or post to it regularly. Guilty! I've been lurking and reading regularly, but haven't posted much... I have a large collection of Atari hardware that I do still actually use from time to time and I follow current software. I really should be more active in the forums... Most questions have been answered before I can add anything. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 The 8-bit Newsgroup has (like so many others) just become a dumping ground for spam. I used to find it useful and go there almost daily. These days I'm lucky to look at it once every couple of months. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybernoid Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 I agree with the newsgroups. It was sad to see them go down hill... but all in the name of progress. Now we have a great website BB Forum called atariage.com. Also, there seem to be 18,182 registered users for AtariAge. I assume that this could be a lower bound for the number of active 8bitters, but how many people are exclusively ST'ers or 2600'ers? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atariksi Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 I agree with the newsgroups. It was sad to see them go down hill... but all in the name of progress. Now we have a great website BB Forum called atariage.com. Also, there seem to be 18,182 registered users for AtariAge. I assume that this could be a lower bound for the number of active 8bitters, but how many people are exclusively ST'ers or 2600'ers? I also think it's harder to read those newsgroups now. There used to be this software when I was college and it was just for reading news groups. It was fast and text-based. Now, you have this web interface which at least on my system is slow and clumsy. I tried posting something once and I have no idea how to locate it. I consider myself active for Ataris, Amigas, older Pentium PCs (with parallel ports), etc. I always remained active since I was developing software to test these simple circuits through the joystick ports and nothing on PCs has replaced that. In fact, they got rid of the parallel port which was the only thing that came close to the joystick ports on the old classic machines. It's simple to just boot up the machine and write code like: POKE 54018,nn:POKE 54016,pp:etc. and do input in output mode or HALT the processor and see how ANTIC behaves or whatever. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted January 7, 2009 Share Posted January 7, 2009 ... by looking at the comp.sys.atari.8bit group... Which seemed pretty dead other than the daily Bravo Sierra posts. Amen... exactly why I quit reading that! I'll "third" that. Got tired of flitering out all the spam so I just jumped ship to here:) Stephen Anderson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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