Who here still has their original 8bit stuff from when they were new?

[bobotech]

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

[Stormtrooper of Death]

I sold all my Atari gear in 1992/93. to buy Amiga hardware. I still regret it.

 

This year, i bought a 2nd hand Atari 130XE with 2 1050 diskdrives, XC-11 taperecorder and 3 boxes with 350 diskettes.

 

Fun fact is: I not only bought an Atari computer, but also got old memories for free.

 

The 350 disks contain several disks that i had made myselve. Seems that i had send the guy in this town several gamedisks and demo disks in the 90s. Now they returned to the original sender. (=me). Even my old DCW! Disk magazine that i made, with my OWN handwriting on the disklabel.

 

Later i bought 2 800XL computers and a 1050 diskdrive. 3 game cartridges (pacman, donkey kong and qix).

 

I also got some dutch atari magazines. Became member of ABBUC and play a little bit with Atmas II.

[+Stephen]

I have my original 130XE from 88, and my US Doubled 1050 from 87. My collection has grown quite a bit though. I wish I still had my first machine, a 48kB 400 with b-key which I got in 82. I did build a clone of it.

[Keatah]

I sold all my Atari gear in 1992/93. to buy Amiga hardware. I still regret it.

 

The Atari 8-bit lineup was and still is more capable than the Amiga series. The software makes all the difference!

[Madi]

I only have few disk poxes (games and utilities) escaped from the trash massacre made by my wife for my Atari treasure when she decided to clean the "garbage". I wish I was there on that day

 

I currently use one 130XE that I purchased from eBay few months back with full blown ram .(fixed 11 days ago). and one 1050 drive.

 

I discovered 4 Arabic games in one diskette and an Arabic word editor dumped from cartridges using one 65xe NAJM computer (in aDawaliah) branch in Jeddh, SA around 1989 or so)

 

I will have a separate thread once i receive my SIO2PC ordered from Ray.

 

Madi

[chevymad]

I still have my original 400. Typed many magazine games in with that flat keyboard. But in the 90s I sold my 800xl, 410 recorder, Indus GT and all my software. For some reason I kept an 800xl I had used for parts. This I fixed and is my current machine. Still wish I had my Indus though.

[ClausB]

Yes, my original 48K 400, 192K 800, and Quarter-Meg 800XL. Also my original TI-59. I had sold my beloved SR-56 (my first programmable) and earlier calculators but have replaced them from eBay.

[snicklin]

I still have my 65XE with its damaged space bar (I smashed my fist onto it when I had a programming problem) and I have a 1050 drive from back then.

 

I did throw a lot of disks and cassettes away but kept the original equipment.

 

I made a vow when I was about 14 that I would keep all my Atari equipment until I was an old man. I have stuck by my vows.

[IndusGT]

still got my original 800 and 1050 which I got later when the price went down to $150 at toys'r us. was going to get an 800xl but the salesperson convinced me otherwise.

[bobotech]

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.

[npturton]

Still got my original 800 + 810 (archiver) + 410 + Modded 800XL with 4 OS's

Got my original 1050s with Laser/Happy

Got my original 130XE + Controller House card

Printers still got original 1027 + 1029 + 1020

Even got my original 850 (but don't use it much now)

 

Original 520STFM + Harddrive + Cumana floppies )

 

Original Jaguar + ALL the games

[snicklin]

I got rid of my cassettes because the majority of them didn't work anymore. I must have got rid of them around 2001 maybe.

[tep392]

This kind of topic makes me cry. I left my childhood 400 and carts in a box by the dumpster back around 1988.

 

A year earlier I sold my Apple IIe system to help fund a car to get me around campus. Wish I still had that one as well, but the car was very nice to have at the time. I made many beer runs with that car.

[Jetboot Jack]

I have my original 800 and 410 from 1981, 810 from 1982, 800XL and 1050 (with super archiver) from sometime around 1984, 130XE, XEGS and ST from 1986-ish..

 

I have every game I ever bought for my A8 systems, dic, tape and cart.

 

I have several duplicate machines I've accrued including a couple of 1200XL, and for no good reason many STFM/STE systems!

 

I sold all my other retro gaming hardware a year or so ago - just rotting in the loft 2600, 7800, Colecovision, Amiga, PS1, PS2, Intellivision, Ti99/4a, NES, SNES, Genesis, GB. GBA etc and around 1000 games

 

sTeVE

[zylon]

The only A8 hardware I had back in the 80's was a 400 and a few carts that I'd bought from a friend. I still have one, but not the same one. We were mostly a Vic-20 user family then.

 

I do still have my original 5200 4-port and REV-7 flexis in my controllers. That technically counts.

Edited August 4, 2014 by zylon

[Android8675]

My 800 I bought originally "Refurbished" meaning Atari took it as a return, re-certified it, re-boxed it (in a box that actually said Refurbished, which I no longer have), and re-sold it. I got my from an Atari Employee, was my neighbor, got it for $600, came with 16k, but he "found" 2 more 16k modules for me.

 

Used to get a lot of eprom copies of carts from him as well as pirated game stuffs.

 

My 800 now has an Incognito as well as a small collection of EA flat box games that I'll probably treasure for a long time. (worked at EA from 97-2004 (roughly), best years of my game dev career)

 

-A.

[AtariNostalgia]

I have 2 X 800XLs, 1 X 130XE, 1 X 800, 1X 400, 1X ST, and so many others I cant evern recall them.

Other than the XLs and the XE and some peripherals, the rest are all packed away.

 

I'm just glad to be among people that were there during the same time period of Atari glory!

[Synthpopalooza]

Still have my 1050 drive from 1984. Got rid of the 600XL it was with, but ended up with various Atari's over the years, including a 65XE and 130XE. My current Atari is a 1200XL.

[+slx]

I had to hand down my 800/810 in the family when I got a. Mega ST but got them back when the recipients 'upgraded' to PCs. Unfortunately the APEFace and my almost complete collection of Compute! atari books got lost. I miss 'Mapping the Atari' most as it was the book I used together with Rodney Zak's to learn Assembly.

 

I sold my original Action! (and maybe MAC/65, can't remember for sure) and gave away my first printer, an EPSON FX-80 with custom ROM, something I have come to regret recently (although there would have been no way to reasonably keep that big, heavy beast and stay married...)

 

After the pain of parting with my 800 I never again sold an Atari and have added a couple more over the years. I have resolved, however, not to keep old PCs and Intel Macs and even passed on an early candy-coloured G3 iMac. (I would be tempted by an Apple II but luckily they are very rare over here.)

 

I did sell my Philips G7000 (Odysssey 2) with lots of carts for a pittance to buy Atari stuff but probably would not play them anyway as most were rather weak. It was a cool looking device, though.

[Britishcar]

Hmmm...

 

48K 800 with Newell FASTCHIP

1050 with HAPPY chip set

850

410

MPP1000E modem / Hayes OPTIMA 2400

various joysticks

various game carts

Amdek Color 300 chroma/luminance monitor

lots of floppy disks

 

...all from the early 80's and still in use.

[csimar]

I have my original 400, and lots of software. Unfortunately I purged some non-working hardware before I learned of the existence of BEST ELECTRONICS.

[ryanmercer]

I do, but it's not Atari... my half-brother is roughly 15 years older than me and he had a 2600 in the basement when I was real little and I had barely ever used, in 1990 for my 5th birthday I received an NES

 

 

The NES changed my life. I remember pushing the power button that first day and being whisked away into the world of computers. Within a few months my brother took the 2600 out of the house and sold it for whatever reason, which my mom was livid about, and I just had my NES. Less than 2 months later I was introduced to a room full of Apple II's in kindergarten, by 1994 I was rocking out Windows 3.11 Workgroup surfing the web hanging out in IRC rooms and MUDding at the age of 9... I rememer figuring out how to connect to an IRC server, the first time I telnet into a MUD, the first time I saw a picture on a website.

[ccc---]

Still have my 130XE (September 1985, allthough it was changed at Atari Austria one or two years later because the RAM was defect, so the 130XE that I have now isn't my original one, oh well) and my 1050 (October 1985?), later modded with Engl Turbo. Also some original games that I bought in 1985/1986 (yes I really bought some originals!!), the first games were Mythos I and Rescue On Fractalus. Oh and of course I still I have alle the club newsletters that I wrote from 1986 on, when I founded the "Blue Danube Atari Club" on 1st January 1986 together with my cousin.

[+CharlieChaplin]

Well,

 

I still have my Atari 1010 data-recorder (with orange sticker, made in Japan) from 1985 and it still works ! All the buttons are still there, in good condition and fully working. Alas, my original Atari 800XL which I got XMAS 1984 "died" a few years ago.

 

In 1995 or 1996 I bought a 256k RAM expansion, known as Mega-RAM-2 (fully Compyshop compatible) for my 800XL. When I discovered that there are many programs that do not work with the CS XRAM but required Rambo XRAM instead, I installed a switch so that I could switch between CS and Rambo mode. But after some months I found this annoying and wished to have both CS and Rambo XRAM inside my machine. So I asked a nice Atarian if he could further upgrade my machine - and he did this for me. In the end I got 512k XRAM and the pcb with the 256k expansion was further expanded with another pcb and another 256k. This worked well for many years, but the original small pcb which was placed (piggy-back) above an 8k RAM chip now had the double size. A few years ago (somewhere between 2008-2009), when I was sitting at my Atari, suddenly a bad smell and smoke came out of my machine. I immediately switched off the power, but it was too late ! The big XRAM pcb (on the small 8k RAM chip) had landed on the motherboard and created a short-circuit. The left third of the motherboard now had a brownish-black colour and had more or less been grilled. All I could do then, was to rescue the few chips off the motherboard that had survived this desaster. And since it was my only Atari back then, I was left with no Atari at all. So, I bought several Atari XL computers at the annual Abbuc meeting in Herten and at ebay. Today I have seven Atari 800XL computers, two of them are often used, the others are simply spare ones... (two of them have a U1MB expansion, another two have a 512k SRAM-expansion and the remaining three are standard 64k Ataris).

 

So my very first Atari 800XL died with an age of just 24 or 25 years... but luckily I have seven other Atari XL computers from 1983 and 1984, they are more than 30 years old now.

Edited August 23, 2014 by CharlieChaplin

[TXG/MNX]

I still got all my 8-bit stuff and sometimes by stuff new aswell, no Atari stuff leaves my house :-)

 

That same rule is also for all other Atari's I got.