Leaving and Returning to the Atari 8-Bits

[tschak909]

I was an avid 8-bit user and hacker throughout the 1980s. I also had Commodore, and Apple hardware in the house (as well as a PDP-11/45 in the garage, and a TRS-80 Model I, and a bunch of other stuff).

 

The hardware itself really was light years ahead of all of the other 8-bit machines in terms of its overall system design, and when the Amiga became available, and I realized many of the same people had worked on it (along with a nice contingent of people from Williams, and other places), I was finally sold on it when I saw it in action, and migrated to it (and believe me, that's a whole different story.)

 

I had PCs in the house starting in the mid-1980s, but was never impressed with them, and while I understood WHY they took off, I never understood the dichotomy between those machines that could do graphics (which everybody called game machines), and those machines that were monochrome (which were obviously business machines)...and I sat there, with both my Atari and my Amiga, demonstrating that this distinction was completely and utterly idiotic, a fact that the rest of the personal computer world didn't learn until the mid 1990s (and that those of us who also had workstations in the 1980s had also realized), and even then, only very slowly as PC video card vendors slowly crawled their fixed function VGA chips out of the fucking stone age (it literally took the TI 34020 for people to realize that fast graphics on a serious PC were a GOOD THING).

 

and the Mac? Ha. Had more than my share of them, for the first 15 years of its existence, the Mac literally was the DUMB BLONDE of the computer world. It was easy to use, yes. But the OS was a pile of dogshit, constantly crashing in direct proportion to the number of extensions loaded, and Quicktime for years was limited to these thumbnail sized windows that somehow made people go "oooo! aaaaah!", while I screamed on the inside because the same demonstrations I gave years before on my Amiga with video happening at full screen HAD NO EFFECT. Are most people really this brainless?...sigh.... I had a NeXT machine by 1991, and was using on a daily basis a lot of the things that people take for granted with their Macs today...and it was a glorious machine, even if it was doomed to non-support (and I knew it then...I could never convince even my father who used Sun machines daily, that this system was better all around for software development...sigh...)

 

Fast forward to 2003, and I decide to try Atari800. I was floored. The emulation was good! And I slowly started dipping my toes into the scene to try and get back all the bits I had lost (that had been relegated to dust and rot)... Finally, somehow I had initially missed AtariAge, and didn't sign on until May of 2006, and I found all of you good people.

 

-Thom

[+slx]

I "upgraded" from a vanilla 48K 800/810 to a Mega ST2 with an SM124 B/W "hires" 70Hz (!!!) monitor and 40MB HD in 1986/7 and had to pass on my 800 to relatives (which I didn't like too much because I had no games, no literature and no programming languages for the ST). I had been programming the 800 in BASIC, Action! and Assembler but as the change to the ST coincided with finishing high school, army service, university and a girlfriend I spent a lot less time with it than I had spent with the 8-bit and changed to "user mode" and never really programmed the ST beyond simple BASIC mini-stuff.

 

With my first job came a phone line of my own and a lot of BBSing (mainly FIDOnet, I'd be rich now if I had put the money I spent on phone bills in a piggy bank). About 1992 I bought an 800XL/1050 "package" I had seen in a classified ad and returned to some teenage favorites (finally managing to finish Spelunker). 8-bit sessions were infrequent, though even after the 800/810 returned to me (sans a lot of the Compute! books and without Monkey Wrench II though).

 

The ST was replaced by a TT and the TT gave way to a PC in 96 as I couldn't get decent Internet/Mail access with the TT. I did install emulators on the TT and the PCs for an occasional game and did the same for the Mac that replaced the PCs in 2008.

 

I did start a bit of 8-bit collecting (years late, as I would have spent a lot less in the early years of EBay) and now have a permanent 130XE setup in my son's room as he likes to dabble in BASIC (and I try to return to assembly language).

 

My plan is to have a permanent 800/Incognito setup in my study but AtariAge, the ABBUC Forum and all those great podcasts keep me from making space for that project....

[+MrFish]

bump...

[Quantum Mechanic]

I started using Atari computers around 1981. I was immediately active in telecommunications, starting with the Atari 830 acoustic modem. I ran an Atari 8-bit BBS from somewhere around 1987 until 1995 when I packed up all my 8-bit stuff and moved out of town for a few years. I was quite the "power user", doing lots of software and hardware projects. I have/had various models including 800, 600XL, 800XL, 130XE, lots of drives including 1050, Trak, Rana, Indus, 850, P:R: Connection, a couple of ICD's MIOs, a couple of Bob Puff's Black Boxes, multiplexer, Super E-Burner, lots of carts including all the OSS language carts, SDX, RT8, and even oddball ones like the right-cart Monkey Wrench. I used to do lots of repairs and upgrades on 8-bit machines for folks all around Sacramento, CA. Let me tell you, there's nothing like spending an afternoon soldering stacks of DRAMs to make a 1088K 130XE!

 

So in January of 2015 I stumbled across the Antic podcast on my iPhone and started binge-listening. It's really brought up some pleasant old memories. I did sell off a bunch of my excess hardware before I moved in '95, but I know I kept at least one instance of each "good thing". All that hardware, along with hundreds of floppies are stashed away in a storage shed. Now I'm itching to dig it all out and see what boots up. Who knows, maybe I'll be inspired enough to get something like a Lantronix WiBox and set up my old BBS??

[+Allan]

I started using Atari computers around 1981. I was immediately active in telecommunications, starting with the Atari 830 acoustic modem. I ran an Atari 8-bit BBS from somewhere around 1987 until 1995 when I packed up all my 8-bit stuff and moved out of town for a few years. I was quite the "power user", doing lots of software and hardware projects. I have/had various models including 800, 600XL, 800XL, 130XE, lots of drives including 1050, Trak, Rana, Indus, 850, P:R: Connection, a couple of ICD's MIOs, a couple of Bob Puff's Black Boxes, multiplexer, Super E-Burner, lots of carts including all the OSS language carts, SDX, RT8, and even oddball ones like the right-cart Monkey Wrench. I used to do lots of repairs and upgrades on 8-bit machines for folks all around Sacramento, CA. Let me tell you, there's nothing like spending an afternoon soldering stacks of DRAMs to make a 1088K 130XE!

 

So in January of 2015 I stumbled across the Antic podcast on my iPhone and started binge-listening. It's really brought up some pleasant old memories. I did sell off a bunch of my excess hardware before I moved in '95, but I know I kept at least one instance of each "good thing". All that hardware, along with hundreds of floppies are stashed away in a storage shed. Now I'm itching to dig it all out and see what boots up. Who knows, maybe I'll be inspired enough to get something like a Lantronix WiBox and set up my old BBS??

Please do and check your disks to see if you have anything that hasn't been dumped on the Net yet. There still is a bunch of software that hasn't been copied yet.

 

Allan

[airsoftmodels]

For me its kind of complicated. My first atari broke in 1984. Then I had an Apple IIc. I bought 3 Atari's cheap in 2003, and then gave them away. Now I have another 600xl I plan to keep. I love the way the poll says "Atari Amiga"

[+Larry]

I never left.

 

I simply added (and subtracted) other computers as the A8 became more and more of a "hobby computer." But I never lost my love of the 8-bit Atari since 1982. However, once I had tasted the power of Intel machines and especially Windows, I never left those. I did leave the Apple IIC, C64, and the ST. Just never could love the ST. Maybe if I had bought the Amiga it would have been different.

 

In fact, I started programming on a 360-40 in grad school, and it was truly "love at first byte!"

 

-Larry

[+MrFish]

For me its kind of complicated. My first atari broke in 1984. Then I had an Apple IIc. I bought 3 Atari's cheap in 2003, and then gave them away. Now I have another 600xl I plan to keep.

 

I didn't really account for all possible scenarios. You can just pick something that makes sense to you -- which you probably already did.

 

 

For me its kind of complicated. My first atari broke in 1984. Then I had an Apple IIc. I bought 3 Atari's cheap in 2003, and then gave them away. Now I have another 600xl I plan to keep. I love the way the poll says "Atari Amiga"

 

It was somewhat of a "Freudian slip", but I liked it too. So I decided not to change it.

[+MrFish]

I never left.

 

I simply added (and subtracted) other computers as the A8 became more and more of a "hobby computer." But I never lost my love of the 8-bit Atari since 1982.

 

I didn't consciously leave, but rather came to a juncture where I had no choice in the matter. I sometimes wonder what things would have been like if that wasn't the case. I was still actively programming my Atari up until the day I left it behind.

[+MrFish]

bump...

[am1933]

Started on my trusty ti99/4a in 1982 and could get next to no software or hardware for it here in the UK, I then bit the bullet and bought an Atari 800XL , 1010 starter pack in 1984 and bought another 800XL with 1050 in 1985, I built up a fairly hefty software and hardware collection and then in a moment of madness-got rid of the lot to finance the purchase of a Commodore 128, after the novelty value of the new machine wore off-I knew I had made a big mistake.

I picked up another 800XL rounabout 1999 and managed to procure a 130XE also, I have also managed to pick up another 130XE since and some more software. If I am being honest-I have put most of my efforts into building my ti99/4a collection but I feel the Atari bug calling once again.

I feel the need for another 1050!!!!!!!

[+MrFish]

Bump

[Dmitry]

The irony of the Atari 800 is it booted to a ready prompt but wasn't, in fact, ready to do anything. But for me and many others it taught us that a computer should come with s programming language and you should instruct it to do stuff. The ST changed all that and it's why I don't remember it fondly... Yeah we bought pascal for it, but there the community around it all, wasn't the same. I actually left computers completely and went old school with "nothing". Now known as 0 bit computing... Did that the first half of the 90s.... Luckily came to my senses and rejoined the world...

[fujidude]

800 had MEMO PAD. 800XL had READY, and it was ready. It was ready to interpret BASIC instructions. And that's about it.

Edited June 12, 2016 by fujidude

[Dmitry]

Wow this reminiscing reminds me of how bitter I was for a while.... Haha wow. Yeah in my youth I was even bitter about what was lost. well look at it this way, the online community of 1985 was tech savvy...period. You didn't get that far into it except you were cutting edge. Compare that to today, nobody says well that person is on the internet so they must be tech savvy.... Lol, no the community of the 'whole internet' will never be a playground for tech geeks again....but of course, the Internet is much appreciated anyway and I got over my disappointment lol

[Dmitry]

Fuji correct.... I tend to generically say Atari 800. I know the 400 didn't come with basic because I didn't even initially have basic . It literally did nothing for me for a month or two

[+davidcalgary29]

I left my original 800 system with my parents in the Bahamas, and 'rediscovered' it after a hurricane in 1996. Fortunately, it survived the storm surge. Those things are tanks!