What did you get rid of that you wish you hadn't?

eegad · November 11, 2016

Full set of Antic and Analog magazines, as well as about 30 games on cart, many non-Atari branded like Jumpman Jr, K-razy Antics, Wizard of Wor, etc etc. After getting dumps of all of them and putting them on a few disks with a little "menu loader" , I thought it was silly to keep them. Got rid of them for like $3 each. These days I wish I still had them.

Edited November 11, 2016 by eegad

isayx3 · November 12, 2016

Most the stuff I let go of I have been able to hunt down....except my first computer, a TRS-80 Model 1 with some cassette games which I can't remember

FifthPlayer · November 12, 2016

i sold off my 800/1050 system along with an Epson RX-80 and MPP modem, in order to fund the purchase of an Amiga 1000. A few years later, I sold off the A1000 to purchase a PC.

I never would have been able to afford the A1000 without selling my Atari 800. But selling the A1000 was unnecessary and I wish I still had mine.

Lord Thag · November 12, 2016

My dad throwing away my entire Antic magazine collection in a garage purge, but saving a bunch of garbage I didn't care about. :mad:

Bryan · November 12, 2016

Hmm..

1. My 1200 (not XL) prototype. It had a smooth case (no texture) and an HCD lab unit sticker.

2. My big collection of boxed A8 software. I sold almost all of it when I moved to Costa Rica and I didn't even take pictures of it in the bookcases first.

flashjazzcat · November 12, 2016

The yellow XE keyboard I chucked before discovering Retr0Brite, and my old 1084ST monitor.

ApolloBoy · November 12, 2016

I've gone through several A8s but the 1200XL is the one I miss the most. It was in great shape, managed to fix the keyboard and then I traded it off along with my first XEGS. It's still part of Guitarman's collection last time I checked.

Edited November 12, 2016 by ApolloBoy

Brentarian · November 12, 2016

About 20 years ago I threw away a ton of Antic and Analog magazines, plus a few Atari Classics and Current Notes issues. Also tossed a few early Computer Shopper magazines that had A8 type-in programs. A few years before that I threw away an R-Time8 cart because it didn't work. Wish I had at least kept the case! Other items that left me would be on the 2600 side including a few rare titles. Life goes on though!

Edit: Good grief! I thought this was a new thread. Looks like I replied 5 months ago.

+mytek · November 13, 2016

I gave everything away to Curt Vendel about 14-15 years ago at a computer swap meet down in Santa Clara (?). And it was a lot of stuff (800, 600XL's, 800XL's, 130XE, 1200XL, 520ST, 1040ST, 810's, 1050's, XF551's, XEP80, and lots of cartridges including Editor/Assembler, Mac65, Action, BasicXL, BasicXE, R-Time8). So about 1-1/2 years ago I started over again, and now I have 2-600XL's, 2-800XL's, 1-120XL, 1-65XE, 1-130XE, 2-XEGS, 1-1050, a few carts (BasixXL, Mac65, Editor/Assembler), and of course a couple of U1MB w/Side2's, as well as a few other upgrades. Obviously I should have kept at least most all of the computers, and I am sad that I didn't :_(

- Michael

Almost forgot: I also gave away 3 Commodore 1702 monitors all working, as well as one color and 2 monochrome ST monitors :mad:

Edited November 13, 2016 by mytekcontrols

fujidude · November 13, 2016

I just got rid of a probable record breaking turd... err wait, I'm glad I got rid of that. Never mind, sorry. :grin:

+mytek · November 13, 2016

So was that an 800 Turd or just a 400? Because those 800's can really hurt :grin:

fujidude · November 13, 2016

So was that an 800 Turd or just a 400? Because those 800's can really hurt

Would have to be an 1450XLD.

+mytek · November 13, 2016

I know I was asking for trouble by encouraging that

- Michael

gilsaluki · November 13, 2016

Sold a perfectly working (found in the wild at a thrift shop) Atari 400 at a garage sale for about $5. Bought it for $2.49. Those days are gone, for sure. I have about 99 percent of the Atari stuff that I have purchased since 1983. So, I guess I don't have a ton of regrets. I just wished I could still use that old 1027 printer. Loved that thing before the printer wheel exploded from deterioration.

gilsaluki · November 13, 2016

I do have ALL the Antics ever published and most of the Analogs. I still read them to this day. Have all the disks for them as well.

+Stephen · November 13, 2016

I do have ALL the Antics ever published and most of the Analogs. I still read them to this day. Have all the disks for them as well.

95c6d2e44bc716d5f5aa106de2574371d5b34984

Blues76 · December 25, 2016

When we moved to the states with my parents, I was told that bringing my atari stuff, 65xe, 1050 disk drive, tape drive, joysticks, a tons of disks and tapes , probably over 200 or more disks with lots of games, utilities, and so on , would be too much of hassle and to please sell it. I was almost 14. While I did receive a good amount , including the disk drive selling at the price of a brand new drive because of all the software I had, and the computer selling it well , I do regret selling my disks the most and to a lesser extent all my atari hardware , because my next computer, more than 2 years later was a PC.

but life goes on

In retrospect , I left wondering why I couldn't append data to disk when using basic program , to the amount of knowledge acquired by using PCs in terms of programming

So, I'm not sure everything happens for a reason, but things worked out

I still think the 8 bit computer , the atari 8 bit, is an amazing machine . In today's world where Vulkan is surpassing opengl, where we have game editors like unreal and unity, what atari had and it still has, is amazing

kiwilove · December 27, 2016

The joy of having an Atari 800 as my own first home computer - is almost unparalleled. I spent a year looking through computer magazines trying to find what new computer system was ideal - in 1982.

Of course I was very sad about having to sell my Atari 800 - in order to step up to the 16-bit computers - thinking that the 8-bit days were over and done with.

But having gone through various 16-bit games consoles and computers / etc - the thought of ever returning to 8-bit hardware was not something to consider at all.

However when emulators were taking off - the return to past machines and videogames became possible - and it's a great feeling to play those games again - to see how timeless their playability is.

I took to Mame when it first started off - and also the first Atari 800 emulators, et.

When I purchased my first laptop PC - it was somewhat akin to buying my first home computer all over again.

And oddly enough - everything fell into place so that GTIABlast!/AtariBlast! started it's development on that laptop with the graphics utility running via a browser window.

Finally getting a tablet - the Nvidia K1 Shield tablet - specifically to run emulators on - is a way to relive all those 80s' videogames (and 90s/etc) all over again. Seeing AtariBlast! running on it too - is a nice feeling.

You can prepare for the time when the old hardware simply refuses to run anymore - by turning to emulation - I can't tell the difference between the original hardware - and emulation when it's running at 100% normal speed - and if it appears to have clunky graphics - that would be, that it always clunky to begin with - but the best graphics designed games always looks the same to me.

And it's only the PlayStation games that do look different with age - now they look much clunkier than from what I remembered back in the day - Tekken being a prime example of this.

Harvey

Keatah · December 27, 2016

There's many subtle difference in emulation vs real hardware. With time those differences become smaller as accuracy improves. And emulation will always feature convenience and reliability as a main selling point. People are first starting to realize that now as hardware is becoming more and more ratbaggy with time.

kiwilove · December 27, 2016

Emulation that is choppy is not worthwhile at all.

I do have to remind myself that with viewing videos on Youtube - that this is not necessarily what you see is what you get.

That you have to see it for yourself - running on the actual hardware - to be sure it is 'real' - ie. smooth?

Youtube does drop frames out - and so, can make something appear 'choppy' when it may not be like that at all.

Harvey

JamesD · December 27, 2016

Not Atari, but I subscribed to a magazine on tape. I gave the tapes to my brother, and they were eventually destroyed.
Some of those tapes have never been found anywhere, and are lost to the community forever.

Bryan · December 27, 2016

Not Atari, but I subscribed to a magazine on tape. I gave the tapes to my brother, and they were eventually destroyed.

Some of those tapes have never been found anywhere, and are lost to the community forever.

Whenever I'm looking though loose tapes, shellac records, or obscure recordable media at a thrift or antique shop, I always wonder if the world's only copy of something important is in there. Of course, it wouldn't hurt to discover a copy of some previously unknown recording worth thousands (as is the case with some old Blues records).

k-Pack · January 4, 2017

I have to say its my Voice Master. But I bought it back, so its not really my Voice Master that I miss. What I really miss is a disk that was in the box. I had rewritten the program Moonlord by Clayton Wilnum to accept voice commands. Being able to play the game without the keyboard was "cool". I do remember there was a problem with the colors changing after voice input. Because of this, it never got uploaded to CompuServe.

I've spent the last 2 years hoping it would show up on an archived disk. No such luck and I'm slowly giving up all hope.

Moonlord (the original):

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-moonlord_3510.html

+mytek · January 5, 2017

I have to say its my Voice Master. But I bought it back, so its not really my Voice Master that I miss. What I really miss is a disk that was in the box. I had rewritten the program Moonlord by Clayton Wilnum to accept voice commands. Being able to play the game without the keyboard was "cool". I do remember there was a problem with the colors changing after voice input. Because of this, it never got uploaded to CompuServe.

I've spent the last 2 years hoping it would show up on an archived disk. No such luck and I'm slowly giving up all hope.

Moonlord (the original):

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-moonlord_3510.html

My brother had the same wish that you did, but in his case it was something he had written for the Apple II GS. Unfortunately he had rashly gotten rid of every single bit of Apple II gear he had, many, many years ago, and then later regretted doing that when the nostalgia bug kicked in (probably sounds familiar). Over the last few years I have been trying to help him put a system back together by buying a combination of Apple GS stuff and modern retro upgrades each Christmas. Well this year he finally has a complete system, and best of all he found what he was looking for on-line (someone had posted it on an Apple archive site). So I tell you this to give you hope that if you keep searching it might turn up

And here is the demo that my brother created and finally found again...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w49PDa6A7jc&feature=youtu.be

BTW, I believe he used an Atari ST I had at the time to help generate some of the graphics that were used to create the bees.

Here's a quote from brother giving a little background on this...

Unfortunately, in addition to getting rid of ALL my Apple computers about 15 years

or so back, I also threw away just about every disk too. The hard drive in one of the

GS's had most of the development source code on it and that went as well.

So, TurboBee is available on a lot of the Apple archive sites as an archive file

"TurboBee.2mg". It doesn't play nice with the GS emulators I tried. Probably

because I did some very tight palette changes during horz blank time. That's what

is doing the gradient-shaded, horizontal bars that are moving up and down behind

the bees. So probably best running on real hardware (with a additional ram card).

The Bees did make an appearance on the last TurboRezGS demos I had running at

the Apple Expo East & West. They were overlay-ed on top of the TurboRez's

smooth scrolling background. Looked pretty nice as I recall.

Really wish I had kept the various source files.

It's interesting that gradient colored bars are relatively easy to generate on our good old A8's (which predate the GS by quite a few years), but apparently not so on a GS