DoctorSpuds Reviews Things - The Atari 800

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So… This Atari 800 computer was found in the basement of West High School in Madison WI. It was with 2 other 800’s, and 800X and a 520ST, there was also an Atari 820 printer, four 5 ½ inch floppy drives, and an Atari 850 interface. The 800X works as do all the floppy drives,the 520ST is not functioning due to an issue with the power button and likely something else,and two of the three 800”s are functioning as well, it is unknown if the 820 or 850 work since we have no idea how to hook them up and use them. It also took us quite a bit of time to figure out that the 800's had to have the front door closed to actually power on the system, we were worried that they were all broken, but as said earlier only one 800 was, and it was because the case had broken in such a way that it couldn’t power on, there is likely nothing wrong with the board and the RAM AND ROM were fine since we had to use them on the other 800 that lacked them, now the poor thing is just a caseless empty husk.

The Machine I purchased is working quite well (and was originally going to use it to type what you’re reading know but all the photo’s I took of the screen had much of the writing cut off, oh well). In fact I’m finding it easier to type on the 800’s keyboard than the one I use with my computer. The machine itself does have a few detractions, mainly due to age and simply being dirty, the function keys are very sticky and like to hold themselves down, this can likely be fixed with a little bit of cleaning, also the PC speaker likes to randomly beep loudly and quickly when I’m typing, I may just disconnect the thing. Aesthetically this computer looks rather hilarious, in that it is enormous. The thing is as long as an Intellivision, as deep as an Odyssey2 with The VOICE add-on and as thick and it probably weighs more than an original Xbox. Yes, I do know about how the 800 was designed to be a ‘friendly typewriter’ or something like that, but that can’t mask the fact that this thing just looks plain weird. But as it is this is a fantastic machine to both type on and play games with, I hope to expand my collection of games, though it is more likely that I will just buy an SD drive and load it up with all the software I want without spending a small fortune.

http://atariage.com/forums/blog/729/entry-15278-the-atari-800/