Old pictures of our Atari 8-bit setups

[6BQ5]

What a great thread! Thanks to everyone who shared photos!

 

Now ... if you still have the same machine then post a side-by-side showing "then-and-now"!

Edited May 4, 2019 by 6BQ5

[Gunstar]

 

Yep! The Indus GT box was designed that way. I loved that.

 

 

 

Absolutely! The house was built in 1977. Total 70's house. I miss it!

 

 

 

Bill Bucker is right! I've been a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan.

 

8-track was little used by me, this stereo was a hand-me-down from my oldest brother.

 

 

Yes. My parents bought a used 1969 Rockola jukebox around that time (which I still have!) and it came with hundreds of 45's.

 

I guess I am lucky, my dad always took lots of photos. I have more of my old setup that I will dig up and share when I find them.

I lived in Wheaton, Illinois (Chi-town suburb) during my formative years from 8-21, minus a year in Oklahoma around '87. Life long Cubs and Bears fan...

Edited May 4, 2019 by Gunstar

[jaybird3rd]

What a great thread! Thanks to everyone who shared photos!

 

Now ... if you still have the same machine then post a side-by-side showing "then-and-now"!

Well, I have the hardware packed away in storage at the moment (I'm waiting until I can safely set it up in a permanent home), but here is a quick picture that I just took of my original "back-in-the-day" disk collection ...

 

 

Most of these disks were made in the 1984-1985 time frame. The disk with Archon II on it (the front-most disk on the left) is the same one shown in my picture; you can see it sitting on top of the 1050, underneath the BASIC cartridge. It's still usable, as are most of the disks in this collection, although I've long since archived them to ATRs.

 

A bit of trivia: I'm pretty sure that "Gemini Enterprises," the name and address of which is printed on the translator disk on the right, was the Atari dealer where my grandparents originally bought the 800 and 800XL. Cedar Knolls, NJ was a quick drive from their home (at the time) in Parsippany.

[gilsaluki]

OMG! This is the BEST thread EVER!! Thanks for all that posted pics of their 'then' setup! I will am now motivated to find my old pics of my Atari setup. Thanks again. Best posting (best President ever) EVER!

[Agent570]

Now ... if you still have the same machine then post a side-by-side showing "then-and-now"!

LOL didn't expect a trip up to the attic tonight but...hell yeah, I still have my The Programmer kit and 410 recorder. I bought an 800 a few years later from B&C when they were on closeout and have been using it ever since. Apologies for the crappy lighting.

 

[+slx]

Well, I have the hardware packed away in storage at the moment (I'm waiting until I can safely set it up in a permanent home), but here is a quick picture that I just took of my original "back-in-the-day" disk collection ...

 

Currently I don't have a permanent real hardware setup either but I am just going through my floppy drawer copying all my floppies to modern storage. I didn't remember this, but apparently I peeled the factory labels off most of my floppies and replaced them with neatly typewritten labels (it never ceases to amaze me how much time one had as a pre-internet teenager with despite never coming home before about 6.15pm on weekdays and having school until lunch on Saturdays, the latter about as mythical and menacing to my kids as stories about dragons). Just like jaybird3rd I exempted Elephant discs from this treatment and applied my labels just like him to keep the elephant head visible.

 

(I had about a dozen of these multi-game floppies and remember the selection of games to be a careful balance between optimum usage of floppy space and having floppies with games belonging to a certain genre, series, etc. I think I even used Diskey to put an excess file sector in the directory or sector 720 to make things fit.)

 

 

(The overall floppy failure rate wasn't alarming, a few bad sectors here and there and just two discs that wouldn't read at all. Almost all of the problems were on floppies with games which doesn't really hurt as they're readily available. I couldn't even say that a specific brand was more prone to failure - also because I can only guess at the brand from the envelopes which I don't recall separating from their floppies. I had one reinforcement ring come off and had to clean the head twice on about 60 floppies. The only thing missing are a couple of floppies with documents which I separated from the rest when I passed my 800 on within the extended family. I am sure I do have them somewhere but need to dig a little more to save them. Most of my programs seem to be alive and well, I only have to figure out what's what.)

[gilsaluki]

Check out all those pirated copies of games now on disk (Qix, Star Raiders, etc.)

[jaybird3rd]

Check out all those pirated copies of games now on disk (Qix, Star Raiders, etc.)

Yeah, I'm ashamed to admit that most of the disks in my collection were pirated copies, too. Those disks were made by my uncles, who would have been young teenagers at the time, so I figure they must have had help from a friend with access to a BBS (they did not have modems for their own computers). I seem to remember seeing them bringing stacks of floppies over to a kid who lived next door and who also had an Atari computer, so I can only assume that he was at least one of their sources.

 

(In later years, after I had inherited all their Atari stuff, I did pick up original copies of the games that I played the most.)

[+slx]

Check out all those pirated copies of games now on disk (Qix, Star Raiders, etc.)

I had about half a dozen original games, the remainder were pirated, first ‚ordered‘ from a guy in Germany who advertised in computer magazine classified ads (paid with cash by mail), later swapped from other Atarians.

 

(IIRC I had Star Raiders, Choplifter, Track Attack, Shamus, The Sands of Egypt, Apple Panic, Zork II, Final Approach and a rather lame SSI adventure plus MAE, Action!, DOS XL, the Page 6 disk (curiously labeled in German) and some APX/ANTIC stuff.)

 

 

Gesendet von iPhone mit Tapatalk

[jaybird3rd]

Currently I don't have a permanent real hardware setup either but I am just going through my floppy drawer copying all my floppies to modern storage. I didn't remember this, but apparently I peeled the factory labels off most of my floppies and replaced them with neatly typewritten labels (it never ceases to amaze me how much time one had as a pre-internet teenager with despite never coming home before about 6.15pm on weekdays and having school until lunch on Saturdays, the latter about as mythical and menacing to my kids as stories about dragons). Just like jaybird3rd I exempted Elephant discs from this treatment and applied my labels just like him to keep the elephant head visible.

 

(I had about a dozen of these multi-game floppies and remember the selection of games to be a careful balance between optimum usage of floppy space and having floppies with games belonging to a certain genre, series, etc. I think I even used Diskey to put an excess file sector in the directory or sector 720 to make things fit.)

I don't want to sidetrack this thread into a discussion of disk collections, but yes, I remember doing the same thing. Finding the optimal combination of my favorite games on a 720-sector disk side was my version of making my own mixtapes as a kid.

 

Somewhere in my disk collection, I found a handy AUTORUN.SYS utility which listed all .EXE files on the disk in a nice menu on a rainbow-colored screen; you would select the file you wanted to load with the keyboard. After Atari DOS and this AUTORUN.SYS file, I had (if I remember correctly) 707 sectors free of the original 720, and I found all kinds of creative ways to make the best possible use of that remaining space. It was a slow and labor-intensive process, but it was fun, and it helped to fill all that free time that I wish I still had today!

 

It's funny that we both labeled our beloved Elephant disks in the same way. I guess it was such a nice-looking label that I couldn't stand covering it up. I still use floppies, and I tend to leave the original manufacturer's label under my own. One of these days, I need to hook up a dot matrix printer and print up some nice-looking labels; for several reasons, I'm not entirely happy with the more "modern" labeling alternatives. I was also one of those who printed a catalog of the files on the disk and taped it to the back of the disk sleeve; the rolled paper from 40-column printers was just the right width.

[Mclaneinc]

Totally agree that the thread is superb, well done OP..

 

I just had to reply to the customisation by people of labels, the notion of them being the equivalent of a mix tape just brought a huge smile to my face, totally on point for those of us from the times. Sadly the notion of me, the most disorganised man on the planet neatly labelling disks just did not work in my multiverse

 

Loving the pictures, moooooaaar mooooaaarrr please

[jaybird3rd]

I'll start with one... I estimate this is 1984.

I just noticed that your desk appears to be the same one shown here, and that several other Atari users also showed with their systems in a similar thread; see here and here. Very nice desk! I wonder who made it, and when. When I get the chance, I intend to spend some time in a woodworking shop, designing and building some retro-computer-friendly furniture, and that desk will certainly be one of my sources of inspiration. (I especially like the wooden media shelf on the top.)

[erichenneke]

I love this thread! I'll have to dig through pics next time I am at my parents' house. There's bound to be a few in there somewhere.

 

I know my original setup involved a shudder off the side of our house laid across a couple of cinder blocks!

And a Sony KV-1222 Trinitron TV on top of that.

 

The TV was excellent. The "desk"? Not so much... but it was very functional, and also allowed room for my Mannesmann Tally Spirit-80 printer.

 

-Eric

[+Nezgar]

After Atari DOS and this AUTORUN.SYS file, I had (if I remember correctly) 707 sectors free of the original 720, and I found all kinds of creative ways to make the best possible use of that remaining space. It was a slow and labor-intensive process, but it was fun, and it helped to fill all that free time that I wish I still had today!

DOS 2.0 style single density disks formatted to 707 free sectors with nothing on them, less after writing DOS.SYS & DUP.SYS. Anthough, with your AUTORUN.SYS menu, you could delete DUP.SYS so it would still have had more free space than a disk with DUP.SYS...

[jaybird3rd]

DOS 2.0 style single density disks formatted to 707 free sectors with nothing on them, less after writing DOS.SYS & DUP.SYS. Although, with your AUTORUN.SYS menu, you could delete DUP.SYS so it would still have had more free space than a disk with DUP.SYS...

That's right, I remember now. It's been a while since I've done it, but that was my procedure: write the system files, delete DUP.SYS, copy AUTORUN.SYS, and fill the rest up with games.

[eegad]

 

This topic had me thinking back to what my Atari area looked like back in the day. I pulled out my photo albums from the 80s, but unfortunately this was all I could find. (back before digital photography I guess I wouldn't have "wasted film" on something as mundane as my room). This would most likely have been 1988, and I was in college at the time.

 

Anyway, this was my 800xl with 256k Rambo upgrade, three 1050 drives (2 with US Doublers), SX-212 modem, 410 recorder, half a dozen boxes full of disks, (and in the lower left, some actual packaged software). I had the 800xl hooked up to both a monochrome monitor for BBS/word processing, and a 20 inch tv for gaming. Sound from the tv was fed into the 2 speakers on top of the bookcases.

 

As I'm looking at this, one thing jumps out at me....that blue thing in the lower right. It was a joystick, but made like a trakball - the ball didn't spin, you just laid your hand on top and pushed in whichever direction. I'd forgotten about that strange joystick until now and have no idea why I bought it. I think I tried using it for a day or two and hated it. Anybody remember what that was called?

 

 

 

 

[JR>]

Love the beer bottle collection. I had a pretty extensive one of those back in the day

[Lord Thag]

 

 

As I'm looking at this, one thing jumps out at me....that blue thing in the lower right. It was a joystick, but made like a trakball - the ball didn't spin, you just laid your hand on top and pushed in whichever direction. I'd forgotten about that strange joystick until now and have no idea why I bought it. I think I tried using it for a day or two and hated it. Anybody remember what that was called?

That's a Roklan Un-Roller Controller, I think.

[toddtmw]

Did anyone have the joystick that looked like a BMX bicycle grip? There was no base and a red button on top. There were mercury switches that detected how the stick was angled and you could squeeze it to center it if you didnt want to move.

[bandit]

What a great thread! Thanks to everyone who shared photos!

 

Now ... if you still have the same machine then post a side-by-side showing "then-and-now"!

Same 800 and same disk, alot of the same from 84 or so till today. I thought I did this here awhile back ??

[lbaeza]

Did anyone have the joystick that looked like a BMX bicycle grip? There was no base and a red button on top. There were mercury switches that detected how the stick was angled and you could squeeze it to center it if you didnt want to move.

Datasoft's Le Stick.

 

Regards,

 

Louis BQ

[+slx]

Datasoft's Le Stick.

Astonishingly one of the first shops to carry Ataris in Austria (computer city in Vienna) had a Le Stick and I tried it out using Pac-Man. I didn't like the feeling and only got one recently because it's so strange (but still don't use it).

[chad5200]

Found another picture! This one was taken at the same time as the original picture of this thread.

 

[Major Havoc 2049]

Forgive me if there is already a thread like this... but I figured it would be fun to post old pictures of us back in the day that include our beloved Atari 8-bits. If there is already a thread, please point me in the right direction.

 

I'll start with one... I estimate this is 1984.

 

PICT1310.JPG

 

Cool pic. Is that Ron Cey of the Chicago Cubs? lol

[chad5200]

 

Cool pic. Is that Ron Cey of the Chicago Cubs? lol

 

Bill Buckner. The chest hair sticking out above his collar is the giveaway.

Edited May 10, 2019 by chad5200