Why did Atari make the 400 have a membrane keyboard?

[desiv]

5 minutes ago, Geister said:

A VIC with 3K of memory wasn't the deal you think it was, but everybody has fond memories of their first.

I'm not sure why people have to get condescending to try to prove their point.

 

I'm not sure why both can't just be good machines for different audiences...

[_The Doctor__]

didn't seem condescending to me. must be in the thoughts of the reader and what he thinks sometimes. Maybe a different choice of words would help?

A VIC with 3K of memory wasn't the deal it appeared to be, but we all have fond memories of our first.

Hope that helps.

[desiv]

4 minutes ago, _The Doctor__ said:

didn't seem condescending to me. must be in the thoughts of the reader and what he thinks sometimes.

🙂  

[ClausB]

On 11/17/2021 at 10:41 AM, drpeter said:

In a nutshell, the original design concept was for a keyboardless games console with 4K RAM, but when executives realised that the newly-demonstrated Star Raiders game would be a killer app for the 400, but needed a keyboard and 8K RAM, these became part of the design spec.

 

Yes but there was another reason for the design change, this from the electronics side: In 1978 the price of 16K RAM chips fell by nearly a factor of four, while the 4K chips' price stagnated.. Even cheaper were 8K chips, identical to the 16Ks but with defects in one half or the other. So Atari redesigned their 400/800 RAM board to accommodate the newer chips and abandoned the 4K design.

 

See:

 

 

and:

 

 

Edited February 1 by ClausB

[magnusfalkirk]

I'm gonig to toss my two cents worth in here on the discussion about BASIC. It seems that one thing EVERYONE is forgetting, when it comes to the BASIC language, no matter which flavor of it you used/liked/hated whatever, is the BASIC stood for BEGGINER'S All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (my emphasis on beginner's). It was designed to help people who had no knowledge of computers BEGIN learning to write programs for their computer. It was never intended as the something that you should use forever, when you learned about other languages, and their much better benefits, you'd move on. So it was a start, not the end, of programming.

[+Larry]

I bought a 400 back in the mid-late 80's when they were being blown out at KMart, et. al.  I know I paid less than $100, and I did try the keyboard before I bought it (meh!).  Gave it to my 9 yr. old.  She hated the keyboard, even for simple game playing.  Bought a replacement keyboard, 32K of ram (I don't think that 48K upgrades for the 400 were common then), and ended up with close to $300 in the computer.  But a very nice game machine for the money.  But the 800 -- they are special!!!

[ClausB]

1 hour ago, magnusfalkirk said:

It was designed to help people who had no knowledge of computers BEGIN learning to write programs for their computer. It was never intended as the something that you should use forever, when you learned about other languages, and their much better benefits, you'd move on. So it was a start, not the end, of programming.

 

True enough, but BASIC came with nearly every computer, and so became the default language, even for professional programmers who marketed their application software to home computer owners, many of whom did not learn to program at all. And BASIC served them all until the end of the 8-bit era (present company excepted).

[Arnuphis]

13 hours ago, Geister said:

 I was spending my money, not Mommy and Daddy's cash. 

I was 12. Not sure if you are trying to be insulting there or not. Regardless of who's money it was your average person would look at the two machines side by side and the VIC would look better quality because it did not have a toy keyboard. the price would then seal the deal.  I agree that under the hood the Atari was better but your average consumer was not that computer savvy. Thanks to Commodore, Sinclair etc. More people were able to experience a computer for the first time during the 1980s. I thought Sinclair machines were just awful but I respect them for broadening the appeal of home computers in the UK. And yes I have very fond memories of my VIC. It was a great computer. But even I outgrew it and ended up getting a TI-99/4a. Atari was still too expensive at the time.

 

I remember a friend at school insulting the Atari 400/800 by saying 'You have to tell it that it's a computer' referring to you having to plug in a BASIC cartridge to make it do anything. He had a Dragon 32 so he looked down on everyone 😄

 

 

Edited February 1 by Arnuphis

[Geister]

I'm not your average person.  I spent a lot of time doing my homework.  I knew what I was buying for my money and what I paid for the Atari 400 was within $50 of the price of a VIC.  I'd already spent a lot of money buying disappointing bits of electronics that were NOT computers so I didn't want to make a third mistake.

 

Your friend had a Dragon32?  He had to tell everyone that it WAS a computer because it was essentially unknown in the US.  Wasn't it basically a Coco clone?

[zzip]

18 hours ago, Stephen said:

I've heard it said that yes, the 400 was considered as a games machine, and it was because of Star Raiders the cheap keyboard was included.  I have NO idea if this was true or conjecture many years after the fact.

Yeah there's always a few different stories floating around on why things came to be.   From what I understand the A8 chipset was designed to be the 2600 replacement, and then the 800 was going to be a computer and the 400 a games console, until finally both were sold as computers.

 

But seeing that cheap computers like VIC20 came out only a couple years later with a full-stroke keyboard,  I do have to wonder if the 400's membrane keyboard was really there for cost-saving or riding what they thought the next trend in game consoles was going to be,

[Max_Chatsworth]

[ClausB]

On 1/31/2024 at 10:26 PM, desiv said:

I'm not sure why people have to get condescending to try to prove their point.

 

Maybe they're just Commodescending.