How did you get your first Atari computer?

[ojanhk]

I received a 600xl for my 13th birthday in June 1984 with a tape drive and 2-3 games. It wasn’t my first computer as I had a ZX81 since 1982 but the black & white without sound little computer was starting to feel a little bit limited. For Christmas that year, the setup was completed with a 1020 printer and a touch tablet. I didn’t own many games as they were pretty expensive and I was the only kid at school with an Atari, the others owning mostly spectrums, Apple ][ or TI99. I still have very good memories of the Atari though, playing Bruce Lee for hours. I also remember spending nearly one afternoon teaching my great-grandmother (someone born in the 19th century!) how to use this little machine, how many thing we could do with it. Sadly the 600xl stopped working all of a sudden sometime in 85 and was replaced by an Apple //c. 
Three years ago, after lunch at my mum’s place, after one more «Could you remove some of your stuff from the basement », I finally obeyed and found a little plastic bag with the 600xl and the 1010. With a bit more experience in electronics, I found out one of the memory chip was dead, replaced it, turned it on and was treated by a nice « ready » prompt. It now stands on my desk with a 1050, an AVG cart and a Fujinet, my kids likes it and have a lot of fun playing Bruce Lee, Moon Patrol, Qix and a few others.

[Gunstar]

My parents were good parents too, but I also had to pay for my own computer too back in the day. I got into the Atari with the release of the XE line in '85 and bought my 130XE from a store called Service Merchandise that no longer exists. The sales man tried to sell me a much cheaper 800XL that were on clearance at the time, but I was dead set on having a 128K computer...if only I'd known about the Rambo 256K upgrades at the time, I'd have bought the 800XL and used the money I saved to get a Rambo and have twice the memory, and with a much better keyboard and build quality. 

 

I earned and saved my money up for it at first with a paper route, but while saving I turned 16 and so I quit the paperboy job and got a job at McDonald's to save up more quickly with my $3.35 an hour minimum wage job. I hated working at McDonald's though, especially the end-of-day cleaning of the huge grease traps, so I quit that job right after getting my Atari and vowed to never work in the fast food industry again. I kept my vowel, next getting a job at a Sears outlet store as a cashier where about a year later I got an 800 from there on clearance for $40 with my 10% employee discount.

Edited November 22, 2022 by Gunstar

[Atari8guy]

Christmas 1983 from http://personalcomputerslondon.com/  

Still in business and still uses a 130XE as the cash point of sale system.

 

Got an 800XL and a 1050, along with a few carts (don't remember which ones).

[_The Doctor__]

16 minutes ago, Atari8guy said:

Christmas 1983 from http://personalcomputerslondon.com/  

Still in business and still uses a 130XE as the cash point of sale system.

 

Got an 800XL and a 1050, along with a few carts (don't remember which ones).

awesomeness,

get a copy of his POS software asap 

along with any technical info on drawers receipt etc etc...

Edited November 22, 2022 by _The Doctor__

[Vyvyan B.]

4 hours ago, bfollowell said:

 

Not exactly what I had in mind, but a good tale nonetheless. I look forward to hearing all about what you find in your treasure trove!

 

Hey, the title is "How did you buy your first Atari computer?" The first one I carried out was a 1200xl, so my first Atari computer was a 1200xl and I paid for it with many hours worth of manual labor. 😀 Not sure what I'm going to do with it all, it's a bit overwhelming, but it was much better than letting him chuck it all away.

[Keatah]

Getting my first Apple II was a real honest ass-buster, a chore-filled summer and winter. Worked all sorts of odd jobs. Sweeping neighbors garages, running errands for the seniors, mowing lawns, shoveling snow, washing windows, taking out the garbage, for the whole damned block. Earning dollars and more dollars every day. Sold some of my toys and other stuff for the final push. It was a grand evening. I could barely slide it out of the box, it was so big and I was so small. Thing was HEAVY! And clumsy. Not a lightweight like the 2600.

 

Got into the Apple II early, before the Atari computers came to market. Loved the A2 logic board because it had a lot of chips on it. Almost a hundred! So I reasoned it must be a very smart computer! All my LED handhelds had one or two, Speak'n'Spell maybe 5 or so, a calculator just 1 or two. I only saw a few advertisements for it, and they were no-nonsense and listed all the major features of what made up a single-board system at the time. I figured it was a real computer because of that. But it also fit into the home because the ad showed it being used in the kitchen/livingroom.

 

Getting my first Atari computer was rather simple and straightforward. It was a 400 and all I had to do was ask. It showed up within a week along with some cartridges and a 410. I don't immediately recall having seen any "killer demos" in the store or anything. Rather I liked the Autumn colored keyboard and general angular style of the console. Very futuristic - kind of reminded me a little of the "Space Quiz" station they had going down at MSI in Chicago. It, too, had amber displays and brown/tan/yellow keys.

 

All the 8-bit software would be discovered at home. Never saw much of anything displayed in kiosks in my part of town. But disks and carts were comprehensively stocked and not difficult to get a hold of. Minnesota Fats, Toys'R'Us, Venture, three stores right there! I would build up a library of carts just like I was doing with the 2600.

 

Eventually I would upgrade it to an 800. Not sure what I did with the 400. I suspect it fell into disuse and somehow just disappeared to somewhere unknown. Both the 800 and Apple II formed the basis of my computer gaming station for long time. There were several interlopers like the TI-99/4A, CoCo 1, and C64. But they weren't quite the combo of Apple and Atari.

 

Edited November 22, 2022 by Keatah

[Justin Payne]

5 hours ago, Vyvyan B. said:

My uncle called me up about six months ago and told me that he had a "pile of computer crap" in his basement that I could have for free if I took it all away. I figured, who doesn't like free crap, right? So I get over there and it's literally an entire corner of his basement full of Atari 8-bit stuff! 3 800s (one with a Bit3 card), 3 boxed 400s, 4 800xls, 2 boxed 600xls, 2 1200xl (one boxed) like 6 810s, 8 1050s, working guts for another 400 and 800, an unused Indus GT in it's original case and a bunch of old floppies. Way, wayyy too much stuff. Six months later and I still have not gone through it all. So that was my introduction to the Atari 8-bit world.

Man, what a nice haul. I doubt I'll get that lucky with any family members. What a jip. 😉

[+MrFish]

8 hours ago, Vyvyan B. said:

...who doesn't like free, awesome 1980's 8-bit gear, right?

 

8 hours ago, Vyvyan B. said:

Just enough stuff to comfortably sustain a retro-computing hobby for the remainder of my existence.

 

There, I fixed those for you. 

 

[Vyvyan B.]

46 minutes ago, Justin Payne said:

Man, what a nice haul. I doubt I'll get that lucky with any family members. What a jip. 😉

All this actually belonged to my cousin, he was about 10 years older than me and was obviously into his 8-bit stuff. He had health issues and passed away a few years back. My uncle is in his late 70s now and was in the process of moving and he just wanted it gone.

[Vyvyan B.]

44 minutes ago, MrFish said:

 

 

There, I fixed those for you. 

 

"pile of computer crap" was a direct quote 😆 I don't think my uncle saw any real value in this collection of relics. There was even more stuff that I missed.

[Rybags]

My parents bought my 400 in 1983 for Christmas.

We got gypped in Aus with Atari stuff until the Tramiels came along (and even after that still overpayed)

From memory the 16K system with 1010 came to nearly $650.  $160 of that was for the crappy 1010 which had button failure fairly early on.

 

About 9 months later I bought a 600XL which I planned to upgrade to 64K but it turned out better value to just buy an 800XL so I did and sold the 600XL to a friend.

Barely 18 months, probably less after the original purchase the 800XL came in under $600.  Still have that computer.

Got my first 1050 in 1985, I think it cost about $450 at the time.

 

Around the same time I got my 400 the C64 was selling here for around the same price, maybe $50 more.  Their tape drive I'm fairly sure was just 50 bucks.

Edited November 23, 2022 by Rybags

[+MrFish]

6 minutes ago, Vyvyan B. said:

"pile of computer crap" was a direct quote 😆 I don't think my uncle saw any real value in this collection of relics. There was even more stuff that I missed.

Yeah, I caught that part. I'm sure it was, to him. At least he thought enough to give someone else a chance with it. Good on your cousin's memory that you took some interest in it.

 

[adam242]

Sometime in 1984, I convinced my Dad to buy me a 600XL. It wasn't even my birthday or Christmas. I dove right into learning Atari BASIC, and my whole family enjoyed cartridge games like River Raid and Miner 2049er.

 

A few years later, pretty sure 1986, I had saved paper route money to upgrade to a 130XE and 1050 disk drive. Whole new world. I was 13.

 

Unfortunately, I don't have either of those machines anymore.. by 1990, I sold both of them to buy a used Amiga 1000. All my current Atari 8-bits (except for an 800 I picked up before the Amiga) were bought on eBay or craigslist years later.

[+x=usr(1536)]

Can't say that I bought my first Atari computer: that was an 800 my dad had picked up for me from a friend who was upgrading to an 800XL.

 

The first one that I bought, however, was a second-hand 520STFM around 1989 or so.  Had part of the cash for it saved up from various odd jobs, with the other part coming from selling off some of the more redundant parts of my A8 hoard.

 

That one ended up being upgraded to (IIRC) 2MB of RAM and stuck around as my main computer until about 1995, at which time it was replaced with a PC.  While I never got into the ST to the same depth as I did the A8, it did teach me a ton about things like emulators, C, Minix, blitters, maths coprocessors, PC compatibility and what that really means, and a bunch more that served me well into the present computing era.  It spawned a few more STs passing through my hands, but sadly never a TT or (lusted-after) Falcon.

 

One thing I will say is that that machine was definitely the early seed of my dislike of Windows as a desktop OS.  Given that Windows 3.1 was the standard when I was actively using the ST and 95 came out a couple of months after I finally got a PC, it really set expectations of usability in my mind that in many ways haven't been met by Windows.  BeOS and OS X / macOS have been the only ones that have really clicked with me as a GUI in the same way.

[Gunstar]

10 hours ago, ZuluGula said:

I was growing up in eastern Europe Poland, the country back than was under communist regime. We had a chains of stores called Pewex which sold western goods for US dollars (official currency in Poland was called Złoty). They had all kinds of western goods not available anywhere else. Color TVs, VHS and CD players, boomboxes, jeans clothes, cosmetics and 8-bit Atari computers. I remember going there after school (around 6th grade) steering at the Atari for weeks. Back than, there was a place in my city that had Atari computers on which we could play games after paying for a certain period of time. This is how I got to know Atari, basically I didn't know much about any other brand. Around that time 65XE was priced I think $149 amd after couple of months it went down to $129. It was still couple month salary for average worker. I had grandmother that migrated to the USA for work. I asked her for money and she gave me enough to buy 65XE and XC12. In exchange, she asked me to write to her a letters, one for every dollar. I end up sending like three letters, I was never good writing tham. One year later I got a CA 2001 floppy drive. About three years after that, I sold everything to buy Amiga 500. Back than I was blown away by Amiga, but now I wish I kept the original hardware, especially the CA 2001.

I love my CA-2001...and my two Indus GT drives that the CA-2001 is a clone of...I've upgraded all three with the Ramcharger speed upgrade and CP/M terminal. I always wanted an ATR 8000 until I learned I could upgrade these drives for CP/M. I know there is a lot more to the ATR 8000 than just the CP/M, but that is what I wanted it for personally. Right now I only have two working Atari's (800 and 1200XL) for the 3 drives, but once I get another 1200XL running, I'll have one for each computer (and 1 Happy 1050 for each 1200XL and one 810 for for my 800 and all three will have CP/M. Though by then all three will also have Fujinet's (only the 800 has one atm), which also has CP/M terminal compatibility, but I still like using real drives and floppies.

[Asaki]

My uncle couldn't sell his 600XL in a yard sale, so he gave it to my brother. He's not really into retro stuff, so he gave it to me.

I don't remember the year, sometime after 2010 I'm sure.

 

I was surprised to find a bunch of carts at a local used game store, so I snatched up a bunch of them, and got a few more on eBay.

Also eBayed a tape drive, but it doesn't work =(

I bought a chip to emulate disks over the serial port, but I haven't tried it yet...

 

Oh, also bought some RAM chips to upgrade it, those installed just fine.

[Gunstar]

9 hours ago, marauder666 said:

 Then a ST for college work in 1987/88.  Then another "Atari" in 1990 when I was working, it just happened to have a C= badge on it.

 

looking at it from that point of view, the ST was Commodore that happened to have a Fuji on it...as far as I'm concerned. Don't get me wrong, I agree with you, but due to the history of both companies, it's a two-way street. Quite literally in a figurative way... 

 

But you can't go wrong with either computer company...as long as you by 8-bit Atari's  and 16-bit Commodore's... J/K...I like the C64 too... What? Expecting I should include the ST in that last statement too? Well, I also didn't mention the VIC20, C16 and Plus/4 either...

Edited November 23, 2022 by Gunstar

[Keatah]

3 hours ago, x=usr(1536) said:

The first one that I bought, however, was a second-hand 520STFM around 1989 or so.  Had part of the cash for it saved up from various odd jobs, with the other part coming from selling off some of the more redundant parts of my A8 hoard.

 

That one ended up being upgraded to (IIRC) 2MB of RAM and stuck around as my main computer until about 1995, at which time it was replaced with a PC.  While I never got into the ST to the same depth as I did the A8, it did teach me a ton about things like emulators, C, Minix, blitters, maths coprocessors, PC compatibility and what that really means, and a bunch more that served me well into the present computing era.  It spawned a few more STs passing through my hands, but sadly never a TT or (lusted-after) Falcon.

I learned all that terminology and what it meant when I started eyeing the PC in the 286 era. It wouldn't be till the 486 that I got my 1st rig. Till that happened I putzed with the old man's 286-12 and then later a 486SX-25 (IIRC).

 

I learned almost nothing in the 16-bit era except how to use more advanced paint programs - for I had seriously outgrown KoalaPaint on the Apple II.

 

3 hours ago, x=usr(1536) said:

One thing I will say is that that machine was definitely the early seed of my dislike of Windows as a desktop OS.  Given that Windows 3.1 was the standard when I was actively using the ST and 95 came out a couple of months after I finally got a PC, it really set expectations of usability in my mind that in many ways haven't been met by Windows.  BeOS and OS X / macOS have been the only ones that have really clicked with me as a GUI in the same way.

Not to start a debate or anything, Windows 3.1 was my savior from 16-bit miasma. I simply wasn't going anywhere with 16-bit anything. All my learning stopped. The machines felt entirely inaccessible, far away from the bare-metal of the A2. Nor did I have enough money to properly expand them. Not that I'd know what would be a savvy purchase if it bit me in the ass.

 

I would regain my mojo with Windows. This time as a power user, learning all kinds of tricks necessary to get the machine to do exactly what I wanted. How I wanted. No other interface seemed to fit me. And I tried a billion of them.

 

Co-processors were huge for me in studies of orbital mechanics. So imagine my delight when I learned Intel would be giving everyone a free FPU with every 486DX purchase. They were even kind enough to build it right on the CPU - to ensure you got it and that the package wouldn't be split up to be sold separately by scalpers.. Howabouthat!

[sup8pdct]

I bought my 400 from my cousin when he was upgrading to an 800XL and wanted to sell old one. Threw my hand up so fast, it broke the sound barrier. 🙂

 

Not my 1st experience with Atari 400 tho. My auntie's then boyfriend had one a couple of years before the above event. Played 4 player Asteroids with 3 other cousins.........

[rdefabri]

My story is very similar - I'm pretty sure I purchased my Atari 400 in 1980 or 1981, it was before I was in high school.  I had saved up some gift money and "lawn mowing" pay to buy it.  Pretty sure my parents kicked in a few bucks.

 

Mine was very basic - 16K, CTIA, Atari 410 tape drive.  I later purchased the 810, memory expansion to 48K, and a GTIA graphics card.

 

I still have the computer, it still works but I haven't fired it up in many many years.  I also still have my original 2600 "heavy sixxer" that my parents bought for us around 1977.  Still in the original box too.

[mimo]

Xmas 1981 me and my two brothers got a ZX81, wobbly 16k ram pack and a cheapo cassette player between us, and a hand me down B+W portable TV. 
It was soon realised that this thing was pretty crap, but we did have fun, mostly mum typing in the games listings for us as she was a touch typist and could type at a fair old speed even on that keyboard.
I remember before xmas 1982 we went to a local computer store (May's Electronics in Leicester) and they had all the good stuff on display there , including an Atari 800 playing Preppie!
Long story short, mum loved the game and as a huge surprise to us kids, we got a 400, 410, preppie! on cassette , Atari Invaders and Missile command on cart and 3 joysticks, although one of them was a Video Command Joystick, so you were pretty unlucky if you ended up with that thing

 

I have no idea how my parents afforded all that, we were never well off and have heard the stories of mum and dad eating bread and jam for a month so they could afford school shoes for us all etc etc.
We also got a colour Hitachi portable TV from Grandparents that year, so we were set!

We saved pocket money and birthday money and eventually saved enough for first a 48k RAM upgrade, then a 1050, then a lazer mod for the 1050. Dad's friend worked for Marconi Radar, part of GE, and there were a huge number of Atari pirates at that place, so we were never short of new games to play.
All three of us kids have gone on to work in IT, so it was a pretty good investment 

PS, I own the very same 800 from May's electronics, which I won on Ebay when they closed the store down a few years ago

[zzip]

15 hours ago, Keatah said:

Getting my first Atari computer was rather simple and straightforward. It was a 400 and all I had to do was ask. It showed up within a week along with some cartridges and a 410. I don't immediately recall having seen any "killer demos" in the store or anything. Rather I liked the Autumn colored keyboard and general angular style of the console. Very futuristic - kind of reminded me a little of the "Space Quiz" station they had going down at MSI in Chicago. It, too, had amber displays and brown/tan/yellow keys.

That's funny.   I had the complete opposite reaction to the 400 keyboard.   I wanted a computer and coming from the 2600, I had a soft spot for Atari, but I also wanted a 'real' keyboard,   the 400 just would not do, I would have rather have a VIC-20!   Well probably not, but the choice of 'affordable' computers in mid-83 that my parents would not balk at as a a Christmas present was slim.   The 800 was too pricey and too much to ask,  even the C64 was probably too much to ask for our economic situation at the time.   Looked at the VIC20, the TI994a, probably the CoCo, and even considered the Timex Sinclair 1000 for a brief stint.   None seemed right.   Then the fall catalogs arrived and the 600XL came along just in time.   Real keyboard, expandable to 64K,  affordable,  perfect!

[magnusfalkirk]

I started with the Sears version of the Atari 2600 in 1979 while I was stationed at Tyndall AFB in Florida. Moved from there back home to S. Calif, George AFB. Bought an Apple ][+ in 1981, gave the 2600 clone away, since prices for games on it and the Apple ][+ were the same, but better graphics on the II+. Have since gone through an enhanced //e, //c, IIGS and into Macs. Have also gone retro, getting back into the Apple II line with a //c+ and GS.

 

Fast forward to the middle of Jul and a friend gave me an Atari 400 that his Dad had in his attic. Had extra memory added, S-Vidoe output added and will add Internal Audio Board. Have just recently finally bought an Atari 800xl. Have both the 3.1 version of the Side3 and the S-Drive Max that i will be using with the 800xl.

[Mclaneinc]

You lot had it easy, I had to work for mine (that will teach me to be old)

[+ZuluGula]

44 minutes ago, Mclaneinc said:

You lot had it easy, I had to work for mine (that will teach me to be old)

Back then I had to work too (helping on family farm, remodeling house etc) and I never got paid with cash money. We got stuff, but it wasn't really free. Today kids expect to get everything for free.