Mendon Posted January 26, 2004 Share Posted January 26, 2004 Was looking thru the eBay 8bit auctions and saw this one: Atari 400 I've heard of people putting a real keyboard in a 400 but never saw one before. Anyone ever seen this before? Anyone have any ideas what the switches might be for that the seller is talking about? Mendon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mendon Posted January 26, 2004 Author Share Posted January 26, 2004 Dang.... another one Atari 400 Must be not as rare as I thought. Mendon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classics Posted January 26, 2004 Share Posted January 26, 2004 My guess would be the push button is a 'hard reset' switch. A normally closed pushbutton wired in series with the power input. Ive seen these installed in XL systems before. Another guess on the toggle switch... a bypass to allow the computer to operate with the cartridge door open. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt Vendel Posted January 26, 2004 Share Posted January 26, 2004 Dang.... another one Atari 400 Must be not as rare as I thought. Mendon The B-Key was a very popular keyboard upgrade for the Atari 400's Curt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intvgene Posted January 26, 2004 Share Posted January 26, 2004 When I was a kid, my best friend had a 400 with the raised keyboard mod AND the 48k upgrade.. That was the envy of the neighborhood.. for a couple of weeks at least. They must have sunk some decent cash into that 400 at the time, and we only used it for games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted January 27, 2004 Share Posted January 27, 2004 I have a 400 with one of those keyboards also. Makes the computer much more comfortable to use. ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 27, 2004 Share Posted January 27, 2004 The first one looks to be the B-key...the second looks more like one of the other types that used raised "chicklet"-style keys. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregory DG Posted January 27, 2004 Share Posted January 27, 2004 A co-worker friend of mine gave me his 400 which has a keyboard like that. I never used it thought but to see if it still worked. Shoot, after about twisting my hands into a contorted mess with my 400, I refused to use another one of those things again for typing... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mendon Posted January 27, 2004 Author Share Posted January 27, 2004 Thanks for all the responses, guys! I had no idea that these were so popular. As I said, I had heard about them and seem to recall some articles in Antic or Analog on doing the mod but I never saw one before. But I also never owned a 400 before; started right off with the 800. Maybe I'm wrong but is it possible that Atari made the 400 mainly as a "gaming machine"? The people that I knew who had 400's (not very many at all) didn't use it for much of anything other than gaming and its hard to believe that Atari would actually think that people would do Antic/Analog type-in programs on one. But maybe so. Anyway, thanks to all for your responses! Mendon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zonic5 Posted January 27, 2004 Share Posted January 27, 2004 one of the buttons on the side turns the 56K ram on and off the other button is a reset button. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
deathtrappomegranate Posted January 27, 2004 Share Posted January 27, 2004 The 400 was definitely aimed at the kids/family market. Atari used to say that you could spill drinks on the 400 and it would still work. The 800's marketing often stressed the more "serious" applications. There was a definite games emphasis with both, though. Just the term "player-missile graphics" tells you where they were coming from. And having four joystick ports! That was unique, and a great selling point. The wide range of cartridge software was also a factor in the marketing of the machines. Compare the range of carts for the A8 with that for the C64, which, in most respects, was a more successful machine. In the UK, the A8 carts were very expensive (as were the machines). That changed at around the time of the introduction of the 65xe, when Atari was heading downhill fast. I suspect that Atari had not anticipated the range of third-party software (including carts) that would appear. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted January 27, 2004 Share Posted January 27, 2004 Third-party support is actually one of the biggest factors in keeping a system alive. Those in the UK had a better time of it, while we in the States had to contend with the trickle of software made by third parties when it became clear to them that Atari lacked direction...and too often the games chosen to port were not the better titles. Atari worked hard in the early days to shake it's "just a you-know-what machine" image, but by '84 it didn't matter much anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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