Can USB, HDMI, and built-in games raise awareness for a platform overshadowed by the C64?
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Why I hope the Atari 400 Mini will bring respect to Atari’s most underrated platform
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Not precisely what you're looking for, but the same people who make the 400 Mini (Retro Games) also make revivals of the Commodore 64 and VIC-20.
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Grew up with a C64, then Amiga 500 when I got to High School, then an Amiga 2000 for ray tracing with Imagine 2.0.
When I got started in IT we were an x86 shop but also sold the Atari 800 series. Always gave my boss a hard time with the audio stuff available on the Amiga, but then Motley Crew had an issue with a MIDI controller and sent someone from Chicago to grab an 800(?) which is what they used at the time. Good times.
Still love the games from Cinemaware and Psygnosis. Psygnoses had the best intros back in the day, and music that sounded good on a good sound system. Also liked Monkey Island (which I then bought for my wife on PC) and Prince of Persia, the original game.
*(Edit, may not have been Motley Crew, but was one of those hair bands)
When I got started in IT we were an x86 shop but also sold the Atari 800 series. Always gave my boss a hard time with the audio stuff available on the Amiga, but then Motley Crew had an issue with a MIDI controller and sent someone from Chicago to grab an 800(?) which is what they used at the time. Good times.
Still love the games from Cinemaware and Psygnosis. Psygnoses had the best intros back in the day, and music that sounded good on a good sound system. Also liked Monkey Island (which I then bought for my wife on PC) and Prince of Persia, the original game.
*(Edit, may not have been Motley Crew, but was one of those hair bands)
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Very fair. I loved the heck out of the Logo language for graphics commands on the Apple IIs we had in middle-school.
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How about this baby?
3 different control sticks: knob, knub, trackball. Even a 0-9 numpad
Eat your heart out MS and Sony!
3 different control sticks: knob, knub, trackball. Even a 0-9 numpad
Eat your heart out MS and Sony!
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The Atari 800 was my first computer and I learned to program Basic on it. Played so many games. Used it for all of my papers in Junior High and High School. Printed my papers via an APE-FACE interface to a Gemini 10x dot matrix printer. Had a 1050 drive with a Happy Disk chip. Had an MPP modem. Good times.
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M.U.L.E., Archon, Star Raiders were favorites of mine. My 800 still works but I haven’t used it in a few years. I bought an svideo cable but not sure my current tvs support it.
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Actually, they did exist, but were a drop-in replacement for the membrane keyboard. Mine resembled the version #3 in this post. It stuck up and you could see the PCB beneath it, but worked great.
I learned to program on my 400 and a TI-99 at school when in the 5th grade (circa 1980). I don't miss those cassette tapes!
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Had a C64 for about 3 days but didn't have something my parents wanted and ended up with 800XL and then later a 130XE.
I never got a chance to play M.U.L.E but could spend hours playing 7CoG alone or playing Rally Speedway, MiG Alley Ace, Castle Wolfenstein or Behind Jaggi Lines (aka Rescue on Fractalus) with my younger sister. Those were good times.
I never got a chance to play M.U.L.E but could spend hours playing 7CoG alone or playing Rally Speedway, MiG Alley Ace, Castle Wolfenstein or Behind Jaggi Lines (aka Rescue on Fractalus) with my younger sister. Those were good times.
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Archon, played with a Wico bat-style joystick back in the day. C64 for me, never got my hands on the Ataris. I still have Archon for PC in the box, on a 3.5” floppy…
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When I got mine I was just happy to have a computer. Eventually I managed to upgrade to an 800 from an open-box sale at Crutchfield.
At the time my dad thought it (and my obsession with computers and gaming) was the biggest waste of money, but it got me started in tech stuff at a very young age
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That Wico Bat-handle stick looked SO much like some sort of sex toy that even naive 10yo me realized it.
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Star Raiders, Donkey Kong, Pole Position, Ultima II, and Miner 2049er were my favourites.
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This is the game that convinced me to find a second floppy drive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe_(1983_video_game)
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Eastern Front was the precursor of most modern strategic simulations. Its "AI" was multi-tasking using VBLANK.
One of my birthday presents was its source code and comments from the Atari Program Exchange.
Atari published all ROM and BASIC sources. The DOS listings followed later.
The OS and hardware were beautifully designed and a great way to learn. It got me hooked.
One of my birthday presents was its source code and comments from the Atari Program Exchange.
Atari published all ROM and BASIC sources. The DOS listings followed later.
The OS and hardware were beautifully designed and a great way to learn. It got me hooked.
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The Atari SIO bus used to connect stuff like the floppy drive had features no one else had that wouldn't be seen again until USB came along. Partly because the same person, Joseph C. Decuir, designed both and drew inspiration from his earlier design.
Edit: Among the cool things, for 1978, was automatically enumerate connected devices (no DIP switches), transfer drivers from the device to the controlling computer (and vice-versa, IIRC), could be daisy-chained and was so fast testing equipment of the day couldn't calculate its maximum throughput.
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This. Exactly this. (Ok, almost exactly in that the DE10-Nano is a FPGA combined with a dual-core ARM CPU, not an ASIC)
What we all really want is FPGA precision of hardware emulation, but all the human factors we can't reproduce like the PETSCII keyboard or the membrane keys or the Atari 9-pin joysticks. Then you'd get into all the fun user ports and other fun peripheral connections. Can't emulate a SID with digital anything because, well, analog, but still.
For whatever reason the manufacturers of these clone devices find it cheaper or easier to just use software emulation and the rest of us are the worst off for it. So sad...
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I remember trying that Atari membrane keyboard as a Commodore PET fan. Just. Awful.
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Early 80's high school era for me, our high school almost went down a 1/3, 1/3 1/3 battle lines between the Atari crowd, the Apple crowd, and the C64 crowd. Almost gang warfare level "our computer's better than yours" The irony that the high school computer lab was almost 100% PET's (ahh the joy of the daisy chained IEEE-488 double disk drive chained to 12 PET's: and then the two C64's at the end of the chain with the expansion slot IEEE-488 dongle which inevitably would cause a bus crash on the IEEE-488 until we unplugged the C64 from the chain.
A friend had an Atari 800: and I really do have to say I envied the 'tank-like' nature of that thing compared to my C-64. The -one guy- in the "atari gang" had a 400 instead of an 800 and was generally dismissed as 'not having a real Atari'.
Thanks for the memories with this great article Benji: I'm sure I've got a picture somewhere of my C-64 cave looking remarkably similar to yours. Not going to find it, and not going to share it:
two words '80ies hair'.
Ended up with Amiga 1000 with too many accessories hanging off of it: too much part time job money went into that thing.
those were the days
A friend had an Atari 800: and I really do have to say I envied the 'tank-like' nature of that thing compared to my C-64. The -one guy- in the "atari gang" had a 400 instead of an 800 and was generally dismissed as 'not having a real Atari'.
Thanks for the memories with this great article Benji: I'm sure I've got a picture somewhere of my C-64 cave looking remarkably similar to yours. Not going to find it, and not going to share it:
two words '80ies hair'.
Ended up with Amiga 1000 with too many accessories hanging off of it: too much part time job money went into that thing.
those were the days
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MAN! All the hate for the membrane keyboard. Do most of you realize that most of us had no choices? There weren't external keyboards for the Atari 400. Most of us weren't going to disassemble the unit and bodge one in. This was a different day. I convinced my parents to buy me a computer. THAT WAS A HUGE DEAL! The 800 was way, way, way out of our budget, but I got a computer!
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The Atari 400 was my first computer as well. We had the cassette backup recorder as well, and had the package that came with the BASIC cartridge (along with some games). I had to steal time from my family to write programs on it, I was 7 when we got it, and remember my parents getting me a subscription to a magazine that had basic programs and games I would dutifully (and frustratingly) type into the machine via that awful awful keyboard, and then record to tape and play back. I kept it for years, moving it with me as I moved and grew up. I think I finally recycled it when I moved to my current home eighteen years ago. I've occasionally looked at ebay listings, thinking about getting another, but I have a pi emulator with all the 2600 games, and I never want to use that keyboard again, so always passed. But like you Benj, much love for what it meant to the little version of me.
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ArmoredCow
Ars Praetorian
Is there any word on if this will include Atari Basic with it?
I never had the 800XL but if I remember correctly Atari Basic came built-in with that system.
And honestly if this has Atari Basic and the ability to save to the USB drive that alone would make the sale for me.
I never had the 800XL but if I remember correctly Atari Basic came built-in with that system.
And honestly if this has Atari Basic and the ability to save to the USB drive that alone would make the sale for me.
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It is great to see how many had a Atari 400 or 800 as their first computer here. My first was the Atari 400 with cassette. I think I had a game for it but mainly I typed in and experiment with programs and saved to the cassette which was more of a /dev/null than storage. The neighbors had the Atari 800 and the wife wrote kids games on it. Gaming really started for me on C64.
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I want to say that the later PETs (which I grew up on at school starting in the 4th grade or so, sometime in the late 70s) has the reasonably nice keyboards, and all the fun characters you could use to make stuff in basic. We did ton's of rockets launching up the screeen back then. The big problem (for all commodores) was the super slow, but reliable, tape drive. It just took forever to load/save stuff. Now I know it was doing two copies for a sorta RAID1 of storage.
I had a friend with the Atari 400 and that membrane keyboard was just painful to use after being on my C64 and typing papers for school on it. Using a word processor was just amazingly wonderful compared to writing them out with pen and paper. And trying to keep them neat and readable. Ugh!
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The Atari 400 was my first computer as well, around 1980 or so I think. I still have mine and as far as I know it still works, which is good because it looks like this new 400 doesn't work with any of the old Atari cartridges. This would be an instant buy for me if I could play my old carts on a machine that can output to HDMI.
As far as the membrane keyboard goes, I was a kid and touch typing wasn't a thing for me for several more years. The keyboard worked, and that was all I needed it to do.
As far as the membrane keyboard goes, I was a kid and touch typing wasn't a thing for me for several more years. The keyboard worked, and that was all I needed it to do.
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Ah, that makes sense. I couldn't imagine trying to type on that..
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Atari 8-bit machines were awesome, especially because they were released in 1979, but I cannot consider them "home computers", as they were too expensive for the average family.
Commodore and especially Sinclair Research were the first ones to actually make home computers for the masses.
And you never forget your first.
Commodore and especially Sinclair Research were the first ones to actually make home computers for the masses.
And you never forget your first.
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I first had a TI-99 4/A, then an 800xl (friend first had Timex Sinclair with like 2K and the membrane keyboard, then got a 600xl, which made me want to get an Atari). Had a 1050 with US Doubler, Star Micronics NP-10 dot matrix printer, XMM 301 modem (whatever the model was), etc..
Atari ST after that, then a PC (briefly a TT bought at a university rummage sale, but never really got into it).
Anyone know how much equivalent RAM this system comes with? Is it the 8 or 16k of the original 400? That would make it really hard to write any basic games.. Wish they'd done a 130XE instead..
Atari ST after that, then a PC (briefly a TT bought at a university rummage sale, but never really got into it).
Anyone know how much equivalent RAM this system comes with? Is it the 8 or 16k of the original 400? That would make it really hard to write any basic games.. Wish they'd done a 130XE instead..
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My first computer was an Atari 800 with 810 disk drive (thanks Mom and Dad!). I really regret getting talked into selling it and all the software & hardware for it. M.U.L.E., Eastern Front, Blue Max, Wizard of Wor, various adventure games (Zork, etc.) were some of my favorite games. Spent many hours playing Pathfinder, which had a bug where you could sometimes move to a corner and, moving the joysticks back and forth quickly, glitch the play field out into the RAM, scroll around until you changed something that crashed the game.
Learned BASIC, Forth, and then 6502 Assembly on it. The Atari Program Exchange was another great thing from those days. Typing in programs from magazines / books, changing the code in them to add features. Fun times!
Learned BASIC, Forth, and then 6502 Assembly on it. The Atari Program Exchange was another great thing from those days. Typing in programs from magazines / books, changing the code in them to add features. Fun times!
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I had an Atari 400 and I wrote my first software programs on it when I was 14. The program would keep a check ledger and print out checks too. Humble beginnings. I had Berzerk, Millipede, and Star Raider for games and Millipede was bundled with the computer which I believe I purchased at Sears. I worked all summer to purchase a computer and floppy drive. I believe I had a roller ball for Millipede but cannot remember. I remember giving it to the local library which they kept for people to use as a word processor.
I will be interested in purchasing this once I see some reviews.
I will be interested in purchasing this once I see some reviews.
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THANK YOU!!! I’m scratching my head reading all these posts, “I knew BASIC and everyone was floored!” Ummm, yeah, try poking individual hexadecimal numbers into memory for commands. BASIC was for babies. lol
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I bought my first computer and could only afford the chicklet keys, so got the Atari 400 for $279 from Labelle's if I remember correctly and a tape drive. Later I bought a 32K upgrade kit for $79.
I was is Heaven. Got a Mapping the Atari Guide and poked my first assembly program to move a Player Missile Graphic across the screen. All I got was a wavy line....I was disappointed till if figured out it was going super fast and was outrunning the vertical blank time by like 100 fold!
I later learned about horizontal blanks and so much more. I also got an Assembler cartridge and a Percom Floppy disk drive for Graduation in 1983! I still have my 800XL and Percom DiskDrive and they still work!
I was is Heaven. Got a Mapping the Atari Guide and poked my first assembly program to move a Player Missile Graphic across the screen. All I got was a wavy line....I was disappointed till if figured out it was going super fast and was outrunning the vertical blank time by like 100 fold!
I later learned about horizontal blanks and so much more. I also got an Assembler cartridge and a Percom Floppy disk drive for Graduation in 1983! I still have my 800XL and Percom DiskDrive and they still work!
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My dad just gave me our Atari 800 XL that we had growing up. I went through the process of getting it to run on a modern television-- the composite doesn't work anymore, because no televisions accept analog channel 2 or 3, and the S video output did not have a color channel because the monitors of the day were all monochrome!
Thanks to the good folks at Atari age, I was able to find instructions for how to solder a 100 ohm resistor to the motherboard and chroma pin on the video output and Voilà!!! Pac-Man and Joust in all their 80s glory!
Unfortunately the wife was a Nintendo girl growing up, and the kids had a tough time with the joysticks. Anyhow, I really enjoyed getting everything running on it.
The difficulty is that I forgot the power cord for the disc drive, but the cartridges all still work. Who knows if the data on the 5 1/4 floppies has survived the ages though??? I am kind of curious to find out...
Thanks to the good folks at Atari age, I was able to find instructions for how to solder a 100 ohm resistor to the motherboard and chroma pin on the video output and Voilà!!! Pac-Man and Joust in all their 80s glory!
Unfortunately the wife was a Nintendo girl growing up, and the kids had a tough time with the joysticks. Anyhow, I really enjoyed getting everything running on it.
The difficulty is that I forgot the power cord for the disc drive, but the cartridges all still work. Who knows if the data on the 5 1/4 floppies has survived the ages though??? I am kind of curious to find out...
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Well, not quite. The Commodore PET had that storage medium from a couple years earlier.
I still have my old CURSOR tapes in a box with all the documentation...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CURSOR
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Sears was the place! My mother bought our Atari game console from Sears because she was afraid "K-mart wouldn't stand behind it," if something went wrong. Those were the days and what sad and ironic twists their histories took after that.
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