600XL or 400? I can't decide which one to get?

[erazmus]

That is something that I never knew. After all these years, I learned something new about the 400! Thanks.

[+wood_jl]

Both. But if you don't have the space, get the 400. The 600XL is so much like the 800XL that (other than chopped-off) there's not that much about it. The 400 has a 1960s-era Star Trek appeal to it. But it doesn't have A/V output. The 600XL does, in your neck of the woods (Europe). But what are you going to use this for? Really use it? Just look at it? Just collect it?

 

You can get internal (official Atari brand) 48K upgrade for Atari 400 new-in-box from Best Electronics. You can get some solder-wizard to *easily* upgrade the 600XL to 64K. Hard to say which is best! Both, but probably 400 for uniqueness. I know people bitch about the keyboard, but it's kind of a neat retro-thing now. Plus, who actually uses their 8-bit keyboard that much anymore, anyway? Programming is mostly on PC with cross-compilers or emulators prior to transfer to real hardware. (That same arguement applies to criticisms of the XE keyboard; are you really going to program and word-process on it now?).

 

AV upgrade for 400 is a bit of a quandry, but the machine is unique. But I'd rather have a 400 and an 800XL than a 600XL and an 800XL, if I had to choose. (I don't)

[WizWor]

My first Atari was a 400. I bought it as a better 2600. It is an excellent arcade machine and it's a lot of fun to play games with three other people. Since you can type on another atari and sneakernet to the 400, I recommend the 400.

[WizWor]

one minor thing to concider is that a light pen or gun will only work in port 4 on the 400. no idea why this was done.there are schematics getting around that show this. this will exclude almost everything that uses those devices as they will need to be in port 1

.

james

Light guns only work with CRTs anyway, so probably less of an issue with each passing day.

[oky2000]

Anything to hammer the final nail in the "A8 vs C64 colour debate" coffin

 

Besides, it's not so much the limited colours of the C64 that bother me, but the choice of said colours - I've never seen an uglier limited set.

 

The colours thing is interesting, as I just set my Triumph(!) portable TV at the time via brightness/contrast/colour how I wanted it and it never looked anything like people moaned about 20 years later. So for me as a graphic artist what bugged me was purple and cyan were left to one shade but orange and grey to three shades. Grey OK but the many browny/orangy shades is just a hippies dream from the 70s...like what he wished his PET would have had if it was colour in 1977

 

Ebay is dictating the choice for me sadly, I haven't seen a 600XL (lone motherboard excluded) for sale but there is two A400s on there right now so guess it will be the 400 probably depending on what they go for. I will stock up on some carts to enjoy with the machine and one of my trusty Zipsticks etc! Seen quite a few 400s this past month. The recession is pushing cool stuff onto ebay this year, quite a few 800s and also 1982/83 64s floating about (worth getting as the SID in that is much more basey and the filter effects way more funky and trippy like the soundtrack to Logan's Run!!)

 

Does anyone know of any really good 16kb games like from Datasoft/US Gold on tape to seek out for games that were not also available on cartridge. What's the difference between 16kb or the expanded memory version of Zaxxon for example? Screenshots look similar so either google is lying to me or it's a gameplay/levels included issue like Congo Bongo disk on C64 vs Cart/Tape version by US Gold.