almightytodd

The interview with Jason Enos is awesome! I really loved hearing about his start with Sega.

I enjoy all of the 8-bit Guy's videos, but this is his project that I am most interested in: There's already an emulator for it so you can experiment with it before it even exists... https://github.com/commanderx16/x16-emulator

I'm amused that you're discussing the CoCo as a competitor to the other home/hobby computers of the day featuring color capabilities. A CoCo 2 with a "melted" keyboard was my second computer; after first owning a TS1000. I've only recently come to appreciate the capabilities and potential of the Motorola 6809 CPU. Strictly speaking of the eight-bit era, it was one of the best if not THE best of the eight-bit CPUs. Ironically, I kinda feel like the main competitor to the 6809 was Motorola's own 68000 32-bit CPU. As I understand it, the assembly language coding is somewhat similar between the two. It was a far more sophisticated (and expensive) chip than any of the eight (or even 16 bit) chips of that era, but as evidenced by Apple, Atari, and Amiga/Commodore's embrace of it; it was clearly the direction of the future for the non-Intel CPU route. The thing I grapple with for home color-enabled 8-bit systems, was that to really leverage the power of color for science, education, or business, you really needed an honest to goodness color monitor. But back in the early 80's, those things were like 800 bucks! -- much more expensive than most of the computers you might be hooking them up to. The Commodore 128 screen output looked great in 80-column mode on a high resolution color monitor, as did the CoCo 3. But when the average Joe hobbyist/home computer nerd was putting together a full system; with disk drives and maybe some kind of printer, a color monitor would push the whole package into the $2,000+ range, and all of a sudden, a Macintosh or IBM compatible began to make a lot more sense; even if that meant abandoning color in favor of higher resolution monochrome. Anyway, I really appreciate all of the discussion here and the fond memories of my early years of computing. I find this all the more exciting with the recent (limited) releases of the C-64 full-sized computer and the new ZX Spectrum NEXT. Exciting times for retro-computing...

You make many very good points. However, I believe the question I was attempting to answer was in regard to the ZX Spectrum, which added color and sound to the ZX80/81 concept while retaining the one-button-press BASIC programming paradigm. I think it's difficult to speculate what the price of a U.S. Timex Spectrum might have been... ...and if it could have been simultaneously competitive and profitable.

I think competition with the VIC-20 was the reason. The VIC-20 had a "real" keyboard - even though the clever use of Sinclair one-button-press "keywords" sort of negated that. But the VIC-20 was marketed as a game console that you could also program. Somewhat ironic, because that's how the Atari 400 started out - and then turned into the 5200...

Here's a screenshot showing some of the keyword tokens, and their numerical equivalents in decimal, hexadecimal, and binary:

I'm going to necrobump this thread. The TS1000 was my first computer; I was in my early 20's with a wife and a baby. The low price made it possible for me to possess a machine with the same CPU that I had coveted in the TRS-80 four or five years earlier. Today, I can reminisce about my first experiences with a microcomputer using the EightyOne emulator, or the online version in Javascript, the JtyOne. Sure, the TS1000/ZX81 had no exclamation mark, so the closest you could get to "Hello World!" was, "Hello World?". But my interest in this little machine was analogous to model railroading; the TS1000 was like a model of a real computer. For learning programming in BASIC, it was perfect. All of the keywords were right there on the keyboard in front of you; and you entered keywords with a single button-press. The cursor prompt would switch between "K" for "Keyword", and "L" for "Letter" automatically, so it helped you learn the rules of the language. It was easy for the ROM BASIC interpreter to tokenize the keywords, because they were coded in the upper 128 bytes of the character codes. This saved memory space so for BASIC programming, with the 16k RAM pack, it was plenty. This strategy also made it easy for Sinclair's BASIC to have syntax checking. After writing a line of code and pressing New Line/Enter, if you had used a keyword in an incorrect way, or forgotten the closing quotes for a PRINT statement, a small black box with a white letter "S" for "Syntax" would appear in the line of code at the location of the offense, ready for correction. Additionally, as you entered lines of code, if you realized you'd done something wrong in one of the lines above, you could press the down-arrow key to move a pointer down to the line you were interested in, then press the "Edit" key (Shift-1) to bring that line of code down to the editing line. Most other BASIC computers of the day required you to retype the entire line to correct it. Oh, and one more thing about Sinclair's quirky character set; it was set up so after the numbers 6,7,8,9 it went right into the letters A,B,C,D,E... ...so converting decimal numbers to hexadecimal was trivial; just use the CHR$ function and add "28" (0) to the number. Here's the conversion of a byte (High and Low Nibble) in just four lines of code: 410 LET N=I 420 LET H=INT (N/16) 430 LET L=N-(H*16) 440 LET H$=CHR$ (H+28) +CHR$ (L+28) The one thing I really wish had been done, was if Sinclair built a similar machine, but with a built-in assembler instead of BASIC. They could have put all of the Z80 assembly keywords on the keyboard the way they did it for BASIC (each button could have up to five functions assigned to it). They could have announced it as the "ZX81 Master System" for hobbyists wanting to learn Assembly Language programming. I think the reason they didn't think to do this, was that computers were so new and the public so uninformed, it would have been upsetting to people who bought the "Master System" thinking it must be the superior machine, but then realized that Assembly Language is not nearly as friendly as a starter language as BASIC.

The TS1000 was my first computer and it really provided the spark that led me to a career as a Software Engineer. I highly recommend you check out the "EightyOne" Sinclair emulator at SourceForge. If you are writing BASIC programs, you can try them out in emulation (with a regular keyboard), and then take a screenshot to type into the real thing. There's also an online emulator that lets you use a regular keyboard, or mouse-clicks on the virtual keyboard so you can learn where the keywords are faster. There's a whole lot of software there, so you can try before you buy (or download).

wishful thinking...

Is it possible to buy shares of Atari stock in the U.S.? I don't expect them to ever be worth anything, but with a share price consistently less than a dollar, it might be fun... ...as a novelty... ...for entertainment purposes only... Apologies if this question has already been answered; I tried a search here and through Google and didn't find anything.

Have you looked here yet? https://archive.org/details/internetarcade This might also be useful: https://www.arcade-museum.com/

Most (if not all) of the early video games used integrated circuits but not microprocessors. Computer Space used the 7400-series Transistor-transistor Logic (TTL) chips. These chips were capable of generating results of the most rudimentary Boolean logic functions (and, or, exclusive or, not-and (NAND) not or (NOR). Microprocessors such as the Intel 8080, the Zilog Z-80, and the MOS 6502 were not cost-effective until the mid-1970s.

@bennybingo Congrats on making the first post of the year! Happy New Year everyone!

I don’t really have anything relevant to add to this discussion, but I want it (and that “other” VCS thread) to come up in my, “content I posted in” stream...

A new console with the Atari brand name that somehow recaptured the magic of the original VCS would be a welcome new option for retro-fans and modern casual gamers alike.

I believe that parody, even of copyrighted materials, is considered free speech protected by the first amendment. That seems to be the opinion of "Fair Use" for this parody piece:

I hope I make it onto page 1000... ...next milestone... ...the traditional New Year's Day postings...

...and then there's that whole thing about Galaga being a portrait-orientation game... ...can you reprogram your game with the screen turned sideways?

Hey! Maybe Disney will buy out Atari. They pretty much own everything else...

So far as a "new" retro/home/simplified computer goes, the 8 - bit guy is working on a project that is probably as close as we'll ever get... ...and as close as we really need to.

The Stella emulator will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world... ...oh wait, I think that's Disneyland...

Since Spielberg directed, he should have insisted on there being an E.T. cart in there...

So a stick PC for $170 you say? For that amount I think you could get one of these with a two-year extended warranty. But yes, it does take up a lot more space...

Maybe someone just needs to come up with a PC-themed case for one of these...

I keep going back to the concept of the "Atari Age". I don't think this site having that name makes any kind of statement that if it's not Atari, it's CRAP!! Rather, it acknowledges that there was a period of time when Atari represented a new era of technology as a basis of personalized entertainment. If you listen to the various Podcasts where some of the people from that era are interviewed, you find that many of them had a wide variety of big ideas about culture, society, and philosophy. I believe that whatever technology touched your life during these years, that is what you will feel nostalgia for and have an emotional attachment to. The very relevant statement that you had to choose a platform because you could only afford one of them was so true for most of us. A little light-hearted tribalism is okay, but in all seriousness, we should really strive to be welcoming of all enthusiasts of all technology that was relevant during the Atari Age. This site means so much to me (Thank you Albert!), because it provides an escape from the cynicism and strife that seems to permeate other social platforms that are focused on current events. I find that I spend much more time here than on say - Facebook, because there, it seems inevitable that just a few posts in, and I just find it depressing. Talk about tribalism! I'm glad that for the most part, discussions here are more likely to be polite and respectful. Thank you all for your contributions here to our love of retro-technology.