Britishcar

An Atari 130XE (unless you can obtain or build an Incognito 800) with a good set of Wico sticks, connected to a chroma/luma separated monitor with a good monitor cable and a modern SIO/USB/APE type of device that will give you immediate access to thousands of high speed colorful games and apps. Atari BASIC is fun to play with - built in graphics and sound keywords and *instant syntax checking* on every inputted line. The 130XE is slightly cheap and clacky (Tramiel era) but they tend to run forever, have a great MMU (RAM disks, etc.) and great chroma/luma video output. 800XL's look feel more luxurious but most (all?) have a noticeably fuzzier composite video output unless modded. The original 800 is like nothing else (if it's in pristine shape) but you'll be limited to 48K titles which actually isn't too horrible, most of the classics all run perfectly on an 800 and its keyboard is one of the best ever fitted to any computer. Good luck.

Yep. Just last week I typed in a very cool Hangman BASIC game on my TRS Model 100. You key in a word on the Model 100 and hand it to your "opponent" who then either solves the word or hangs themselves, complete with graphics. My daughter and I challenged each other for quite some time while driving back from her college orientation in my 1966 VW Bug.

A lot of people feel that the awkwardly named "Power Mac G3 All-In-One" was a fairly fugly affair. It predated the much more fascinating Bondi iMac G3 that came along a bit later.

A cassette-driven TI-99/4A was my first computer, which I still own. I agree that the "TI" story has *really* never been written. I would definitely purchase your book/research. Good luck and keep us updated if you move forward.

No, just an admirer. I've always felt the Intell was the most handsome console of any ever produced. When they are pristine like that I am always reminded that they are lovely bits of industrial design -- and very pricy in the day.

It appears that a video game store from the early 1980's has been time/space teleported into your new home.

What a clean system. http://www.ebay.com/itm/161374369306?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2648&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Hack for external keyboard...

My original 48K 800 with a Newell FASTCHIP and an Omnimon OS mod is SEMI-retired. My work/play machine is an Incognito 800 chroma/luma attached to my original early 80's Amdek Color 300 monitor -- crisp and beautiful to this very day. The Incog 800 is also attached to a Happy 1050, an 850 interface, a Hayes Optima 2400 and a SIO2USB interface from Germany.

Adventures of Tron: great opposite flowing color rainbows Atlantis: flying spaceships Battlezone: autoplay, very colorful, lots of motion Bugs Bunny: title / brief game play California Games: scrolling text, lots of rainbow colors and playfield animation, repetitive music Carnival: gameplay Cosmic Ark: gameplay Decathlon: running man with torch, scrolling infinite stadium Demon Attack: game play Dig Dug: "arcade" mode Enduro: driving through the scenery Fast Food: game play Laser Gates: game play Millipede: game play/arcade title look Miner 2049er: screen tour Moonsweeper: moving sprites Night Driver: drivin' at night! Phoenix: game play Pooyan: game play with color shifting Quickstep!: game play Rampage: arcade attract mode Realsports Boxing: game play Realsports Tennis: game play / title Solar Fox: game play (sort of) / title Spacemaster X-7: game play Spaceshuttle: lazy orbiting Spider Fighter: game play Sword Quest: Earthworld: cool sword Tapper: game play Time Pilot: flying around with color shifting Track and Field: game play / title Trickshot: balls moving on table Turmoil: game play Vanguard: game play Worm War 1: noisy game play

Great fun and a technological wonder. However, it seems like the early boards are much too aggressive. First time up the ramps and I'm getting swarmed by barrels. I can't put together a coherent set of tactics on the pie factory level -- the pies are so close and everything is so cramped that I can only rush up to the 2nd level and wait and hope that a firefox doesn't decide to do me in before I can scramble the rest of the way. It seems like a die roll no matter what I do or don't do. It seems like these boards are at a difficulty level that one might encounter on a 2nd pass into them or something.

Ready to go! Put me in the hat!

86,460 The "3rd" intermission is the "bell" (the "fruit" of these levels) floating/traveling from right to left with Pacman chasing it. Then a HUGE red ghost chases Pacman back from left to right. I have NEVER seen this "intermission" on any version of Pacman before. The "fruits" at these levels all seem to be the "bell" over and over. The ghosts begin to stay blue for a fairly sane and stable amount of time, allowing you to use your power pellets in a reasonable defensive fashion, however, everything is moving pretty damn fast.

For simplicity, I've stuck with the VERY EXCITING early 80's concept of "bringing the arcade home." I've picked these all for the same, simple reasons: a) They were almost better than the original arcade version i.e. slightly easier but still amazingly fun. b) They ran the best, fastest and smoothest and took the best advantage of late 70's, early 80's Atari technology: 1) Defender: this game is amazing on an Atari. Fast, smooth, colorful, with great early arcade crunchy sound effects. 2) Donkey Kong: faster and slightly easier than the original game -- arguably better. Great fun and extremely addictive. 3) Galaxian: bright, colorful and packed with motion and smooth animation with nutty sound effects. Simple and replay-able over and over and over. 4) Pacman: Yes, it came out on the 2600 first, but the Atari Home Computer version was the best kept secret for a long time. Beautiful, bright and accurate with great joystick response, it starts getting very fast and very furious after about 20,000 points. 5) Pole Position: It didn't matter that you didn't have a steering wheel or foot pedal. Atari made the acceleration automatic, with you in control of the shifting, brakes and steering. Set it for 8 laps and screech around the curves, trying to not go up in a ball of flame and beat your own record times and number of cars passed.

joyfulcoder, that is PERFECT and exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much! AA is such a great resource/community.

JD6502, thanks for the confirmation on the HELP key. I fooled around with OPTION until blue in the face. Yes, the "raster" up and down effect can be modified but there seems to be no way to kill that silly "I'm an editor" text. I did a disk scan to see if I could find any clear text to sector edit to spaces or something but no go. Ah ha! I finally found the source for the file. It's from the April 1989 issue of "Page 6" magazine. The article mentions nothing about how to turn off the blue title text. Apparently, the entire program was designed solely to create long, obnoxious scrolls. No joke. Read the article. https://archive.org/details/page6-magazine-37 If you can spot anything in the code that would let me eliminate the title text, please let me know! Thank you in advance.

I'm attempting to use this program to use as an announcement scroller (in a classroom). However, I simply CANNOT figure out how to remove the "SCROLLY TEXT EDITOR" text that appears at the top and bottom of the screen when it is scrolling its message(s). It seems like this shouldn't be the case. i.e. that this program is designed to *edit* a scroll and then allow it to scroll *without* announcing itself as the editor of said scroll. Does this make sense? I feel like I'm missing a single keystroke or something to make the title disappear but for the life of me, I'm stumped. It's a very nice program, written in assembly or machine code with a nice, clean scroll. Maybe it's the HELP key? I'm using an Incognito 800 and don't have a HELP key. If figure this out, can you please post here? Thank you! Scrolly Text Editor.atr

Is Ice-T failing on an Incognito 800? I can get my .ATR (DOS 2.5, AUTORUN.SYS, ICET.XEX) on the Atari800MacX emulator but on my Incognito (in XL/XE 1088K RAMBO mode) it fails to a black screen and a non-responsive keyboard. The hardware is an Incognito 800, an 850 and a Hayes Optima 2400. The 800/850/Hayes work with 850 Express and dial out fine, connect, etc. Any suggestions? Thank you!

I've owned about all of them. I ran an Austin, TX BBS on a vertical Percom in DD but it was a bit twitchy. I would say the Happy enhanced 1050 is a very solid choice. However, my nostalgia factor has to go with a Happy 810. Why? Well, the 810's were reliable tanks -- still are -- an a Happy enhancement made them super sweet. They were big bucks and were the ultimate hacker/pirate tool early on. First you had to afford an 810...lot's of cash...and then you had to get that Happy upgrade...also not relatively cheap back then. So...I really admired the guys who put up the $ for a Happy 810 back then. I was much too young and poor to pull it off until the mid-80's.

I agree that this is a very interesting topic. For quite some time, I thought I was the only person on the planet that appreciated and actually oddly "enjoyed" the sound of an Atari's SIO. It was strangely comforting that your 8-bit was firing up normally when the SIO sounded "right." I was always unnerved around friend's C64's since they always had this slow, silent IO. You could never tell what was happening with a C64 while it was doing any IO. Bad sector? Still loading? It was just a sit and wait game. With the A8's, your ears told you immediately if loads/writes were progressing as they should. I also thought I was the only one who enjoyed an 800's keyclicks. I suppose it had to be a part of the original OS for the 400's flat keyboard and was a part of every A8 from that point forward. I've always appreciated that snick snick sound. It makes me feel like I'm typing REALLY FAST even though I'm probably not.

How about opening it up to 80's computers and consoles in general, then you get titles like "Beauty and the Beast" and "Tropical Trouble" both for the Intellivision.

I bought my 800 new and still use it for relaxing, spin down the work day, leisure even today. I became a bit of a collector as well, owning some 800xl's a 400 or two and a 130xe. The 800 is my far away favorite for many, many reasons. The 800xl is a fine machine and carried the day with it was the machine of choice but I NEVER reach for it today. Why? VIDEO. The 800 outputs SOLID chroma/luminance video to my 80's Amdek 300 color monitor. All of my 800xl's have dim and blurry video by comparison. I know, I know. I can "fix" the video but I've always been too lazy to put a soldering gun to the thing. Add in the fact that I have to hold down the damn OPTION key every time I boot (practically) and I'm done. The 800xl is a closet queen, the 800 the daily workhorse.

I'm sweating through "Enduro," 40 cars away from completing Day 5, and I'm thinking, "there's absolutely no way this could be played on an Intellivision." I'm carefully winning at "Sea Battle" and I'm thinking "there's absolutely no way we could be playing this on a 2600." And I suppose that sums up what makes each of these systems, existing as they did at the same time, so great. Each was a super machine at doing it's own thing.

I think I know exactly what you are looking for in terms of ambiance for visitors. If you don't mind it not being a "games" demo, try the Atari Dealer Demonstration Cart. You can download the 16K ROM just about anywhere and it loops and is designed to show off the machine. Be careful of juvenile "porn text" versions. Since it was so easy to hack the text, a lot of 13-year olds did back in the 80's. The normal version goes on for a while, is quite varied and makes a great screen saver for the machine.

Candle, thank you! I don't have a physical card for my 800 so I can't do a physical test, just the emulator test, etc. If it helps with understanding what might be going on, I CAN create the drive, initialize the drive and then copy one or two very small files to it...but no more that 4 or 5K in size total. Anything larger results in freezes or freakouts from the machine. If anyone has a way to test an Axlon board, here is what I am doing in both emulation (Atari800MacX) and the Incognito 800: 1) Load up TOP-DOS 1.5 © 1985 R.K. Bennett without BASIC and set to base 48K (a very nice menu-driven DOS with lots of configurability and a nice help system) 2) Binary Load (L) the "AXLON" file on the TOP-DOS disk. It will say "Installing Axlon ramdisk ..." and "AXLON" will appear in your menu/status area. 3) Binary Load (L) the "IZRAMDISK" file on the TOP-DOS disk. It will then say "Initializing ramdisk" 4) You should have a single density 883 sector ramdrive 8: to work with -- depending on the size of your expansion card? In emulation, this works great. On the Incog, it fails. Same ATR image for TOP-DOS.