deathtrappomegranate

Me too, although I was more 4/800 vintage in terms of lust. I also had to settle for Uncle Clive's offerings. I did quite a lot of 6502 on BBCs in computer shops though. It was pretty cool not having to load an additional assembler. Welcome to the A8 microverse!

Atarimania has been repeatedly attacked by script kiddies, and some more serious interlopers. The site has been in the process of moving to a new server, too, which should help a great deal with uptime in the longer term, but might have made it a little more difficult recently. Please bear with us.

Atarimania has the instructions (from the Synsoft version): http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-blue-max_5977.html I thought that we had scanned the XE cart version too. I guess not.

Memories... I started out in computing using a VDU and an Anderson-Jacobson ADC-212 modem (similar to a Bell 101) to connect with a remote mainframe. 110/300 baud, no graphics, CTRL-G sound. Happy days.

Zaxxon is an interesting example. The loose cart has been selling for quite a bit recently. It's not so rare, although it's much tougher to find with a box. Similarly, InHome's Baseball appears several times a year loose on ebay. Not as often as Zaxxon, though. It's very unusual to find a boxed one. As far as the Atarimania rarity values go, they are based on *complete* games, where they exist. Romox games had no instructions, and so a complete Romox game is just cart + box (except for the review copies). No box/instructions have yet been confirmed for Matterhorn, Abracadabra, Ozzy's Orchard, etc, so their rarities are based on loose carts. A8 collecting is full of such contradictions. It's a much smaller market that that for the 2600, so it's inherently more unstable. And more fun

Nice find!

Merci, c'est une image très belle! That is still the only legitimate copy ever to have appeared on ebay, AFAIK. Thanks for giving us a glimpse of it again!

Apologies! <blush> I meant "Fast Food". "Food Fight", of course, is pretty common. In mitigation, I had just cleaned up the kitchen after it had been the victim of a terrorist attack by a 2-year-old armed with dinner of mass destruction, so I might have been a little distracted

It's probably an impossible to question to answer definitively. Rob Catron just sold a cart on ebay that was previously unknown, and is, to date, the only known copy. That one was a HAM radio utility cart. There are probably quite a few other specialist carts with very low production numbers that remain unknown. Some Arabic carts were mentioned above, and Hebrew carts also exist. The Atarimania team is aware of at least one other undocumented cart, but we haven't been able to resolve some copyright issues with it. The situation with games is slightly clearer, but, even then, there might very well be some carts that are unknown to the 8-bit collecting community. When Atarimania first uncovered a Gold Mine cart, it was the only one known to exist at the time, but several more have since been found. Interestingly, more of them have been boxed than not. "JamesTheOrangeCat" bought a complete A8 "Food Fight" cart on ebay, and this is still the only example to have surfaced, AFAIK. None of the XEGS-specific titles from Atari is especially rare. Summer Games and Karateka are the toughest to find of them. As for BBSB, the cart itself appears on ebay quite often. The box, though, is much more elusive. Rarity and value are related concepts, but are not the same. BBSB, like M.U.L.E. , is a prized title, and often sells for more than other carts of similar or greater rarity. Gameplay, nostalgia and kudos are probably important in these cases. Unfortunately, production numbers are not readily available for most A8 carts, so the experience of collectors is vital in the determination of rarity. The "Rarity" forum at Atarimania was introduced with the idea of helping to bring the experience of the A8 community to bear on these questions, but the level of input so far has been disappointing.

If this is to happen, and to include people from outside North America, it will have to start soon. It's a pretty cool idea.

IMO "grading" of video games is a preposterous notion, and an utter waste of money. The only viable reason for the existence of such a service, I think, is to persuade the ignorant to part with more of their cash than is necessary. "Graders" of collectibles, to me, seem like the telephone sanitisers of Douglas Adams, but without even the redeeming quality of some marginal benefit to society. As far as Atari stuff goes, the expertise is here, not at some self-appointed arbiter of quality. Every video game, or piece of vintage software, sent to be graded, makes games more like commodities or stocks. May onions fall upon the heads of the graders!

I have a couple of the carts, but I haven't done anything productive with them. Does anyone know what the original packaging for these carts was?

What he said!

This one, perhaps?

Just a little irksome thing. On the old version of the forum, when looking at the results of the "View New Content" query, I could click on the "Last Post Info" and go straight to the most recently added post, but clicking on the topic title would open the first post in the thread. Now, whichever I click, I get the latest post. When browsing forums, clicking the topic title still brings up the first post. For example, in one thread, looking from the "View New Content" page, clicking "Last Post Info" links to : http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/152291-livestrong-challenge-donate-to-a-great-cause/page__view__getlastpost Clicking the topic tile from the same page links to: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/152291-livestrong-challenge-donate-to-a-great-cause/page__view__getnewpost__fromsearch__1 Whereas clicking the topic title when browsing forums links to: http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/152291-livestrong-challenge-donate-to-a-great-cause/ Maybe it's just me, but I liked being able to go straight to the first post in a thread I hadn't previously seen, especially from the "View New Content" query page. Often, of course, it's better just to go straight to the newest post, but it was good to have that choice. BTW - good luck with the subject of that particular thread!

A spare boxed Expando-Vision unit.

His reply to your neg won't exactly encourage future custom for him either.

Thanks once again, remowilliams!

My most recent arrivals are two flavours of Forth, and one of LISP.

I watched the first episode, and I was surprised and pleased that they mentioned the NewBrain a few times. Not nearly enough geek detail for an informed audience, of course, but pretty well-done for a (sort-of) mainstream dramatised history.

I agree with Curt and Al. However, at the risk of adding a somewhat political dimension to the discussion, the potential extradition of McKinnon is based on a treaty between the US and UK which requires US authorities to have "reasonable suspicion" in order to extradite a suspect from the UK, whereas the UK must show "probable cause" before a suspect can be extradited in the opposite direction. It's very odd for a treaty to be so lopsided. FWIW, I think that it's very unlikely that McKinnon actually caused any material damage to the "target systems". He did cause a lot of red faces, though. The fact that his apparent autistic-spectrum disorder only emerged after the extradition proceedings had begun is interesting, given his age, but IMO there's no public interest, on either side of the Atlantic, in prosecuting him.

Very nice, thanks!

On the old forum, when, for example, searching for new content/topics, clicking on the forum title on the left side of the page would bring up the thread, starting at the first post, whereas clicking on the description of the last post on the right of the screen would go straight to the most recent post. Now, both methods seem to lead to the most recent post. I like to read entire threads, and it's kind of irritating that that option seems to have been lost. Or maybe I'm just missing something...