Dmitry

It's interesting, I don't like having a lot of old computers around, but for some odd reason, when I bought my Atari 800 a few years ago (didn't have my original one from the 80's)....for some reason I kept buying - all Atari 8-bits, got an XE, an two 800XL's and a 1200XL. I have no idea why I did that....lol For a while I had one system set up and was using it and programming for several months, that was fun. With all the rest in a box in the closet. Now, they are all in a box in the closet. I'm feeling some more nostalgia coming on and slightly tempted to take the main system back out and try to find space for it.....

oh p.s. I mentioned my Dad had us 'research' every computer for sale that particular month, I'm assuming it was some month early in 1982. Before the Commodore 64....before the 800XL, but after the release of the IBM PC. TRS-80 Coco Model I was out, but not yet the Model II. Anyway, exactly that moment in time, and you know what we wanted so bad....... the Apple II Plus - we begged for it. Reason: Choplifter But my Dad balked at the price, also he said no to the IBM PC for the same reason. ultimately the computer we did buy the TI-99/4A proved to be too expensive as well, because we quickly established a disk drive as a requirement, but you had to buy this obscenely priced expansion box to add a disk drive. So I ended up with an Atari 400, later upgrading to an 800XL. After I got the 800XL, my Dad upgraded it to 256K via the byte magazine article, and I eventually got an Atari 1050 disk drive which was quite affordable. My friends who bought into the computing scene a little later, end up getting Commodore 64's. But ultimately I wasn't the least bit concerned about that. Their 1541 disk drive was a colossal piece of crap in my view. It ran at 300 baud for goodness sakes. Meanwhile I was running out of a ramdisk, and backing up to my much faster 1050 once a day. I was really into online and databasing message forums and some online multiplayer, and as obscure as this is now - atascii animations, lol So, yeah - as it turns out I didn't want a C64 at all. I loved going to a friends house to play some C64 games, and they'd come over to mine to play some Atari games. I didn't have exclusive but nobody could buy them all anyway, we'd play epyx pit stop, summer games, jungle hunt, or Karateka - I didn't have a lot of games, but I had a few to showcase the machine.

My main reason for getting an Atari is because I loved all the computers of the time. The first thing that really sparked my imagination was the Timex Sinclair 1000, because it came out at $99. I had been following the computer scene for a while, but with the understanding it was for other people, not for me. But then I had this strong belief that I could own a computer. I didn't even know my Dad was technical - because I was an ignorant kid of course, lol....he was an engineer for the army security agency, he probably had some technical chops, lol.... Anyway, so at that point he stepped in and said, no way are we buying a Timex Sinclair - and he took my and my older brother on an evaluation of the technical specs and we ultimately bought a Ti-99/4A - because lets face it, at that moment in time, it came with 16k, while the Atari 400 had 8k, and the TRS-Coco had 4k... all that was about to change, of course. The 8-bit era is remembered for the 64k machines, but that was a few months or year later after our initial evaluation. Technically the Ti-99/4A had a 16-bit cpu, for that matter. Anyway, that was a fun computer, but it was 'shared' by the whole family...so a year or two later, when they were blowing out the Atari 400's at sears, I picked one up for $50 or so, and I was hooked. Finally my own computer, that I put in my bed room. Later I started earning money mowing lawns, and I got a disk drive, built my own ring detector so my modem could answer the phone - ran a BBS. Upgraded to an Atari 800XL - my dad helped me install the 256K memory upgrade as described in Byte magazine. So ultimately, I remember the Atari 800XL very fondly. Though my family owned a Ti-99/4A, my dad ended up buying a TRS-80 Model III for his own work, my younger brother eventually bought an Atari 520ST.....we ended up buying every computer under the sun, I guess, lol.....hard to believe now, I once thought it was out of reach.