Ransom

My first was an Atari 400 with a 410 tape drive, connected to a 12" TV via RF hookup. Ah, those were the days! Sitting on the edge of my bed, hunched over a small plastic table, learning to program from Inside Atari BASIC. Then thirty minutes to save my program, and if the air conditioner clicked on near the end of that, it was likely to ruin the save. Thank goodness my parents bought me a 1200XL and 1050 as soon as they came out. On the other hand, I fell for the Okimate 10 marketing and ended up with a well-nigh unusable printer. Should have asked for a standard 9-pin dot matrix instead of falling for the color hype. I've hated thermal transfer printers ever since (including the later ones by Tektronix). The 1200XL/1050 combo remains my most nostalgic and favorite system of all time. But at the moment I have an 800XL and two xf551's set up for gaming purposes, simply because the 800XL is easier to pop carts in and out of and the xf551's are simply still out from the last time I was writing programs for the Atari and using SpartaDOS X.

I'd have to dig mine out of the basement, but according to Best Electronics (see this page), it takes the same power supply as the 400 & 800 computers.

Interesting thread. In my case, the first ones I play are all pretty quick games, nothing that requires a big time commitment like Ultima: Star Raiders Ms. Pac-Man Pole Position Joust Dig-Dug

I've been using an Avery glue stick. It's acid free, and permanent. Seems to work fine so far, but I've only used it on a few carts.

Was the use of 2600 form factor on 7800 carts simply a cost-saving measure? I think the "image" of such carts might have been improved if they'd been bigger (a suitable cartridge port design could handle either larger or smaller carts without difficulty). That's always been my assumption.

[deleted -- never mind]

I remember going from the 2600 to the 5200, and I (as a pre-teen) was definitely impressed by how big the 5200 carts were! But a year later, when I went to the Atari 8-bit, I was shocked at how little the 8-bit carts were!

It's been a long time since I've had an 800. It's just so much nicer to put an XL on a keyboard drawer in a typical desk than to have the 800 sitting in front of the monitor. Good to hear the stock video circuits are so good!

In the arcade heydey of the early 80s, we had a total of 1 arcade (in a town of circa 70,000 people at the time). That one arcade was constantly being denigrated in the local newspaper and by the city council as supporting juvenile delinquency, etc. The arcade went out of business in about 1984. Now, since the arcade was a long bike ride from my house, I could only go there once a week. But on weeknights or when I just had a dollar or two, I could ride up to my local 7-11, which was just a few blocks away. They always had the latest Williams cabinet (Defender, then Stargate, then Robotron) plus one other game. I probably spent more total time playing arcade games at that 7-11 over the years than I did at the arcade.

You've obviously never seen a supervideo upgraded 1200XL.

Thank goodness! We gotta keep our 1200XL's running.

Like many others here, my first computer was an Atari 400. I spent a lot of time typing in programs on that thing, and I don't particularly have a problem with it for its intended use -- on a child's computer. A 400 with "The Programmer" and a 410 (or did the 410 come with The Programmer? I forget.) made for a good setup for budding programmers. Of course, when I upgraded to the 1200XL with 1050, I was in heaven! I still think the 1200XL had the best keyboard ever. (The 1050? Probably not the best disk drive ever, but still way better than a tape drive.)

In my experience, assembly language is the way to go. The Mac/65 assembler cart is the best I found. "Atari Roots" is the best beginner's book on assembly language programming on an Atari 8-bit that I've found. Good luck!

In no particular order.... Omnitrend's Universe Ultima III Wizard's Crown Gemstone Warrior Deadline (and most other Infocom titles) Castle Crisis M.U.L.E. Frogger Popeye Q*Bert Ballblazer Defender Donkey Kong Galaxian Joust Jungle Hunt Karateka Lode Runner Missile Command Ms. Pac-Man Pac-Man Pole Position Qix Rescue on Fractalus! Star Raiders (That last one is probably my #1 reason for keeping an Atari 8-bit computer all these years.)

Atari2600.com is looking into the problem; they think it's a bad capacitor. But I haven't been asked to send it back to them for repair yet, so we'll see what happens. I'll let you know if any improvement is achieved.

Populous: The Beginning (Win98) Baldur's Gate (and other Snowblind cooperative titles on PS2)

I've been organizing my games collection, and with the ever-popular "favorite" lists on here in mind, I started thinking about my favorites for each of the platforms I own. I decided to limit myself to only three favorites for each platform. What if I could only keep three games for each? Which would I choose? It was pretty difficult coming up with only three for several of the platforms (and I cheated a bit with the Atari 8-bit, splitting out carts and disks), but here is what I have: Atari 2600: Adventure Dragonfire Kaboom! Atari Home Computer (Cartridge): Castle Crisis Ms. Pac-Man Star Raiders Atari Home Computer (Disk): Gemstone Warrior Omnitrend's Universe Wizard's Crown Atari Lynx: Battle Wheels Rampart S.T.U.N. Runner Atari Jaguar: Cannon Fodder Cybermorph Tempest 2000 Intellivision: AD&D (Cloudy Mountain) Astrosmash Tron Deadly Discs NES: Desert Commander Nobunaga's Ambition Legend of Zelda SNES: Populous Rampart Romance of the Three Kingdoms II TG-16: Galaga 90 Military Madness Power Golf Playstation 2: Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II Champions: Return to Arms What would you choose from your own collection?

I'd love to see the port finished, too. It's one of my favorite arcade games. If it was offered on cart for sale, I'd buy it!

I have the following titles, complete in box, for trade (see attached photos for condition): Berzerk (Atari Corp. era) Casino (picture label) Combat (01 Combat) Solaris Space War (text label) Video Olympics (picture label) Fishing Derby (picture label) I'm looking for the following carts, complete in box (send photos to show condition): Battlezone (Warner-era Atari) Bowling (Warner-era Atari) Grand Prix (Activision w/o UPC) Video Pinball (Warner-era Atari) Adventures of Tron (M Network) I'm also looking for an NES cart: R.C. Pro Am. Cart and manual only are necessary (I have a sleeve and box). If you're interested in setting up a trade, let me know!

Yeah, it comes and goes for me, too. The key lesson I've learned, though, is not to sell everything just because I haven't used a console in a while. I could have saved myself a bundle if I'd never sold any of my consoles or games. Glad to see you're getting back into classic gaming.

Um...thanks, I did try a different cable and TV, as stated in my original post, and got the same result.

Freddie is a RAM access multiplexer. Here's a short article on it: Atari Freddie

I just received a video upgraded Intellivision from Atari2600.com and it displays a shadow our double image. It does this regardless of which cable I use and which TV I hook it up to, so the problem is definitely with the console. Has anyone else experienced this? I plan to call Atari2600.com tomorrow, but I wanted to see if this is a common or unavoidable problem.

Which arcade ports to the 2600 do you consider to be superior to the original? Berzerk is one that I think of that way. I never much cared for the arcade version, aside from the synthesized voice. But I really enjoy playing the 2600 version. It has better playability. And, I like having the game variations to choose from. Which 2600 ports do you see as better than the original?

I think the Atari 2600 port of Amidar is fine. It's not on my top 10 best list, but it's a decent game. (And I agree that the author of this article had no idea what he was talking about.)