old atari users

[dinosaur]

I guess I am about the third oldest here...63 years old ( behind our

beloved "Grand Old Man"...Larry!

 

I got my Atari 800 in 1980 with a 410 recorder.In 1981 along came an 810...

 

And the rest is history..

[Ross PK]

I'm 34 and have been playing the 800XL since 1985. I now have an 800XL which was one of the first models I think (so that would mean it was released in 1983), and it still works. I'm also playing games on cassette that are 20+ years old which still work as well (well, most of em), even my Journey To The Planets cassette game which is 28 years old.

Edited July 17, 2010 by Ross PK

[+Philsan]

I'm 40.

I had an Atari 800XL from 1984 to 1986.

I wasn't very happy because all my friends had C64's, with a huge amount of copied games.

In 1987, after C128, I switched to Amiga 16-bit computers till 1996.

Now I have many computers of the past but strangely I love A8.

 

You can like or dislike it, you may think or not it is the best 8-bit, but everyone must agree that A8, dated 1979, is a milestone.

Unfortunately history is written by winners so often only Apple II and Macintosh are remembered.

Even Commodore is often forgotten by computers historians.

[rchennau]

I vote this thread be made a sticky/pinned thread. These are wonderful stories and certainly a more compelling thread than the about lost programs. I am just saying.

[qix_maniac]

My 8bit days in the early and middle 80s was great! I lived in an apartment building where 7 kids all had atari 800xl or atari 400/800. We used to get together and play games after school and weekends for hours.

I remember playing decathlon until I could not move my hands and arms! We had tournaments and competitions and prizes for each event and overall decathlon score, it was pretty awesome. Couple of neighbors down the street joined in and it was about 10 of us having various competitions for different games...it went on and on for months until a few friends moved and others began upgrading to the atari 520/140ST :-) (myself icluded) ...loved the BBS and getting games and trading...my phone bill to enland and germany was high, my father nearly killed me!!!

[sloopy]

I vote this thread be made a sticky/pinned thread. These are wonderful stories and certainly a more compelling thread than the about lost programs. I am just saying.

 

 

HEAR,HEAR! x2

 

 

sloopy.

[Dropcheck]

I will never tell my true age. A lady just doesn't do that. But....

 

I got started in my early and mid twenties in 83/84 time frame. I never was much into the BBS thing, using the 800XL to write the great American Science Fiction novel like my favorite novelist C.J. Cherryh was my main draw. She was using a heavily modded 800 and Letter Perfect at the time. Then I slowly got drawn into the games area and programming. I can remember walking into the local Atari store hangout and seeing the same two or three kids hanging around the Atari 800xl playing Mule nearly every week. I remember lusting after OSS Mac65 and Basic XL packages for months before I could finally afford the Mac65.

 

My first collection was an 800XL, 1050 drive and 1027 LQ printer. Man I thought I was living high with that setup. I joined an Atari computer users club, became it's newsletter editor and wrote and published several basic utility programs.

 

Well.... The oil economy in Oklahoma went through one of its frequent boom and bust cycles and by the end of '87 I was no longer living in Oklahoma. I had joined the Navy and was stationed in the Florida Keys. Over the next twenty years I moved on computer and geographically speaking, first the Amiga 500/2000 then the 486DX generation IBM clones and then finally the more current crop of Intel machines. Jacksonville Fl, Biloxi Miss, Norfolk Va, Sciliy Italy, Newport News Va (and once out of the Navy Phoenix Az) I called home for awhile.

 

But I never forgot the almost sensual feeling of running my fingers along the sides of the 800xl's case and the musical tones of the floppy drive loading a program. They say the circle always comes back to the beginning. Three years ago I returned to Oklahoma and with my return fell back under the Atari 800XL spell again. Now I can afford those items I lusted after back then, well... most of them anyway. I enjoy tinkering with mods, loading up that Mac65 or BasicXE or Missle Command or Pac-Man and seeing what mayhem I can create.

 

My work requires a modern computer, but you never forget your first love or computer. I never did.

[almightytodd]

I vote this thread be made a sticky/pinned thread. These are wonderful stories and certainly a more compelling thread than the about lost programs. I am just saying.

 

 

HEAR,HEAR! x2

 

 

sloopy.

I concur. I'm age 50 at the time of this posting. Our family Christmas present for 1977 was an original heavy sixer. That same machine is in the closet of the room I'm sitting in as I type this. I've been a career Windows programmer since 1993 and the 8-bit home computer revolution of the late 70's and 80's is a big part of that. I'm so thrilled that I can re-live those exciting times and make new memories, experiencing these classic machines through the magic of emulation.

[sloopy]

I will never tell my true age. A lady just doesn't do that. But....

 

{snip}

My work requires a modern computer, but you never forget your first love or computer. I never did.

 

 

women are like wine, best when finely aged ;')

 

and next to this machine from work which they just spent $4k on, is my 130XE...

 

sloopy.

[jim14425]

Well,

 

depends on what you (or others) think of "old". Ask a six year old child and he/she will name someone with just 20 years as being "old". Anyways, Atari was founded in 1972 - I was born in 1972... so I guess I always have the perfect age (being always as old as Atari).

 

My very first Atari 800XL got 25 years old, I bought it in 1984 and it "died" in 2009. This made me very sad - so I bought four Atari 800XL computers at ebay as replacements...

 

-Andreas Koch.

 

 

Hello:

 

I need to reply in kind words to a younger generation that has 'instant' everything. First modem was 300 baud, reading speed back then. Went to 2400 after that and I thought it was light speed. I was a co-sysop in a few BBS Systems(Bulletin Board Systems) in Rochester New York. Had a wonderful time giving love advise to the loveless, in one bbs, and another I was EASYTOUCH the poster that didnt mind getting too far off in his subject content. As I grew older, got my first 1bm and doctored it up so that it could run faster, let the Atari gather dust and my kids loved playing the old games. Sure I date myself with computers that were big as todays refrigerators and had eight inch floppy drives. But I always remembered my roots, and how I enjoyed playing text games, PolePosition and enjoyed my life at a slower times. So much to be thankful these days, but I am still trying to make my collection of software work or use the APE interface to back up my collection and have one last play of the oldies

JIM

[redman]

I'm 63. I put together a Sinclair ZX81 kit in 1982 and that hooked me on computers. It was also the first time that I got bit by price drops. I paid $100 for the computer + $100 for a 16K rampack. One month later the computer kit cost $80 and the rampack was $50. That was a $70 penalty for being too fast to buy. My first Atari experience was when we bought my father an 800 (don't remember what year that was) that came with a 410 recorder and the BASIC cartridge. That cost $200 also but was a lot better deal:) I also got him a Frogger tape. You should have seen his face when he saw all those sharp colors on his tv, it had a very nice picture even though it was hooked up to the modulator. I got an 800XL a few years later, and then all the other stuff that's down in the cellar.

[+Guitarman]

I'm 48 at this point in time. The Atari 400 was the first computer I owned. I found it at a swap meet in San Diego for $25 w/ a Basic cart. That was 1984-85. I had previously got my hand dirty with a friend's Apple IIc and, within a couple of months, I was programming databases in SynFile on another friend's Apple IIe. Once I got my 400, it only took a couple of weeks before I wanted more. I found a used 800XL with a 1050 drive. Don't remember what I paid but I couldn't afford it!! I started working for a few hours on the weekends at a small used computer shop that has a lot of Atari stuff. I pretty much worked for trade. Got a Citizen dot printer and a ICD PR Connection so I could start doing graphic and Printshop stuff. By 1988, with the help of a few swap meets, an outlet called Warners Computer and a little place near where I lived call Federated, I had amassed a small collection of the 400, 800, 800XL (now with a RamboXL), 600XL, my first 1200XL (also upgraded with a Rambo), 2 1050 drives, 2 XM551 drives and just about all the ICD stuff including a 256K MIO (which is the same one MetalGuy used to reverse engineer the new run of MIOs), SpartaDos Construction Set, SDX and RTime-8. I had even acquired a 520STFm setup with a color monitor and a modem. The collection went with me to Michigan in 89, Nevada in 91, and back to San Diego in 92. It was in '93 that I got my first PC, a 486DX-33 and by '94, I had my first job as a computer tech. The Atari collection found the inside of a few boxes its home for the next few years. Then, around '99, I found this cool little program call Atari800Win that was supposed to act like an Atari on the PC. I found a few disk images of some familiar programs from my past and gave it a spin. From the moment I started the program and heard the beeps of a DOS 2.5 disk loading and the 'READY' prompt with a blinking cursor staring me in the face, it was all over!! I was, again, hooked. If you have seen any of the pictures I have posted over the past few years, you'll know what I mean. I love these crazy old systems and now have a collection that includes just about all of the different computers and game systems that Atari made. I can't help but buy most of the latest hardware upgrades and mods that are coming out. I am lucky enough to have a 'significant other' that lets me go off the deep end when it comes to Atari stuff. I have made it my goal to keep as much Atari stuff out of the landfill and scrap heap. I would have to say, looking in my garage, that goal is being met!!!

[spookt]

Guess I'm a relative youngster at 37 My 600XL was my second computer after a 16K ZX81 and I remember being blown away by Pole Position beacuse a) it was in color, b) it had sound and c) I got a joystick to play it with !!! I still remember vivdly sitting in my folks front room on the "big" TV (probably less than 30") playing laps and laps of Pole Position on Christmas morning.

 

The whole package was the 600XL, a 1010 and a CX40 and Pole Position on cart. There was a copy of a guide to the 600XL by (i think) Ian Sinclair and a book of type ins which I immediately set to work on. In later years I progressed to an 800XL but never owned an Atari floppy drive until many, many years later. They were really expensive here in the UK and by the time I could afford one the 1050 had been phased out and no one had XF551s in stock yet.

 

One of the great things about collecting stuff now is I can finally get my hands on all the stuff I used to drool over in the magazines but could never afford. BTW - I collect to use not to put on the shelf and look at. I have an 800XL with 256Kb on my desk with stereo Pokey and two real 1050s next to it which I use regularly along with my SIO2USB and SDrive NUXX.

 

I've owned plenty of computers and consoles over the years (my A1200 set up is on the shelf under the 800XL) but somehow none of them hold a candle to the A8

[flashjazzcat]

One of the great things about collecting stuff now is I can finally get my hands on all the stuff I used to drool over in the magazines but could never afford.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

 

As relative youngsters in our mid-thirties (!), we were well positioned to witness the home computer revolution when we were even younger than we are now. It constantly amazes me that the XF551 on my desk was my everyday computer storage device ten years ago when I didn't have a PC (admittedly I was hanging on for grim death there). I can now store dozens of 16MB hard drive images on a card the size of a postage stamp.

[+DarkLord]

Well, I'm 48 now, got my first Atari 800XL from a local Magic-Mart in about 1982/1983.

I guess I would have been about 21 years old then. I couldn't afford both it and the

floppy drive at the same time so I bought the 800XL and put the drive on layaway. I

typed in endless amounts of programs and lost them until I was able to get the drive.

But boy it was fun. I can still remember that animated lightning strike!

 

I guess the best testimony I can give about the staying power of Atari computers is

that even knowing what I know now, and how things turned out with Atari Corp., and

the computing industry in general, that given a chance to go back in time, I'd still

make the same choice...and still leave that C64 sitting on the shelf when I bought

the 800XL...

 

The Fuji Lives!

[bandit]

Well, I started with a 400 and a 410 and was doing basic, wanted a 800 but I was lucky the wife let me have the 400. 1980 upgraded the 400 to 48k and bought 810, Oh man! thats was good! Did not buy an 800xl as I thought they looked to cheap until Gauntlet came out that was XL only, well I think it was gauntlet. Both my kids grew up with atari and my son has been a programer since 98. Oh, I use my 800xl now and for the past 20 years, yea I came around to like it.. Age is baby boomer area married in 70.

[RodLightning]

I'm 40, with a similar story to many of you...we're in good company here. My first Atari computer was a 600XL (with no accessories) as a Xmas gift in I think 1983...maybe 1984 but I remember the 600XL was in stock that year at Toys R US and was the only XL series available. Nobody had the 800XL anywhere and I recall seeing Atari 400/800 hardware still on sale in K-Mart that year. I had a TI99/4a on layaway and decided last minute to cancel and go with Atari. That turned out to be a profound decision in my young life!

 

After playing around with BASIC for a while, I went out and bought a QIX game cartridge. Weeks later, I found a 410 program recorder on sale and started shopping for cassette games. I used that 410 every day, saving typed in programs from the pages of Compute! magazine. The play button stopped locking after a year or so and I upgraded to the newer 1010 recorder. Still later (I don't remember the year), I saved up enough money to buy a 1050 "enhanced" density floppy drive. That was a major step up and from there I quickly downgraded from Atari DOS 3.0 to 2.5 and began thinking about dialing in to bulletin boards.

 

Those of you who purchased the Atari 1030 direct connect modem have my sympathy. I was one of the "lucky" owners of a 1030 with it's built in terminal program. Ordering and waiting for a floppy disk copy of 1030 Express finally allowed me to do what I had wanted all along; download programs!

 

By this time, some of my high school friends had Ataris or C64s and we played Infocom games both at home and in the school computer lab. Some of the commercial game disks had Atari 8bit versions on one side and C64 on the other. Montezuma's Revenge was a big hit as I could play Atari at home and C64 on the systems at school. Yes, I did use the XL and a 1027 LQ printer for school work. Parental expectations satisfied!

 

The biggest speed bump in my Atari history was when the 600XL (now with 64k RAM) developed problems and I got a deal buying my local K-Mart's 400 demo model, for $40 US dollars. I even got a battered original box minus the foam inserts. This proved disastrous as the 400 fell out of it's box and slid several feet, face down across the asphalt parking lot! You know, those older systems are so tough that nothing was broken and there were barely visible scratches. I installed a 48k RAM upgrade and picked up playing my favorite Infocom games. That 400 membrane keyboard was a bitch when entering text!

 

I'm in danger of rambling so I'll say that I got a SX212 modem along the way and eventually fixed the 600XL. I got another 600XL and various other 8bit items from catalog stores and thrift stores over the years. I was involved in my local Atari user group during the early 90's and moved on to an ST and later a PC, but the Atari 8s are my first love. I still set up the XL now and then to relive old memories. The emulators are great too.

Edited July 20, 2010 by RodLightning

[atariksi]

Well, I'm 48 now, got my first Atari 800XL from a local Magic-Mart in about 1982/1983.

I guess I would have been about 21 years old then. I couldn't afford both it and the

floppy drive at the same time so I bought the 800XL and put the drive on layaway. I

typed in endless amounts of programs and lost them until I was able to get the drive.

But boy it was fun. I can still remember that animated lightning strike!

 

I guess the best testimony I can give about the staying power of Atari computers is

that even knowing what I know now, and how things turned out with Atari Corp., and

the computing industry in general, that given a chance to go back in time, I'd still

make the same choice...and still leave that C64 sitting on the shelf when I bought

the 800XL...

 

The Fuji Lives!

 

What demo is the "animated lightning strike!"?

[griz]

I was born in 72. My younger brother and I received a VCS under the Christmas tree. We had the bundled "Combat" along with SWESB. Although the whole family enjoyed it at times, none so much as I. Being fascinated with the fact that you could use light and sound on a tv to create interactive worlds, I was hooked for life. My first real computer was a Vic 20, but I was always fascinated with the Atari 8 bits. Eventually I would get a newly released 65XE as my first A8. Today I prefer the XLs. I did jump into a 520ST a few years later, and enjoyed it a lot, but it just wasn't quite as charming as the 8 bits to me. I lived with that XE for something like an entire year before finally getting a storage device. A 1050 disk drive with Dos 3. The Atari Dealer also provided Dos 2.5. My first few disks games included Boulder Dash, Movie Maker and Koronis Rift. Ah the good old days.

[potatohead]

I'm 40 something.

 

First computer experience was a TRS-80, at a neighbors place. Was facinated with BASIC and wrote some little programs. Soon after that, the school got Apple ][ computers, and I flat out loved those. Ended up helping to teach LOGO and PASCAL classes before it was over.

 

Those had the mini-assembler, and were my introduction to ASM code. Read the ROM listings, assemble stuff up from photocopied opcode sheets, and go!

 

I was saving up to do the Apple thing, when I played Star Raiders at a friends house. They had a 400, and we had all been jamming on VCS machines prior to that. I was sold!!!

 

Spent many long afternoons after school, typing BASIC games into the thing, and saving to cassette (several times, just because).

 

My first Atari computer was a tricked out 400, with 48K and one of those funky keyboards, obtained from a local user group.

 

I followed that up with a 800XL, and the 1040 disk, and that was my system for a pretty long time. Used it for various things right through the very early 90's.

 

Stepped away for a very long time, keeping the old 400, but ended up ditching the 800XL and a lot of other HAM / electronics gear through a series of moves.

 

Caught the SGI fever in the early 90's, being lucky enough to work somewhere I had access to those machines. They rocked, and I had those until a few years ago, running the older Stella, from time to time. Gave them all up on a move (and that dude was HAPPY!! It was a full deal. Indy, O2 (with ICE video card), R12K Octane, gigs of RAM in the higher end machines, tablet, buttons and dials, space ball, camera, and some very high end software, Alias, I-deas, Maya, Adobe....)

 

After getting burned out on higher end, serious computers, I came back to Atari, writing Ooze for the VCS, on Batari Basic, and starting little projects on the 400. Recently got a new 800XL, and want a SIO device for it.

 

Now it's Atari, some CoCo, and Propeller, and I'm in little tiny computer happy land!

 

Honestly, I still want an Apple, when I get room for one, but if I had to choose one, it would be just the Atari 8 bitters and VCS.

[Fletch]

I Just turned 40 last month. We had a 2600 in 1980 and I bought a 400 in 1981. The 400 was $189 at a Sears Surplus store. I used every penny to my 11 year old name and was immediately crestfallen when I got it home and realized it did not include the BASIC cartridge. My parents apparently took pity on me on took me back to Sears and bought it for me. I had no means to load or save anything I typed in, so I would leave the 400 on for days at a time and hope my parents wouldn't notice the red power light glowing.

 

I eventually got a 1010 program recorder and an 800XL in '83. That Christmas my brother and I bought each other a copy of Ultima III which only came on diskette with hopes that my parents would get me the 1050. I remember going to the store to measure the box so I knew the dimensions. I'd then sneak into my parents' bedroom and measure all of the boxes to see if the 1050 was there. I was pretty certain we were in luck! Indeed we were, if not we would have had a useless Ultima III game

 

In 1985 I convinced my mom to buy me a 520ST. I then went on to get a 1040STf, a 1040STe, and finished off my Atari computing with a Falcon030 in '93. I knew the Falcon was going to be the end for Atari, but wanted it anyway. I sold it when my wife got pregnant to some dude in New Zealand. I hope it is still in use.

 

I became a Mac guy in 1994. Apple was in similar bad shape as Atari and Commodore at that time. I've never liked DOS or Windows PCs and though I work on them as part of my Job I pretty much refuse to use them personally. So when it came down to switching away from Atari, the Mac was the only real option for me.

 

The Mac culture reminded me quite a lot of the Atari culture at the time. The underdog fighting spirit drew me in.

 

I think Apple has lost its way over the past five years or so and though I remain a Mac guy, computing in general is just not as exciting or interesting as it was when I was younger. The days with my 800xl, 1010, and 1050 are still my fondest. My first ST and my first Mac were special, but the 8-bit days will always be my favorite.

[eightbit]

I am 35, born in June of 1975. I started in my early years with a Commodore PET, then a Vic-20, and eventually a Commodore 64 in the early eighties. You can say I was a Commodore guy throughout my youth.

 

I actually only discovered the wonder of Atari computers when the XE game system was released in the late eighties. It was then that I started to research the back catalog of the Atari 8-bit computer line and see what I missed out on.

 

See, in my area the Commodore reigned supreme. Our school computer rooms were all Commodore. I did have an Atari VCS throughout the years, but was completely oblivious to the 8-bit computer line.

 

Nowadays I have an 800XL and too use APE with an SIO2PC interface to experience what I had missed all those years. I can tell you for sure that if I had one of these machines back in the day things would have been alot different. I love the C64 of course and always will, but I do believe that the Atari 8-bits were the superior machine. The graphics and sound are stunning, and the computers abilities are just incredible.

[UNIXcoffee928]

I'm 42. I had some friends in Scouting who were into computers, so I started using their CP/M & TRS-80 machines in 1979, and started reading all of the computer magazines of the day. I got my 400 system in 1980, and my 800 system about a year & half later. I cut my teeth programming on an Atari, and the knowledge that I gained from that time period laid the foundation for all of my excursions into advanced computing, over the course of my life. I got involved with telecommunications very early, and have been online since 300 bps was the norm.

 

I later went to the Amiga 1000, when it came out, from there I went to Silicon Graphics systems. I spent a lot of time working in computer graphics, UNIX system administration for most flavors of UNIX, computer security, and software engineering. I currently run a recording studio, completely built upon Datacenter tech, and play & write, & arrange for several rock instruments.

 

The most fond memories were the Ataris, Amigas, and SGIs. They were all very unique systems, and caught my attention rather completely. I still run these systems, in my studio, right next to multi-Xeon systems. It brings me a lot of peace, just to see my 800, every day. I am currently on the  Natami Development Team, doing my part to contribute to bringing the world a new Amiga that embraces Jay Miner's original design, while bringing modern computing conveniences to the system. Mostly because I miss a lot of the things that the Amiga did so well.

 

Atari will always exist for me. On one hand, there is a lot of fond nostalgia of my childhood & teenage years inextricably linked with Ataris & Old-School hacking culture & Old-School Skateboarding culture. On the other hand, there is something intrinsically amusing about owning computers older than the 20-somethings that I usually end up dating... lol. (I never got married).

 

Of course, that's not all that it's cracked up to be, either... when you date a 23 year old woman, you have to deal with the everyday problems of a 23 year old: drugs, lifestyle, etc... Somehow, between all of the CRT radiation, Lack of Daylight UV, seas of Coffee, fields of tobacco, and punnishingly loud music, I never aged much, visibly. I've found this to be both a blessing & a curse. Since 40, though, it's been freaking me out a little, numerically, & I've been trying a bit more to find a woman who is old enough to have played Asteroids or Space Invaders arcade machines, & knows what the hell I'm talking about when I say "Centipede", lol. Anyone else have this sort of 'problem'? 

 

It is weird, because so many older people apparently want to look younger... but when you actually DO look younger than you are, it creates it's own set of problems. Coupled with the fact that the vast majority of single American women who are also 42 are divorced several times, have batches of children, are obese, and really look like somebody's "Mom". lolkinda.

 

I console myself that it's beneficial to my career in music that I do still look young. The funny thing is that I've never changed my California-skatepunk style, since I was a teenager... back then, you were definitely a minority to dress that way... today, every punk, new-wave, goth, emo, metalhead, and even the mainstream music people wear the same stuff. I hardly even know anyone my age, so, I'm just wondering if anyone else here has experienced this, since there seems to be a large # of people in my age-group here on this forum. So much of today's contemporary culture has it's direct roots to 80's alternative culture (although incredibly diluted)... everything from hairstyles to hackerspeak, to valley-girlisms, to music-culture & fashion... so much stuff. A lot of times I wonder about the effects of Youth-Culture... what happens when you are wrapped up in it, then find yourself 80? lol. I mean, Andy Warhol pulled it off till the end, but is it really worth it? Is there even really a choice? I mean are you really supposed to change who you are & what you care about in life?

 

It makes me think how absurd it will be at the Goth-Old-Age Home, with saggyboobed seniors in Siouxsie wigs, with indistinguishable blotchy-green tribal armbands & various other age-blotched tattoos, and tons of makeup that just looks plain old wrong on an old woman... lol... will they still "Be looking so long at these pictures of you, that (they) almost believe that they're real?" Will the beer-bellied old men still be blasting Slayer's "Angel of Death" headbanging in their wheelchairs? Will there be the old hunched over man with the cane with OZZY written across his knuckles, blasting Van Halen's first album, high on acid? Will there be withered jocks in football jerseys smoking beer-bongs? Or horribly-aged Guidos with ancient restored Camaro IROCs & Mustang 5.0s that they tinker with in the garage, while listening to techno, still prfixing everything that they say with, "Yo"? ha... I sorta wonder If I'm permanently damaged from growing up in 80's alternative culture.

 

Does anyone out there get the same feeling? I mean, I've played the role of an adult in a suit... but really, it always felt like fiction, & inside, I still feel like I'm 18 & 800 years old, at the same time. Is it like shell-shock?

 

Then, too, I run into people my age, on facebook, who look like moms & dads, and have lots of kids... and for all intents & purposes, it seems that they really did "Grow Up"... and it looks waaaaay scary to me. It's like they get child-bearing amnesia, too... they most certainly forget to mention all of the sex, drugs, and rock & roll that they lived, prior to reproducing. So much so, that they have a hard time remembering it, because they've lied to themselves, over & over, in an effort to pretend that it never happened... lol, then, they wake up one day, and can't understand why their kid got wasted, is still drunk the next day, kept the neighbor's daughter out all night, and now they're getting phone calls from her parents, who have also forgotten that that's what kids do best. lol. 

 

A lot of times, too, I go out amongst the people, and there's people in their late 20s who look older than me or the whole community of aged Baby-Boomers, out there... It makes me feel like an alien, amongst them... Makes me want to just want to get back home to the coffee, and the thousands of wires hooking up all of my equipment, and forget about everything outside. I often feel like it's been one excrutiatingly loooooong sleep-deprived day, since 1988. Is this part of the 'normal' aging process for the average dude from the "Baby Bust" generation?

 

Ah, it's all very weird, and I don't like to focus on it much... I've grown to accept my madscientist lifestyle & weird reality... but looking over at my Original Atari 800, and all thinking of the days & nights that have past since I first got it, all of these things, that I've mentioned, totally spring to mind. Now I'm remembering chromed Haro & Redline frames, and how they looked so modern & cutting edge, even the damned Haro two fingered break levers, and aerodynamic plates... OK, enough of this... The original poster BETTER be working diligently on a Time Machine, because 2010 sux.

 

L8R.

[ApolloBoy]

I'm 21, which I suppose makes me the youngest of the group so far. Technically my first A8 was a dead 600XL I got off eBay, but I consider my first one to be the 800XL, which I got off eBay in July 2003. I've owned all of the 8-bit computers at one point or another except for the 65XE, but now I've pared it down to a 400 and 130XE. I use the 130XE almost all of the time, and only use the 400 for anything that requires OS-B.

[My600XL]

I'm 38, and I got my first Atari 400 in 82-83 (I think). I later moved up to the 600XL then 800 XL systems. I vividly remember my old tape drive, modem, Okidata "COLOR!" print, and playing spy vs spy and an odd game called SCRAM. Still looking for the last one on ebay!

 

Ah, the memories!