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Atari 8-bit users from Chile (even if not living there now)


Blues76

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Hello Atari Users from Chile. I would like to find out who is here from Chile.

I'm from Chile (Concepcion) but I have been in the US for more than 27 years. My love from Atari started in Chile. First with a 2600 and then a Atari 65XE.

 

I had many friends (whom some are in Facebook) that used Atari. I'm wondering who is still active (even if is emulation)...

 

This is the first post -- I plan to have a post later for Latin America Atari 8-bit users.

 

 

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Hi! I'm still active in the A8 scene... Just check my home page.

 

I'm from Valparaíso, but half of my life has been working in Santiago.

 

Anyway, I think this post should be in one the community subforums... hum... unless your plan is.... ehr... I'm curious ;)

 

 

Well, It was specific to A8, this is why I posted here. Which subforum did you had in mind?

 

Thanks

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Hi Blues76

 

Here I am, currently living for 10+ years in Santiago, although I was born in San Antonio.

While I was at school I had the chance to play with some Atari 600XL and 1010 tape recorders (circa 1985, I remember because that was the year of that big earthquake), but previously I used to play games on a school mate's 2600 VCS.

I remember visiting my local official "Centro Atari (Atari Centre)", the only resource for original Atari software. Everywhere else, you could only find pirated software. Now that I recall, I even remember buying a TDK C60 pirate tape on that Centre too! Those were the days...were you could buy pirate tapes on big retailer stores like Falabella and Paris.

Atari was #1 in popularity here, seconded by the C64 and Sinclair computers.

 

Regards,

 

Louis BQ

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Hi Blues76

 

Here I am, currently living for 10+ years in Santiago, although I was born in San Antonio.

While I was at school I had the chance to play with some Atari 600XL and 1010 tape recorders (circa 1985, I remember because that was the year of that big earthquake), but previously I used to play games on a school mate's 2600 VCS.

I remember visiting my local official "Centro Atari (Atari Centre)", the only resource for original Atari software. Everywhere else, you could only find pirated software. Now that I recall, I even remember buying a TDK C60 pirate tape on that Centre too! Those were the days...were you could buy pirate tapes on big retailer stores like Falabella and Paris.

Atari was #1 in popularity here, seconded by the C64 and Sinclair computers.

 

Regards,

 

Louis BQ

 

 

Louis... It is very interesting how was the scene back then. I lived in Concepcion until I was 14 (which, in 1990 I came to the states).

 

In Concepcion, the primary places we had for Atari 8-bit (tape or disk) was a couple of places in the city center ("centro")

 

It has been a long time, but one of the stores was located in front of city park ("La plaza de armas"). There was a video arcade place, called Gioco. In that mall, there was a store that sold Atari (there was also a store that sold music, among other items there). From the news that I was able to gather, I found that Gioco is not a coffee place with a few arcades from the 80s (see here and interesting story about it here ) -- I remember Gioco as I had amazing fun on the arcades when I was kid and I was even robbed for a few coins (I was probably 11 maybe)...

 

In that particular mall, there was a very small places that sold computers and games (of course pirated). They had more than Atari.

 

I do remember my parents shopping around in another store for an Apple (I'm not sure if it was an apple II or mac, it look to me like a mac but the apple Iic plus had that feeling too -- so, I'm not sure). What I do remember is that it was very expensive, so at the end they purchased the Atari 65xe with tape drive in that store that I mentioned. I think they purchase a tape with 10 games (river raid among them) -- of course the tape was pirated.

 

Another store that I remember, where I purchased a a few games was in a small mall near by, where a big toy store (big for the time) was located. I think the store's name was Otto Kraus but I may be mistaken. It has been a long time. In that mall, there was a place, where they sold Atari, Commodore, and Amiga computers and software. Everything was pirated but I think they would go to Santiago to buy some games.

 

Most of my games came from other friends, in particular, a dear friend named Bruno that his dad probably worked with computers because they had lots of computers. Other friends had games.

 

There were other stores but not with much software. The store where I used to buy the software from times to times, later open a place in a supermarket where they would sell the games in a "mini" store.

 

The disk drive was purchased a year later (or two) from a store --- It was the best, the 1050 was a great gift.

 

Actually, I don't know what would have happened if I would have gotten the Apple computer but I do know that the Atari woke up the love for programming and Computer Science (I was coding a bit before with a calculator that my sister had for her university who had a one line lcd and basic built-in -- maybe a sharp ... it had a keyboard on the right, on the actual cover and the numbers on the actual calculator).

 

I remember the scene in Concepcion being primarily Atari and yes C64 was second. I never med anyone with an Amiga or Atari ST when I was there. I remember talking to some friends that coded about C and Assembly language without real understanding of them, as we knew only basic. There were some people into programming but lots of friends were just into the games.

 

I believe that PC were become more popular. I remember playing Ace of Ace on a 286 (or possibly 386?) that was owned by the brother of my brother-in-law. I also remember a store in Concepcion that was beginning to sell Atari ST (They didn't sell Atari 8-bit in there). All those computers were very expensive at that time.

 

I do remember that the best Atari purchase I did was on the street. Someone was selling magazines. It wasn't a Kiosk, but a vendor on the street with magazines. He had an Atari magazine (I wonder if this was published on Santiago or something else) with code but it had an amazing disk: Turbo Basic... Turbo Basic was the best basic I seen for the Atari, when I was active coding on that platform. (I haven't coded in Atari since I came from chile).

 

Finally, there were a few things that I remember that I wanted to do. One was to connect with a modem to Santiago BBS that I heard. I never did. I never had a modem there. I'm not even sure if there was but I heard there was one. I also wanted to visit a store in Santiago that had atari hardware and software. I don't remember the name but it was probably in providencia or las condes. I actually don't remember. However, it was amazing when I went. They had Atari ST, 8 bit , software, and it was very big compare to the stores from Concepcion. This was probably a year before I left to the states.

 

Another thing that I didn't have was a printer. However, my friend Dario had a printer and we used to do pretty cool stuff with it. I don't remember if the program to draw was called Paint Shop, Paint Pro, or something like that, but it was very cool.

 

Anyways, it is really good to know that we have people from Chile here and I would be interested to know how was the scene.

 

-- Francisco

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Francisco: you could join local communities: Atariware, Retronia and Retrogames. There are many stories there, and you might find friends from your childhood ;)

 

About Turbo BASIC XL, I used it those years just as a faster BASIC interpreter for my Atari BASIC programs and utilities, but never programmed using its newer instructions, until the middle of 2015!!! I was surprised with some of the programs from NOMAM's 10-liners Contest and tried by myself, successfully!

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Francisco: you could join local communities: Atariware, Retronia and Retrogames. There are many stories there, and you might find friends from your childhood ;)

 

About Turbo BASIC XL, I used it those years just as a faster BASIC interpreter for my Atari BASIC programs and utilities, but never programmed using its newer instructions, until the middle of 2015!!! I was surprised with some of the programs from NOMAM's 10-liners Contest and tried by myself, successfully!

 

Thank you. I will join those communities.

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Francisco: you could join local communities: Atariware, Retronia and Retrogames. There are many stories there, and you might find friends from your childhood ;)

 

About Turbo BASIC XL, I used it those years just as a faster BASIC interpreter for my Atari BASIC programs and utilities, but never programmed using its newer instructions, until the middle of 2015!!! I was surprised with some of the programs from NOMAM's 10-liners Contest and tried by myself, successfully!

What's the difference between those three. I register already on those three. Do you have a preference? are they different? or the same?

 

Thanks,

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What's the difference between those three. I register already on those three. Do you have a preference? are they different? or the same?

 

Thanks,

 

  • Atariware is 100% Atari.
  • Retrogames is the latest incarnation of AtariChile, which started as an Atari community, but now it also has sections for "other brands" or topics.
  • Retronia is somehow a branch/fork of Retrogames, but completely open to old consoles and computers, not only about Atari.

 

I think that most of the active people is at least in two of them, and from time to time, someone posts the same message in more than one forum.

 

I usually post in Retronia, but reply and follow threads in all of them, as well as here!!! :D

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I'm not from Chile, but I just wanted to say it's very interesting reading this thread, I almost wish I had been in Chile in the 80's, it sounds like there was a much better Atari scene there as in the states Atari was always the number 3 machine behind Commodore and Apple. It sounds like you guys got software from Europe (pirated or not) that we just never got in the states. Most English and European software I never got to try until the era of the Internet and download sites!

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  • 2 months later...

Hi Gunstar

 

You made me think twice about going back to the 80s in Chile. Those were hard times, dictator Pinochet was ruling the country with an iron fist, and in 1985 we were hit by one of those earthquakes. Although Atari was #1 in Chile, few people were able to afford a microcomputer. I never had one back in the day. Disk drives were very scarce because of their price, cassettes were the primary source for programs here. Obscurantism was the rule back then, information on assembly programming was very scarce also. And in retrospective, we were years late. When the ST line was being unveiled in the US, we were still playing River Raid on our 800XL computers.

 

Anyways, I keep very good memories from back in the day: the challenge of learning to type, devising ways to duplicate tapes and contraband them at school, establishing social networks in order to exchange programs and information, backing up program listings by writting them by hand on notebooks, walking several blocks in order to find a place where to photocopy some pages from that only american magazine available at school, going to the atari centre and playing Star Raiders for the first time without reading the manual and finding out how to play by trial and error, looking for a very long time that Atari Store Demo cartridge running at the store, trying to figure out how did they mix those graphic modes, and many many more. Today I really miss the passion that technology made me feel back in the day. Today I tend to not get impressed by it, and sometimes I tend to avoid it. For instance, no game today can make me feel the adrenaline running on my veins like Defender or Tron did back then at the arcades.

 

Kind regards,

 

Louis BQ

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  • 3 years later...

Hola!

 

Given how important Atari was in Chile and the outsize presence of Chileans in the community, it occurred to me to Google "Atari Chile" and found this thread :)
 

I'm Chilean too, grew up in Santiago and had an Atari 2600 since 1984 and 800XL since 1986. Nothing defined my young years more than these machines.

 

I migrated to Atlanta, US in 2005.

 

Saludos!

Raul

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On 1/25/2017 at 11:14 AM, lbaeza said:

were you could buy pirate tapes on big retailer stores like Falabella and Paris.

The big stores thought they were selling originals because they got these nicely produced tapes from Mexico. That's what they would tell me. But then around 1988 they realized they were pirated ;) haha

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Hi! I’m from Chile also and i’m still active on this forum. I try to contribute by giving some patches here and there, as well as developing some hardware projects locally. My goal is to maintain the chilean Atari scene active here and I hope my contributions helps here as well.

 

regards,

 

Guillermo.

Edited by Wilheim
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16 hours ago, Wilheim said:

Hi! I’m from Chile also and i’m still active on this forum. I try to contribute by giving some patches here and there, as well as developing some hardware projects locally. My goal is to maintain the chilean Atari scene active here and I hope my contributions helps here as well.

 

regards,

 

Guillermo.

Are you WillySoft? http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-draconus-iv_1708.html

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Wow!  A lot of Chilean Atarians.  I remember well in an Antic Magazine (in fact, I just re-read it a day ago) where they surveyed the world for Atarians.  Antic received several responses from Chili.   One was a child of about 11.   Good times.  Atari brings us all together.  With Atari, we'll all get through this (cliche' that I am really sick of hearing.).

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I am also from Chile from the city of Santiago, the 8-bit Atari world still amazes me.?

 

Among the collaborative active projects we have Joy 2B+ modification to obtain 3 buttons easily, another is a wiki with material that was distributed in Chile, whether it is magazines, programs, information in general.

 

regards

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