+wood_jl Posted August 30, 2017 Share Posted August 30, 2017 Well, pertinent to the topic, here are a couple references that are from quite-known sources: 1980 Suggested Retail Price List: https://archive.org/details/AtariPersonalComputerSystemsSuggestedRetailPriceList_1980-06-01 1984 Retailer Confidential Price List http://www.atarimania.com/documents/Retailer_Confidential_Price_List_Jan_1984.pdf Talk about expensive for the time and the [then] value of the currency! 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+slx Posted August 30, 2017 Share Posted August 30, 2017 1500$ each for a 48K 800 and an 815..... The 815 would have been good value for money at only 100$ more than 2 810s. Interestingly the dealer discounts on hardware are much better than those on software. The manuals were cheap, however. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted August 30, 2017 Share Posted August 30, 2017 I just remember that when I wanted a computer, in 83.. The Atari 800 was way out of my family's budget, and I didn't want the membrane 400 keyboard. But then the 600/800XL line came out just in time and were in the budget, so that's what I got. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leech Posted August 30, 2017 Author Share Posted August 30, 2017 I always kind of tended to think most of us ended up with a 600XL or 800XL, right? Except some of the earlier richer people? I'm trying to remember if we got the 800XL before or after we sold off our 2600+games. Hmm, all this talk about the 8-bit is making me want my 130XE back from it's upgrade soup really soon! Of course I always have my original 800XL I could load up... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClausB Posted August 31, 2017 Share Posted August 31, 2017 Some 'street' prices in late 1980 from BYTE for January 1981. Unless you went to the big city these were mail order prices and mail order was less trustworthy back then. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted August 31, 2017 Share Posted August 31, 2017 I think they mean, "10K OS in ROM" in the second ad for the 800, not "10K BASIC in ROM". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DGS-Atari Posted August 31, 2017 Share Posted August 31, 2017 I bought my 130XE for £99 and 1050 for £129 in Nov 1986 in the U.K. from Silica Shop. I've got scans of some 1987 and 1988 Silica Shop catalogues and flyers in the 'Pictures & Scans' section of my website if anyone's interested: http://www.dgs.clara.net/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClausB Posted August 31, 2017 Share Posted August 31, 2017 Yes and they don't say how much RAM you get for the price and whether the BASIC cart is included. Shows how little they knew about the product. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted August 31, 2017 Share Posted August 31, 2017 Yes and they don't say how much RAM you get for the price and whether the BASIC cart is included. Shows how little they knew about the product. Probably came with 16K since they say "expandable to 48K". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leech Posted August 31, 2017 Author Share Posted August 31, 2017 IMG_20170831_081048.jpgIMG_20170831_080803.jpg Some 'street' prices in late 1980 from BYTE for January 1981. Unless you went to the big city these were mail order prices and mail order was less trustworthy back then. Ain't that the truth! Several horror stories of mail order... 1) Dumb young me was curious and pulled apart our 'Happy' 1050. Accidentally put the chip in one pin pair off, fried it. We took it into the local Atari shop who said they had to send it off for repair, a month went by, we asked about it, nope still nothing, a few more months went by... they went out of business. Pretty much curbed the usage of our 800XL for years... 2) We mail ordered Racing Destruction Set and Lords of Conquest. Months went by and they finally called us and asked if we wanted to cancel our order because they were out of stock, we told them we could wait. They never did get any RDS in stock (we finally found a pirate copy anyhow) but we did eventually get Lords of Conquest. It's no wonder a lot of people pirated software, in many cases it was far easier to get than legitimately. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClausB Posted August 31, 2017 Share Posted August 31, 2017 From January 1980 BYTE. Atari ad does say 10K BASIC, which makes sense if you include the math ROM. One mail order ad just says 20% off all Atari items but gives no list. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzip Posted August 31, 2017 Share Posted August 31, 2017 Ain't that the truth! Several horror stories of mail order... 1) Dumb young me was curious and pulled apart our 'Happy' 1050. Accidentally put the chip in one pin pair off, fried it. We took it into the local Atari shop who said they had to send it off for repair, a month went by, we asked about it, nope still nothing, a few more months went by... they went out of business. Pretty much curbed the usage of our 800XL for years... 2) We mail ordered Racing Destruction Set and Lords of Conquest. Months went by and they finally called us and asked if we wanted to cancel our order because they were out of stock, we told them we could wait. They never did get any RDS in stock (we finally found a pirate copy anyhow) but we did eventually get Lords of Conquest. It's no wonder a lot of people pirated software, in many cases it was far easier to get than legitimately. Ahh, The bad old days of mail order. Everything took weeks to ship, no tracking Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted August 31, 2017 Share Posted August 31, 2017 (edited) IMG_20170831_133440.jpgIMG_20170831_133602.jpg From January 1980 BYTE. Atari ad does say 10K BASIC, which makes sense if you include the math ROM. One mail order ad just says 20% off all Atari items but gives no list. OK, fair enough, but it still seems strange to call an 8K cartridge 10K. So if you have a 10K OS and you have a 10K BASIC it totals 18K? Edited August 31, 2017 by MrFish Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClausB Posted August 31, 2017 Share Posted August 31, 2017 (edited) Ah but they didn't call it a 10K cart. Anyway, what's 2K among friends? Everyone says the 800XL has 64K when only 62K are accessible. Edit: Oops, I see the Atari ad did call it a 10K cart, though the mail order ad called it 10K ROM. Edited August 31, 2017 by ClausB 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted August 31, 2017 Share Posted August 31, 2017 Ah but they didn't call it a 10K cart. Anyway, what's 2K among friends? Everyone says the 800XL has 64K when only 62K are accessible. Edit: Oops, I see the Atari ad did call it a 10K cart, though the mail order ad called it 10K ROM. "What's 2K among friends?"... haha... Marketing number games/shenanigans. Remember, 2K was a lot in those days (in terms of storage) and that's +25% to the 8K. True about the 62K/64K, but by that time 2K meant a lot less, and 2K is just a little more than +3% to the 62K. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+slx Posted September 2, 2017 Share Posted September 2, 2017 In the early days mail order from the US was the only way to get some Atari stuff here in Europe. I remember it always took some time to convince my dad to let me use his credit card to order. At least he liked mail order in general and wasn't suspicious as we also bought wondrous pilot supplies/gadgets from time to time. I don't think I have any of these typed up orders left but I remember typing them, sending them off via airmail and then waiting for weeks for the stuff to arrive. I think I even "pooled" orders for my friends whose parents were less easy on mail order and of course to save postage. Got MAE, Monkey Wrench II, APEFace, Action!, DOS XL, exDDT and some other stuff from the Antic! catalog that way, maybe my TAC-2 as well. The only "lemon" we ever received was Shamus: Case II which didn't run on our 800 and which we go on floppy instead of the ordered cart. I don't recall any orders not arriving at all. (Had a much worse experience with a German dealer about 7-8 years later who sold me a 240/44 Syquest combination - paid py postal money order, a service long gone as well - with a wrongly installed connector shorting one of the ribbon cables and the drives as well and then took weeks and dozens of increasingly furious phone calls to return it repaired.) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted September 2, 2017 Share Posted September 2, 2017 From memory the 810 was £399.00 initially (maybe 299.00) Basically whatever it was in USD was what we paid in UK Pounds ie $649.00 = £649.00 at a time when it was 2USD to a Pound...We were ripped off sommit rotten, even with my staff discount it was still expensive initially. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted September 2, 2017 Share Posted September 2, 2017 It's funny to see people ragging on mail order. We had no qualms ordering by mail in the early '80s. My Sinclair ZX-81 was ordered direct from Sinclair in the summer of '81, my 400 was ordered from a Pennsylvania mail order outlet in fall '82 and my 800 came from a NYC mail order place in the summer of '83. No problems with any of those transactions that I recall, except that it took about a month to get the 400, as I recall. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Level42 Posted September 6, 2017 Share Posted September 6, 2017 Hi, nice thread :-) I found an old invoice about a complete Atari Computer system dated from September 1984. All prices are in "Deutsche Mark", the former currency before the Euro came over us... All prices are incl. tax. In 1984 the conversion rate was approx 1 USD = 2,84 Deutsche Mark. German bill dated 1984.jpg For the english people here the translation: 1. Atari 800 XL Computer 2. Atari 1025 Printer 3. Atari 1050 Diskdrive 4. Sanyo Color CRT monitor 5. Atari to monitor cable 6. Two pieces Joystick (I think the CX-40) 7. A game (cart? disk? not known...) 8. A game (cart? disk? not known...) 9. A book (let´s guess... I think it´s "My Atari Computer" (Poole)) 10. Paper for the printer 11. Floppy disks, I thin 10 pieces Wasn´t really cheap that time... Man you were a rich guy ! I payed DFL (Dutch guilders) 599,- for the 600XL and a whopping DFL349,- for the 1010....when it had just came out those were the prices. I think the 800XL was DFL 899.- ? Just checked the internet, a dollar cost about DFL 2,80 then, so converted to dollars the 600XL was USD214, and the 1010 USD125. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted September 20, 2017 Share Posted September 20, 2017 (edited) Here's some additional insight as to why they were probably still calling it 10K BASIC when it was on an 8K cartridge ROM. This is from the Atari 8-Bit ROM Source Code Project ReadMe file: The OS itself initially fitted in 8 KB of ROM space, but it was decided by Atari that it should also include 2 KB Floating Point Package (FPP), originally part of Atari BASIC designed by Shepardson Microsystems. The Atari BASIC was specified as having the size of 10 KB,[WLKNSN] but a cartridge of this size could not be built - the system architecture allows the cartridge size to be either 8 or 16 KB. So the excessive 2 KB of code was designed to be built in the computers along with the OS. The FPP became part of the OS ever since. [WLKNSN] Wilkinson, Bill. "Introduction: Being a History of Two Births: "Coleen" and "Candy"". Inside Atari DOS. ISBN 0-942386-02-7. Compute! Publications, 1983-04. <http://www.atariarchives.org/iad/introduction.php> Edited September 20, 2017 by MrFish 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billysastard Posted September 21, 2017 Share Posted September 21, 2017 my uk launch 16k atari 800 was £799 if i recall, still have it (upgraded to 48k) and it still works perfectly. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tigrezinho Posted December 17, 2018 Share Posted December 17, 2018 My father bought in 1988 my 65XE PAL-N with a 410 datacorder and a pair of courtesy tape games for "only" an equivalent of 400 US dollars from that time. Very, very expensive in Argentina... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
256 colors Posted December 18, 2018 Share Posted December 18, 2018 I remember buying my Atari 800XL from Woolworth £80 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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