Your 8-bit hibernation (if you had one)

[Xebec]

Great topic!

 

I used my 8-bit from ~ 81/82 (5 year old kid) as a main computer, even for a year or so after we go our 520ST In 1986. (USA). After that, I'd go back occasionally to the 8bit, and even transferred a bunch of games to the ST to try ST Xformer for emulation (too slow sadly, later I understand why ). I went PC In late 89-1990 - same story with the ST, and about 1 year later, I spent 99% of my time on the PC. I kept a 520ST and 800XL unpacked and ready to play; and over the next 4 years, the 8bit got all of my spare time (not the ST). For the ST the non-usage came because my Supra drive died* - and going back to floppy just didn't do it for me / I had played out the ST games pretty well at that point. Unfortunately i also leant a 1040ST With 2-3 boxes of floppies to someone and have never been able to find their contact info. .

 

In August 1994, US Marshals came to seize my (pirate) PC BBS (DeadBeat BBS); but the 8-bit and ST stayed out and ready for usage. I didn't actually get back 'online' until 1996 - (just stayed away from computers for 18-24 months after that experience); but I was playing Alternate Reality and some other games on the 8bit occasionally. I actually played the 8bit occasionally (both through emulation, and occasionally real hardware) through about the years 99-01, packing it up (and the ST) around 2001. They stayed in boxes at the parents during my apartment years and even after I bought my house, finally come out of the boxes maybe 7 years ago or so. I still have my original Atari 800 and 800XL though i'm not sure which is which since I have a few of each :-P.

 

As for the ST not getting love -- Little Green Desktop (LGD) or atari.st kept me 'in the ST scene' once emulation got decent on PC in the late 90s / early 2000s. That website holds a ton of nostalgia for me because it allowed me to run the ST the way I really remember it ("with a hard drive"), and I eventually fell in love with that platform again. Big kudos to whoever created and maintained that site - it was awesome checking out releases after I left the ST scene in ~ 1990.

 

*I wish I still had that harddrive mechanism for the ST (threw it out) - I'd actually pay someone to recover the data now.. wrote a lot of scripts with my father, etc for BBS Express ST!, then later ran FoReM for better HDD usage / file transfer protocols. (FoReM was ugly though vs BBS Express imo ). I threw away almost all of my ST floppies but still have a selection of 8bit floppies..

 

I wish I had discovered the Amiga back in the day; I only saw Rogue on an Amiga 1000 and assumed the platform was nothing special. I did pick up an A500 and A1200 in 2012 or so before prices started skyrocketing -- but they're keepers now.

Edited April 20, 2019 by Xebec

[eegad]

Started with a 400 in 1982. Moved to 800xl in late 1984. I continued to use my 800xl long after all my friends moved on to PCs and had retired their Ataris and Commodores... I was still using my Atari to call BBS's and play games in 1992. But then, after using Macs at work for the previous few years, I finally broke down and replaced my 800xl with a Mac IIsi. All my Atari stuff got packed up in their original boxes and then hibernated in a closet for the next 15 years or so. Until one day while walking along the beach on a sunny summer day I started thinking about all the games I used to play on my 800xl. Thoughts of various Atari things continued to randomly surface over the next month or two until finally I went and dug out all my old stuff, set it up in the basement, and spent the day playing lots of old games. It's been set up there ever since.

[Preppie]

Got a 400 in 1982 after upgrading from zx81, upgraded to an 800 after about a year. When the 800 died it went into the attic and I got an 800xl. At some point in time that 800 somehow made it's way out of the attic (my parents clearing space I guess) which is a great shame as I'm now sure it was just a capacitor that needed replacing. The 800xl died at some point and was replaced (not had much luck with longevity of my ataris).

 

Eventually I got myself a 520STFM, the 800xl was put away for a short time but eventually made it's way back onto my desk alongside the ST. Around 1995/6 I got a PC and not long after that the Ataris were packed away into that same attic the 800 dissapeared from.

 

A couple of years ago I went round to my parents attic and got all my stuff out the attic (Atari 800xl, ST, Lynx, games, magazines) with the intention to sell them but I couldn't bring myself to do it. They were sitting on the shelves of my office for the past couple years until last month, after a session on youtube watching the 8-bit guy, I decided to pull them apart and give them a good clean.

 

ST is now working fine after replacing the disks belt which had pretty much rotted down to nothing. I got a power supply for the lynx, which had gone missing, only to find out the socket is wobbling. Probably just needs resoldering onto the board which is a good reason for me to learn how to solder (something I've wanted to do for years). 800xl rf is fuzzy and has no sound so I got a cable to conect tv via monitor out, it worked great for about an hour then died. Not sure if it's the tv or the atari (probably the atari), so it looks like I'll be buying a 130xe unless I can learn to solder soon and also figure out what needs fixing.

 

For now I'm on emulator for XL. Re-learning how to code as I always enjoyed that. Gonna do a turbo basic game to get things going before I jump back into assembler.

[TGB1718]

Bought my 800 in 82 with a cassette player, eventually bought a 1050 when they first appeared, then a 130XE, I used them to develop

software and hardware and for College work. When I bought my first STM the 8 bit's drifted into the shadows but I kept everything, they were

never stored away for very long periods, from time to time I would pull them out, power them up, play a few games etc. (ST as Well) unfortunately

work required me using a PC so not enough room to keep all the Atari's permanently out.

 

My only regret is I left a lot of the disks out in a fairly damp garage so most of them have degraded and are now unreadable.

 

Redundancy 3 years ago gave me an excuse to pull them all out and now a permanent 130XE beside my PC, the ST's have floppy drive

problems, but they are on a desk in the garage (this ones nice and dry).

[Rybags]

I guess I should expand my experience to other 8-bit machines and consoles.

 

The 2600 although I had one in the day for about a year, fell out of my sphere of interest by the end of 1982 and I had little to do with it before getting another probably about 10 years ago. Though I did get into emulation and follow the homebrew scene before that.

 

The C64 - I had access to one until the late 80s and still have the 1541 I bought in 1986 but had little to do with it probably from around 1989 until the early 2000s.

 

The 7800 and Lynx - they were rare here in the day and I never had either or access to them in their era but obtained both in the early mid 2000s and have followed the homebrew scene esp for the 7800 since a bit before that time.

 

Others - the C= Plus/4 I obtained one about 10 years ago but have little to do with the scene and don't follow it closely.

[Mclaneinc]

I've shut down a lot of my interest as well, I used to follow anything and every thing but its all started to get curtailed. First MAME, too many DAFT systems and a platform that could never hope to run the newer stuff even today.. Hardly look at the Vic 20, same with Megadrive, I keep the systems on the hope I might look again but my attitude has just got worse towards them as time goes on. Basically in emulation terms I'm down to systems I also own as real hardware but have little or no space for.

 

Can't really get as excited about it all as I used to, the recent book thread also just took its toll on my enjoyment....

 

I'll keep my Snes, Amiga, C64, Atari emulation going in no particular order.....I guess after 40+ years of gaming I'm going a little soft on it and certain community ways have not made that any easier..

 

As said, I'll hang on to some other systems like the Vic20 on the hope I get a burst of rose tinted memories but I doubt it..

[Lord Thag]

I've shut down a lot of my interest as well, I used to follow anything and every thing but its all started to get curtailed. First MAME, too many DAFT systems and a platform that could never hope to run the newer stuff even today.. Hardly look at the Vic 20, same with Megadrive, I keep the systems on the hope I might look again but my attitude has just got worse towards them as time goes on. Basically in emulation terms I'm down to systems I also own as real hardware but have little or no space for.

 

Can't really get as excited about it all as I used to, the recent book thread also just took its toll on my enjoyment....

 

I'll keep my Snes, Amiga, C64, Atari emulation going in no particular order.....I guess after 40+ years of gaming I'm going a little soft on it and certain community ways have not made that any easier..

 

As said, I'll hang on to some other systems like the Vic20 on the hope I get a burst of rose tinted memories but I doubt it..

I know what you mean. The community (meaning the wider circle of 'retro gamers' not specifically Atariage) has gotten... well, it's gotten just as rude, intolerant and draining as the rest of social media has. A sign of the times. I've also had those people really drain my motivation to be involved.

 

What I do, when I feel like this, is get back to what I loved about the hobby: the games, friends, and good times. I invite some friends over for a game night, drag out a couple of consoles, fire up the smoker, and we all just chill, eat and have a good time. I find that renews my appreciation. Dealing with online/in person drama over egos, entitlement and whatnot kills it.

 

 

[spookt]

Hmm, I've had a couple of hibernations. I went from ZX81 to 600XL to 800XL and then got really frustrated because when I finally could afford a disk drive (huge expense in the UK) I couldn't get one. It was right between the 1050 disappearing and the XF551 being available. So (ashamedly) I moved to a C64C with a 1541-II just because they were available. That didn't last long TBH and I moved on to an Amiga 500 and then a 1200HD with a Blizzard 1230 accelerator and that lasted until I switched to PCs in the late 90s early 2000s.

 

I got back in to Atari around the same time when I bought a huge collection from a guy at the other end of the country and got my mate to drive it up to the North East. There was literally piles of stuff and I got bitten by the bug again. I collected an attic full of stuff but then due to a huge life change and house move I sold almost everything off and packed up what was left into storage.

 

I've sold off some other stuff in the last couple of years Atari and Amiga when I've needed finds, some of that I regret, but needs must. Still have my original 600XL which was a Christmas present back in the 80s. (Though now much expanded). A couple of months ago I dug it all out and hooked it up and am back in Atari business. I've never really missed the other stuff (C64 / Amiga etc) - Atari is the one that has the deepest hooks into me I guess.

[flashjazzcat]

If the currently hushed forum is anything to go by, there's a mass hibernation happening or at least pending.

 

My hibernation started around 2001 when my dad brought a janky old 286 PC into the house. His buddy at the tool shop had thrown it out (not fit for use in 2001, which says a lot). Five minutes with Microsoft Word for Windows 3.1 (which I had seen fleetingly at Uni and in the local library, as well as in Computing magazines) was enough to make me realise the little 8-bit's time was up. The Atari had fulfilled all my assignment and creative writing needs for ten years, but the printed output (even with Daisy-Dot II or a bubble-jet printer) just wasn't cutting it. Into storage it went. My crucial, life-ruining mistake here was believing that it was pointless learning to code on the x86 platform since - unlike on the little Atari - it appeared that all software which could possibly be required on the PC (word processors, databases, graphics editors, etc) had already been written. It seemed there were no niches to fill. That was my '640K' moment, I suppose.

 

Anyway: in autumn 2008, just after I got married, I was reminiscing with a friend about my old 6502 programming adventures and eventually decided to pull the 128K upgraded 65XE out of storage. On the face of it, rejuvenating this long-dormant hobby a few weeks after getting married (and having previously provided no clues that I was predisposed to irritating hobbies which tend to overrun the house with junk) was a potentially divorce-triggering move, but one started gently and slowly built momentum. Within a year I had half a dozen 8-bits, a couple of STs, an Amiga, a bunch of hefty old CRT monitors, etc, all piled up on a long desk in the marital bedroom (the nearest thing I had to a man-cave at the time and which had to double as an office; webcams were definitely off-limits). Thankfully I now have a dedicated space for all the computer stuff, allowing my wife to fill the resulting void in the bedroom with shoes and stuffed toys.

Edited June 5, 2019 by flashjazzcat

[oracle_jedi]

My Atari 800 and 800XL had a brief hibernation in 1987 when I got my first 520ST. But I became frustrated with the ST on a number of fronts, sold it in 89/90 and moved back to the 800XL.

 

They then had a four-year hibernation late 1990 to 1994 when I was at Uni.

 

After Uni I had a little more space, but not much. The 800XL moved to the living room and became the "games machine" which due to space meant primarily cartridges. I even threw out all of the boxes (gasp!) because they took up space and really, who would ever want those?

 

A larger house, a home office and Nick Kennedy's SIO2PC broke the XL's dependency on a large and clunky 1050. The 8-bits have been a regular fixture of the home office ever since spending about six months of the year of the desk and then yielding some time to the other retro systems - the VIC20 collection, the TI99/4A, the Amiga or the Falcon.

[Mclaneinc]

Stuffed toys....Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

My house is full to the brim, both the wife and daughter are collectors of certain 'types' (not so expensive ones..Thankfully) but they far outweigh any hardware I have in the flat to at least 50-1

 

Anything Hello Kitty and Care bear and its in here...Somewhere...

[flashjazzcat]

Yes... as if five cats didn't represent a sufficient amount of fur on their own.

[Irgendwer]

If the currently hushed forum is anything to go by, there's a mass hibernation happening or at least pending.

 

Maybe this is a very wild guess, but I can imagine that the deadline of ABBUC's software contest keeps some members busy and prevents participation here. (I hope so... ) - At least the trophy money and conditions are very attractive this year.

 

(That said, I will not manage to submit something.)

Edited June 6, 2019 by Irgendwer

[Mclaneinc]

Yes... as if five cats didn't represent a sufficient amount of fur on their own.

 

Oh, been down that route as well, 3 cats turned in to 3 cats with 15 kittens VERY quickly...All but 1 rehomed now, just our Felix...

 

SO now its get some Atari time...

[Mclaneinc]

 

Maybe this is a very wild guess, but I can imagine that the deadline of ABBUC's software contest keeps some members busy and prevents participation here. (I hope so... ) - At least the trophy money and conditions are very attractive this year.

 

(That said, I will not manage to submit something.)

 

Here's hoping for the contest but you can't always produce something, take a rest and enjoy...

[scitari]

I got my Atari 400 and 410 around 1981 and had a 2600 before that. A year or two later we got an 800 and an 810. I used the 800 through high school and college until about 1990. I then packed it all up for 10 years while I attended grad school and got my career going. I then got into the nascent retrocomputing hobby in the early 2000s and started collecting from flea markets and thrift stores. This was a good time to be collecting as Atari stuff was cheap and plentiful. I amassed a pretty large collection in a few years and then made major move and packed it all up again. It stayed packed up from 2004 until 2016 as I was again busy with career and family. I am now back and having a great time unpacking, using, and filling in the gaps in my collection.