Old pictures of our Atari 8-bit setups

[Jeffrey Worley]

On 4/3/2022 at 7:03 PM, joeventura said:

Where I am today. I have my Atari 822 out for repair/assessment. Would like an 825 but can't seem to find one.

Have the Keypad and the Old version 410 and a 400 somewhere. I think unless an 815 becomes available that is all the beige devices

 

 

 

It's funny, really.  In 1992/93 you could buy as many 825's, New in the Box, as you liked, for $19.95 each.  That printer is a TANK.  It is actually a Centronics 733-series with an Atari enclosure.

 

[Alfred]

2 hours ago, Jeffrey Worley said:

It's funny, really.  In 1992/93 you could buy as many 825's, New in the Box, as you liked, for $19.95 each.  That printer is a TANK.  It is actually a Centronics 733-series with an Atari enclosure.

 

I never saw an 825 for sale here in Canada. We had the 1029 which I used for a couple years until I got the Panasonic 1091. Later I got some 133 character printer from work as surplus. It's really fast, but the ribbons were somewhat hard to come by.

[+slx]

2 hours ago, Jeffrey Worley said:

It's funny, really.  In 1992/93 you could buy as many 825's, New in the Box, as you liked, for $19.95 each.  That printer is a TANK.  It is actually a Centronics 733-series with an Atari enclosure.

 

I think Best had them boxed until a couple of years ago, if not for 20 bucks but not extremely pricey either. They are sure nice as collector's items but from a print(er) quality point of view I'd take an Epson any day. To be fair, they were probably better in relation to what was available on the market than Atari's later offerings. Looking back from today's throwaway inkjets financed by refills it's hard to imagine how expensive good printers were in the early 80s and to understand why Atari later sold cheap printers rather than good ones.

[Jeffrey Worley]

On 4/7/2022 at 5:02 PM, Alfred said:

I never saw an 825 for sale here in Canada. We had the 1029 which I used for a couple years until I got the Panasonic 1091. Later I got some 133 character printer from work as surplus. It's really fast, but the ribbons were somewhat hard to come by.

The ribbon for the 825 was available pretty much anywhere.  It is the same as a Centronics "Zip-pack".  You put the package in the tray, thread the ribbon and then unzip and remove the little plastic carrier and what's left is loose ribbon in a metal tray.

[Jeffrey Worley]

On 4/7/2022 at 5:39 PM, slx said:

I think Best had them boxed until a couple of years ago, if not for 20 bucks but not extremely pricey either. They are sure nice as collector's items but from a print(er) quality point of view I'd take an Epson any day. To be fair, they were probably better in relation to what was available on the market than Atari's later offerings. Looking back from today's throwaway inkjets financed by refills it's hard to imagine how expensive good printers were in the early 80s and to understand why Atari later sold cheap printers rather than good ones.

I once forgot to flip the line-feed switch before doing a multi-page printout on the 825.  The whole thing was printed on a single-line, with no LF's.  When I ejected the sheet it had 80 perfectly cut rectangles through the paper.  The 825 is a brick, uses an octagonal steel bar where most other printers used a rubber platen.  Yeah, the target surface is a steel bar.  Also, it is an eight-pin impact dot-matrix, where nine was more usual.

 

 

[+slx]

17 minutes ago, Jeffrey Worley said:

I once forgot to flip the line-feed switch before doing a multi-page printout on the 825.  The whole thing was printed on a single-line, with no LF's.  When I ejected the sheet it had 80 perfectly cut rectangles through the paper.  The 825 is a brick, uses an octagonal steel bar where most other printers used a rubber platen.  Yeah, the target surface is a steel bar.  Also, it is an eight-pin impact dot-matrix, where nine was more usual.

 

 

8 is better than the 7 used on the more elegant but very loud and rather slow 1029. At least the 825 had some semblance of descenders. You really wonder why they picked an OEM unit that couldn’t even print the ATASCII character set. (In the 825‘s days there wasn’t much to pick.)

[Jeffrey Worley]

14 minutes ago, slx said:

8 is better than the 7 used on the more elegant but very loud and rather slow 1029. At least the 825 had some semblance of descenders. You really wonder why they picked an OEM unit that couldn’t even print the ATASCII character set. (In the 825‘s days there wasn’t much to pick.)

I didn't know the 1029 was a 7 pinner.  That model never made it to the US in significant numbers.  The print quality musta sucked.t 

 

 

[+slx]

8 hours ago, Jeffrey Worley said:

I didn't know the 1029 was a 7 pinner.  That model never made it to the US in significant numbers.  The print quality musta sucked.t 

 

 

It was a rebranded Seikosha GP500VC, identical to the Commodore MPS801. It is a "unihammer" printer which means it can only print one-way and makes it noisy and slow. Weird choice, but probably cheap, if Commodore bought it as well.

[+Larry]

Here's one that is so old it is in black & white!  OK, not really -- it is a scan of the photo used for my article (and 15 minutes of Atari fame) in Atari Classics, December 1993.  The article was about using a Sony multiscan monitor with my 130XE and PC computers.  It was quite a sophisticated monitor!  Sorry for the graininess, but I have no idea where the original photo is -- I probably sent it to the mag editor, Ben Poehland.  Items of some significance are the XF551 CSS dual drive and the XEP80 which had the Bob Woolley RGB mod.  That monitor with Bob's mod was the only way I could get all 80 columns on the screen -- barely!  Also note the old "shoebox" hard drive enclosure that I used with an MIO.  I still have that enclosure tucked away.

[machf]

Not really an old picture, but my setup hasn't really changed that much (I've only upgraded monitors as time went by, currently I have a TV tuner connected to the 22" HD monitor on the left). You can see my Atari 800XL has stayed in the same place all these years, although I haven't been using it recently (I guess the dust on top of it already made you guess it...)

The left monitor on that pic is showing Altirra running maximized, that's where the signal from  the 800XL would be displayed too if it were switched on...

 

 

[machf]

My diskettes to the left of the 4-drive stack, and the 2600VCS under the monitor...

 

 

[machf]

And my late cousin-in-law's Atari 130XE behind the 800XL, and another cousin-in-law's former 800XL under the PC's keyboard... tha latter had socketed ICs, so I upgraded it to BASIC revision C (mine came with Rev C from the factory) and 256KB RAM.

 

EDIT: and on my desk's right-hand door it's where I keep my old Atari diskette, cassettes and cartridges, together with unused controllers...

 

 

Edited June 9, 2022 by machf

[Keatah]

ZOMG!

[adam242]

5 hours ago, machf said:

Not really an old picture, but my setup hasn't really changed that much (I've only upgraded monitors as time went by, currently I have a TV tuner connected to the 22" HD monitor on the left). You can see my Atari 800XL has stayed in the same place all these years, although I haven't been using it recently (I guess the dust on top of it already made you guess it...)

The left monitor on that pic is showing Altirra running maximized, that's where the signal from  the 800XL would be displayed too if it were switched on...

 

 

There's an 800XL somewhere in that mess?

[Leonard Smith]

I get flashbacks of "Howdy folks JT here" (?) when I see pics of those dusty relics.

My word!  All that dust and mold/mildew!   ?

[machf]

1 hour ago, adam242 said:

There's an 800XL somewhere in that mess?

Bah, that's nothing... some 15 years ago you could have made the question "there is a 1/50 scale Lufthansa DC-10 somewhere in that other mess?"

 

1 hour ago, Leonard Smith said:

I get flashbacks of "Howdy folks JT here" (?) when I see pics of those dusty relics.

You should have seen some diecast commercial aircraft I had lying on a really high shelf (where nobody could break them with the excuse of "dusting", as happened to some other models I had) some years ago... back then in 2010 I took pictures of their "before" and "after" conditions. Now they are safely stored in their original packaging and inside plastic containers

 

1 hour ago, Leonard Smith said:

My word!  All that dust and mold/mildew!   ?

Nothing a low-power vacuum cleaner and a rag with windows cleaner can't solve... I'm more worried about the disk drives' heads. That's why it's going to take a while before I start doing anything on my 800XL again.

I used to have a cover for the keyboard, but I got it misplaced some time before I stopped using the 800XL regularly... the problem has been (a) the window is a couple of feet to the left, (b) in recent years there's been lots of construction work going around my street, and (c) when you get 100% humidity during the winter, it certainly doesn't help...

 

Edited June 10, 2022 by machf

[Keatah]

1 hour ago, Leonard Smith said:

I get flashbacks of "Howdy folks JT here" (?) when I see pics of those dusty relics.

My word!  All that dust and mold/mildew!   ?

Indeed. Seems like only emulators are capable of functioning in that sty!

[Leonard Smith]

30 minutes ago, Keatah said:

Indeed. Seems like only emulators are capable of functioning in that sty!

Ah yes

Anyhow.  What's become of Santa Claus?  He posted so much of his youtube drivel on here these past few months, but now its slowed to a trickle.

[Keatah]

A crank 2BSHUR but I kinda miss that.

[Mclaneinc]

At least he's on topic and trying to brighten a day up

[+DarkLord]

On 6/9/2022 at 10:28 PM, Keatah said:

Indeed. Seems like only emulators are capable of functioning in that sty!

 

If you're looking at that room, a veritable treasure trove, dust, mold, mildew

and all, and the first thing you think of is emulation....well, there's a problem.

 

 

 

[Keatah]

Emulation is THE way out of that mess. Can't see the treasure with all that detritus. It's like an unfiltered tank of goldfish.

[machf]

No, as I said, it's nothing that a rag with windows cleaner can't solve... and an old toothbrush, toothpicks and cotton swabs for the crevices. Thats what I've been doing when I've had some free time over the past days. What's missing now it opening them up and vacuuming with the low-power vacuum. And the reason for showing the emulator on that monitor was because the 800XL is currently unplugged, duh... I need to connect that 110V equipment to a 220V/110V transformer since my power stabilizer only has 220V outputs. (Though one of the 800XLs has a custom made 220V supply which also has outputs for the 1050disk drive, I opened it up years ago in order to make a circuit diagram...)

 

 

[Mclaneinc]

You might say it's nothing that a wipe and a toothbrush can't fix, but while dust is a pain, mildew is not something you want to leave rotting away at your machine, with mildew comes rust and that WILL destroy stuff. They are your machines to do as you please with but I urge you to give them a good going over and then box them etc. Most certainly get to the root of the mildew and nuke it, not only does it stink but untreated it starts to eat away at the house. I have had a pipe gushing water down my outside wall for months and my landlord is in dispute with the council about who is right to fix it, meanwhile, I have damp and mildew destroying my wall inside and  my window sill is now cracking with where the damp is ruining the wood.

 

And boy does it stink and I'm powerless to do much incase anything goes wrong and I get the blame..

[+DarkLord]

21 hours ago, Keatah said:

Emulation is THE way out of that mess. Can't see the treasure with all that detritus. It's like an unfiltered tank of goldfish.

 

Emulation is nothing more than a substitute...

 

Ya know, don't take this personally, but I sense a real lack of enthusiasm on your part for the retro scene.