stepho Posted January 3, 2020 Share Posted January 3, 2020 "How Atari took on Apple in the 1980s home PC wars" https://www.fastcompany.com/90432140/how-atari-took-on-apple-in-the-1980s-home-pc-wars Interesting pic of Chris Crawford playing Eastern Front. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted January 3, 2020 Share Posted January 3, 2020 Interesting - Star Raiders seems to have had a big influence in the decision to give the 400 a keyboard. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
potatohead Posted January 5, 2020 Share Posted January 5, 2020 Sure glad it got one! One Xmas morning, a good friend (now passed away) called me up and said he got this Atari 400 computer thing... Sparked what was going to be a lot of damn good times. We played it often, one person on keyboard, one on joystick. Amazeballs for the time! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted January 5, 2020 Share Posted January 5, 2020 The article mentioned the SIO bus as being like USB. Didn’t the guy who made that bus also have a hand in making present-day USB? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+MrFish Posted January 5, 2020 Share Posted January 5, 2020 On 1/3/2020 at 1:48 AM, Rybags said: Interesting - Star Raiders seems to have had a big influence in the decision to give the 400 a keyboard. I hear people complain about the 400's cheap keyboard; but I always thought it was meant as more of an extended game controller for the machine, rather than something to type on; and for that, I always thought it served it's purpose rather well. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted January 5, 2020 Share Posted January 5, 2020 (edited) For a time the 400 probably held the award for worst keyboard though it was matched or beaten numerous times afterwards. I think it was Joe Decuir who made significant contribution to both Atari SIO and USB. Though some people extend it to a highly dubious claim of Atari inventing USB. Edited January 5, 2020 by Rybags Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stepho Posted January 6, 2020 Author Share Posted January 6, 2020 My impression was that the 800 was the real computer and the 400 was the cut price version. I guess the intent was to bring in as many buyers as possible with the cheap version, then hope that they will create an eco-system to support the better version. These things were cheap compared to minis and mainframes btu still a significant cost to an average family - anythign that made them cheaper was a good thing. As for the worst keyboard... I remember using a friend's cheap MSX80 variant from Japan that had 2 controllers with about 20 keys+joystick each that could be put together to make a really crud keyboard. The IBM-PCJr had a pretty bad chiclet keyboard too. The article mentioned that Atari wanted a slice of the business market. But using only 40 columns and using home TV's for monitors made this a laughing stock. Even the C64 didn;t manage that one, leaving the market mostly to the Apple II. Then the IBM-PC wiped the floor with the entire home computer market - "no-one ever got fired for buying IBM". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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