# History of Atari Computers



## Cholly (Mar 22, 2004)

Here's a fascinating slideshow history of Atari computers, courtesy of PCWorld. Back in the day, my first real computer was an Atari 800 with 48K of memory, a tape recorder and a 300 bps modem. I didn't realize that Atari continued the manufacture and sale of computers until 1990.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/225776/the_history_of_atari_computers.html#tk.nl_dnx_h_crawl


----------



## djlong (Jul 8, 2002)

I had an Atari 800 (games of 4-player M.U.L.E. were probably the most fun ever had for a 'gaming party')

Later, I picked up a 1040ST and wrote a lot of stuff in TrueBASIC for that.

After that it was an Amiga and then I made the switch to DOS, to Windows, etc.


----------



## BobaBird (Mar 31, 2002)

The power without the price.

I still have my 520ST and 1040ST. Even at the time they were contemporary, it was hard to get people to accept that what I had wasn't a toy.

Eventually, IBM-compatibles started using 3.5" floppies, establishing as a "standard" what the ST, Mac and Amiga had been using from their beginnings.


----------



## sum_random_dork (Aug 21, 2008)

very cool find! Growing up we had an Atari 800 and 1200 played many games on those over the years. Still have them around, after the Atari was retired we had an Amiga. At the time that machine seemed well ahead of it's time, I remember my dad brought home a modem for it and I didn't understand how it could be cooler if you hooked the computer up to the phone and had it dial out. It was one of the old modems where you actually placed the phone on top of it. Amazing how far computer technology has come in the last 30 yrs.


----------



## The Merg (Jun 24, 2007)

I wanted an Atari 800 to follow my Atari 2600, but my uncle had other ideas and got me a Vic-20. Upgraded to a C64 and then moved on to a 80286...

- Merg

Sent from my iPod touch using DBSTalk


----------



## TheRatPatrol (Oct 1, 2003)

Thanks for the link. Theres a lot of other cool slide shows on there as well.


----------



## Shades228 (Mar 18, 2008)

The portable atari reminded me of my SX-64.


----------



## BattleZone (Nov 13, 2007)

When I was young, I *really* wanted a computer, but they were expensive and my parents, my dad especially, were technophobes. To this day, my dad doesn't have an ATM card and only has a cell phone because my sister bought it for him (he HAS learned to use it).

Anyway, one summer my buddy Kirk, whose mother worked in the school district, was able to borrow a computer from school. I immediately went over to try it out. It was the Atari 400 with the membrane keyboard:



















What a hunk of junk that was. The keyboard was damn near impossible to type on. You had to press super-hard on those membrane buttons, making typing super slow and eventually painful. Still, I spent hours trying to figure it all out...

A few years later, my neighbor, also ironically named Kirk, had an Atari ST that I used to borrow to type my reports and stuff on. The computer was miles better than the 8-bit Ataris, but by far the most interesting thing was the printer:










The printer had a motorized print head with 5 or 6 rubber bands with all of the letters and symbols on them. The rubber bands would spin around until the correct character was in front of the impact hammer, which would whack the character against the ink ribbon and onto the paper. Because there were multiple rubber bands, the print head had to move back and forth to position the right rubber band where the next character was being printed. It was fascinating to watch, but with this much complexity, the letters tended to run up and down along the intended "print line", much like an old manual typewriter with some bent hammers. Clearly the design wasn't successful as I've never seen another printer like it.


----------



## BattleZone (Nov 13, 2007)

Remember all the Alan Alda commercials for Atari's computers?






You've got to love that 40-character screen...


----------



## Cholly (Mar 22, 2004)

Ah, yes - Atariwriter! I did a mod of it for the NEC PC-8023 printer, providing semi-proportional spacing so all line lengths would be the same, along with a few other neat features. That was over 25 years ago.


----------



## Dude111 (Aug 6, 2010)

Atari 2600 is my FAVOURITE CONSOLE!! (IMO the best released!)

My second favourite console is Coleco 

I have alot of Atari/Coleco Games


----------



## Stuart Sweet (Jun 19, 2006)

My first PC was an Atari 800… thanks for this!


----------



## bobukcat (Dec 20, 2005)

My dad bought my brother and I an Atari 400 after many, many hours of begging and ensuring him it was a learning tool and not just a toy. I'm still surprised he bought it because that was an unbelievable amount of money to my family back then (I never had a new tricycle or bicycle, almost all my clothes were hand-me-downs, all my jeans had been patched at least 3 times, etc.). My brother never took to it but I spent so many hours teaching myself basic on that horrific keyboard and totally unreliable tape drive, I can't believe I kept at it after all the times it would fail to recover a program I had saved to tape. 

I would end up thanking my father more than a few times for buying that 400 for us, one of which was many years later in my second year of tech school when I knew tricks for programming in Basic that not one of my instructors did. I didn't go on to be a programmer but have worked in technology all my adult life and like to think that my background understanding of s/w architecture has helped me many, many times over the years.


----------



## gfrang (Aug 30, 2007)

River Raid by Carol Shaw .


----------



## dmurphy (Sep 28, 2006)

Dude111 said:


> Atari 2600 is my FAVOURITE CONSOLE!! (IMO the best released!)
> 
> My second favourite console is Coleco
> 
> I have alot of Atari/Coleco Games


Bah. It was all about Intellivision.

I have a signed poster from the Intellivision programmers... very cool


----------



## Dude111 (Aug 6, 2010)

I didnt ever have any intellivsion stuff,as good as Atari 2600?


----------



## Rob (Apr 23, 2002)

TI 99-4


----------



## code4code5 (Aug 29, 2006)

My family had the Atari 2600, but my first computer was the Atari 65XE received as a gift from my grandmother at Christmas. I used to spend days and hours writing Basic programs and making GUIs with the ASCII characters. 

Anyone else remember the Conversational Spanish program that came on about ten cassette tapes? I can still remember the funky disco background music that would play while it loaded, only to get a load error after an hour.


----------



## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

I know it doesn't count, but... I bought an Atari "Pong" back in 1972 for $1,200.


----------



## Dude111 (Aug 6, 2010)

Rob said:


> TI 99-4


My 1st computer ever!

Quite special for what it was


----------



## Matt9876 (Oct 11, 2007)

Radio Shack Color Computer - MicroSoft Disk Basic

My first real computer, didn't sleep for days.


----------



## dmurphy (Sep 28, 2006)

Dude111 said:


> I didnt ever have any intellivsion stuff,as good as Atari 2600?


Better. Way, way better.


----------



## Dude111 (Aug 6, 2010)

Ya i'd have to say they added more to some of thier games than Atari did HOWEVER THEY ARE SLIGHTLY NEWER THAN ATARI (They started in 83 while i think Atari started in 77)


----------



## Cholly (Mar 22, 2004)

The other day, I was going through some old files and ran across the sales receipts for my Atari 800, 810 disc drive and NEC PC-80233 printer. Quite a shock!
December, 1981: Atari 800 computer with 48K RAM, Cassette deck and Basic cartridge - $1047
August, 1982: Atari 810 Disc drive - $419
December, 1982: NEC PC8023 - AC printer $474

How times have changed!


----------



## armophob (Nov 13, 2006)

Odyssey pong, then Atari, then Comadore64. It was a magic event in my childhood. Almost like as I matured, so did the technology. Or maybe I did not advance as quickly. Hmm, time to see the shrink again.


----------



## FHSPSU67 (Jan 12, 2007)

Heathkit H89 here.


----------



## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

Abacus, here.


----------



## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

My first computer was the Atari 400! I learned to type on that membrane keyboard and spent hours typing all those programs from Softsides and Compute magazine.

The best buy I ever got on a computer was an Atari 1200. Atari sent me a coupon for $100 rebate if I'd buy one. Target was selling them for $25! Atari paid me $75 to buy it!! 

Later the Atari 512ST that got quickly opened and added another 512K RAM via soldering iron and a 6-pack on a buddies kitchen table.

Ah the good old days!


----------



## Angel-78 (Feb 12, 2012)

I always had IBM clones growing up, but really wanted an Atari ST when they were popular because a lot of my friends had them.


----------

