• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Your first Atari, and last?

My first Atari was after I joined the Air Force in Summer 1984 and bought an 800XL at my BX at Lowry AFB. Before that I could not afford to get an Atari system - I used to stand in line at my local Sears store waiting for a chance to get to play Air Sea Battle on the 2600 on display in the sporting goods department. I paid $220 for the 800XL and found about a month later the 800XL selling for $79 on clearance at Toys R Us. This 800XL I got was one of the rarer ones that had all the chips inside mounted in sockets vice being soldered in. Made it easy to install my Rambo XL 256MB memory upgrade that I got later. I eventually acquired a 130XE, 1200XL, 600XL along with a 1400XL and the TONG version of the 1450XLD. I also later acquired a TT030. My last Atari systems I acquired were Atari Lynx and Jaguar gaming consoles and the development hardware for the Jaguar.
 
I first came across the ST as a student and was completely blown away with it. Its hard to explain what an impact 16 bit machines with GUI's had at the time. They were just light years ahead of 8 bit machines, which was all most of us could afford, it seemed a massive leap forward. Even the 3.5" disks seemed incredibly 'modern' with their plastic 'surround' rather than the really floppy 5.25" disks. I bought a 520ST a few years later, with the fabulous high res monitor. Many years later - actually in the late 90s - I bought a Falcon although by that time, PC's had completely taken over so it was more of a nostalgia purchase.
 
I started collecting retro computers as an adult, and it was then when I got my first Atari, a 2600. The last Atari I've played around with is a Lynx.
 
Pong (Sears)
2600 (Sears)
800 w/410
Add 810
400
1200XL
800XL with 1050
520ST
1040ST
 
Past Atari's
1st gen 1977 Atari VCS before it was called the 2600.
800
800xl
1040ST

I currently own a mint Atari 800 with CTIA, with first gen 410 tape drive, 810 Floppy Drive, 825 Printer with 850 Serial/Parallel interface.
I also have a 'yellowed' Atari 800 with the Incognito modification.
 
1982 (I think) - my first Atari 800.
Since then I have had a bunch of Atari 8-bit machines.
In 2021, when I sold off most of my collection, I had 25-30 CPUs (mostly 800XLs), around 15 1050s and some other stuff... some pretty rare like an Astra Big D drive and 3 MIOs.
Most of that is gone now. I kept 4 800XLs, a 600XL an Indus GT, a few 1050s (Happy, USD and stock) and 1 MIO. I have some of the new hardware like IDE2PLus (2), U1MB (2), SIDE 2 and SIDE 3 carts. My favorite 800XL is a Hong Kong version with the Alps mechanical keyboard in it and a Rambo 256k upgrade along with an APE 32n1 OS.

Forty years later this stuff is still fun.
 
Atari 400 in ‘82, 1200XL in ‘83, 520ST (one of the early models with socketed ROM and a monochrome monitor) in ‘89, and a 1040STE in 91 or so I think! Playing on these was probably the majority of my childhood and led to a great career.
 
I only have beige systems in my Atari collection (multiples of many). 400s,800s,810s,820,822,825,830,835,850
Would like a Black 850 and a 815

Plug ins: Bit3 card, Omnimon, Newell Ramrod, Axlon 128
 
1040 ST. Man, I loved playing the "Caveman Ugh-lympics" and many other heater games. I never got another one, though I still have it in my music studio. I got into Electronic music in my '20s and when I saw my first Midi cable I was like "Holy heck, that is what that weird port was on my Atari!"

Thankfully both my Mom and I love to hoard shit like that so it was still around. Sadly I've been without a monitor and haven't managed to set it up... 25 years later. Still sitting in the case I put it in, and one day my intention is to get it out and try to sequence some vintage synths with it.
 
First and last, 1040STe

Mr.Bishop said:
Sadly I've been without a monitor and haven't managed to set it up...
Click to expand...

There are options, even without upscaler.
You might want a SCART cable to get the lo-mid res stuff which is most of the music production apps.
Cubase is the only one I use that operates in high-resolution. For that a VGA adapter cable is enough.
 
Zare said:
First and last, 1040STe



There are options, even without upscaler.
You might want a SCART cable to get the lo-mid res stuff which is most of the music production apps.
Cubase is the only one I use that operates in high-resolution. For that a VGA adapter cable is enough.
Click to expand...
Wait, really? I honestly haven't looked at it in a while, I remember thinking there was some sort of proprietary cable because I used to have the actual monitor that came with it... but that got lost. I will look into those two cables - are you saying that you can hook it up to a more modern Monitor?
 
Atari ST has three resolutions, low, med in colour and high in monochrome.
The signal is VGA compatible but for low and med resolution it is at a low horizontal frequency thus not accepted by many monitors. High res monochome works fine.

The best option is to have a 15 kHz compliant monitor, that can cover both colour and mono;

Flat Panel Displays - Atari Wiki

www.atari-wiki.com www.atari-wiki.com

And then put this small adapter/switch to control the video mode

www.ebay.de

ATARI ST DIN13 TO VGA ADAPTOR LOW-MEDIUM/HIGH SWITCHABLE WITH AUDIO OUT | eBay

Then look no further, if you have a compatible monitor, this is the gadget for you! The adaptor takes care of hooking up the right signals to the right places. Adjustable resistors are placed before the red, green and blue outputs with default resistance 45-55 ohms.
www.ebay.de

Since these monitors aren't sometimes easy to acquire, the second best scenario is to get a monochrome VGA cable and a SCART adapter cable to the same TV set, and switch them physically on Atari.

Here https://info-coach.fr/atari/hardware/interfaces.php#atari_video_cables you have all the techincal info.
 
My first Atari wasn't an Atari but a CBS Colecovision expansion module that allowed Atari 2600 carts to be played. I had a douvle-ender of Ghost Manor and Spikes Peak which I loved. My sister preferred Numbers and Hangman. The Colecovision games were way better graphically.
In '86 we aquired an Amiga 1000 and thereon to PC's in the '90's. Around 2016 I started collecting retro and scored a Atari 520 stfm with some games. It's case was broken and it took effort to glue it. I learnt about the colour and monochrome screen modes and bought a vga adapter. Finding the joystick ports and how fragile they are also.
A year or two on I found a boxed 1040 STE and equipped it with an Ultrasatan hdd with drivers by PP and loaded with demos and games. Alsi scored a SC1435 monitor which failed later screaming but my cousin, a tech repair ex serviceman re-flowed some of the lopt points and it was ok. I bought a spare flyback in case but it is unused. Around 2020 I bought a Lynx console, half a dozen games and case. That was sold later as it wanted to move on.

Around '21 I went through the process a aquiring an Atari Falcon from Greece. It had been found in the trash and refurbished with NOS keyboard, drive, ram exp and nvram. A loaded hdd too. Looks immaculate today. I bought some games, vga adapters (one was a 3in1 from exxos - later sold) manuals and genuine software.

I also have collected a tub of ST games.
 
silcreval said:
Many years later - actually in the late 90s - I bought a Falcon although by that time, PC's had completely taken over so it was more of a nostalgia purchase.
Click to expand...

It is in this timeframe that I acquired my ST, as a compensation for PC repair services.
I've been PC guy all my life, having limited contact with C64, seeing Amigas at friends houses, etc.

For me it was interesting to retroactively compare this "new platform" against something I've used from same age...a PC-XT, and from a position of having a bit of knowledge how things work. I knew I should expect absolutely superb graphics experience due to blitter and a proper sound, and that machine by its form factor is harder to upgrade.

I've been impressed by looks of GEM and how everything (TOS - GEM and GEMDOS) are in the ROM. The machine didn't POST for half a minute then clonked up the HDD to slow through autoexec - it booted swiftly and silently into a GUI.
The easy upgrade to 4MB...I searched the Internet back then how to get rid of German operating system, discovered SELTOS, but my machine only had 1MB RAM...Opened it up for the first time, saw bog standard memory slots, brought a bag of memory from cache, put some modules in, it boots to 4MB, SELTOS boots into US TOS. True happiness.

Less so impressed by the video switching. My XT had a monochrome monitor and works in high resolution mode by default, but perfectly able to show CGA games. Sure today I'm aware why it was easy for that XT to do so, and why it would be hard for ST, but from just user's perspective back then, it seemed like an extra nuisance.

Completely dissapointed by the keyboard. I found it much more comforting to work at any generic PC keyboard than Atari built in. Are Mega keyboards better, or same?

All in all it is a wonderful machine and biggest surprise about it, for me, that it was designed and sold as a lower cost machine. I've always seen it likw an Apple but more for sound than for graphics.
 
First: 2600 VCS (wood grain)
Last: Technically the Lynx but I did just get the 7800+ from the "new" Atari Corp but dunno if that counts.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top