"Atari was founded in 1972, but its crowning accomplishments in console gaming and computers were the Atari Video Computer System (or 2600) and the Atari 400/800 line of personal computers. This four-year period - from 1977 to 1981 - contains some of the most exciting developments the company ever saw in its history: the rise of the 2600, the development of some of the company's most enduringly popular games (Centipede, Asteroids) and the development and release of its first home computing platforms. This comprehensive look back, filled with quotes from the original creators and other primary sources, offers a detailed peek into the company that popularized video gaming as the '70s turned into the '80s, and created the first viable market for home consoles. For more detail, be sure to read Gamasutra's first Atari history article, which covers the period of 1971 to 1977 - the latter date being the year that the Atari VCS was first released." That's a grand total of 40 pages of detailed Atari history. Nice weekend reading for the fans.
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Member since:
2006-07-12
I have only owned the game systems, and all that know me they would tell you that i prefer Amiga and BeOS above all other so far. But I would like to try out the Falcon fully upgraded with the 110mhz 68k chip. Some people say its very enjoyable. So if anyone in Norrbotten read this and have a 68k falcon please let me know, then i can visit you for a demo. I can even bring my monstro Amiga to compare with your Atari. Its a 1200 amiga with blizzard ppc and a sbc intel M 1.8ghz intel. Would sure be interesting. I can also settle for some video footage or video of said Atari machine.
Member since:2005-07-06
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2005-11-10
He also felt that the incipient Atari computer line needed to embrace outside developers, but the record company execs from Warner -- who were used to completely controlling IP and the delivery medium for it -- wanted to make the new computers completely closed to outside developers.
30 Years on and no change there, then.
Member since:
2005-12-15
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2006-05-09
Member since:2006-10-08
Ave Atari computers!
Profundantur et omnia Atarium est. :-)
Allthough Atari wasn't my first computer, I liked the experience (different to the MS-DOS stuff at this time). Sadly, I don't own any of the cool gaming equipment anymore, but I still have this fully working stuff:
- Atari 800 XE with cassette drive
- Atari 800 XL
- Atari 1040 (x 2)
- Atari Mega-ST
- Atari STM-124 monitor (x 3)
- Atari Megafile hard disk drive (x 3)
- Atari Megafile exchangable hard disk drive with media
- Atari Mega-ST keyboard
- Atari mouse (x 2)
So many Atariae. =^_^=
Member since:2006-04-09
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2007-07-03
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2005-09-21
Me and my buddies played missile command till the wee hours of the night.. on of my friends ended up getting the actual arcade of it (disabled the coin op) and still toys with it today.
Biggest thing I remember about the Atari tho was we must have had unusually bad luck, because I went through controllers faster than my parents would buy them for me. So the new, I cant move left strategy made gaming harder.
Member since:
2007-07-27
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2005-11-10
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2006-01-23
I cut my teeth on 6502 assembly language programming with an Atari 800, thanks to the technical documents Atari published, as well as the source code listings of the ROM.
The 8-bit systems had a reasonably sophisticated operating system to which you could add (and remove) device drivers on the fly. Of course, there was only 52 KB available at any time, but you could switch the top 4 KB and keep data available, but out of sight until you needed it. Shepherdson, later Optimized Systems Software, did a great job on the DOS and 8 KB BASIC interpreter.
I always thought it said a lot about the hardware to see the same application or game title for Apple II and Atari machines but the 48 KB requirement of the Apple II diminished to only 16 KB on the Atari machines. Of course, the Amiga developers enjoyed a similar jolt from the hardware's ability to manipulate graphics on the fly and more.
Too bad development is so boring these days.
Member since:
2005-07-06
I remember a time when you could go into a computer store and had the choice of (at the time) new PC computer along with Amiga 500, Atari ST, Apple II/GS and Mac and in the corner you still had the Commodore 128 that was still on sale.
So many choice, one was good for gaming (Amiga) but the Atari had more business software and could also game for less money. The Mac was cute but SO monochrome and costed too much.
And side by side, the lonely IBM with MS-DOS Text looked so ugly that (at the time) I wondered how could this thing sell.... Amiga/Atari/Mac all had nice GUI.
Nice memory. Today, we don't have that kind of choice. It's all about Intel/AMD and Windows/Linux/OSX. That's all....
