The Way We Were |
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Sunday, April 15, 2007
5 comments:
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Anonymous said...
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I had the Atari 400. Begged the parents for it and they got it for me with a basic cartridge. Now I am a miserable Oracle DBA. Thanks Mom and Dad. Wait until you need an old folks home. I'll wait for a 60 minutes expose and send you there...
Seriously, the Atari's were a blast. Good machine to cut your teeth on. -
4/15/07, 3:37 PM
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B....... said...
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Hey Chris – I had an Atari 800 with disk drive that I figured out how to slow down to corrupt a sector. I could then make copies of program disks that had a corrupt sector as copy protection. I think that all together I spent about $2000 on that machine. My how times have changed. Agree with you - Ataris were a blast! Oh, and good luck with SQL :P
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4/15/07, 4:02 PM
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Anonymous said...
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Similar experience here...
At the ripe old age of ten, I spent many hours lusting after the Atari 400 & 800's at the electronics section of the local department store (and hacking out simple programs in BASIC on the display model) but they were always sold out. My parents bought me a used Apple ][+ (48k, Applesoft basic in ROM, one disc drive, 8" Sanyo B&W monitor) and spent thousands of hours over the next five years pushing that machine as hard as it would go, writing video games in 6502 assembler.
I still remember the pride of buying a WHOLE box of Gorilla brand 5.25" diskettes for the bargain price of $35, then using a paper whole-punch to make a notch in the opposite side of the disk, effectively doubling the capacity (from 40k to 80k, IIRC) since I could now flip the disk over and use the other side.
It was the golden age of computing -- when you could dig in and understand everything about a machine, and have full control over the system. Now, it's tough to even know how many layers are between your application and the CPU.
I still have that old Apple ][ and the damned thing still works perfectly. And most of those 30-year-old diskettes still boot up and work! Amazing stuff, really.
What started as a hobby ended up as a career writing rendering engines for 3D CAD, and video games. Best investment ever. Thanks, Mom & Dad!!
--Jack -
4/15/07, 5:27 PM
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Anonymous said...
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Jack, I remember the 5 1/4" disks as being 180k/360k, depending on density. Man oh man, those were the days. I had (still have, somewhere) a Timex-Sinclair that I puttered around on. Then a IIe, then an XT. Times keep on keeping on...
skh -
4/15/07, 7:10 PM
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Anonymous said...
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Ah, but how many of ou remembr the erox 820,, B&W only, no graphics, 2 8" FD's, ran CPM
It was one of the first that ran the original Adventure text based game
Or the Pc jr, IBM's very own "screw you" computer -
4/16/07, 5:26 PM
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