Yesterday after several long weeks of lackluster thrifing I came
across a 'complete' Atari XE game system. (though I have been avoiding
that Atari ST at the other thrift store for weeks as I just don't have
the room for it and whatever else it may need.)
Of course, as many thrift stores do, they broke up the system down
into several 'parts' and I dutifully browsed through the store and
re-collected it. (for those unfamiliar with thrift store procedure,
they bag the computer as one item, the disks as another, the drive as
yet another, the power supply seperate, cables separate also, etc.)
Remember if you find a hint of something you are collecting at a thrift,
look around for other components (i.e. if you find a Commodore IEEE-488
cable start looking for PET/B-128 drives, printers, computers, tapes,
disks, manuals, etc.)
Among the items I got:
XE game unit (equiv to Atari 65XE) with keyboard & Power Pack
SIO & TV cables
1030 Modem
1050 Drive & Power Supply
Atari Light Gun
Several Cartridge games (including Bug Hunt which uses the gun)
2 packages of assorted hand-labeled disks for the Atari
Several packages of orignal games, (mostiy SSI combat simulations, but
all with complete instructions and very good condition boxes)
I passed on the Atari Sticks as I have better than the 'Atari standard
joystick' to use with it. Everything seems to be working great (except
for loose video and audio jacks, but that is easily fixed)
Now I am finally able to really play with the Atari disk drive more as
I found a wealth of disk-based software to experiment with (BASIC
programs and ROM dumps). The only thing I didn't get was a power supply
for the modem, if I can't find one around the house I know just where to
get one for a couple bucks. Then I can start transferring some of the
Atari stuff from the internet to Atari disk.
People keep saying how great the Atari 8-bit was/is, but when it comes
to interfacing on a base system it is pretty limited... You can't do
much communication without an 850 or a modem (I know some of you are
going to talk about APE or some other PC to atari converter, but I don't
have a PC...) The Commodore 8-bits are WAY easier to
interface/communicate to anything.
Larry Anderson
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Received on Sat Feb 14 1998 - 22:34:07 GMT