Classic Atari Page

I heard of the Millennium Bug but is this ridiculous!!!

I still use my Atari computer, which only have 64K of memory, but not as much. You may say, how can you run a program with so little memory. Easy. Don't forget, Pacman will run on this system! Can anyone remember Space Invaders? I still have a copy which will run on the Atari! I became an Atari Owner on 10 June 1985, a proud owner of an Atari 800XL with a tape deck. I did not get my disk drive until 1990, from a good friend of mine, Derek Fern, used to sells Atari equipment and software, some of it BRAND NEW!, under the name, Micro Discount. He was based in Birmingham

I have written a program which was published in New Atari User, Issue 72 in the UK. It's called the Stars Database. Unfortunately, I have problems in getting my Stars Database Program to run with the demo, so it will not be available, unless you go out and get PC Xformer yourself.

New Atari User was the only Atari 8-bit computer magazine available in the UK. Priced at £2.50, it came out bi-monthly and only available on subscription. It has now cease publication.

The Atari equipment I still have are: Atari 800XL computer, Atari 1050 Disk drive, Atari 1010 Cassette Recorder, Atari 1029 Dot Matrix Printer, Atari 1020 Colour Printer/Plotter (uses pens not ink). In 1985, the Atari computer plus a tape deck cost me £129.99. Now, getting the computer is proving to be difficult.

For those people with PC (that means nearly all of you reading this), there is an emulator available to emulate the Atari on a PC. I have the software and it proves to be very good, apart it is written by an American Company. Most of my type in programs will work with this emulator, but commercial games is proven to be difficult to run. You do need a cable between the PC and the Atari to transfer files between the two systems.

The Atari is used mainly as a gaming machine. Games are loaded from cassette and to play them, requires such long loading times. For example, games like Pole Position took over ten minutes to load! Gauntlet took over thirty minutes! The program is loaded using 300 Baud Rate. Well most games did cost £1.99! Compare that to £40 for some current games for Nintendo and Sega and not forgetting the PC's. If you look hard, games now costing 20 pence is possible.

Do not get confused with the Atari 8-bit and the Atari ST. They are two totally different machines. Commodore 64, Spectrum and Amstrad are a similar line.

Some of the games available were: Pole Position, Bruce Lee, Pacman, Mr. Do, Gauntlet, Chuckie Egg, War Hawk, LA Swat, Jet Set Willy, Ghostbusters, The Living Daylights, Arkanoid, Zorro, Kikstart, Mountain Bike Racer, 180, Ninja, Rockford, Pengon and Fruit Machine Simulator. This is a selection of the 100+ games I still have. Even Lemmings (The Brundles as it is called on the Atari) has hit this machine, even mouse controlled!!!

I have transferred most of my Atari Public Domain software onto the PC, so I could run them on PC Xformer. It takes about 4 minutes to transfer 1 disk of 92K!

Links of other Atari Web sites

Emulators Inc. The creator of the Atari Emulator on a PC. If you are lucky, you may even download the Atari 8-bit emulator somewhere on the site!