• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Your first Atari, and last?

I was a Sinclair man for much of the early phase of the original home computing so I came late to the Atari party. My first Atari (around 1986-87) was therefore a 520STFM, which I still have. Originally 512K RAM, it acquired a further 2MB of RAM not long after I bought it.

Around 2001, I got talking to a guy at work who was looking for a basic PC and discovered that he had an almost unused Atari 1040 so I went home and built the best PC I could throw together from the parts I had lying around and the next day, offered it to him as a direct swap for the Atari, which he agreed to. When I finally set eyes on the 'new' ST, it turned out to be a 1040 Ste, still in pristine battleship grey livery as it had never been exposed to the sun for any length of time.

I tested it and then mothballed it in a dark place, and continued using my original STFM which was already dark orange and beyond cosmetic redemption. After about 15 years the STFM failed (temporarily). When I got the 1040 Ste out of storage to use while I was fixing the original machine, it worked for about half an hour and then froze up: That turned out to be due to the PLCC sockets, particularly the one for the CPU, not making good contact, and it was only properly and permanently repaired when I replaced the sockets. I also took the opportunity to upgrade its 1MB of memory to 4MB - unlike the STFM the RAM was in SIMM form factor and easily replaced.

As things stand, both machines are still in working order. The old STFM workhorse is still used quite a bit: The Ste is back in dark storage to preserve its colour.

Ah you hadn't been informed of the instant fix. Lift the computer 8 inches and drop 2 or 3 times. And no I'm not kidding. I had to do this a few times my Atari 520 ST.
 
There is no way anyone should do that to a piece of vintage equipment, especially not with something as mechanically delicate as a floppy drive mechanism inside it. If you think the ICs need reseating, take it apart and do it properly and non-violently.

I had the machine stripped down and not even manually inserting and removing the PLCC socketed ICs fixed it properly, it had to be replacement sockets in the end. There is a particular problem with PLCC sockets, the inserted IC exerts constant sprung pressure on the insides of the sides of the socket but there is no corresponding equal pressure on the outside so, over a long period of time, the sides of the sockets bow gently outwards just enough to make contact with the middle pins on each side unreliable.

Finding replacements was also a headache, for some reason Atari used sockets with a non-standard 'staggered' pinout rather than the standard double row of inline pins, and they were very hard to find.
 
1986: Atari ST, mod'd to 512K

Interesting! You had an ST with less than 512 kB RAM? Ddd you had such an early prototype 130ST or 260ST? Wow! Later, when ST was pblic available during 1985, the smallest machine was 260ST with 512 kB, and 520ST with 512 kB (no difference between the two except for the label).
 
I got a 520ST (the external floppy model) in late 2010 and by 2012 I had upgraded to a 1040STF with a Megafile 30, color monitor and a Unitor-N.
 
Interesting! You had an ST with less than 512 kB RAM? Ddd you had such an early prototype 130ST or 260ST? Wow! Later, when ST was pblic available during 1985, the smallest machine was 260ST with 512 kB, and 520ST with 512 kB (no difference between the two except for the label).
No, I remembered wrong in that post. I think now it came with 512K and I piggy-backed another 512K on that.
 
A never opened case 1040 STE in 2014, a new old stock one.
The same day updated to 4 MB RAM.

A second STE, a french one in 2021

And recently an Atari 65XE
 
My Atari story is...well...non-existent! Until recently, that is.

Technically, my first experience with an Atari was at a cousin's house. He had 2600 and I enjoyed some serious Pitfall on it. I never owned an Atari of my own, though, until I found two 5200's rotting in a barn. I pulled them home, cleaned them up, and they worked! I ended up selling them shortly after, only to find ANOTHER poor abused 5200 hiding in a musty basement. That one is currently on my bench. It's a four port model that gets power, but no video, so I need to carve out some time and diagnose the problem. Once I get it working, I'm gonna keep this one though.
 
My first was the 800 I bought around 1982. My most recent was an 800xl in 2006 but in between those I also picked up several more 800s, some 400s, some 1200xls, some other 800xls, a 600xl, a 130xe, the Portfolio, some 1040STfs and a 1040STfm. My 800 was my second computer I ever owned and the first I actually made money programming specifically.
 
An 800XL with 256k of RAM I picked up at Midwest last year. (Or various arcade cabs I've come across, including the Major Havoc cab at the Galloping Ghost. That one has some really impressive game design!)

We haven't known each other long, but I've enjoyed learning how to maneuver. I'm really enjoying The Dreadnaught Factor - I like how it pairs shoot 'em up gameplay with strategy elements and a pretty sophisticated damage model.
 
I got a 600XL in box at a jumble sale in the late 90s or early 2000s. I followed up with an ugly yellowed 800XL which came with an assortment of cartridges and joysticks, along with a 410 Program Recorder and a set of the Spanish instructional tapes that have audio on one channel and data on the other. The XL aesthetic is one of the cleanest and most professional of all the "Home Computer" class machines, although the XE also pulls off a premium look by copying the ST.

The local video-games shop had an 810 drive sitting around recently, but I've been hesitant to drop the coin considering it's not even a 1050.
 
I bought my 800 in Fall of '82. Bought the 48K 800 and the tape drive. I was in college, and in high school we had PETs to work with, and these are much of what I cut my teeth on. I had hoped that the cassette experience would be similar to that of the PET, which was, honestly, pretty good.

Now, the PETs were just 8K, so that may have been part of it, but the 410 cassette experience just wasn't the same for me, so pretty quickly I sprung for an 810 disk drive.

I bought Star Raiders (HAD to have Star Raiders), Defender. I used to play Defender with the computer on the floor, and my toe on the space bar. Figured that was better for it than me madly slapping it for a smart bomb. Loved how the beam penetrated all the targets. Great at blowing up packs of bombers.

But mostly I bought programming stuff. Playing with Atari BASIC. Bought BASIC-XL, Action, MAC-65, C-65 (which was terrible). Typed in an assembler in BASIC from a magazine. Mostly just did a lot of hand assembly and POKEing in BASIC. Both BASIC-XL and Action were a marvel.

Had De Re Atari, the Atari Tech Manual, the Mapping the Atari books. Bought pretty much all of the COMPUTE, ANALOG, ANTIC magazines.

I left the Atari behind with a friend when I got my Macintosh. But, later, I worked for same the magazine publisher when they bought ANALOG. I was just a couple doors down from Lee Pappas and Andy Eddy. I was there when they started Electronic Computer Games Monthly (or whatever it was called).
 
800xl was my first and the last was a 520st I just got. in between I had a 65xe, 800, XEGS and another 800xl.
 
1984: Atari 800XL, mod'd to 256K & Omnimon
1985: Atari 800, mod'd with Omnimon (automatic swap of A & B roms)
1986: Atari ST, mod'd to 2.5M and an ST502 type drive with a Xebec controller (weird parts)

I don't have the ST I sill have 2 800's, 2 - 800xl's, and a 600xl.
 
My first was an Atari 400, the 410 program recorder, Star Raiders cartridge, and a color TV which my family won in a drawing. The store offering the drawing allowed people to submit an unlimited number of entries. My mom would grab a pack, bring them home, and we'd all sit around the table filling them out. I would have been surprised had we not won.

Last was an 800XL which my parents bought me for Christmas 1985. This was quickly paired with the 1050 disk drive and eventually an XM301 modem.
 
I've never had Atari's before, but now I find myself surrounded by a 520ST+, 1040STF and 1040STFM. I'll have to check them to see if they work and if there are any upgrades inside, and then probably decide to keep one. Or none, as there's also that Amiga 500 waiting in the corner...
 
Got a VCS/2600 (light sixer) back in 1978 for Christmas.
Longed for a 400/800 in the mid 80's (by which time I had a Commodore 64). I still think the 400 is beautiful so I finally got one last year. I would NOT have wanted to to be typing in code from magazines on this machine as I did on my 64 back in the day.
 
Last edited:
I've tinkered with some friends' Atari computers but the only Atari I've owned was a 7800 game console I sold in 99 - my first sale on eBay back when it was worth messing with.
 
Back
Top