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Your first Atari, and last?

My first Atari was after I joined the Air Force in Summer 1984 and bought an 800XL at my BX at Lowry AFB. Before that I could not afford to get an Atari system - I used to stand in line at my local Sears store waiting for a chance to get to play Air Sea Battle on the 2600 on display in the sporting goods department. I paid $220 for the 800XL and found about a month later the 800XL selling for $79 on clearance at Toys R Us. This 800XL I got was one of the rarer ones that had all the chips inside mounted in sockets vice being soldered in. Made it easy to install my Rambo XL 256MB memory upgrade that I got later. I eventually acquired a 130XE, 1200XL, 600XL along with a 1400XL and the TONG version of the 1450XLD. I also later acquired a TT030. My last Atari systems I acquired were Atari Lynx and Jaguar gaming consoles and the development hardware for the Jaguar.
 
I first came across the ST as a student and was completely blown away with it. Its hard to explain what an impact 16 bit machines with GUI's had at the time. They were just light years ahead of 8 bit machines, which was all most of us could afford, it seemed a massive leap forward. Even the 3.5" disks seemed incredibly 'modern' with their plastic 'surround' rather than the really floppy 5.25" disks. I bought a 520ST a few years later, with the fabulous high res monitor. Many years later - actually in the late 90s - I bought a Falcon although by that time, PC's had completely taken over so it was more of a nostalgia purchase.
 
I started collecting retro computers as an adult, and it was then when I got my first Atari, a 2600. The last Atari I've played around with is a Lynx.
 
Pong (Sears)
2600 (Sears)
800 w/410
Add 810
400
1200XL
800XL with 1050
520ST
1040ST
 
Past Atari's
1st gen 1977 Atari VCS before it was called the 2600.
800
800xl
1040ST

I currently own a mint Atari 800 with CTIA, with first gen 410 tape drive, 810 Floppy Drive, 825 Printer with 850 Serial/Parallel interface.
I also have a 'yellowed' Atari 800 with the Incognito modification.
 
1982 (I think) - my first Atari 800.
Since then I have had a bunch of Atari 8-bit machines.
In 2021, when I sold off most of my collection, I had 25-30 CPUs (mostly 800XLs), around 15 1050s and some other stuff... some pretty rare like an Astra Big D drive and 3 MIOs.
Most of that is gone now. I kept 4 800XLs, a 600XL an Indus GT, a few 1050s (Happy, USD and stock) and 1 MIO. I have some of the new hardware like IDE2PLus (2), U1MB (2), SIDE 2 and SIDE 3 carts. My favorite 800XL is a Hong Kong version with the Alps mechanical keyboard in it and a Rambo 256k upgrade along with an APE 32n1 OS.

Forty years later this stuff is still fun.
 
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