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What, is this celebrating the thirty third anniversary of the never-completed Atari Mindlink for Atari 2600?

Atari too had modular systems on the drawing board:
http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/concepts/1200/A300-4.jpg/

Seriously, chill out, you seem way too angry and uptight about this. You're also attributing meanings to things I've said which simply aren't there. Anyway, some examples back at you: http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/8BITS/XL/xlperipherals/1030.html
"Just like the Atari 850 interface, the Atari 1030 modem had not only its device driver in ROM which would automatically upload into the computers memory, but also its software as well. The Atari 1030 came with an on-board software package called ModemLink which would automatically upload into the computers memory. "

So both driver and software loaded during boot. Also.. http://www.geocities.ws/SiliconValley/Lakes/6757/1030.HTML

The 850 interface did the same i.e. loaded a driver. As I'm sure you know, when booting, the 8bit attempts to boot from a floppy drive, if present. These devices respond to that request as if they were a floppy drive and the 8bit is non the wiser and loads the drivers/progs as needed. That's how the trick was achieved during the boot process.

I still stand by my comments that the OS was very powerful *for it's day*. We're talking 1978/79 here. The only thing that was obviously missing compared to it's peers, such as they were then was the lack of monitor, hence 3rd party OS replacements that added that and better FP performance.

I submit http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/2600/atari2600.JPG.

And yes, you could write programs directly on the 2600

Yes, still brings back memories.

Still have my old Atari 800 and 800XL along with all the bits and pieces acquired every Christmas (sprocket printer, little graphics tablet that used the paddle ports for input, the little plotter printer. But then, by the time you had all those, you needed two extension bars for all the different transformers (keyboard, TV, disk drives, printers, RS232).

Fortunately, there are emulators for the Atari and all the other home computers like the BBC. I've used to them to type in the listings from archived articles I had always wanted to try out. All those program still run, even the "100+ free programs" that came from the shop I bought them from.

Just to let folks know, you don't have to find a working original 2600 or run an emu, you can also mod the widely available Atari Flashback to run carts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Flashback
http://www.atarimuseum.com/fb2hacks/page1.htm

http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/16bits/stpad.html

They did that already

http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/2600/a3000.html (never released)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellivision (keyboard component)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ColecoVision (specifically Expansion #3 that turned it into the Adam)

Also, both the C64 and Amiga were originally designed to be video game consoles. (that's why the C64 has the Ultimax mode) They were turned into computers later into their development.

Lets not forget the Atari XEGS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_XEGS

More recently, Linux on the PS2 and PS3:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_for_PlayStation_2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ps3_linux

What is funny is Atari did this back in 1984 with their "Mindlink" headband controller: http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/2600/mindlink.html It was quite good, too bad the company switched gears to primarily computers at the time and didn't go forward with the controllers. Its amazing how people forget about stuff that was invented decaded ago and announce them today as if they just discovered the wheel for the first time. Then you have the exact opposite - you have older technologies that have been reborn with a whole new purpose - take the old Atari joysticks from the 70's and 80's - just simple 5bit hardwired controllers, nothing really special in today's world, but they were the controllers by which all others were guaged in the 70's and 80's... Now there is a company who has brough those very same controllers back, but now they pack USB circuitry in them and can be used on PC's and Mac's - cool stuff indeed! http://www.legacyengineer.com/storefront Next thing you know, someone will bring Pong back and claim its this innovative immersive head to head combat game! ;-) Curt

Ten years ago, a similar machine was my junk box of last resort for messing around with ipsec firewalls, a spare end point for some test configurations. I had OpenBSD 2.5 on the box and had to compile some stuff out of ports. With 16MB, this was deadly slow and some ports failed to compile. With 24MB it was about twice as fast, and most of my compile problems went away.

OpenBSD doesn't seem to have become especially bloated, but on a recent OpenBSD, even something as basic as gcc likely have inflated memory requirements to the point where 24MB is a bit dicey. That said, on my old clunker, it was amazing how much it would do if left alone for 24 hours. OTOH, I was reading last week that compiling Java on OpenBSD 4.6 out of ports might not work if your machine was low on memory, which I suspect is somewhere around the 512MB threshold. (OpenBSD now has Java as a binary package, but it's an early-look version of 1.7, that doesn't scream prime time).

My first laptop was a 486DX/25 with 8MB of memory and a 120MB hard drive. I had NetBSD on it before I tossed it out. Under DOS, I had measured sequential disk transfer at about 250KB/s (using PIO mode 4 or the least DMA mode, can't recall precisely). That's less than DSL speed these days--for sequential hard disk transfer.

Many video cards from the day had single-ported memory. You'd get the majority of your frame buffer update bandwidth during the blanking intervals. For a single-ported video card, a video driver optimized to the hilt (there were many of these, I wrote one myself) would have trouble redrawing the screen in 640x480 mode with a static image in under 200ms and it tended to tie up your CPU the whole while. If the CPU has anything else to do, or the disk is swapping, good luck with that.

I suspect you could browse the web successfully on such a machine with a lot of patience if you turn off images and JavaScript and Flash, etc. You'll want the mode I used to use on bad dial-up: click the image to have the image load. It'll be about as useful as console mode on a 1200 baud dial-up. I wonder how many lines of code that still exist in the BSDs were written over 1200 baud dial-up.

My oldest machine at the moment is a PPro 200 on an Intel Venus FX440 board that doesn't know how to die (slated for replacement this very day). I don't recall this machine glitching a single time in ten years. I could have dry walled it into a closet.

A PPro 200 with 64MB running something tight like OpenBSD is where you might actually manage to forget for more than five minutes (on a graphical desktop) what a terrible POS you've just built. The PPro was the first CPU Intel made that really worked well at 32-bit, with DMA all around, a split transaction bus, etc. It was the first Intel chip scorned with a hint of fear.

I find this stuff interesting from the perspective of historical delusion. At the time, people are wailing that you can or can't do X, for X possibly equal to X. In hindsight, sometimes that was true, sometimes it wasn't. We're about to go through another round of the same delusions as we transfer from the oil economy to the post-oil economy over the next 100 years, maybe a lot quicker if the carbon hits the coral reef.

A lot of people out there presently believe it's not possible to drive home from work in the summer without air conditioning. Necessity is 90% perception.

The first manned Apollo mission to achieved manned lunar orbit was Apollo 8, launched 21 December 1968. Imagine the electronics that was running. It was soon miniaturized.

http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/dedicated/homepong.html

The first space shuttle launch was 12 April 1981, thirteen years later. What a difference a decade makes. It's now been three decades since the construction of nuclear power plants in America came to a grinding halt. In the meantime, we've gone from a 8086 to the i970. I wonder if that translates into a safer reactor design.

Fuck the NES, what about the 2600 Junior? The fun is back!

http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/2600/atari2600jr.html

http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/7800/games/ says:
"Note: If you are going to Mirror these sources or place them onto your own site, please have the respect and courtesy to include with them - Source: www.atarimuseum.com as these wouldn't exist if I hadn't of climbed into a filthy dumpster at 3am in the morning behind the old Atari building in Sunnyvale and salvaged them and restored them from their diskettes."

Apparently Curt Vendel and Atarimuseum.com deserve the real credit for this release.

It's unofficial because it wasn't released by Atari, as the post suggests, but by the Atari Historical Society, copied from source disks recovered from Atari's trash.

These computers had a large assortment of "Intelligent" peripherals which communicated through a custom bus called the "SIO" (Serial I/O) which compared to today standards is a rather simplistic version of the USB (Universal Serial Bus). In fact the USB and the Atari SIO have a lot more in common then many would think. One of Atari's original computer engineers, Joe Decuir who created the Atari SIO bus is also one of the team of engineers at Microsoft to help design and holds patents on the USB.

...it's real, and it's a very old idea. Atari created a very similar device 25 years ago. It was crude by today's standards (you very nearly had to move your eyebrows for it to register movement) but it did work. Atari had working prototypes at a CES in the early 1980s--people could play pong and breakout with the "mindlink". It was a crude form of the very same technology used here, though it was much less sensitive and required a bit of muscle movement for it to pick up neural impulses. The technology was developed for myoelectric prosthetic limbs and has matured greatly since those days.

Atari's MindLink controller was never released to production though...testers often experienced tension headaches after using the device for extended sessions and it was not very precise. Beyond pong and breakout and other simple games it was not very effective because users had trouble coping with more than simple linear control. Also, furhter refinement of the product was abandoned as this was around the time of the Tramiel takeover (and Tramiel was known not to ever be enthusiastic about the potential of home video game consoles vs. low cost home computers) and the big console industry shakeout made for a lot of vapourware from all industry players.

Certainly with increased processing power and better sensor technology in the past 25 years there could be much more potential in such a device, especially for those who have physical disabilities that prevent them from effectively using keyboards and mice. This isn't April fools or even a new idea, and it employs passive sensors (they do not transmit neural impulses--only detect the ones you generate) so a "blue screen of death" won't really kill you, and if you get a good fragging it won't fry your brain (the feedback is only visual--what is on the screen).

Hmmm. That doesn't sound any better than the Atari Mindlink developed in the early eighties. That thing was reported to give players terrible headaches.

http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/2600/mindlink.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Mindlink

If we're going to consider systems that were released very recently, I think we should include the retro system that was released recently.

Like many others, I owned an Atari 2600 when I was about 6. I came to acquire a large number of games for it, which somehow I managed to stop my parents from throwing away. I still have those games, but of course the old 2600 doesn't hoot up to any TV I own, nor does it likely still function.

Enter the Atari flashback2. 40 games on a system that still uses my old Atari joysticks. And even better, people have already demonstrated how to hack it to play the original 2600 cartridges!

Now I just have to get my hands on a second one, so that if I screw up the hack, my wife and I can still play pong on the first flashback2 I bought...

http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/dedicated/homepong.html

Atari Stunt Cycle was my first gaming experience.

http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/dedicated/stuntcycle.html

It came out in 1977. It was a single-game console where you jumped a motorcycle over some buses. Over and over. And over.

Yeah, me too... I liked the cool factor of those handset-cradles, though! Where is it, where is it...? Ah, here it is!

Hell of an upgrade when I went to the Avatex 2400 (could only find the 1200 BAUD model of this design in a good pic), though. I just about wet myself at how FAST the BBSes flew by!

• Build a machine with lots of processors.
• Get investors to buy into the hair-brained scheme.
• ??? (Mention that programming is a problem to be solved shortly.)
• Skip town with the cash (Profit!).

a updated version of the Commodore Vic-20 or the Atari 400/800 systems. Similar price point, and the market in China is 25 years behind North America,so it makes sense

This reminds me of a gaming console that Atari worked on in the mid-1980s called the Atari Mindlink, very similar concept except it used infrared sensors to measure the movement of the muscles in your head.

http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/260 0/mindlink.html

Everything old is new again?

Actually, he's the guy who *co-founded* Atari and jumpstarted the video game industry.

He did not "single-handedly create the Video Game Industry".

PONG arcade sales simply helped sales of the Magnavox Odyssey

Actually, he was responsible for none of those save Space War and partiall PONG.

As reported by Alan in Steve Kent's book, if anything people had to *ignore* Nolan than listen to him or go to him for direction because he was often looking over people's shoulders and contradicting himself in his directions.

No, 5200 was a much later system (are you assuming that was the proposed console because of hindsite?) and that's incorrect about the computers (probably just repeating stuff on fan sites).

The 2600 was intended for a short lifespan to create a more cost effective method of delivering Atari's then (1975-1976) popular arcade games to the home. It was only supposed to be on the market for a few years and replaced by a more capable console (and the design shows this).

Warner management didn't want to simply throw away the 2600 and wanted to extend its life. So they changed the project to a regular low end "gaming computer" and a higher end "business" computer which became known as the Atari 400 and 800 PCS's respectively

Unfortunately, the technology for the next console failed to work out, causing Atari to repackage an 8-Bit computer as a game console. (The 5200.) At that point, however, the 5200 was late to the market, overbuilt for being a game console, and had these poor analog controllers which failed within hours of use.

Again, not true. The technology did not fail to work out, it was developed. The problem was that the game developers complained

Actually, he's the guy who *co-founded* Atari and jumpstarted the video game industry.

He did not "single-handedly create the Video Game Industry".

PONG arcade sales simply helped sales of the Magnavox Odyssey

Actually, he was responsible for none of those save Space War and partiall PONG.

As reported by Alan in Steve Kent's book, if anything people had to *ignore* Nolan than listen to him or go to him for direction because he was often looking over people's shoulders and contradicting himself in his directions.

No, 5200 was a much later system (are you assuming that was the proposed console because of hindsite?) and that's incorrect about the computers (probably just repeating stuff on fan sites).

The 2600 was intended for a short lifespan to create a more cost effective method of delivering Atari's then (1975-1976) popular arcade games to the home. It was only supposed to be on the market for a few years and replaced by a more capable console (and the design shows this).

Warner management didn't want to simply throw away the 2600 and wanted to extend its life. So they changed the project to a regular low end "gaming computer" and a higher end "business" computer which became known as the Atari 400 and 800 PCS's respectively

Unfortunately, the technology for the next console failed to work out, causing Atari to repackage an 8-Bit computer as a game console. (The 5200.) At that point, however, the 5200 was late to the market, overbuilt for being a game console, and had these poor analog controllers which failed within hours of use.

Again, not true. The technology did not fail to work out, it was developed. The problem was that the game developers complained

Actually, he's the guy who *co-founded* Atari and jumpstarted the video game industry.

He did not "single-handedly create the Video Game Industry".

PONG arcade sales simply helped sales of the Magnavox Odyssey

Actually, he was responsible for none of those save Space War and partiall PONG.

As reported by Alan in Steve Kent's book, if anything people had to *ignore* Nolan than listen to him or go to him for direction because he was often looking over people's shoulders and contradicting himself in his directions.

No, 5200 was a much later system (are you assuming that was the proposed console because of hindsite?) and that's incorrect about the computers (probably just repeating stuff on fan sites).

The 2600 was intended for a short lifespan to create a more cost effective method of delivering Atari's then (1975-1976) popular arcade games to the home. It was only supposed to be on the market for a few years and replaced by a more capable console (and the design shows this).

Warner management didn't want to simply throw away the 2600 and wanted to extend its life. So they changed the project to a regular low end "gaming computer" and a higher end "business" computer which became known as the Atari 400 and 800 PCS's respectively

Unfortunately, the technology for the next console failed to work out, causing Atari to repackage an 8-Bit computer as a game console. (The 5200.) At that point, however, the 5200 was late to the market, overbuilt for being a game console, and had these poor analog controllers which failed within hours of use.

Again, not true. The technology did not fail to work out, it was developed. The problem was that the game developers complained

Space Invaders on an Atari 2600? Played with Mind Control?!? Very funny, guys.

I suppose the researchers thought it would be hi-friggin'-larious to make the Atari Mindlink a reality. That way they really COULD play games with their mind! (Insert *snickers* and *gaffaws* here.) Considering that the original was a sham (you were really moving your brow to control the game), I'm not sure they really want to be associated with such "technology".

On the other hand, I suppose they deserve some serious Geek Cred for making such an obscure reference with this experiment. Most people wouldn't "get it" anyway, and would only see the neat research going on. :P

Now what narrowly-deployed architecture for which everyone runs a CPU simulator will be taught in computer organization and assembly language classes?

Atari VCS: Atari, Spectravideo, and Perphial Visions Inc. all tried to create a keyboard for it. Only the Spectravideo keyboard made it to market. Only the Spectravision keyboard made it to market. It flopped.

Intellivision: Mattel promised from day 1 that the Intellivision would be able to be turned into a full computer by adding a special keyboard component. Unfortunately, the component proved too expensive to manufacture. When Mattel was finally forced to release the product due to an FTC fine, nearly every unit was returned as broken or defective. Mattel then shifted gears in a hurry and released the Entertainment Computer System, a quick hack produced by a secret project that was intended to get Mattel out of hot water. Predictably, it flopped in the market.

Odyssey 2: Magnavox actually integrated a keyboard into this console, but gave no thought to an OS, tape drive, or printer. There was a BASIC kit released for the European version, but otherwise this console's potential as a computer was sadly underutilized.

Coleco Adam: Coleco had the bright idea of creating a computer that could play Colecovision games. Consumers couldn't decide whether or not it was a game machine or a serious "home computer" system. Combined with its odd design (the power was routed through the printer) it flopped in the market.

Atari 5200: This actually WAS a computer packed into a game system case. Unsurprisingly, no peripheral components were produced to prevent competition with the Atari 400/800 systems.

Atari 7800: Again, a keyboard component was created, but never marketed. With Nintendo deciding NOT to ship the Famicom Floppy Disk Drive in America, Atari may have finally realized that trying to make a game console into a computer wasn't such a good idea.

PlayStation 2: Sony tries to make the PlayStation into a generic computer with a keyboard/mouse attachment, a harddrive, and a copy of Linux. Sony kills the product citing poor sales.

PlayStation 3: Sony tries to differentiate their console by claiming that "it's a computer". Welcome to the 1980s.

Atari VCS: Atari, Spectravideo, and Perphial Visions Inc. all tried to create a keyboard for it. Only the Spectravideo keyboard made it to market. Only the Spectravision keyboard made it to market. It flopped.

Intellivision: Mattel promised from day 1 that the Intellivision would be able to be turned into a full computer by adding a special keyboard component. Unfortunately, the component proved too expensive to manufacture. When Mattel was finally forced to release the product due to an FTC fine, nearly every unit was returned as broken or defective. Mattel then shifted gears in a hurry and released the Entertainment Computer System, a quick hack produced by a secret project that was intended to get Mattel out of hot water. Predictably, it flopped in the market.

Odyssey 2: Magnavox actually integrated a keyboard into this console, but gave no thought to an OS, tape drive, or printer. There was a BASIC kit released for the European version, but otherwise this console's potential as a computer was sadly underutilized.

Coleco Adam: Coleco had the bright idea of creating a computer that could play Colecovision games. Consumers couldn't decide whether or not it was a game machine or a serious "home computer" system. Combined with its odd design (the power was routed through the printer) it flopped in the market.

Atari 5200: This actually WAS a computer packed into a game system case. Unsurprisingly, no peripheral components were produced to prevent competition with the Atari 400/800 systems.

Atari 7800: Again, a keyboard component was created, but never marketed. With Nintendo deciding NOT to ship the Famicom Floppy Disk Drive in America, Atari may have finally realized that trying to make a game console into a computer wasn't such a good idea.

PlayStation 2: Sony tries to make the PlayStation into a generic computer with a keyboard/mouse attachment, a harddrive, and a copy of Linux. Sony kills the product citing poor sales.

PlayStation 3: Sony tries to differentiate their console by claiming that "it's a computer". Welcome to the 1980s.

Atari VCS: Atari, Spectravideo, and Perphial Visions Inc. all tried to create a keyboard for it. Only the Spectravideo keyboard made it to market. Only the Spectravision keyboard made it to market. It flopped.

Intellivision: Mattel promised from day 1 that the Intellivision would be able to be turned into a full computer by adding a special keyboard component. Unfortunately, the component proved too expensive to manufacture. When Mattel was finally forced to release the product due to an FTC fine, nearly every unit was returned as broken or defective. Mattel then shifted gears in a hurry and released the Entertainment Computer System, a quick hack produced by a secret project that was intended to get Mattel out of hot water. Predictably, it flopped in the market.

Odyssey 2: Magnavox actually integrated a keyboard into this console, but gave no thought to an OS, tape drive, or printer. There was a BASIC kit released for the European version, but otherwise this console's potential as a computer was sadly underutilized.

Coleco Adam: Coleco had the bright idea of creating a computer that could play Colecovision games. Consumers couldn't decide whether or not it was a game machine or a serious "home computer" system. Combined with its odd design (the power was routed through the printer) it flopped in the market.

Atari 5200: This actually WAS a computer packed into a game system case. Unsurprisingly, no peripheral components were produced to prevent competition with the Atari 400/800 systems.

Atari 7800: Again, a keyboard component was created, but never marketed. With Nintendo deciding NOT to ship the Famicom Floppy Disk Drive in America, Atari may have finally realized that trying to make a game console into a computer wasn't such a good idea.

PlayStation 2: Sony tries to make the PlayStation into a generic computer with a keyboard/mouse attachment, a harddrive, and a copy of Linux. Sony kills the product citing poor sales.

PlayStation 3: Sony tries to differentiate their console by claiming that "it's a computer". Welcome to the 1980s.

It already existed in 1984.. Well, it kind of did, this one actually worked off of your muscles in your head but it sure reminded me of the Atari Mindlink that was vapourware in 1984.

Picture: http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/260 0/mindlink.html
Info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Mindlink

If you pick up the slightly more expensive "Atari Flashback 2" console you can actually modify it to accept the old cartridges. It looks like a pretty easy job even for someone with no soldering experience.

http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/8BITS/1200xl/ 600.html

You could play games, write code etc. Really really cool!

Ahh, the good ol'days playing BC's Quest for Tires, Miner 49er and other classixs.

I collect games, so console and computer compilations tend not to interest me - I'd much rather have the original version (or, in the case of arcade games, a port from the timeframe of the original game) than a re-release.

My favourite compilations tend to be portable versions. I like being able to take several different games along with me without having to carry multiple cartridges.

By far, the best portable compilation I've ever seen is Konami Collector's Series: Arcade Advanced for GBA. It contains six arcade games that aren't emulated, but reprogrammed specifically for GBA. You'd be hard-pressed to find the difference. Also, each game is of a different genre (unlike compilations such as Pac-Man Museum). And finally, you can use the 'Konami Code' to unlock hidden features and updated graphics in each game.

Another fine compilation for GBA is Atari Anniversary Advance. It contains, like the Konami one, six arcade games. Unlike the Konami compilation, the games are emulated. There are some problems like slowdown and sound issues, but it really feels like you're playing MAME on the go. Another issue is that nearly all of the games used nonstandard controls (like a spinner for Tempest, trackball for Missile Command, dual sticks for Battlezone, etc) so that the GBA controls don't quite match the arcade ones. Still, it is an excellent compilation with several true classics.

Bridging the gap between handhelds and consoles, the recent trend of dedicated direct-to-tv devices is interesting, and has resulted in several that definitely count as compilations.

In particular, the Commodore 64 DTV stands above all others. It has 30 C64 games ranging from merely tolerable filler to true classics. But what makes it absolutely incredible is the dedication and love poured into it. It has lots of hidden secrets, and can be hacked to add real C64 hardware like disk drives so that you can play (or code) original games on it!

The Atari Flashback 2.0 is also great for similar reasons. It has a larger and better library than the C64 DTV, but also less hacking potential. You can add a cartridge port from an original Atari 2600, allowing it to play real 2600 games, but it has no major secrets and the homebrew possibilities are limited by the cartridge medium of the original system. It is as much a labour of love as the C64 stick, though, as is made obvious by the newly manufactured 2600 joysticks that have the proper connectors, allowing them to be used on the original system!

The Namco II 5-in-1 joystick is also worth a look. It has less games and no additional potential, but the games themselves are great. The joystick feels a little loose, making the controls a tad difficult on some of the games. This is (almost) made up for by an innovation that results in the best home version of Pole Position ever: the knob on the joystick twists and acts as a steering wheel, which gives the game absolutely FLAWLESS control. This is a must-buy if you love Pole Position, and well worth looking into if you like any of the other games on the stick.

Despite what I said at the beginning, there are some compilations available for PC and consoles that are worth investigating.

On PC, the Ultima Collection

You must be referring to the 130XEP (?). It wasn't s***canned because of portability issues. It was canned because the Tramiel crew could not figure out the AMY sound chip coding. Tramiel had fired the majority of the Atari engineers after he purchased the company, and only they knew how to get the chip to function. Its a shame; the Atari 7800 could've really used the AMY sound chip added to a lot of its titles just as the POKEY (you may correct me if I am wrong - the standard soundchip of the 400/800/XL/XE computers) chip was added in game titles like *BallBlazer* to improve the sound capabilities. Hell, the ST computer line could've used the AMY chip as well.

This is where I get confused... I think it was the 65-XEM (M for Music) that was going to have the AMY chip. The 65-XEP (P for portable) would have been a luggable like the Commodore 64-sx and would have also sported a 3.5inch drive. Both protoypes, near as I'm aware only one of each was ever built. I'm sure there might have been a 130 version of these planned... just the only ones that existed were the 65.

http://www.atarimuseum.com/ahs_archives/archives/p df/computers/8bits/amy1.pdf

All very good ideas... but what did atari produce last? The XE game system! Basicly the same bloody thing at the XE except with a detachable keyboard and huge pastel colored buttons. I have no clue what the hell Trammel was thinking... because this thing was released in 1987... carried a heavy price tag... and the library of games they re-released for the sucker were circa 1981-1983... games you could run on an atari 800... then there was Nintendo actually creating NEW games. It would have been spiffy keen in 1985... but this was 1987 and cartridges were that annoying overpriced technology that took up way too much space.

http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/260 0/mindlink.html

In other news, Goodyear reinvents the wheel.

Nah, he learned his lesson when he tried to eat my Atari 400 (because I referred to it by its codename).

On a C64 keyboard, the quotation marks are found on the 2 key and the dollar-sign is on the 4 key. To search for the directory of a floppy disk, the command is LOAD"$",8, which was arguably one of the most commonly used commands on a Commodore 64./useless info

Wikipedia has their article on the NES on the main page today.

No mention in that article of the failed Atari deal, one of the biggest and most important non-events in video game history.

I also don't agree with 1983 being listed as the year of the video game crash, as seems to be the current fashion (though Google still lists more hits for "video game crash 1984" than "video game crash 1983"), but I guess it's debateable. 1983 was really the start of trouble, though, not the end of it. It was the year of stock market declines and then a very bad Christmas, but 1984 was when the bottom really fell out, and when all current consoles were pulled from the US market.

Up until a few years ago, when history started being rewritten by those who are too young to even remember it, 1984 was always the year listed for the "great video game crash" - that's when the console gaming industry basically ceased to be. You could argue that the "crash" really came with the stock market declines and the poor 1983 Christmas sales, but it just strikes me as revisionist, and those types of events happen in the industry even today. We called it a "crash" in 1984 because of the cataclysmic events that occured as a result of what happened in 1983 and early 1984, not the events leading up to it.

An interesting article. Unfortunately, I found it to be very lacking. In 1992, I was a dirt poor college student. Strapped for cash, but needing a computer, I bought a KayPro portable computer. It had a 10MB hard drive and ran MS-DOS. Total cost at the time was $100.00 used. It was the first DOS-based computer I owned.

It's also sad that the Atari Portfolio wasn't mentioned. I'm not sure when it actually sold (sometime between 1997 and 1989). However, at 15.87 ounces with batteries and running a DOS compatible operating system, I'd say this piece of technology should stand out! A bit of notoriety: It was used in Terminator 2 when John Connor hacked an ATM. Full specs can be found at old-computers.com with a nice blurb at atarimuseum.com

Or the Atari MindLink.

Remember Atari computers?

They had the same technology and promised you the kitchen sink...

http://www.atarimuseum.com/computers/16bits/transp uter.html

Hey IBM, I hope you have all your patents covered on this concept, cuz prior art exists everywhere.

An overview of the never-into-production 1450XLD.

C'mon... Mindlink anyone?

http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/260 0/mindlink.html

Sadly, the technology isn't exactly new.
http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/260 0/mindlink.html

We're not jaded. It's just that we've been hurt by so many poor (and many vaporous) incarnations of this kind of tech so often...

Don't forget the Atari Portfolio . I owned one of those great little buggers back in the day. Heck, I still own it, but the screen is bust :-(

Here's correct link