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Atari 1200XL Stacked Up Against a Dell Inspiron

Posted by timothy on from the ok-it's-actually-stacked-on-top dept.

Bill Kendrick writes "My first computer was the short-lived 1200XL model of the Atari 8-bit computer line. I finally got ahold of one again, after having to settle with a lesser Atari system. My immediate reaction was: 'Damn, it's as big as my Dell Inspiron laptop!', and I couldn't resist doing one of those side-by-side comparisons, complete with photos of one system sitting atop the other. (I also put the 1983 storage and speeds in 2009 terms, for the benefit of the youngin's out there.) While in many ways the Atari pales in comparison to the latest technology they cram into laptops, I do get to benefit from SD storage media. It also still boots way faster than Ubuntu on the Dell, has a far more ergonomic keyboard, and is much more toddler-proof."

41 of 253 comments (clear)

  1. Youngins by ubergamer1337 · · Score: 5, Funny

    "I also put the 1983 storage and speeds in 2009 terms, for the benefit of the youngin's out there." We would thank you, but we're too busy getting off your lawn.

    1. Re:Youngins by Moblaster · · Score: 3, Funny

      >>"I also put the 1983 storage and speeds in 2009 terms, for the benefit of the youngin's out there." We would thank you, but we're too busy getting off your lawn.

      Considering the Atari 1200 was powered by the 6502 microprocessor, the assembly code of which drove the original Terminator, that would be an entirely wise idea.

    2. Re:Youngins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      keep your dendrophilia to yourself

  2. Interesting by jimbobborg · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I had an Atari 800XL back in the day. With a 300 Baud modem, two floppy drives, and a color monitor! I miss that machine. Had way too many pirated games for it.

    1. Re:Interesting by Dogtanian · · Score: 4, Informative

      A pal of mine had an Atari XEGS. It looked awesome and futuristic, but was a bit of an oddball considering Atari already had the cheaper 2600 and superior 7800 out on the market.

      Atari's problem seemed to be that they tried to do too many things at once and lacked focus.

      Bill himself has already mentioned the Warner-era 5200, which was a previous attempt at building a console derived from the 400/800 8-bit computer hardware. From what I know, internally the hardware was virtually identical to the 400/800, but for some reason they changed round the location of a few registers in memory and removed some of the OS. They also changed the cartridge interface.

      Therefore, despite the hardware and most of the system being identical, the 5200 couldn't directly run 400/800 games (*1) and vice versa, even if you could get it to load them.

      AFAIK, they launched the 5200 around the same time that the 400/800 was replaced with the XL line. The XL was backwards-compatible (*2), so it ran (most) 400/800 games and hardware, and it *wasn't* compatible with the 5200.

      Why did Atari do this? Was it a cynical attempt at marketing? Or were the divisions within Atari just more concerned at scoring points off each other? It happens.

      Anyway, the 5200 flopped, not least (I heard) because the joysticks were horrible.

      Re: the XEGS. This was launched later on, circa 1987, during the Tramiel era. I heard that Atari were originally planning on releasing the 7800 in Europe then changed their mind and launched the XEGS instead. Since the XEGS was (unlike the 5200) fully compatible with the 400/800/XL/XE line, it was probably a quick and easy way of exploiting existing hardware that had a lot of pre-existing software.

      Thing is though, I later saw the 7800 for sale in Europe (more specifically, through Argos in the UK) and I think they sold the XEGS in the US anyway. So I'm not sure what the story was. I don't think Atari did either.

      Then during the early-1990s there was the launch of the ST's successor, the Falcon 030. The ST had been quite successful in Europe, but was later overtaken by the Amiga 500 when the price of that came down. I *knew* that regardless of whether it was a nice machine or not, the Falcon 030 was going to flop because (a) Even then the ST market was seriously declining with no obvious likelihood of things getting better and the PC compatibles were taking over, (b) Atari probably didn't have the budget to do it justice and (c) Atari couldn't market ****.

      The Falcon 030 flopped.

      It was withdrawn after just a year or so, I seem to remember so that Atari could commit to the Jaguar console, but that was a relative flop as well. If they'd launched it properly, it might have done some business before the far superior PlayStation came out and wiped the floor with it, but they didn't.

      Oh yeah, and the technically-brilliant-for-its-time Lynx was a flop as well, even though it should have done well.

      Atari sucked.

      --
      "Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
    2. Re:Interesting by anss123 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      So I'm not sure what the story was. I don't think Atari did either.

      LOL. Probably true that :-)

      Oh yeah, and the technically-brilliant-for-its-time Lynx was a flop as well, even though it should have done well.

      The Lynx should have been smaller with a bigger BW reflective screen. The Lynx hardware itself was quite innovative, but its "huge" size and hunger for batteries made it a poor portable. The Game Gear was similarly troubled but Sega somehow managed to attract buyers though.

    3. Re:Interesting by Hal_Porter · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Landon Dyer, who wrote/ported Donkey Kong for Atari 8 bit machines has a blog

      http://www.dadhacker.com/blog/?p=987

      It's actually a remarkable story - he was in charge of the 'port', but actually he just played the arcade game at his hotel, wrote a spec and reimplemented it from scratch. When it was done he had code that just fit into the Rom - only a 'dozen or so bytes' were free. It's easily one of the best arcade ports to the Atari too.

      Actually since Atari is the topic, I had one back in the day and there are two things I saw demonstrated that I never could figure out.

      One was a turbo loader for cassette tapes. There was a lump of electronics in potting compound and a normal cassette recorded. They claimed it could load from tape faster than an 1050 disk drive. It couldnâ(TM)t but it was pretty close. The lump of potted electronics was quite small and the sold the whole thing for about 40 bucks. I never figured out how they managed to modulate and demodulate that high a baud rate with what must have been a couple of Op Amps. I donâ(TM)t know how stable it was - probably not very - but I donâ(TM)t think it was faked.

      The other was an Atari 800XL with a Prestel cartridge. It was displaying 40Ã--24 text in the Prestel font, which is easy to do on an Atari. But it was also displaying Prestel colors. They allow any character cell to have one of 8 colors (basically R1G1B1) in the foreground and one in the background. If you looked carefully the screen looked like Mode 0 with a strage overlay color, like they used the player missile graphics or something. But PMG doesnâ(TM)t look like it can handle the worst case where either the background or the foreground can change each character square. It was sort of flickery too, though not as bad as if they interlaced a color frame and a text frame alternately.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  3. What the hell? by XPeter · · Score: 4, Funny

    No SSD? No blu ray? No multiple core processors? No high clocked graphics cards? No ram with heat-spreaders attached? And worst of all no big case with lights inside?!

    What kind of world did you people live in?

    --
    "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
    1. Re:What the hell? by Moblaster · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It was a world where almost every kid grew up learning at least a little BASIC, because virtually all computers booted right into the BASIC command line. Which skill-wise puts the early 80s generation ahead of every generation before or after, young whippersnapper.

    2. Re:What the hell? by mcgrew · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What kind of world did you people live in?

      As primitive as the world is today, the world I grew up in was WAY primitive. Computers took entire buildings to house but were less powerful than a pocket calculator (my "pocket calculator" was a slide rule), there were no mice, no laser pointers (no lasers at all). there was color TV but only one family in the neighborhood could afford one and besides there were only two station (this was in St Louis, a major metropolis). No VCRs, no video games, no microwave ovens, no cordless phones (the phones had dials instead of buttons), no remote controls. Cars had no fuel injectors, air bags, or seat belts. Most electronics still used tubes. No accomodating lenses for cataract patients (in fact the first IOL was developed only a few years before I was born). Most folks didn't have air conditioning, and nobody had air in their cars. Cars only had AM radio.

      When Star Trek came on TV (I was 12 iirc) everything about it was pure science fiction - doors that opened by themselves (now every grocery has them), flat screen desktop computers, "communicators" (cell phones), etc.

      You don't realise how primitive your world is until you get older. I can't imagine some of the stuff you guys will get to see. I never dreamed that some day I wouldn't have to wear glasses!

      Hell, the laser didn't exist until I was 8 or 9. Talk about primitive.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    3. Re:What the hell? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Funny

      Hey, being admitted to a teaching hospital is virtually the same as getting into med school, right?

    4. Re:What the hell? by vlm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Computers took entire buildings to house but were less powerful than a pocket calculator

      A very common misconception. Actually they were far, far more powerful than any modern computer. One mainframe could run multinational corporations, put a man on the moon, etc. In comparison, on a good day, a modern computer might be able to balance my checkbook, with alot of help, play a game, or maybe replay some music.

      That is what motivates people like myself toward retrocomputing... Its not that its a low clock speed, who cares about that, but that on my desk I can now use technology that ran entire research labs, major corporations, etc.

      You can either learn how to solve scalable, ultra high reliability, enterprise grade computing problems by studying how the ancients solved those problems, or flail around blindly while re-learning the ancient's wisdom... Your choice.

      Power is applied by changing the world, not toggling a flipflop at GHz speeds but not really doing anything out in the world.

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    5. Re:What the hell? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Arguing with my friends between the Commodore 64 and Apple //e.

      But mutually laughing at the friend with the IBM PC.

    6. Re:What the hell? by camperdave · · Score: 3, Funny

      What kind of world did you people live in?

      We lived in the kind of world where one could fully reboot a computer faster than one could type the words "full reboot". We lived in a world where installing a program was faster than ejecting a DVD. We lived in a world where one could double your storage with a hole punch.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    7. Re:What the hell? by Zak3056 · · Score: 2, Funny

      No SSD? No blu ray? No multiple core processors? No high clocked graphics cards? No ram with heat-spreaders attached? And worst of all no big case with lights inside?!

      No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

      --
      What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
  4. Not again! by girlintraining · · Score: 3, Funny

    Slashdot's continuing trend to post stories late continues, with one now finally exiting the queue that came from 1983. And even then; The 1200xl was so horrible that people bought up its predecessor to avoid having to succumb to the evil. Someone quick, draw an analogy to the current Vista v. XP debacle as a distraction while I run away now!

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
  5. Even better! by EdipisReks · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm going to compare my horse to my car! My dog to my Xbox! My socks to my power outlets!

    1. Re:Even better! by CannonballHead · · Score: 4, Funny

      Dude, Dells aren't all that bad. You don't have to call them horses, dogs, and socks. ;)

    2. Re:Even better! by aardwolf64 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Well, we DO measure the power of an engine in "horsepower". Dogbox, not so much...

  6. Missile command by Hatta · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Unfortunately, the Atari trakball is digital so you don't get that much benefit from using the trackball over a regular joystick. If you want to play a real game of Missile Command, you need an Atari 5200, and it's giant ass trackball.

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  7. Longevity by Mordaximus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That dell won't be running in 27 years to make a similar comparison. It may be huge and slow, but that atari is still running in 2009. That's no small feat.

    1. Re:Longevity by MrEricSir · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'm here from the future to tell you that in fact, the Dell lapto-

      BZZZTT *crackle*

      OH NO THE ROBOTS ARE OUT! *bzzzZZT* EVERBODY RUN, RUN! AAAAAAAAA ...*ZAP*

      --
      There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
  8. 1KB != 1B by Mprx · · Score: 4, Informative

    Some of the "In 1980s terms" calculations are out by a factor of 1024. I'd love to have a laptop with 2TB ram, but I don't think they exist yet.

    1. Re:1KB != 1B by Bill+Kendrick · · Score: 3, Funny

      Heh, crap. It was late, and I've got a toddler, so I do appreciate corrections. ;)

  9. Sound by Bill+Kendrick · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Plus... sound _always_ works on my Atari, unlike the latest version of Ubuntu ;^P

  10. Keyboard by Danathar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The Atari Keyboard looks cooler. That's enough for me!

  11. This is all fine and well but... by east+coast · · Score: 2, Insightful

    As nifty as your comparison is I've always found that the computing experience is based more on the ass in the chair than the box on the desk.

    In other words: I knew how to get more out of my Commodore 64 at the age of 17 than my 17 year old nephew can get out of his Dell. At least as far as how to do it without Google support and a slew of gadgets and gimmicks.

    --
    Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
  12. Re:Hm. by Bill+Kendrick · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Does it run Linux?"

    Sadly, no. But I love it anyway. :) Everything else in the house does, though. (The SmartStor NAS, the Roku Netflix Player, the TiVo DVR, my laptop, my wife's laptop, our toddler... oh wait, not yet.)

  13. Cost? by AdamTrace · · Score: 2, Funny

    Did I miss it somewhere? It would be interesting to know the retail cost at time of purchase for each computer.

    I knew/knew of the submitter (Hi Bill!) in college. He had a real hard-on for Atari's. Still does, apparently. :)

    Adman

  14. ERROR 9 by nvrrobx · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This reminds me of one of the most impressive things about my Atari 800XL. I ran into this error when I first started to learn anything about computers. I was thoroughly stumped. (I was also 8 years old.)

    I wrote a letter to Atari (using Atari Writer!) and I got a reply back in the mail just a few weeks later. They told me what I did wrong, included a bunch of software, an Atari BASIC book and a years subscription to Antic.

    No computer company has impressed me like that since then.

  15. Get over the compares already by Cryogenic+Specter · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Oooh oooh I know! Compare an Asus EeePC to a Speak and Spell next! Or maybe an Asimo to a Teddy Ruxpin.
    I first read the comparison between a C64 and an iPhone and thought that was dumb, but I am surprised to see another "comparison" story.
    Yes, back in the day, things were old and different, but comparing them really does not do much.
    It might be more useful to compare an array of things like storage methods over time (washing machine platters, real to real tape, cassette, floppy, HD, zip, jazz, optical, cd, dvd, flash). Or maybe interesting memory storage methods, for example, did you know that there was a method of storing data in "memory" by keeping a pulse in a tube of mercury? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay_line_memory) That is cool.
    Any more of these "comparisons" should compare more than one old school item to some modern device. That would make it more interesting and seem a lot less like comparing apples to ... rocks.

  16. Re:What I got from this article by abigor · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Flame me if you want, but it seems like an Atari computer made in 1983 works better with peripherals than an Ubuntu does made in 2009.

    Let's be honest - that's not saying much.

    Seriously though, those early 8-bit computers were simply the greatest things ever for learning. They were small enough that you could comfortably learn them in a pretty complete fashion. My C64 Programmer's Reference Guide taught you everything you needed to know about that machine, supplemented by The Transactor, possibly the greatest technical computer magazine ever.

  17. Why is bootup time a metric of quality? by synthesizerpatel · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you're dealing with say, realtime embedded devices for managing air travel or life-support systems, sure.

    But who cares how long it takes to boot your desktop or laptop? I reboot my laptop maybe once a week, the rest of the time it's either running or hibernating.

    I'd rather have a slow boot up that verifies everything is working correctly than a fast one that skips sanity checks. It's not the OS that causes bootup slowness anyway but rather the 5400RPM honey-encrusted hard-drives that slow things down.

    Drop an SSD HDD in and the time is reduced to trivial levels on any operating system.

    1. Re:Why is bootup time a metric of quality? by n30na · · Score: 3, Interesting

      If my laptop booted faster I'd be more likely to boot it down and carry it around. Enough of a reason to complain about boot times imo.

  18. Not a speak and spell, but... by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 2, Interesting

    When I got my Eee, I actually did a comparison to the (SCO) Unix server we used circa 1992.

    Systems: EeePC 900, Target model; Austin WinTower 486/33E.

    CPU:
    Eee - 900MHz Celeron
    WinTower - 33MHz 486/33 (note that this predates the DX/SX split)
    Comparison: Eee - 30x faster

    RAM:
    Eee - 1GB DDR
    WinTower - 32MB FPM
    Comparison: Eee 32x more, runs at higher speed, wider bus.

    Storage:
    Eee - 4GB IDE SSD (added 16GB SDHC)
    WinTower - 1GB 5.25" Full Height SCSI-2 HD (added 4GB SCSI-2 drive and 1GB Tape drive)
    Comparison: Eee 4x larger (before and after upgrades). Eee - 3-4x faster (estimated)

    Network:
    Eee - 100BaseT, 802.11G
    WinTower - 10Base2 (yes, ThinNet)
    Comparison: Eee, 10x faster wired.

    Video:
    Eee - 1024x600x24 integrated 9" LCD, Accelerated (Intel chipset), external 1024x768 VGA available
    WinTower: 1024x768x8, 14" CRT, Frame buffer (Trident TVGA)
    Comparison: Eee: Better color, faster video. WinTower: Higher Resolution.

    I/O:
    Eee - 3xUSB2, Mic In, Audio Out
    WinTower: 2 spare EISA slots, 2 spare ISA slots, 6xRS232, 5.25" and 3.5" Floppy disk, Bidirectional Parallel port

    O/S:
    Eee - Eeebuntu 3.0
    WinTower: SCO Open Desktop 2.0 Server
    Comparison: Eee wins.

    Keyboard:
    Eee - integrated laptop style keyboard
    WinTower: 101-Key AT connector keyboard
    Comparison: WinTower wins.

    Mouse:
    Eee - Integrated touchpad, MS Wireless Laptop Wheel Mouse
    WinTower - Logitech 2 button mouse
    Comparison: Eee wins (when using external mouse)

    Cost:
    Eee - $400 (2008 USD, includes RAM upgrade and SDHC)
    WinTower - $15000 (1992 USD, includes SCO ODT2 and Dev System)

    --
    Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
  19. Re:Hm. by Aliotroph · · Score: 2, Informative

    The closest thing it might run with sufficient hacker dedication would seem to be LUnix.

  20. Action! Woot! by Quiet_Desperation · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I got through college in the 1980s with an Atari 800XL. Action! was the first programming language ever did anything interesting in, including two games- a vertical scroller and a side scroller. I remember side scrollers being harder because of the way the video memory was setup, or something. You had to do things in the video blank interval.

    For classes, though, I also had QuickBASIC, Deep Blue C, Kyan Pascal and versions of Forth and FORTRAN. It was amazing how many languages were available for those things. I could write initial code at home before heading to the (always crowded) computer lab to enter the final version to be submitted for a grade.

    [bleep] I feel old now. :-(

  21. Re:8bit colour? by Bill+Kendrick · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Switch into GRAPHICS 9 mode (16 shaded bitmap mode). Use a Display List Interrupt (DLI) to change the colors down the screen. You can arrange it to get a nice grid of 16 hues of 16 shades == 256 colors!

    The paletted colors were actually only out of 128 colors. (16 hues of 8 shades)

    More useful, though, are some of the software-driven tricks for drawing more colors on the screen. One simple one interlaces between 16-hue and 16-shade pixel modes, combining to give you any of 256 colors (albeit a little washed out), anywhere on the screen. In glorious 80x192 pixel resolution. (Not a typo)

    Or cycle between 3 16-shade modes, one Red, one Green, one Blue, and you get 4096 colors, anywhere on the screen. (Or do it at higher horizontal resolution and get 64 colors or 8 colors.) There are GIF and JPEG viewers for Ataris that have been around for _years_ that use these modes.

    Even fancier tricks give you 30 shades of grey at 160x192, some obscene number of colors at 160x192, etc.

    In fact today (before this post appeared on Slashdot), someone contacted me about the character-set (you know, "font"? :^) ) driven multicolor text mode I came up with a decade ago that let me do cell/tile-based graphics and get 13 colors on the screen. (Simply toggle the font at each Vertical Blank Interrupt -- no need for Display List Interrupt tricks.) I wrote a puzzle game with it.

    Anyway, he pointed out that those huge-pixel (80px across) modes can be "applied" to any graphics mode (try GRAPHICS 2:POKE 623,64:?#6;"abcd"), and therefore a similar frame-flickering trick could be made to get lots of large, multi-colored tile graphics on the screen.

    Lots of stuff you can get ANTIC and GTIA to do; a few of which are 'artifacts' or 'bugs', but all consistent across the platform. :)

    (Heh - I wonder if a single person will care about that braindump I just presented.)

  22. Action! was great by tjstork · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I loved Action. I'd have to say that it was probably the most advanced programming environment of the 8 bit era.

    --
    This is my sig.
  23. Re:Fail... by bxbaser · · Score: 2, Funny

    "(Remember who designed the Atari 400/800, and who designed the Amiga! :^P )"

    I would like to meet the guy that designed the 400 membrane keyboard...Yup just a 5 minute meeting is all it would take..

  24. Re:8bit colour? by Vector7 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm really fascinated by this stuff, as planning out how you're going to (ab)use the video hardware is key to getting the most out of these old machines - modern machines are so boring, with high resolution and unlimited colors, and no need for split screens and hblank trickery. I grew up on old Ataris but was too young (or too lame) to do anything but putter around in Basic at the time, and I love reading about the clever ways people have come up with to stretch the limits of the machine. I wish there were more graphic examples on the web demonstrating what you can do in these exotic modes.