Vintage Computer Sites Of Interest

Here are some sites that I visit whenever I feel like reading about old vintage computers. Not that I have much time to devote to the subject, but I just love reading about how computers were back "in the day".

http://www.old-computers.com/

http://www.1000bit.net or also http://www.1000bit.it - NOTE: 1000 is the binary number 8. In other words, if I have 1000 in base 2 numbers, it equals 8. Pretty clever huh? So it's really 8bit.com. Many of the computers on this site are also later 16-bit models, but hey, who's counting?

http://www.digibarn.com/

http://www.cpu-museum.com/

http://www.computercloset.org/

Good stuff. Oh, and follow your dreams.

BASIC Program

This is my 80th post. YEAH! To celebrate, I decided to post about a recent endeavor, trying to type BASIC programs into my old Atari 800 computer. I realize this is very geeky. Oh well.

This is a little test program. It is a looping program that prints a number, starting with 1, then that number to the 2nd power, then that number to the 3rd power, then the number to the 4th power. To calculate these exponential numbers, the little microprocessor of the Atari 800 is really maxing itself out, at least with the 4th power.

Here we go:

10 FOR INDEX = 1 TO 10000
20 PRINT "=================="
30 PRINT INDEX
40 PRINT INDEX^2
50 PRINT INDEX^3
60 PRINT INDEX^4
70 PRINT
80 PRINT CHR$(128), CHR$(164), CHR$(123)
90 NEXT INDEX
100 END


Now give yourself 1,000 Geek Points if you can actually understand this code. HINT: it's known as BASIC. Personally, I have never encountered anything basic about writing a computer program. It's all hard to figure out.

Atari 2600 Vanguard Game

Oh how I love old video games. Here's a blast from the past - The Atari 2600 Vanguard Game

Ahh, does this ever bring back the 80's or what?

Vintage Computer Games From Atari

Oh how I love old computer games. Years ago Atari ruled the world.
Here's an old Atari 2600 game console.





Here's a video of Defender from an Atari 800 computer. WOW!!! This is the video I tried to upload a few weeks ago but it didn't work, then I was full of piss & vinegar about it. Today I could upload it.

Finally!

Today Atari is not a gaming company, at least not at the top of the industry.

Vintage Computing - Atari 800

My, how time flies. It seems like just yesteryear that I played with Atari computers like it was the best thing since the integrated circuit chip. Since then I've used many other computers. There will still always be a special place in my heart for old supposedly obsolete computers however. Some may call this computer "not Scottish" (i.e. like the saying "If it's not Scottish, it's CRAP!") but I think it's just a beautiful machine full of innovation for it's time. AND IT STILL WORKS !!! It must be close to 30 years old.





I can boot it up.

It runs a BASIC programming language cartidge.

It plays, Defender, PacMan, and Centipede!!!















Here's how they installed memory in the good ol' days. They stuffed a bunch of chips into what looks like an Atari cartridge (for good reason - it's an Atari cartidge) then they plugged it into an Atari cartidge socket. What a great idea!!





I seem to have what they call a later Atari 800 computer. It has 48 kilobytes of RAM memory (yes, I said KILO bytes, not mega or giga, like any real computer today) plus I've never had this so-called 'heating issue' with it. That is, it's never overheated since I've owned it, no matter how long I leave it on, doing something productive. Like calculating long math equations with no end, even though I don't need to know the answer, like they teach in traditional math classes in school. There was some kind of overheating issue with the first Atari 800 computers. They fixed it by the time they pumped out 48 KByte machines.

I have a cartidge of the Defender game. This was one of my favorites when I was a young lad. It still plays on this old, but VINTAGE computer.

I tried to upload a video of this game running, but as usual, I'm having trouble uploading video to blogspot.com even though I can upload to anyone else with no trouble.