Why I returned to ATARI

Quite a few children probably wanted an ATARI computer in the 1990s. To be honest, I have no idea whether I was one of them. Yet one summer, out of nowhere, my brother and I received this beautiful toy, and I think that ever since then I have had a fairly positive relationship with IT, even though my studies never took a technical direction because of my dislike of mathematics.

My parents brought the computer back from a shopping trip to Germany shortly after the borders opened in 1990. My first ATARI was an 800XE, and at the time it smelled beautifully of newness, the West and all those Neckermann catalogues that we used to borrow and admire longingly under the communist regime. The first games loaded very slowly from a classic XC12 cassette recorder. The game I remember most is Arkanoid, in which I got farther than anyone else in our family. Before long, Dad arranged a TURBO 2000 modification for the cassette recorder and the necessary cartridge from JRC. Copying BASIC programs from the user manual gave way to hunting for and playing games. At that time there was also a computer club in our town. Unfortunately I don’t remember whether it operated under Svazarm or whose initiative it was. I have made it my task to map this out and find as much information as possible.

At the computer club we programmed KAREL on PMD machines and glanced into the next room at the colour screens of the seasoned Atarians. Back then, whoever arrived first got to play first. It was a wonderful time of childhood and carefree days. As I got older I discovered the PC, which I bought when I was about 16 or 17. That ended my first ATARI era, because I sold it to a friend, used the money to buy a 4× CD-ROM drive for my PC, and that was effectively the beginning of the PC era.

I was always used to assembling my hardware myself. Only my first AMD586 with 8 MB of RAM was bought from Mironet for about CZK 30,000 😮 using money from my savings insurance. Besides games, I witnessed the arrival of the internet and the legendary visits to the INVEX trade fair in Brno. I used to travel to the local PVT to access the internet, where a PC with a modem was available to the public in the lobby and it cost about CZK 1 per minute. I immediately created an e-mail account at usa.net and web space at xoom.com. At school they thought I was a computer nut. I bought LEVEL and SCORE magazines; Excalibur, if I remember correctly, was more or less coming to an end. Fortunately our mathematics teacher had a soft spot for computers, so I think he also let me scrape through secondary school with threes and fours in maths. While still at school I was already creating websites and programming simple web applications and a content management system in ASP. My brother particularly appreciated this, as it allowed him to pursue his sports-journalism ambitions by writing articles about the local second-division ice hockey club and publishing them on the internet – something he apparently still does to this day.

Many years passed during which I only occasionally thought back to the good old, simple ATARI. Kevin and I in particular would always reminisce about the old days and the computer club in our town whenever we met. The idea of getting an ATARI again gradually started nagging at me. It finally came to a head after Kevin sent me a photo of an ATARI he had just bought on Bazoš.cz. I really wanted one too. For more than ten years I had been putting maximum energy into my work. Apart from my family, I didn’t have any major interest to devote myself to and use to switch off from what was often demanding work. Perhaps returning to ATARI would be the ideal filter for thoughts otherwise constantly grinding away about work. Yes, that’s it, I told myself when the idea finally matured 🙂 First I contacted the person who had bought my original ATARI, but got nowhere. Then came trawling the internet and searching for a good deal. To be honest, 8-bit computers now appear in classified ads only rarely. But gradually I managed to obtain the longed-for series of all the 8-bits; here is my collection.

I have also approached my whole return to ATARI partly from a collector’s point of view. I decided to complete the basic 8-bit line: ATARI 800XL, 800XE, 65XE and 130XE. I am also interested in period ATARI literature, original cartridges with TURBO and various similar relics. I would like to get a floppy drive and printer working, something I regarded in childhood as complete utopia and an unattainable goal. I began taking an interest in the current ATARI scene and the development of new peripherals and upgrades. Although the ATARI company officially went bankrupt in 2013, the community around the brand is, to me, incredibly alive and develops some truly beautiful technical things. I would also like to improve my electronics skills and devote more time to the technical side. Dear ATARI, I’m back 🙂