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On Ataris, PCs and more | ||
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On Ataris, PCs And More:
That's a true fanatic... I begged my mom for a whopping 9,500 East Mark to buy a used 130XE back in 1988, valued at 199 Deutschmarks new at the time. I got my wish and I was the happiest kid on the block - countless nights were spent listening to that 600bps data tape drive loading one of the classic games in under 15 minutes or so. I soon got the hang of it, and with the help of some pirated magazines and books I started programming - Basic, Turbo Basic, Pascal, Forth, and finally in 6502C assembly language. The coolest games at the time came from an underground market in Poland but most programmers there had implemented nasty copy protection tricks on their floppies. So I had found my calling and I actually did manage to figure them out, hacking with hex editors directly on disc sectors. I also enjoyed code optimization tasks, as the 8-bit Ataris were awesome machines using revolutionary graphics chips in their system that were quite finicky about machine cycle usage between horizonatal and vertical display list interrupts so as to not mess up the screen synchronization. As soon as I have some space to store one I will try again to buy another machine... just for fun!
I never really got into the swing of things when it came to programming 16-bit and 32-bit machines. My code-optimizing skills weren't in demand as hardware rapidly became cheaper and bloated software rather than tuned code was the way history went. I did become quite an expert in all sorts of hardware issues, though, and I worked my way through parts of college by building and fixing PCs and peripherals. Not that I am still using these skills a lot but they do come in handy when calling a stupid telephone support person's bluff and actually demanding a real answer from his or her boss.
Networking is a fantastic area to be in for a more experienced guy like myself, as structured and high-level thinking are required in combination with many super-basic issues of general computer knowledge. In fact, I earn my money these days designing and implementing voice, video, data and security networking solutions. It's great to be the infrastructure person in a team - while you rarely get the public accolades when high-visibility projects are completed, it is a very satisfying feeling to know that it all works to a big extent just because of your own work.
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The 800XL had been sold as the "Home Computer of the 1984 Olympic Games" in Los Angeles, so the
130XE had a lot to live up to. The peripherals, such as the XF551 floppy drive and the XC12 datasette,
followed the new design, too.
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