I endured that Atari 400 membrane keyboard for about 6 months, then got a 3rd party keyboard and 48K RAM upgrades. Seeing it again, brought back a bad memories of keying in magazine programs.
I had a really bad day and I just jumped in joy because I forgot it's wednesday and I can relax to 25 minutes of Adrians calm and soft spoken voice. *exhales*
I had an Atari 400. By the time they started selling them in Britain they had improved the spec, mine had 16k RAM and the improved graphics chip that gave you more graphics modes. The big game on the Atari then was Star Raiders. I bought the computer, Star Raiders cartridge, a joystick, cassette drive and probably a cassette game or two. The Basic cartridge was included with the computer. The 400 was designed to be non-expandable but there were memory expansions for it. I had mine expanded to 48k, the shop fitted it for me. They had to do stuff that voided the warranty on the computer but it worked fine and I had enough memory to use an 810 disc drive. I did eventually buy a Commodore 64 because there were a lot more games for it but the Atari has always been my favorite 8 bit computer.
There is a bug in the memory check routines in BASIC 2.0 that reports an extra two bytes installed. The 19967 bytes free shown by the VIC-20 means that you have 19965 bytes free. The paper was written by someone who calculated the free memory, but did not verify what the machine would actually display. Most Atari cartridges were for "Left Cartridge" Only and thus later machines didn't even have the right cartridge slot.
Can you please confirm this with a reliable source? No one speaks of a bug and (3583 bytes free) are everywhere in the documents! 19967 - 16384 = 3583, so the calculation for the cartridge is okay. Did you made that up? The simplest and most likely explanation for the written 19965 is: A TYPO... 1K 0-1023 System RAM (1K used) 3K 1024-4095 empty - 3K RAM expansion area 4K 4096-7679 BASIC program user area (3583 bytes free) 7680-8191 Screen text memory (~0.5K used) 24K 8192-32767 empty - 24K RAM expansion area via en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ACommodore_VIC-20
The 3583 bytes free without the cartridge + 16384 equals 19967 precisely. Do you mean that 16K is added, but BASIC 2.0 needs another 2 bytes perhaps because of the modified memory layout, and therefore it's really back down to 19965?
@@oqibidipo Thank you for the enlightenment. I see 19967 BYTES FREE and then 19965 ... very near together. Why should this be the reason, the manufacturer of the cartridge put that onto it? In my opinion, the claim made above remains just an unproven speculation. Also this obvious behavior (not for me, thanks again) must be well known at the times of the VIC20. Sorry, I don't want to argue about this. There is only one thing to achieve more enlightenment: we have to ask the manufacturer:)
This was the first computer I learned to program on in the early 1980's I will get hold of one one day - sentimental value. It was the machine the put me on the IT course the rest of my life...
The Atari 400 was intended to be released with 4K and the 800 with 8K (hence the names), but falling RAM prices meant they were upgraded to 8K and 16k at release.
Due to the need for worldwide travel and residence, I didn't keep any of my sequence of computers, all of which would have been in mint condition: Heathkit ET-3400A microprocessor trainer (not really a computer, but I learned machine language programming), ZX-80 built from a kit, VIC-20, Atari 400 - heavy modding done professionally by me using NASA/milspec soldering and wiring techniques, Atari 800XL - heavy modding done professionally by me using NASA/milspec soldering and wiring techniques, Atari 1040ST, Commodore PC20 open box special which I bought at an incredible discount, and from that point on all personally built PC systems starting with the AMD AM386-40. I now deeply regret not keeping them all somehow.
Most of what you said comparing the Atari 400 and 800 is correct. Loved the idea of two cartridge ports on the 800 but I only ever saw 1 cartridge that could use the right port. Brings back memories for the 800!
My first computer was an Atari 400. Just seeing that brings back so many memories. The membrane keyboard was a horror to touch type on, but it got the job done. A great game to play on that machine is Star Raiders. That's the one that sold the computer to me.
In the Uk it was Spectrum vs C64 or Spectrum vs BBC or Spectrum vs Amstrad (you get the idea). Atari computers (post VCS) were less common, like Dragon, Oric, Jupiter Ace,. I actually had an 800XL after my spectrum - mainly because my mate had C64 and I didn't want the same. Then moved onto Amigas. I wish I had kept those 8 bit marvels, I sold them in original boxes and all the peripherals. :). Never had disk drives with the 8 bit machines, always tape. My mate had a disk drive with his C64 but i could never afford one for my computers until Amiga. Great nostalgia video.
An Atari 400 was my first computer, bought secondhand in '82 with a 48K RAM upgrade. My fingers still ache from the hundreds of hours of Basic programming I did on that membrane keyboard! I think most commonly you'll find these with 16K RAM as memory cost and availability was rapidly improving during the first couple of years they were produced and sold.
I remember getting the 16K expansion for Christmas 1982 and that dad and I nearly didn't manage to get it plugged in. We thought we'd break something if we pushed any harder. Eventually we got it in though and I thought I have the biggest memory in the world.
This C64 fan desired an Atari 800 for one game only: M.U.L.E. Four joysticks! No more crowding around the keyboard to play with friends, and since it is the original version it has more varied world maps too.
Cool. I never owned an Atari 400/800. I am looking forward to your video on these repairs, We had an Atari VCS and then went to Vic-20 and then C64. I do remember them well and the flame war that existed. Actually the flame war existed between all the various computers, really. I seem to remember a 3rd party made a keyboard that sat on top of the 400 membrane for improving the typing experience. Not sure how well that would work. A family friend worked at Atari in Sunnyvale and he used to bring us home 2600 cartridges when they released. No boxes though, just the cart and the booklet.
Hopefully your family friend - if he's still alive - has participated in the Atari Museum Facebook group. Lots of ex-Atari Inc, Atari Corp, and Atari Coin/Games employees, in fact.
I became a U.S. Navy Tactical Data Systems technician in 1976. I left the Navy in early 1982. I bought an Atari 5200 and loved the analog sticks. I loved Defender and Star Raiders. I bought an Atari 400, to play games and light office type work, i.e., word processing and spreadsheets. I eventually bought several subsequent Atari models, including the 130 XE.
Finally some Atari computer stuff! :) Most of the classic 2600 games had 8-bit computer ports and these were usually much, much better than the 2600 ones... Also try Star Raiders as well as Donkey Kong, the best version besides the original Arcade...
It wasn't just the heavy aluminum RF shielding that made the Atari 800 expensive. Internally, it has multi-board construction, which adds up to a lot of additional, relatively expensive components and additional operations to assemble the machine.
The keyboard connector in the 400 follows the same cross matrix as modern keyboard. I have the wiring of the keyboard connector in my RELIC collection. I am handicapped now so I can't get to the basement easily to retrieve it. There is so much to know on the Atari! IF you find a RIGHT cartridge for the Atari pick it up - there were only a few. I expanded the 400 memory to 48k with a kit long ago when I added the wired keyboard. I added a 40 pin telephone connector to the side of the 400 so I could remove it. I used that membrane KB to type minutes for meetings, budget with VisiCalc., Its an art but you can make the membrane keyboard work well. The 400 was all I could afford, so I upgraded it as I could. Trying times makes resourceful people, generally.
Here is the lowdown on the Atari 800 and FCC mandated RF shielding. As far as I know Sears didn’t care how well the home computers they sold meet new FCC mandated RF but the FCC sure did. This meant that many companies getting into the home/micro computer business back in the late 70s and early 80’s had to design or in some cases redesign their computers to meet the new very strict standard for RF emission if they were going to support RF output to a TV (Computers that only used composite out or some other video outpost standard other then RF have less strict rules about shielding. This got Tandy in trouble with it’s original TRS-80 released in 1977 which was completely unshielded, forcing them to redesign the TRS-80 shortly after release to be RF shielded. Thus if you have the first models of the TRS-80 you have no RF shielding but later models do. Since the TRS-80 used a composite output for use with composite monitors such as a Tandy model sold specifically for the TRS-80 I believe the rules where a bit more lax making this redesign a bit easier. The Commodore Pet, released the same year benefited from it being a all-in-one design with a built-in composite monitor that made shielding much less of an issue vs computers require a external RF cable to a TV. Apparently, having a RF modulator that outputted to a RF cable to a TV caused a lot more RF interference vs composite output which meant cheaper home/micro computers relying on RF output to TV only to shield their machines to a greater degree. The Atari 400 and 800 were also where being designed when the new rule went into effect so they both had to be redesigned to comply and I think Atari just decided to sort of go overboard with the more expensive Atari 800 since it wasn’t going to be the budget model. One major issue the FCC new ruling caused was it became difficult to have any sizable holes in the Atari 800’s case which eliminated expansion slots or cards that communicated with the outside paripherals via their own connectors. That’s why the Atari has the Serial Input/Output (SIO) computer bus, a daisy-chainable system that allowed multiple, auto-configuring devices to connect to the computer through a single shielded connector. I believe later home/micro computers that used RF output as the main or one option for video out benefited from a) a change in the rules and b) new designing for the RF modulator that moved into outside of the computer’s main unit/case thus eliminating the need for such high level RF shielding in the case. One advantage of the heavy faraday cage in the Atari 800 is the computer is very sturdy as I am sure you can tell.
As a kid, I had an Atari 400. I spent so much time programming and gaming on it. I had pretty major oral surgery, and my mom surprised me with an 800xl while i was recovering... i still thank her for that to this day.
I was given a choice between getting an Atari 400 or a Vic-20 (couldn't afford the 800... except I could have... nevermind) I chose... poorly. (shoulda saved up for the 800 or waited a few months for a C64).
🤔 My first was a PET, then an Atari 400 with a keyboard upgrade and an Indus drive, after that investment my only choice was to get an Atari 130xe. My timing was off too 😔 I etched my own PCB and used the Radio Shack speech chips and gave it and the 400 to a handicapped child.
My family had an 800 when I was growing up: between a TS1000 before, and an original Mac after. Miner2049er is a classic game I played a lot. PacMan by itself was worth the price of an Atari. Now, it's not software, but if you can find the Indus GT floppy drive, it's insanely cool. We had one, it was superb.
I bought a 400 in the pennysaver when I was in high school. I spent a lot of time playing Star Raiders on that rig. I think it ended up on eBay around 1999. Good times!
That vic 20 that you're using the RAM pack with is not a German vic because it says vic-20 and that's a rude word in Germany.. they released the vc 20 for the German Market....fab video mate... All the best from the UK xx
He might have gotten it from a German viewer though. May be Adrian should check the label at the back or open it to see where it was manufactured. I'd be surprised if it was Germany. On the other hand that plant in Germany might also have made VIC-20s for European countries other than Germany. Was just watching the German Jan Beta restoring a Commodore MPS-801 and using a Commodore VC-20 (label clearly showed "VC-20, not VIC-20) to test it.
I wonder if they have some sort of built in power supply to convert AC to DC, ala Acorn Electron? The Electron nominally runs on 19VAC, but can run on anything from 12V-19.5VDC without any hassle (although 12VDC requires at least 1.5A for best results).
@@OzRetrocomp Yep. 9VAC provides +5 / -5 / +12 via a some multiplier circuits and some linear regulators (hot). www.atarimania.com/documents/Atari_400_800_Field_Service_Manual_June_82.pdf - Page 47.
Just to correct a misapprehension, you could not leave the BASIC cartridge plugged into the 800 and put game carts in the right slot. The left slot was the only one the OS would check on boot-up, so if you left the BASIC cart plugged in, it would always boot to BASIC. Game carts always had to go in the left slot, otherwise they would simply be ignored. To boot machine code software from tape or disk, the left slot had to be empty. The right slot was almost completely unused. A very few utility carts made use of it, and they were nearly always things associated with cracking software copy protection, even though that's not what they were designed for.
If an Assembler Editor cartridge is run in the left slot while a pre-1983 game cart is in the right slot the assembly program for the game can be displayed. It worked for Centipede.
My old teenage self would have loved using a such a painfully obvious vulnerability to hardware hack and P̶i̶r̶a̶t̶e̶ backup games! ❤️ The concept still tickles me. "Gee, what can we do with this extra port, me hearties!" 🏴☠️
The left slot was for general purpose carts, games and productivity apps, and the right slot was for utility carts, like Monkey Wrench which adds more functionality to Atari Basic. I do remember a home brew 80 column cart that used the right slot and an expansion card. Pretty neat and very sad as it was practically useless to the average user.
I absolutely love seeing Rammy. Every time I see him I laugh thinking "I did that, I sent that Ram and now it lives on the internet". I'm such a mature adult. Adrian Black is definitely the highlight of my week.
Thanks for the great video, Adrian! Having a bunch of Atari 8-bit machines I faced the problem of finding SIO cables needed to connect my 1050 drive and SDrive emulator. Finally I found a local "lifehack": old Soviet/Russian GRPM-series sockets (ГРПМ1/ГРПМ2) have exact the same pattern and pitch as original SIO connectors and can be simply adapted with some saw/file work. They are still kinda available here as a "new old stock" (maybe even still produced as a spare parts for some military applications).
Maybe that's why the Soviets were so fond of Atari 8-bit computers back then. Epyx learned the Soviet embassy - and consulates - in the States used Atari 8-bits at the time of the 1984 Summer Olympics.
My friend had an Atari 400 which they’d been given for consumer testing and I remember being completely blown away by Star Raiders. It’s probably not stood there test of time but it was amazing for that era.
An Atari 400 or 800 is my third most wanted retro computer after the X68K and Falcon. The most impressive 8 bit Atari games I've seen are Yoomp! (which honestly looks more like an ST or Amiga game) and the Space Harrier port - both of which didn't get released until the 2000s.
I love the look of the Atari 400, try and save them both, it would be a shame to not get it working. Keep up the great work! Hope to see a repairathon soon.
If you want a little project to do, the plot, color, and sound functionality in Atari BASIC was pretty cool. You can do simple 20 odd line programs where you do a nested loop and draw lines in the X Y plane and vary color, hue, intensity etc .... The GTIA chip was quite capable and supported very well in Atari BASIC. I used to apply the new things I'd learn in my Geometry class at Hurst Jr High School, Hurst Tx, and use the graphics functions to do those new things I learned in middle school geometry. I also used to transcribe down altitude and downrange callouts during Space Shuttle launches and graph those.
Loved seeing the Atari 400! That was my second computer after a Timex/Sinclair ZX81. I had a keyboard that replaced the membrane one and gave real keys, not as good as the 800 though. My pride and joy when I was a kid with my 400 was my Indus GT black disk drive. I actually used my 400 to do a lot of programming in the early to mid 80's, but played a lot of games on it too! I remember flipping over Defender, which I had on a cartridge back then. I sure do wish more people did Atari based retro stuff. I still have my TT030 from the early 90s in a box somewhere. I even had an add on graphics card for the TT030. It was a POWERHOUSE back then. Thanks for the videos and the memories that you awakened of my own 400 :) Cheers from California!
Apparently Atari marketed that membrane keyboard as being child proof or spill proof. It was actually a selling point. The lack of physical keys made it unlikely for kids to break or damage it. And if they spilled or messed on it in some way, you could just wipe it off. I'm curious to see what it's like to type on it... But there's no need torture yourself and type an entire page on that thing!
In the UK, many Atari 400s were upgraded to 48k. It was a pretty common mod, since buying a 400 and getting it upgraded to 48k was significantly cheaper than buying a 48k 800.
They are a bit before my time but never seen an atari 8 bit in the wild in UK other than 2600 - remember seeing c64, zx spec, 380z, 480z, Bbcs and even a c16. Apart from the 2600, did many people have them?
@@mattsword41 yeah, i don't really remember many people owning them, but I definately saw them in shops at the time, and in the catalogues. I reckon the most popular would have been some of the later, cheaper ones, like the 65xe. but mostly it was spectrums, c64s and amstrad cpc464s, BBC Bs (mostly at school), Acorn Electrons (and very very rarely the Toshiba HX-10 MSX)
I think the 800 has key switches versus the mylar membrane on the 800XL. The Pokey chip controls the sound, paddles I/O, and the keyboard. If the key switches registers, look towards the Pokey chip for any other keyboard issues.
The Atari 400 keyboard was membrane to make it water proof because of its target market being small children. Bad, for typing, but good for spill proofing on a budget.
I remember once when we were kids, my friend had one of those. We spent hours and hours typing in a program from a magazine on that awful keyboard, we were nearly done, but we had to leave the computer to eat dinner, so we saved the program to tape. Then we ate dinner and his dad turned off the computer. We though we were okay because we had saved it, but it wouldn't reload it from tape, just got and error part way through. We were bummed.
How many dads throughout the ages have turned off computers and video game consoles when you needed to keep the RAM alive for various reasons..... (I’ve even known one who would leave the TV on all day but kept trying to turn off a fan I had going bc it was hot!) It’s probably the same ones who always turn the thermostat down too :D
Pretty cool to see both 400 and 800 side-by-side, always loved their futuristic, angled shapes. Still happy though I got the more advanced 800XL+floppy-drive at the time. Looking forward very much to the check & repair-video, take care :-)
I still have my childhood 400 :D a few years back I picked up an Atari 800, but it appears to have a bad GTIA so need to source one somewhere. For example MS. Pac-Man, Character sprites are huge while the maze is normal.
I had one of these Atari 400 systems as a kid. Wanting a C64 to match what we had in school but got this. One Ms. Pac-Man cart, One Tape Drive, One Hangman tape card, One joystick. That was it. To this day I can spend hours playing Ms. Pac-Man as I played it for a long time as a kid. We were never in the position to get more carts, or anything for it since money was tight. But today I would just buy the 800 as I hated the 400 keyboard.
Same here except I got a Star Raiders and a Defender cartridge. They were extremely expensive for the time in Germany! I played these two games to death and was off the score scale in Star Raiders (it's possible because the score is calculated based on a formula) and could play Defender infinitely. Attack wave 88, I believe, is special: You only get these spinners that leave a "mine trail" as enemies... ;-)
I remember spending 1/2 a day typing in a game from a magazine on a 400. I was so excited when it worked, I forgot to save it to tape and was absolutely dejected after I turned it off and then realized what I had done.
Fun fact about the crumpled disk: actually here some "Proto-Indie" (Indie before the word became cool) companies just added a leaflet to their shink-wrapped, newsstand sold floppies that advised you to bang, twist and straighten bent floppies before sending them over for replacement. I always wondered with what results :) Nice video, by the way :)
The slot in the 400 is the same as the left in the 800. And it can run all 800 software, except the few programs that actually required 2 cartridges in at once. But I do not think there were only a couple of those. And the thick aluminum was also a heatsink. The metal would get incredibly hot after a while. And the stickers in the 800 are contemporary. Warner owned Atari from 1976 to mid-1984. So still having WB badges on a unit sold in 1985 would be common. I think they used them until replaced by the XL in 1985. And finally, for software, Star Raiders.
The Atari 400 and it´s disc drive are so much the aesthetics from the original "Alien" movie. I was just waiting for him to type "What´s the story, mother?" :)
RE keyboard form factors - time sharing terminals were still relatively fresh in the late 70s, with most computing even at large universities done in batch mode - use a keypunch to create a punched card deck and submit your program at the I/O window, a literal window staffed by a CS troll/grad student. Serial terminals when found had big, blocky keyboards like this Atari 800 or the C64. Like keypunch machines, they were made to "take a lickin and keep on tickin'". The IBM model M keyboard was a huge, elegant change to this semi-brutalist industrial design.
If you can get your hands on original disks for the Atari(s) (Atarii?) awesome, otherwise just get/build yourself an S Drive Max. An absolutely brilliant device.
First computer i had when i was 5 years old i remember the keyboard was dredfull lol, Then had the 800xl a pretty nice upgrade kept that till i bought a master system.
The 400's keyboard is bad but nowhere near as bad as the ZX Spectrum. When typing on it, it is very sensitive and detects the presses pretty easily. At least my two 400's do. So you don't have to mash the key all the way down for it to register.
I'm also looking forward to seeing these repaired. I have to give a shoutout to Ms Mad Lemon. If you're an 800 fan, she has a nice series you might like. Start with her 'Atari 800 Exploration & Computer talk'. It's a 20 minute love letter to old tech.
that atari 400 and the external floppy drive where given to me when I was a kid and it brought a ton of good gaming times and memories...but among my friends at that time the drive was given the name of the "screaming eagle", cause if would shrek every time it would read a bad sector or a bad floppy disk...good times...LOL!!!!
Also so hello from the UK...I can't remember any one in my family ever buying a pre-built pc, ever since I was young I built pretty much all of our pc's apart from one...But I fixed that one a couple of years later. It wasn't the best pc but we got the most out of it.
The 6502 has an addressing mode that uses a pair of bytes in the first 256 bytes of memory (the zero page) as a pointer to anywhere in memory (known as indirect indexed addressing, as it adds the Y index register to the pointer value, not to be confused with indexed indirect addressing which adds the X index register to the base address to locate the address the pointer is at). This is an ideal way to go about accessing the mobile video memory in both VIC-20 (caused by automatic memory map rearrangement as the memory is expanded) or the configurable video memory location in the Commodore 64 and Commodore 128.
The Atari 400 shipped with 16K standard, at least here in the UK. The keyboard wasn't as bad as many claimed because of the ridges around each key. I wrote 1000s of lines of code on my Atari 400 without too many problems (I'm not a superfast typist) but the keyboard on the 800xl that replaced it was much better!!
In the UK there was always the argument of which was better between the Atari or Commodore machines, but over here it started with the Amiga 500 and Atari ST. Atari in the UK had a really small user base during the 8 bit era with most of the market being split between the C64 and Sinclair Spectrum. There were other machines on the market, but their sales were tiny in comparison, this was the BBC line of computers which was mostly sold to schools and Acorn computers such as the Electron and later Archemedes. As such, we didn't get the 'video games crash' that people from the USA always seem to go on about.
Defender is great on these old Atari's BTW, love to POKEY sound FX. Also Adrian, keep us posted on the 800 keyboard fix please, I've an 800XL with the exact same problem.
The Atari 1200XL introduced the error where chroma and luma were tied together, followed by a lot, though not all 800XLs. The later ones had the error in the circuit board corrected. The 600XL doesn’t have a composite output, but has the capability on the board - you just have to solder in the appropriate electronics and DIN connector. It too has the chroma - luma error.
Was that Rammy picture inspired by the dream sequence from the Father Ted episode "A Song For Europe"? :D Now I have "My Lovely Horse" stuck in my head!
The heavy heavy shielding on the Atari's vs the lighter on the Vic and C64 was due to the FCC changing the rules between the time the 400/800 were developed vs the Vic20. The requirements got a lot lighter in 81 IIRC, which was one of the reasons why Atari did the cost reduction 800xl - they were able to cut a huge amount of expense out by being able to eliminate a lot of the shielding...
Texas Instruments is the reason why the FCC rules changed. They lobbied for those changes and their congressional district rep was the Speaker of the House. That's after Atari tricked them into trying to roll out a fiber optic based cable connector and adapter to connect to TVs with the original TI-99 and the FCC gave them major grief. Atari tricked them because they knew their TI parts rep was telling the TI internal home computer team everything the Atari guys were telling him so they deliberately told the TI rep they were working on fiber optic cabling solutions. The moral of the story was Atari Inc learned it was cheaper to lobby Congress to thwart the FCC than it was to comply with every single whim of the FCC [which had led to the expensive RF shielding in the 400/800]. And that industrial espionage in the home computer and video game industries were a real thing back in the 1970s.
On an 800 I bought from Ebay, everything seemed to work on first power-up except for the keyboard. Trouble-shooting revealed that something was clobbering the data bus. Both the Pokey and 6520 PIA chips are on that bus. When I removed the 6520 the keyboard worked properly. I had some Western Design Center W65C21’s in my inventory. According to the data-sheet the W65C21 is a direct replacement for the 6520 and several other PIA part numbers. See the “Features” section on page 3 of the WDC data-sheet. The 800 has worked perfectly ever since I replaced the defective 6520 with a new W65C21 that I had purchased from Mousers.
It will be a sad day when Adrian is no longer amazed by the number of mid-week mini mail calls.
I endured that Atari 400 membrane keyboard for about 6 months, then got a 3rd party keyboard and 48K RAM upgrades. Seeing it again, brought back a bad memories of keying in magazine programs.
I had a really bad day and I just jumped in joy because I forgot it's wednesday and I can relax to 25 minutes of Adrians calm and soft spoken voice. *exhales*
Same, I had a crap day at work. Sat down to decompress and Adrian is here to cheer me up. Then I got to schedule my first vaccine shot!
Same. I'll be bummed when he stops. I guess next week. :/
@BumbleBee I do. I had enough bad days to get their point. They can stop now.
I had an Atari 400. By the time they started selling them in Britain they had improved the spec, mine had 16k RAM and the improved graphics chip that gave you more graphics modes. The big game on the Atari then was Star Raiders. I bought the computer, Star Raiders cartridge, a joystick, cassette drive and probably a cassette game or two. The Basic cartridge was included with the computer. The 400 was designed to be non-expandable but there were memory expansions for it. I had mine expanded to 48k, the shop fitted it for me. They had to do stuff that voided the warranty on the computer but it worked fine and I had enough memory to use an 810 disc drive. I did eventually buy a Commodore 64 because there were a lot more games for it but the Atari has always been my favorite 8 bit computer.
There is a bug in the memory check routines in BASIC 2.0 that reports an extra two bytes installed. The 19967 bytes free shown by the VIC-20 means that you have 19965 bytes free. The paper was written by someone who calculated the free memory, but did not verify what the machine would actually display. Most Atari cartridges were for "Left Cartridge" Only and thus later machines didn't even have the right cartridge slot.
As far as I remember, the only "Right Cartridge" carts were assembler/debugger carts...maybe 1 or 2 other programming carts.
Can you please confirm this with a reliable source? No one speaks of a bug and (3583 bytes free) are everywhere in the documents!
19967 - 16384 = 3583, so the calculation for the cartridge is okay. Did you made that up? The simplest and most likely explanation for the written 19965 is: A TYPO...
1K 0-1023 System RAM (1K used)
3K 1024-4095 empty - 3K RAM expansion area
4K 4096-7679 BASIC program user area (3583 bytes free)
7680-8191 Screen text memory (~0.5K used)
24K 8192-32767 empty - 24K RAM expansion area
via en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ACommodore_VIC-20
The 3583 bytes free without the cartridge + 16384 equals 19967 precisely. Do you mean that 16K is added, but BASIC 2.0 needs another 2 bytes perhaps because of the modified memory layout, and therefore it's really back down to 19965?
The "xxxx BYTES FREE" message shows 2 bytes more than what the FRE() function returns.
Unexpanded VIC-20:
**** CBM BASIC V2 ****
3583 BYTES FREE
READY.
PRINT FRE(0)
3581
READY.
With 16 KiB expansion:
**** CBM BASIC V2 ****
19967 BYTES FREE
READY.
PRINT FRE(0)
19965
READY.
@@oqibidipo Thank you for the enlightenment. I see 19967 BYTES FREE and then 19965 ... very near together.
Why should this be the reason, the manufacturer of the cartridge put that onto it?
In my opinion, the claim made above remains just an unproven speculation. Also this obvious behavior (not for me, thanks again) must be well known at the times of the VIC20.
Sorry, I don't want to argue about this. There is only one thing to achieve more enlightenment: we have to ask the manufacturer:)
This was the first computer I learned to program on in the early 1980's
I will get hold of one one day - sentimental value. It was the machine the put me on the IT course the rest of my life...
Ditto. Changed the course of my life.
The Atari 400 was intended to be released with 4K and the 800 with 8K (hence the names), but falling RAM prices meant they were upgraded to 8K and 16k at release.
My first computer was an Atari 400 with BASIC and Centipede cartridges :)
Due to the need for worldwide travel and residence, I didn't keep any of my sequence of computers, all of which would have been in mint condition: Heathkit ET-3400A microprocessor trainer (not really a computer, but I learned machine language programming), ZX-80 built from a kit, VIC-20, Atari 400 - heavy modding done professionally by me using NASA/milspec soldering and wiring techniques, Atari 800XL - heavy modding done professionally by me using NASA/milspec soldering and wiring techniques, Atari 1040ST, Commodore PC20 open box special which I bought at an incredible discount, and from that point on all personally built PC systems starting with the AMD AM386-40. I now deeply regret not keeping them all somehow.
Most of what you said comparing the Atari 400 and 800 is correct. Loved the idea of two cartridge ports on the 800 but I only ever saw 1 cartridge that could use the right port. Brings back memories for the 800!
My first computer was an Atari 400. Just seeing that brings back so many memories. The membrane keyboard was a horror to touch type on, but it got the job done. A great game to play on that machine is Star Raiders. That's the one that sold the computer to me.
In the Uk it was Spectrum vs C64 or Spectrum vs BBC or Spectrum vs Amstrad (you get the idea). Atari computers (post VCS) were less common, like Dragon, Oric, Jupiter Ace,. I actually had an 800XL after my spectrum - mainly because my mate had C64 and I didn't want the same. Then moved onto Amigas. I wish I had kept those 8 bit marvels, I sold them in original boxes and all the peripherals. :). Never had disk drives with the 8 bit machines, always tape. My mate had a disk drive with his C64 but i could never afford one for my computers until Amiga. Great nostalgia video.
An Atari 400 was my first computer, bought secondhand in '82 with a 48K RAM upgrade. My fingers still ache from the hundreds of hours of Basic programming I did on that membrane keyboard! I think most commonly you'll find these with 16K RAM as memory cost and availability was rapidly improving during the first couple of years they were produced and sold.
Can't wait for the Atari repair video :)
I remember getting the 16K expansion for Christmas 1982 and that dad and I nearly didn't manage to get it plugged in. We thought we'd break something if we pushed any harder. Eventually we got it in though and I thought I have the biggest memory in the world.
This C64 fan desired an Atari 800 for one game only: M.U.L.E. Four joysticks! No more crowding around the keyboard to play with friends, and since it is the original version it has more varied world maps too.
When Adrian says “try and keep these videos shorter”.
Me 😭😭😭
IM STILL WAITING FOR A MID WEEK MEGA MAIL CALL FROM HIS BACKLOG THATS 3 HOURS LONG!!!
Cool. I never owned an Atari 400/800. I am looking forward to your video on these repairs,
We had an Atari VCS and then went to Vic-20 and then C64. I do remember them well and the flame war that existed. Actually the flame war existed between all the various computers, really. I seem to remember a 3rd party made a keyboard that sat on top of the 400 membrane for improving the typing experience. Not sure how well that would work. A family friend worked at Atari in Sunnyvale and he used to bring us home 2600 cartridges when they released. No boxes though, just the cart and the booklet.
Hopefully your family friend - if he's still alive - has participated in the Atari Museum Facebook group. Lots of ex-Atari Inc, Atari Corp, and Atari Coin/Games employees, in fact.
I became a U.S. Navy Tactical Data Systems technician in 1976. I left the Navy in early 1982. I bought an Atari 5200 and loved the analog sticks. I loved Defender and Star Raiders. I bought an Atari 400, to play games and light office type work, i.e., word processing and spreadsheets. I eventually bought several subsequent Atari models, including the 130 XE.
Finally some Atari computer stuff! :) Most of the classic 2600 games had 8-bit computer ports and these were usually much, much better than the 2600 ones... Also try Star Raiders as well as Donkey Kong, the best version besides the original Arcade...
@ 19:22 wow.... you gota love that soft eject... And the shine of the keys.. @ 19:10 I understand how he has it beside him as he watches TV...
It wasn't just the heavy aluminum RF shielding that made the Atari 800 expensive. Internally, it has multi-board construction, which adds up to a lot of additional, relatively expensive components and additional operations to assemble the machine.
The keyboard connector in the 400 follows the same cross matrix as modern keyboard. I have the wiring of the keyboard connector in my RELIC collection. I am handicapped now so I can't get to the basement easily to retrieve it. There is so much to know on the Atari! IF you find a RIGHT cartridge for the Atari pick it up - there were only a few. I expanded the 400 memory to 48k with a kit long ago when I added the wired keyboard. I added a 40 pin telephone connector to the side of the 400 so I could remove it. I used that membrane KB to type minutes for meetings, budget with VisiCalc., Its an art but you can make the membrane keyboard work well. The 400 was all I could afford, so I upgraded it as I could. Trying times makes resourceful people, generally.
Here is the lowdown on the Atari 800 and FCC mandated RF shielding. As far as I know Sears didn’t care how well the home computers they sold meet new FCC mandated RF but the FCC sure did. This meant that many companies getting into the home/micro computer business back in the late 70s and early 80’s had to design or in some cases redesign their computers to meet the new very strict standard for RF emission if they were going to support RF output to a TV (Computers that only used composite out or some other video outpost standard other then RF have less strict rules about shielding. This got Tandy in trouble with it’s original TRS-80 released in 1977 which was completely unshielded, forcing them to redesign the TRS-80 shortly after release to be RF shielded. Thus if you have the first models of the TRS-80 you have no RF shielding but later models do. Since the TRS-80 used a composite output for use with composite monitors such as a Tandy model sold specifically for the TRS-80 I believe the rules where a bit more lax making this redesign a bit easier. The Commodore Pet, released the same year benefited from it being a all-in-one design with a built-in composite monitor that made shielding much less of an issue vs computers require a external RF cable to a TV. Apparently, having a RF modulator that outputted to a RF cable to a TV caused a lot more RF interference vs composite output which meant cheaper home/micro computers relying on RF output to TV only to shield their machines to a greater degree. The Atari 400 and 800 were also where being designed when the new rule went into effect so they both had to be redesigned to comply and I think Atari just decided to sort of go overboard with the more expensive Atari 800 since it wasn’t going to be the budget model. One major issue the FCC new ruling caused was it became difficult to have any sizable holes in the Atari 800’s case which eliminated expansion slots or cards that communicated with the outside paripherals via their own connectors. That’s why the Atari has the Serial Input/Output (SIO) computer bus, a daisy-chainable system that allowed multiple, auto-configuring devices to connect to the computer through a single shielded connector. I believe later home/micro computers that used RF output as the main or one option for video out benefited from a) a change in the rules and b) new designing for the RF modulator that moved into outside of the computer’s main unit/case thus eliminating the need for such high level RF shielding in the case.
One advantage of the heavy faraday cage in the Atari 800 is the computer is very sturdy as I am sure you can tell.
I miss the days when I had my Atari 400, then later, the 800. Those were good years.
Average joe you are lucky you had one my co worker who was born in the 70s had a Atari 400 he said it was expensive at the time 🙃
As a kid, I had an Atari 400. I spent so much time programming and gaming on it. I had pretty major oral surgery, and my mom surprised me with an 800xl while i was recovering... i still thank her for that to this day.
I was given a choice between getting an Atari 400 or a Vic-20 (couldn't afford the 800... except I could have... nevermind)
I chose... poorly. (shoulda saved up for the 800 or waited a few months for a C64).
🤔 My first was a PET, then an Atari 400 with a keyboard upgrade and an Indus drive, after that investment my only choice was to get an Atari 130xe. My timing was off too 😔
I etched my own PCB and used the Radio Shack speech chips and gave it and the 400 to a handicapped child.
Then why didn't you keep them?
"Hi, I'm an electrical engineer, I've been working since 1983".
Adrian: "Well, that kinda sucks.." 😂😂😂
Not sure why, probably in his late 50s maybe.
Your Atari 800 is soooo nice! I'm a child of the win95 era and just getting into STs, but I definitely want an atari 8-bit
My family had an 800 when I was growing up: between a TS1000 before, and an original Mac after. Miner2049er is a classic game I played a lot. PacMan by itself was worth the price of an Atari.
Now, it's not software, but if you can find the Indus GT floppy drive, it's insanely cool. We had one, it was superb.
Hi from another native Oregonian computer nerd :) - While I like the mid-week mail calls, I really love your repair & recondition videos the best!
I love seeing old Atari computers, a local public library had an Atari 800 and I remember playing Captain Beeble for hours there as a kid
I bought a 400 in the pennysaver when I was in high school. I spent a lot of time playing Star Raiders on that rig. I think it ended up on eBay around 1999. Good times!
That vic 20 that you're using the RAM pack with is not a German vic because it says vic-20 and that's a rude word in Germany.. they released the vc 20 for the German Market....fab video mate... All the best from the UK xx
He might have gotten it from a German viewer though. May be Adrian should check the label at the back or open it to see where it was manufactured. I'd be surprised if it was Germany. On the other hand that plant in Germany might also have made VIC-20s for European countries other than Germany.
Was just watching the German Jan Beta restoring a Commodore MPS-801 and using a Commodore VC-20 (label clearly showed "VC-20, not VIC-20) to test it.
That Atari disk drive DWARFS the Atari 400!
Yes, and it had quite low capacity...
You have to play Star Raiders, it was the "killer app" in the early days of the Atari.
The membrane keyboard on the Atari 400 was also meant to be spill proof to be more 'child-use friendly' compared to the 800.
The Atari 400, 800, and 810 disk drive all run on 9 volts AC, not DC.
I wonder if they have some sort of built in power supply to convert AC to DC, ala Acorn Electron? The Electron nominally runs on 19VAC, but can run on anything from 12V-19.5VDC without any hassle (although 12VDC requires at least 1.5A for best results).
@@OzRetrocomp Yep. 9VAC provides +5 / -5 / +12 via a some multiplier circuits and some linear regulators (hot).
www.atarimania.com/documents/Atari_400_800_Field_Service_Manual_June_82.pdf - Page 47.
Just to correct a misapprehension, you could not leave the BASIC cartridge plugged into the 800 and put game carts in the right slot. The left slot was the only one the OS would check on boot-up, so if you left the BASIC cart plugged in, it would always boot to BASIC. Game carts always had to go in the left slot, otherwise they would simply be ignored. To boot machine code software from tape or disk, the left slot had to be empty.
The right slot was almost completely unused. A very few utility carts made use of it, and they were nearly always things associated with cracking software copy protection, even though that's not what they were designed for.
If an Assembler Editor cartridge is run in the left slot while a pre-1983 game cart is in the right slot the assembly program for the game can be displayed. It worked for Centipede.
My old teenage self would have loved using a such a painfully obvious vulnerability to hardware hack and P̶i̶r̶a̶t̶e̶ backup games! ❤️ The concept still tickles me. "Gee, what can we do with this extra port, me hearties!" 🏴☠️
I believe the sound chip is responsible for some I/O. I used to have an 800 and a 400 actually. The 800 was my favorite Atari computer.
The left slot was for general purpose carts, games and productivity apps, and the right slot was for utility carts, like Monkey Wrench which adds more functionality to Atari Basic. I do remember a home brew 80 column cart that used the right slot and an expansion card. Pretty neat and very sad as it was practically useless to the average user.
Love the content and work you do. I vote for more Atari!
I absolutely love seeing Rammy. Every time I see him I laugh thinking "I did that, I sent that Ram and now it lives on the internet". I'm such a mature adult.
Adrian Black is definitely the highlight of my week.
Nearly at that 100k subs mark....
Thanks for the great video, Adrian! Having a bunch of Atari 8-bit machines I faced the problem of finding SIO cables needed to connect my 1050 drive and SDrive emulator. Finally I found a local "lifehack": old Soviet/Russian GRPM-series sockets (ГРПМ1/ГРПМ2) have exact the same pattern and pitch as original SIO connectors and can be simply adapted with some saw/file work. They are still kinda available here as a "new old stock" (maybe even still produced as a spare parts for some military applications).
Maybe that's why the Soviets were so fond of Atari 8-bit computers back then. Epyx learned the Soviet embassy - and consulates - in the States used Atari 8-bits at the time of the 1984 Summer Olympics.
My friend had an Atari 400 which they’d been given for consumer testing and I remember being completely blown away by Star Raiders. It’s probably not stood there test of time but it was amazing for that era.
An Atari 400 or 800 is my third most wanted retro computer after the X68K and Falcon. The most impressive 8 bit Atari games I've seen are Yoomp! (which honestly looks more like an ST or Amiga game) and the Space Harrier port - both of which didn't get released until the 2000s.
I love the look of the Atari 400, try and save them both, it would be a shame to not get it working. Keep up the great work! Hope to see a repairathon soon.
If you want a little project to do, the plot, color, and sound functionality in Atari BASIC was pretty cool. You can do simple 20 odd line programs where you do a nested loop and draw lines in the X Y plane and vary color, hue, intensity etc .... The GTIA chip was quite capable and supported very well in Atari BASIC. I used to apply the new things I'd learn in my Geometry class at Hurst Jr High School, Hurst Tx, and use the graphics functions to do those new things I learned in middle school geometry. I also used to transcribe down altitude and downrange callouts during Space Shuttle launches and graph those.
Yes, it was slow but worked out of the box. That was a clear advantage at the time.
His Atari 400 and 800 might only have the original CTIA graphics chip in them instead of the later GTIA.
I love your channel, Adrian. Great new find!!! Pitty I hadn't found it earlier. Anyhoo, many hours of wonderful videos to watch!!!
SNIFF! Ah! That new cartridge smell.
Loved seeing the Atari 400! That was my second computer after a Timex/Sinclair ZX81. I had a keyboard that replaced the membrane one and gave real keys, not as good as the 800 though. My pride and joy when I was a kid with my 400 was my Indus GT black disk drive. I actually used my 400 to do a lot of programming in the early to mid 80's, but played a lot of games on it too! I remember flipping over Defender, which I had on a cartridge back then. I sure do wish more people did Atari based retro stuff. I still have my TT030 from the early 90s in a box somewhere. I even had an add on graphics card for the TT030. It was a POWERHOUSE back then. Thanks for the videos and the memories that you awakened of my own 400 :) Cheers from California!
Atari 400 was totally awesome back in the day. They were so late 70’s design-wise.
Apparently Atari marketed that membrane keyboard as being child proof or spill proof. It was actually a selling point.
The lack of physical keys made it unlikely for kids to break or damage it. And if they spilled or messed on it in some way, you could just wipe it off.
I'm curious to see what it's like to type on it... But there's no need torture yourself and type an entire page on that thing!
Good to see Atari content :). Indeed 800XL required chroma/Luma mod. XE series got that built-in.
Awwwwwwwww yeah!!!!!! Some sweet Atari action, coming soon!!!! I love me some Atari 8-bit computer! Thanks so much for sharing with us!
In the UK, many Atari 400s were upgraded to 48k. It was a pretty common mod, since buying a 400 and getting it upgraded to 48k was significantly cheaper than buying a 48k 800.
Was it an add in PCB soldered to various points on the board or was there an official upgrade path?
They are a bit before my time but never seen an atari 8 bit in the wild in UK other than 2600 - remember seeing c64, zx spec, 380z, 480z, Bbcs and even a c16. Apart from the 2600, did many people have them?
There was also a "real" keyboard upgrade available from a 3rd party.
@@adriansdigitalbasement I had the upgrade done at a tv repair shop... so i think some soldering was involved.
@@mattsword41 yeah, i don't really remember many people owning them, but I definately saw them in shops at the time, and in the catalogues. I reckon the most popular would have been some of the later, cheaper ones, like the 65xe. but mostly it was spectrums, c64s and amstrad cpc464s, BBC Bs (mostly at school), Acorn Electrons (and very very rarely the Toshiba HX-10 MSX)
I wrote a LOT of basic on that keyboard. It was horrible, but 13 year old boys will work with anything.
thumbs up from a 12 year old ZX81 user and coder :)
@@TheSudsy Yes, thumbs up from me too. I started coding on a ZX81 on my 14th birthday! I then moved from a ZX81... to an Atari 400. 😁
"I can add more bites to that Ram cartridge if you'd like!" -Rammy
I think the 800 has key switches versus the mylar membrane on the 800XL. The Pokey chip controls the sound, paddles I/O, and the keyboard. If the key switches registers, look towards the Pokey chip for any other keyboard issues.
Something to review and get for the Atari's would be the new Fujinet device for the 800 and other Atari's.
The Atari 400 keyboard was membrane to make it water proof because of its target market being small children. Bad, for typing, but good for spill proofing on a budget.
I was one of those Atari people back in the day. I still have some in the closet. One day I will bring it all out.
I love these old Ataris -- I even love the 600XL and 800XL -- they are beautiful machines.
I remember once when we were kids, my friend had one of those. We spent hours and hours typing in a program from a magazine on that awful keyboard, we were nearly done, but we had to leave the computer to eat dinner, so we saved the program to tape. Then we ate dinner and his dad turned off the computer. We though we were okay because we had saved it, but it wouldn't reload it from tape, just got and error part way through. We were bummed.
How many dads throughout the ages have turned off computers and video game consoles when you needed to keep the RAM alive for various reasons..... (I’ve even known one who would leave the TV on all day but kept trying to turn off a fan I had going bc it was hot!)
It’s probably the same ones who always turn the thermostat down too :D
Pretty cool to see both 400 and 800 side-by-side, always loved their futuristic, angled shapes. Still happy though I got the more advanced 800XL+floppy-drive at the time. Looking forward very much to the check & repair-video, take care :-)
I still have my childhood 400 :D a few years back I picked up an Atari 800, but it appears to have a bad GTIA so need to source one somewhere. For example MS. Pac-Man, Character sprites are huge while the maze is normal.
Very much looking forward to the Atari video :-D
Was always a dream computer of mine when I was young...
I had one of these Atari 400 systems as a kid. Wanting a C64 to match what we had in school but got this. One Ms. Pac-Man cart, One Tape Drive, One Hangman tape card, One joystick. That was it. To this day I can spend hours playing Ms. Pac-Man as I played it for a long time as a kid. We were never in the position to get more carts, or anything for it since money was tight. But today I would just buy the 800 as I hated the 400 keyboard.
Same here except I got a Star Raiders and a Defender cartridge. They were extremely expensive for the time in Germany!
I played these two games to death and was off the score scale in Star Raiders (it's possible because the score is calculated based on a formula) and could play Defender infinitely. Attack wave 88, I believe, is special: You only get these spinners that leave a "mine trail" as enemies... ;-)
I remember spending 1/2 a day typing in a game from a magazine on a 400. I was so excited when it worked, I forgot to save it to tape and was absolutely dejected after I turned it off and then realized what I had done.
Fun fact about the crumpled disk: actually here some "Proto-Indie" (Indie before the word became cool) companies just added a leaflet to their shink-wrapped, newsstand sold floppies that advised you to bang, twist and straighten bent floppies before sending them over for replacement.
I always wondered with what results :)
Nice video, by the way :)
The slot in the 400 is the same as the left in the 800.
And it can run all 800 software, except the few programs that actually required 2 cartridges in at once.
But I do not think there were only a couple of those.
And the thick aluminum was also a heatsink. The metal would get incredibly hot after a while.
And the stickers in the 800 are contemporary. Warner owned Atari from 1976 to mid-1984. So still having WB badges on a unit sold in 1985 would be common. I think they used them until replaced by the XL in 1985.
And finally, for software, Star Raiders.
I remember computer camp, where I learned to program in Pilot on the Atari 400, then BASIC on the Atari 800.
Aw, so disappointed you didn't try turning on either Atari... can't wait until you troubleshoot them!
Rammy merchandise when? :)
Thanks for all the great videos Adrian, they really help me chill out after a tough day! Keep up the good work!
It may be the nostalgia talking, but I think the Atari 800 is one of the prettiest computers ever made.
It reminds me of the dedicated terminals.
The Atari 400 and it´s disc drive are so much the aesthetics from the original "Alien" movie. I was just waiting for him to type "What´s the story, mother?" :)
RE keyboard form factors - time sharing terminals were still relatively fresh in the late 70s, with most computing even at large universities done in batch mode - use a keypunch to create a punched card deck and submit your program at the I/O window, a literal window staffed by a CS troll/grad student. Serial terminals when found had big, blocky keyboards like this Atari 800 or the C64. Like keypunch machines, they were made to "take a lickin and keep on tickin'". The IBM model M keyboard was a huge, elegant change to this semi-brutalist industrial design.
Vic20 RAM expansion cartridges are like good wines: they get better with the age. Wait another 30 years and you will get not 2, but 4 bytes extra. :-D
If you can get your hands on original disks for the Atari(s) (Atarii?) awesome, otherwise just get/build yourself an S Drive Max. An absolutely brilliant device.
First computer i had when i was 5 years old i remember the keyboard was dredfull lol, Then had the 800xl a pretty nice upgrade kept that till i bought a master system.
I always enjoy the intro. The music never gets old and the VCR look is great!
The Atari 8-bit graphics subsystem could still hold its own over the C-64 in some ways.
And the Atari POKEY can emulate a SID.
The 400's keyboard is bad but nowhere near as bad as the ZX Spectrum. When typing on it, it is very sensitive and detects the presses pretty easily. At least my two 400's do. So you don't have to mash the key all the way down for it to register.
i added a 6' cord to my 400 and a IBM 370 terminal keyboard cuz the membrane keyboard was no fun, but it worked.
When i was a kid, we always took the rubber off the Atari joystick for better control and feel.
That's an easy and quick way to break the XY Insert.
@@theannoyedmrfloyd3998 At least I know that now. Thx.
I'm also looking forward to seeing these repaired. I have to give a shoutout to Ms Mad Lemon. If you're an 800 fan, she has a nice series you might like. Start with her 'Atari 800 Exploration & Computer talk'. It's a 20 minute love letter to old tech.
that atari 400 and the external floppy drive where given to me when I was a kid and it brought a ton of good gaming times and memories...but among my friends at that time the drive was given the name of the "screaming eagle", cause if would shrek every time it would read a bad sector or a bad floppy disk...good times...LOL!!!!
Best game cartridge i ever had for the 400/800 was Defender, it was really true to the arcade machine.
Me I Started with the Atari 400 & 410 Cassette Drive,,,, But My First was a RCA Cosmic Vip Kit ..
I will wait impatiently for that video, to see how you fix it.
Also so hello from the UK...I can't remember any one in my family ever buying a pre-built pc, ever since I was young I built pretty much all of our pc's apart from one...But I fixed that one a couple of years later. It wasn't the best pc but we got the most out of it.
A glorious day for Adrian's Digital Dong!
The 6502 has an addressing mode that uses a pair of bytes in the first 256 bytes of memory (the zero page) as a pointer to anywhere in memory (known as indirect indexed addressing, as it adds the Y index register to the pointer value, not to be confused with indexed indirect addressing which adds the X index register to the base address to locate the address the pointer is at). This is an ideal way to go about accessing the mobile video memory in both VIC-20 (caused by automatic memory map rearrangement as the memory is expanded) or the configurable video memory location in the Commodore 64 and Commodore 128.
The Atari 400 shipped with 16K standard, at least here in the UK. The keyboard wasn't as bad as many claimed because of the ridges around each key. I wrote 1000s of lines of code on my Atari 400 without too many problems (I'm not a superfast typist) but the keyboard on the 800xl that replaced it was much better!!
When you get your 800 working you must try Star Raiders (the original, not SR 2 which needs more RAM than the 800 has).
In the UK there was always the argument of which was better between the Atari or Commodore machines, but over here it started with the Amiga 500 and Atari ST. Atari in the UK had a really small user base during the 8 bit era with most of the market being split between the C64 and Sinclair Spectrum. There were other machines on the market, but their sales were tiny in comparison, this was the BBC line of computers which was mostly sold to schools and Acorn computers such as the Electron and later Archemedes. As such, we didn't get the 'video games crash' that people from the USA always seem to go on about.
Defender is great on these old Atari's BTW, love to POKEY sound FX. Also Adrian, keep us posted on the 800 keyboard fix please, I've an 800XL with the exact same problem.
The Atari 1200XL introduced the error where chroma and luma were tied together, followed by a lot, though not all 800XLs. The later ones had the error in the circuit board corrected. The 600XL doesn’t have a composite output, but has the capability on the board - you just have to solder in the appropriate electronics and DIN connector. It too has the chroma - luma error.
Was that Rammy picture inspired by the dream sequence from the Father Ted episode "A Song For Europe"? :D Now I have "My Lovely Horse" stuck in my head!
The heavy heavy shielding on the Atari's vs the lighter on the Vic and C64 was due to the FCC changing the rules between the time the 400/800 were developed vs the Vic20. The requirements got a lot lighter in 81 IIRC, which was one of the reasons why Atari did the cost reduction 800xl - they were able to cut a huge amount of expense out by being able to eliminate a lot of the shielding...
Texas Instruments is the reason why the FCC rules changed. They lobbied for those changes and their congressional district rep was the Speaker of the House. That's after Atari tricked them into trying to roll out a fiber optic based cable connector and adapter to connect to TVs with the original TI-99 and the FCC gave them major grief. Atari tricked them because they knew their TI parts rep was telling the TI internal home computer team everything the Atari guys were telling him so they deliberately told the TI rep they were working on fiber optic cabling solutions. The moral of the story was Atari Inc learned it was cheaper to lobby Congress to thwart the FCC than it was to comply with every single whim of the FCC [which had led to the expensive RF shielding in the 400/800]. And that industrial espionage in the home computer and video game industries were a real thing back in the 1970s.
On an 800 I bought from Ebay, everything seemed to work on first power-up except for the keyboard. Trouble-shooting revealed that something was clobbering the data bus. Both the Pokey and 6520 PIA chips are on that bus.
When I removed the 6520 the keyboard worked properly. I had some Western Design Center W65C21’s in my inventory. According to the data-sheet the W65C21 is a direct replacement for the 6520 and several other PIA part numbers.
See the “Features” section on page 3 of the WDC data-sheet. The 800 has worked perfectly ever since I replaced the defective 6520 with a new W65C21 that I had purchased from Mousers.
Atari 8-bits at last! :-) Probably should get yourself a FujiNet device as a starting point.