ATARI 130-XE 1986 Demo

A humble homage to those fantastic machines.

The Atari 400, 800, 600XL, 800XL, 65XE and 130XE were too much more than a simple video game consoles: they were very powerful 8 bits home computers.

This demo is from some 1986 Atari dealer (I don't know who) and it is for free at the Atari 8-bits Computer Files web page:

http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/xlsearch/

Where you can find a lot of software to run with the Atari 8-bits Windows Emulator you can download for free from the same page.

My first steps in the computer world were with the Atari 600XL (with the extra Memory Module to get the "outstanding" full 64KB of RAM) and the software packages: AtariWriter (Text processor), SynCalc (Electronic Spreadsheet), SynTrend (Graphs and Stats), SynFile+ (Data Bases) and AtariLogo (The old well-known digital turtle).

Also, we spent a lot of time playing: Pac-Man, Mario Bros, Donkey Kong, Caverns of Mars, Space Invaders, Moon Patrol, Pole Position, ChessMaster, Bruce Lee, World Karate Championship, RiverRaid, etc. etc. etc. etc.

Then I got the 130XE model, with the "monstrous" 128 KB of RAM, a wonderful jewel I'll never forget.

Also, my first steps in the MIDI music world were with these machines. I used the Atari Music Composer cartridge and I wrote a lot of music pieces with that. Unfortunately, those 8-bits machines didn't have a MIDI port to external interfacing with MIDI instruments but it had a very nice internal synthesizer (so cool to those years).

Thanks a lot to all the Atari people for those wonderful machines, which introduced me and put me inside the computer world for ever!!!!!!!

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• ATARI 400
• ATARI 800
• ATARI 600XL
• ATARI 800XL
• ATARI 1200XL
• ATARI 65XE
• ATARI 130XE

[TeamRocketReviews]

So much better than all this iPad iShit. I miss computers.

[LoveMeLoveMyDog80]

Seen a lot of the original Atari promo demos, and always suprised me they didn't produce something that really ran the system at it's limits. While this is clever, having something more like the demos you see now (running on the same hardware!) would have really helped Atari actually... well, SELL something :)

[mspeter97]

that's a demo!

[andymerrett]

Nice upload. I remember this!

I can't remember the keypress, but there was a modifier key that would alternate between Atari and the name of the company who did the demo. It was something like Xanax, though I think that means something quite different these days! :)