Big (and Free!) Atari A8 Haul!

So a few months ago a customer at work came in and asked about dropping off electronics for recycling. I told him he could drop off anything from old TV's, Stereos, Computers, DVD players etc etc etc and he said he had a few boxes of old Atari computer stuff in his basement he wanted to clear out. I told him that I would actually take it off his hands! He was really surprised that I would actually want the old Atari stuff but than he started talking about it and how awesome it was back in the day. He said he would eventually bring it over for me but it was awhile ago now so I almost forgot all about it until just the other day when he brought it in and I got a call from a co-worker saying someone dropped off some Atari stuff for me. So I raced in, picked it up and brought it home.... and here we are taking it all out and seeing what's all here!

Truth is I'm mainly after the cart games that I don't already have, the disk drive and a small, select portion of the floppy and tape games. I tested the Atari 800XL and like mine, it doesn't seem to work. My own previous 800XL has a similar problem it that it will power up and send video to the TV (TV will go from snow to a black screen on RF so I know it's at least doing something) but it just sits at a black screen. Holding down the option key on power up to load the built in self test does nothing nor does inserting a cartridge. It powers on, but just sits there at a black screen. My Atari 600XL still works okay although the RF signal even on a straight lead (no switch) is really noisy. I can only imagine these things have bad capacitors, cold solder joints and other issues related to their age. They are 25+ years old after all! Oh yeah and there may also be an Atari printer not shown in the video. I'm guessing the people at work saw an old dot matrix style printer and didn't realize it was part of this Atari set.

So there is a lot of stuff here I won't be keeping, I don't have the room and truth is I'll never use all the extra stuff so I'm hoping someone local (I have someone in mind already who may be picking up all the extras) will take it from me.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Atari
• A8
• 400
• 800
• 600XL
• 8-bit
• computer

[icyds]

Someone please tell me how you play video games on cassette tapes XD

[MN12BIRD]

@icyds Cassette tapes can hold data no different from other magnetic storage or think of how a modem can transfer data as sound waves across a phone line a tape can hold data as sound waves too. Sound is data anyway you look at it. Only problem with tapes is it's linear, not like a disk you have to go through all the data in order and they're REALLY slow to load. Could take several minutes to load a simple little program.

[Paperclown]

lol merry christmas ! .. haha.. awesome pickup. Do you guys get dibs on stuff at the drop off center ?

[MN12BIRD]

@Paperclown I can take stuff the odd time as long as I'm not taking stuff ALL the time if you know what I mean.

[ZavenNes1718]

Lucky!!!!!!!!!!!!,

I have been wanting to get into older computers like atari 400/800 or comador 64,

how often do you get old video game stuff at you job?

[MN12BIRD]

@ZavenNes1718 Not very often. Almost always old computers that are either too old to bother with or missing most of the good stuff. Printers, CRT monitors and TV's too. But very rare to be old video game stuff.

[TeamRocketReviews]

Bruce Lee is a great game. I have it on C64. Great mix of platforming and fighting game.

[TeamRocketReviews]

NIce stuff. I got a C64C in box for Christmas, and it came with a lot of boxed games.

[tempchan4comments2]

@PompeyGamesRoom What these greedy companies need to do is give the working older computers to poor families that can't effort a computer. This 2005 hp pavilion desktop I'm on was giving to me by somebody from the other side of the US, he got a new PC, and didn't won't the old one anymore. I had to replace some parts on it, but got it up and running smooth.

[garfunkle187]

My first gaming rig was an Atari 400 and I had a lot of those carts. Jungle hunt and Qix were particular favorites from what I saw.  Do you have Super Cobra? That was my all time favourite 400 game.

[tempchan4comments2]

also I still have an old Pentium II 350ghz PC my dad got rid of.

[tempchan4comments2]

I still have my Commodore64, Sega master system, and Atari 2600. I can understand people wanting to get rid of stuff that's outdated or taking up space and not in use. But from the sounds of it, alot of people just don't seem to care for vintage stuff. Which is not a problem, to each his on, but atleast there taking it to a recycle center of some type.

[Mkjudo101]

Dude, do you still want that commordore 64? Cuz i want one

[Bylga]

Nice!

[Superfreaxx]

@icyds

When your CD\DVD\Blu Ray player plays back sound. The sound is stored on disc as a digital signal. But for the speakers to output the sound, the sound must travel through a chip known as a Digital to Analogue Converter (DAC). The process of getting a game off a cassette and into your computer is a similar process except it uses a Analogue to Digital Converter chip instead.

[Pervypriest]

Great guy,giving you ll this great stuff for free:)

The world, needs more of these kind of ppl...