Message text written by INTERNET:classiccmp@u.washington.edu
>Does anyone know if Atari is still around? I remember years ago (really
not TOO long ago) I wrote to them and they sent me a pretty huge list of
old Atari 2600, etc., games still available, as well as old Atari 400/800
software they still had around. Does anyone know if there are still Atari
disutibutors that do this?<
Atari was purchased by someone else and dissolved as an independent
company.
No clue if the successors have any inventory, but I suspect I know where
their leftover cartridges went. An outfit called O'Shea, Ltd. has one
million, three hundred thousand atari video game cartridges (!), and is
selling them for 80 cents apiece. They claim they have 50 different
titles, but I only see about 40 listed; pretty evenly divided between 7800
series cartridges and 2600 cartridges.
These people seem to sell mostly in bulk (most of their different items are
available only by the case), but there's no such notation with respect to
the Atari cartridges. I've never done business with them, and I frankly
don't know what they'd do if you asked for (say) one copy each of ten
different titles. But might be worth a try if you want to round out your
Atari cartridge collection.
One the internet, they're at http://www.oshealtd.com/
E-mail is billh(a)oshealtd.com
Phone is 816-531-1177
Address is on West 47th Street in Kansas City.
and I'm at
Gil Parrish
107765.1161(a)compuserve.com
My friend's apple /// has the same problem. i had to have a chip replaced
several times. now it broke again but it's been so long that no tech will
touch it.
dave
On Fri, 18 Jul 1997 01:56:33 Mr. Self Destruct <more(a)camlaw.rutgers.edu>
wrote:
>>Me too! On a sidenote, I once saw an ad for some old shares (worthless of
>>course) in Commodore (for people to hang on their wall, etc.)
If you come across this ad again, I'd be interested.
Also, to those who have expressed a passing interest in the remote idea of
acquiring any leftover Commodore intangible assets {assuming that (1) we can
find out who has them and (2) they want only peanuts for them}, I'll be
contacting my attorney today to have him get an update from the US Bankruptcy
Court. Maybe we can trace what happened after ESCOM went bankrupt last July.
My idea would be to acquire the rights to the source code for the ROMs, the
schematics for their machines, IC masks for any custom chips, PC board
artwork, engineering diagrams, manuals, and service/technical information.
That's it. I don't want any inventory (which by now, I'm sure, has been
dumped) or tooling. I'm up in the air about trademarks, though (I know that
"Commodore" is gone, but the others like VIC, C-64, and PET may still be
available).
As far as any licenses that Commodore may have had (for games written by
third-parties and sold under the Commodore name, for example), I don't
necessarily care. Commodore's machines were developed in-house with MOS/CSG
parts, so they were owned by the same company ultimately. At worst, we'd need
the IC masks for any custom chips (VIC, VIC-II, SID).
Sounds like the beginnings of a business case...
-------------------------------------------------
Rich Cini/WUGNET
- ClubWin Charter Member (6)
- MCPS Windows 95/Networking
Would anyone have any ideas as to what might be causing a problem
with my Apple ///...it does the following:
1) the only disks it will boot are the disks for the Apple ][+ emulation,
the CP/M 2.2 diskette for the Softcard ///, and the 'Apple /// Dealer
Diagnostic' diskette. All other diskettes give a blank screen, though I
have two full sets of the Apple /// systems disks.
2) The diagnostic diskette keeps reporting a RAM Map failure when I try to
run a RAM test, on either the 5V or 12V settings, and it then asks me for
the amount of RAM in the machine. No matter which choice I've given, it
just goes back to the same error. As far as I know, it is a 128k machine
with the RAM daughtercard below the keyboard. The amount of RAM was gotten
>from the factory sticker next to the PSU on the bottom of the machine.
3) Of the diskettes that will boot, once booted, the machine runs fine,
including being able to boot Apple ][ DOS 3.3 and being able to run Wordstar
under CP/M 2.2.
Any help someone can provide as to trouble shooting this would be
greatly appreciated since my experience with Apple machines is quite
limited. The machine has a Monitor ///, Disk II for the Apple ///, Softcard
///, and a Silentype printer. It would appear that Apple at least did some
kind of work on the machine at one point as it has an extended warranty
sticker on the bottom from Apple, with the additional 1 year ending on
08/06/83. Thanks.
Jeff jeffh(a)unix.aardvarkol.com
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Amiga enthusiast and collector of early, classic microcomputers
http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lakes/6757
Spring having arrived here in the wilds of Canada, I moved some
stuff and got close enough to that thing I was given last fall to read the
labels on it. The box is a little bigger than a legal two drawer filing
cabinet, and weighs a couple of hundred pounds. There are three tags with
"M.A.I. Basic 4 Information Systems, each with a different model number...
#9152 upgrade, # 610, and #1321. There is also a tag saying that in event of
power failure the batteries are good for four hours!
The cabinet contains a backplane and several plug-in boards.
Does annyone have any idea of what this is?
Cheers
Charlie Fox
At 11:22 AM 7/19/97 -0800, you wrote:
>> Spring having arrived here in the wilds of Canada, I moved some
>> stuff and got close enough to that thing I was given last fall to read the
>> labels on it. The box is a little bigger than a legal two drawer filing
>> cabinet, and weighs a couple of hundred pounds. There are three tags with
>> "M.A.I. Basic 4 Information Systems, each with a different model number...
>> #9152 upgrade, # 610, and #1321. There is also a tag saying that in event of
>> power failure the batteries are good for four hours!
>> The cabinet contains a backplane and several plug-in boards.
>> Does annyone have any idea of what this is?
>
>It sounds like you've got the main hunk of a Basic 4 system there.
>These are minicomputers that were sold with special-purpose software
>- accounting, doctor's office, etc. - for small business environments.
>
>Is it possible that there's a hard drive (likely 8" or 10.5") somewhere
>in the box? Any tape drive? How many DB-25's on the back for terminals?
>
>Tim.
>
>
There are 16 db-25's on the back, also two drives about the same
size as the computer, the only one with a manufacturers label is Century
Data Systems, Model T-80A.
It came from a municipal office. When the fellow said he had got a
new computer and asked if I wanted the old one, I thought he meant something
like an XT! Next time I will ask. There was also a Calcomp 1041 plotter,
which runs the test plot, but so far refuses to talk to my 386.
Cheers
Charlie Fox
> When I first got onto the net, the first thing I found out was that it is
> most useful for e-mail.
That's about all I use it for, except looking for people who sell oddball
parts.
I tried IRC, I tried Usenet,
Usenet I use, for classified ads.
I tried a couple
> other things, and eventually I found myself paying $19.95 a month for
> e-mail.
btw, My ISP will sell time (so many hours) which will carry over from month
to month. $30 will buy 30 hours, which lasts a *long* time with an offline
e-mail reader. Some charge, say $7/month for e-mail only. Ask.
> But all in all I find the Internet to be EXTREMELY valuable. Where else
> can I go to find 200 zealots who collect classic computers to get
> information about a particularly obscure piece of hardware and get an
> answer to my questions usually within 24 hours?
>
I can e-mail a diatribe to the President of the United States of America.
...and get put on the FBI's secret list.
> Basically, it is truly information at your fingertips (almost) instantly.
> Constantly updated, constantly growing, alive.
Sure. For me, too. But how many newbies want -- or need -- all that info,
or want to acquire the necessary skills?
I think, after visiting the Lego page, nakedgirls.com and looking at
trucks, many users cast the internet aside with the rest of their toys (and
that was my point). Businesses, however -- such as mine -- find a real use
for the communications / information.
Most of my customers are interested in solitaire, Internet and
scanners...and you know? I may be wrong, but I see a *lot* of people trying
the interned for a couple of months, then letting the subscription lapse.
We have millions of potential newbies to work through, but what's it gonna
be like in 10 years? How many dust-covered chess-playing machines do you
see around? Electronic keyboards? Cuisinarts? I think we're seeing a fad.
Killer app? There hasn't been one since multimedia stuff for IBM I mean..)
You're right -- we've been refining (and good refinements the've been, some
of them! -- I'll take Corel 7 over DOS MS Paint any day).
Next killer app? Dunno. Voice recognition?
At 08:54 PM 7/18/97 -0500, you wrote:
>I recently picked up an Atari 400 computer... and have the version of
>Sega's Frogger for it. It's on cassette tape, and I am having some
>problems loading it. I know some loading commands from a quick look at the
>manual, but am still not able to get the tape loaded. I eventually get
>errors using three different load types: CLOAD, ENTER "C:", and LOAD "C:"
>-- I think these are the three common types of loading procedures. I am
>sure this tape is machine language, and am wondering if there are some
Cord,
Take the Basic cartridge out, and hold the Start button down when
turning the machine on. This will give the beep to hit play on the cassette
player, then hit enter and it will load. This is how you load a machine
language program on the atari from cassette. Hope this helps.
Isaac Davis | Don't throw away that old computer, check out the
idavis(a)comland.com | Classic Computer Rescue List
indavis(a)juno.com | http://www.comland.com/~idavis/classic/classic.html
