Today Sean and I visited Mom and Dad to help them carry some drywall downstairs. At the same time, we began the painful process of sorting through the old junk that Mom and Dad want us to get rid of - including our old Atari 8-bit computers. Here I am with the Atari 130 XE that got me halfway through university. I'm afraid it's off the the Eco-Station for you, old friend.
Halfway through university I picked up a more powerful Atari 520 ST. The infamous screenplay "Toilet Chase" was written on this machine.
When the 520 ST crashed, you had to twist it and drop it to get it working again. This was Atari's real-life, no-kidding solution. As the years went by I had to twist it harder and harder and drop it from greater and greater heights to get it working again. What a great computer, and I say that without a trace of irony.
1 comment:
Wow, what memories. I found a collector who wanted my Amiga from that era. I hope I got rid of the porn, first.
Still, it's a vivid memory of Earl twisting and dropping that Atari. He told me once that the Atari tech support told him that the CPU chip would overheat and become unseated from its clip, just slightly. Twisting the motherboard and then dropping the computer tended to re-seat the chip. I don't know if that's shoddiness or genius. The more I have to do with computers, the more I side with genius.
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