The Story Of: 5 More Unreleased 8-bit Atari Computers

Comments · 65

• MI

  @microbry · 2 weeks ago · pinned

  Fascinating.  My late father, Bill Wilkinson (of Optimized Systems Software) worked on the 7800 version of Basic and possibly some other things for it (maybe the word processer?  I know he worked on The Writer's Tool at OSS).  It's kind of sad that while we had samples of almost every Atari released computer from those days, we never got a 7800 and all that other hardware disappeared over time, with only a peripheral-less, accessory-less 800 he had in his home office remaining in my own collection now (though along with some other more interesting  artifacts from OSS). Does the 7800 Basic itself survive in any form?

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• RA

  @Randy.Wuerger · 2 weeks ago

  This is another fascinating look at the early days of the industry in its wildest diversity. I miss the excitement of amazing developments in technology taking place weekly.

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• TW

  @twankistevenson3884 · 2 weeks ago

  Another good one. I like to think I know my 8 bit and 16 bit history but these vids never fail to drop something on me I had no idea about.

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• TO

  @Tomatosoup-t5o · 2 weeks ago

  Love how donn is such good player he inputs on the controller talking to camera

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• AP

  @Applecompuser · 2 weeks ago

  The Apple Computer was also offered to Wozniac's employer as well, but they declined.

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• FU

  @furella · 2 weeks ago

  Great video as always!! I wasn't aware of those projects at all.

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• 20

  @2001pl · 2 weeks ago

  great video, thank you ! Atari stories can't get old.

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• PR

  @przemekkobel4874 · 2 weeks ago

  Man, thank you so much for these videos. Overall conclusion for these companies is they burned massive amounts of money on stuff they weren't quite sure about. I mean, even things they did release weren't cross compatible (for Atari it was like 3 different expansion buses across ST/TT/Falcon line, or at least 7 soundchips, including 2 DSPs, with only 3 somewhat related). Imagine Sony or nVidia creating completely new, incompatible hardware every 2 years or so.

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• CY

  @CyclesMcHurtz · 1 day ago

  If the 65816 had actually been delivered on time and to spec, the computer world would have been very different. The inability to get the original CPU's above 3.5MHz really hurt so many designs.

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• MA

  @MadsterV · 2 weeks ago

  So many missed opportunities. To think I wanted an Atari ST really bad and was sad when I got a 386. I got over that real quick though.

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• DR

  @dreamcaster4754 · 12 days ago

  Very interesting video!

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• FI

  @firsteerr · 2 weeks ago

  i imagine a company as large as Atari was at the time would have lots of prototypes , i have seen a good few for Sinclair

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