Hi all,
This is my first post on these forums. I just wanted to introduce myself and share with you my story and some pics of my system. I also wanted to ask a few questions.
So, here goes:
Having rented for so many years I never really settled into any place, because I knew I'd be moving again eventually. Now that I am a homeowner I am finally going through and unpacking boxes I haven't bothered to unpack for years.
One of the recent gems I uncovered was my old Atari cartridges, among them a couple of rare first article Pac-Man carts that my Dad told me he pulled right off the assembly line back in the 80's when he worked at Atari. I posted this picture on facebook and got a lot of "likes" and some comments including a few people in the gaming industry.
I don't know much about these "first article" carts, is anyone here familiar, and can anyone, at the very least explain exactly what the term "First Article" refers to? I'm not interested in selling them as they hold too much sentimental value to me, but out of curiosity can anyone gauge their value?
![Posted Image]()
Finding these sort of got me thinking about my old Atari stuff, and got me in the mood to dig everything out and actually use it again. As I mentioned by Dad worked for Atari in the 80's, at the height of Atari popularity. My family had the Atari 800, along with the floppy drive, modem and tape drive. This system has been stored in a box at my grandparents house for quite a number of years. We mainly used it for playing games, and my Dad brought home many copied floppies full of games that he got from his buddies at work (even in the 80's people were pirating games). It stopped being used at our house once I got my Sega Genesis.
To give you an idea just how long I have been playing this thing, here's a picture of me as a kid, with Atari joystick in hand:
![Posted Image]()
So this past weekend I went and got it out of storage at my grandparents house.
Here it is, in all it's beautiful brown glory:
![Posted Image]()
The top opens up to reveal the cartridge slots, and behind that is the bay were the RAM plugs in:
![Posted Image]()
From what i have been reading about this system lately I think the board that doesn't have a casing is the OS card, is that correct?:
![Posted Image]()
Here is the floppy disc drive:
![Posted Image]()
There was even a tape drive, although I don't think we ever used this as we never had any software on tape. You can see we tried to sell it at a garage sale for 10 bucks at one point, but no takers. I'm glad to still have it in the collection:
![Posted Image]()
Here is the modem, I remember one time when I was very young, my Dad showed me how to dial into a bulletin board system with it. That's the first time I became acquainted with the concept of uploading and downloading. I remember we chatted with some guy, and I think we attempted to download a game from him (can't remember what we got or even if we were successful). We didn't use it much as I think it was a long distance call when dialing in to most bulletin boards. Thinking back on it; it was some pretty damn high tech stuff to be doing back in the 80's. This was at least 10 years before the World Wide Web became a thing. I wonder if I could still use this to dial into something:
![Posted Image]()
Here it is, fully assembled, still works and surprisingly my old floppies still seem operational:
![Posted Image]()
Seeing this system working again has really sent me on a nostalgia trip, and I would really like to start collecting more items for this system. Other than ebay, is there any good place to buy old carts?
I plan to make a full catalog of all the programs, and see if I have any rare items.
Also I am aware that these floppies have a fairly limited lifespan, and I would like to back them up somehow. In browsing various Atari sites and forums I have heard mention of a process called "dumping the rom" in reference to backup of programs. I'm guessing this forum has instructions on this somewhere but I have not yet found the correct thread. Could someone direct me to some concise instructions on doing this? I'd like to also share whatever rare programs I may have with the world, as I feel like they are a part of gaming history and it would be a shame to have them crumble away on these old floppies... I'm not sure the legality of this though. Are these games old enough to be public domain?
I think that's it for now, thanks for reading.
This is my first post on these forums. I just wanted to introduce myself and share with you my story and some pics of my system. I also wanted to ask a few questions.
So, here goes:
Having rented for so many years I never really settled into any place, because I knew I'd be moving again eventually. Now that I am a homeowner I am finally going through and unpacking boxes I haven't bothered to unpack for years.
One of the recent gems I uncovered was my old Atari cartridges, among them a couple of rare first article Pac-Man carts that my Dad told me he pulled right off the assembly line back in the 80's when he worked at Atari. I posted this picture on facebook and got a lot of "likes" and some comments including a few people in the gaming industry.
I don't know much about these "first article" carts, is anyone here familiar, and can anyone, at the very least explain exactly what the term "First Article" refers to? I'm not interested in selling them as they hold too much sentimental value to me, but out of curiosity can anyone gauge their value?
Finding these sort of got me thinking about my old Atari stuff, and got me in the mood to dig everything out and actually use it again. As I mentioned by Dad worked for Atari in the 80's, at the height of Atari popularity. My family had the Atari 800, along with the floppy drive, modem and tape drive. This system has been stored in a box at my grandparents house for quite a number of years. We mainly used it for playing games, and my Dad brought home many copied floppies full of games that he got from his buddies at work (even in the 80's people were pirating games). It stopped being used at our house once I got my Sega Genesis.
To give you an idea just how long I have been playing this thing, here's a picture of me as a kid, with Atari joystick in hand:
So this past weekend I went and got it out of storage at my grandparents house.
Here it is, in all it's beautiful brown glory:
The top opens up to reveal the cartridge slots, and behind that is the bay were the RAM plugs in:
From what i have been reading about this system lately I think the board that doesn't have a casing is the OS card, is that correct?:
Here is the floppy disc drive:
There was even a tape drive, although I don't think we ever used this as we never had any software on tape. You can see we tried to sell it at a garage sale for 10 bucks at one point, but no takers. I'm glad to still have it in the collection:
Here is the modem, I remember one time when I was very young, my Dad showed me how to dial into a bulletin board system with it. That's the first time I became acquainted with the concept of uploading and downloading. I remember we chatted with some guy, and I think we attempted to download a game from him (can't remember what we got or even if we were successful). We didn't use it much as I think it was a long distance call when dialing in to most bulletin boards. Thinking back on it; it was some pretty damn high tech stuff to be doing back in the 80's. This was at least 10 years before the World Wide Web became a thing. I wonder if I could still use this to dial into something:
Here it is, fully assembled, still works and surprisingly my old floppies still seem operational:
Seeing this system working again has really sent me on a nostalgia trip, and I would really like to start collecting more items for this system. Other than ebay, is there any good place to buy old carts?
I plan to make a full catalog of all the programs, and see if I have any rare items.
Also I am aware that these floppies have a fairly limited lifespan, and I would like to back them up somehow. In browsing various Atari sites and forums I have heard mention of a process called "dumping the rom" in reference to backup of programs. I'm guessing this forum has instructions on this somewhere but I have not yet found the correct thread. Could someone direct me to some concise instructions on doing this? I'd like to also share whatever rare programs I may have with the world, as I feel like they are a part of gaming history and it would be a shame to have them crumble away on these old floppies... I'm not sure the legality of this though. Are these games old enough to be public domain?
I think that's it for now, thanks for reading.