New Zealand Vintage Computer Forums

Hello All,

I was so excited by my latest "investment" that I felt compelled to document. It's Friday morning 5:17am

Earlier this week I was perusing listing on Trade Me when I came across this.

Vintage ATARI Computer

Attention got...

The description was fairly scant and read, " Vintage ATARI computer includes monitor, key boards, floppy drive, plug and play games,joy sticks,cassette games as per photo's " Start Price $10 Buy Now $20.

Flash thought at time "hmmm Do I make a bud in the hope that i can get this treasure for less than the buy now?"

After nearly pushing the left mouse button through the desk to beat you all to the BUY NOW, I was the proud owner of a mystery box of 2 Atari "Key boards"

With time now available It's a good look at photos...



I ran to tell the Mr`s with great delight and a massive grin!

The result of my announcement to the female keeper of sanity was a great education in the following points...

A: Taupo IS indeed a 512km round trip from our home in Palmerston North.
B: An overnight stay in a lady suitable accommodation is a pre-requisite for a trip of this nature. ( Fortunately, I negotiated this out by wit, hypnoses and mention of some shopping at the great lake )
C: I have collected a lot of Junk in a short time.
D: I may be in-line as the next character on the Television show "Neighbors at war" as a hoarder. (Great show) See http://tvnz.co.nz/neighbours-at-war/index-group-4520329

It's now 5.52am, We're due to set off and I have just enough time for coffee OR a wee... Coffee!

I'll take some photos and itemise find on return. Have a great day.

Awesome deal! Plus a great example to enjoy a night or two in Taupo...

Wow!

Congratulations for your finding

Awww, It was good. Real good. The Dead Sea Scrolls, The Lost Ark, Pompeii, Tutankhamun, The Baghdad Battery, The Terracotta Army of Xi’an were nothing when compared to this 8-bit treasure. For ten to twenty minutes after loading what seemed to be box-after-box into the back of the car I was in a glee induced trance, only able to look over at the missus and offer a silent glassy eyed grin of "yeah baby, that was $20!" and a series of speechless nods.

Behold...



...Three Atari's











The haul In detail...
1 Commodore Monitor ( AKA The beige-beauty)
1 IBM CRT... (I would if i were the seller, disposals cost)
1 Atari 130XE in Stryofoam with original box
1 Atari 130XE with box
1 Atari 800XL
1 Atari 1029 Programmable Printer - 80-column lower-quality 7-pin dot matrix ( Same as the Commodore re-badge)
1 Atari 810 DIsk Drive
1 Atari 1050 Disk Drive
1 Atari XF551 Disk Drive
1 Atari XC12 Cassette Recorder
1 Atari 1010 Cassette Recorder
1 Joystick
1 Joystick
1 Oddy Shape Joystick
1 Mixed Assortment of Floppies, Cassettes, Big Box Software Titles, Magazines, Manuals, Books and games, Dot matrix printed basic program listings.

Unfortunately, the 810 Disk Drive case is pretty beat up and looks like it may received an exorcism with a plank and buried with some old E.T Cartridges in the Mexican desert.

The next step, will be clean and test. I'll keep you posted.

Wow! Mongols after Bagdad

@TechExpress

An Excellent pickup, I hope the Floppy Drives all work.


Well done Ray

Audronic wrote:@TechExpress

An Excellent pickup, I hope the Floppy Drives all work.


Well done Ray

Thanks, So do I.

Good score there! Those Atari 130XEs. They really seem prone to yellowing (or in this case browning/greening). Should work ok though.

That Commodore monitor is worth having too.

The drives cleaned up nice. I cleaned the heads with IPA and a cotton bud , made sure they were safe and that mechanical actuation was good prior to power up. The case were simply cleaned with detergent and toweling and a good polish and buff up withe Pledge. They are certainly yellowed as Terry has pointed out would be the case but clean. I am not a fan of the retro-bright process on theory as it seems to be a temporary measure and may (without understanding the chemical process involved in-depth) jeopardise the enclosures integrity in time. That`s open for debate and possibly one for the chemists.

The drives work!!. I have yet to try the 810 but of the Atari 1050 and Atari XF551`s both test good. (I had one 1050 already, as you can see in the stack and found this a good time to clean & test)

I did have to go through the learning curve of absorbing how to power up and boot from disks etc but got there in the end. I had not played with Atari's at all being a Speccy/Commodore kid. I have a stack of floppies to work through. The sounds the drives make mixed with the load chirps from the 800XL's speaker is quite nice. To test these drives I've used an existing known good Atari 800XL and have yet to attempt a vitals check on the 3 computers themselves. I'll clean and test the tape drives next and lastly the computers.

Woah, pretty amazing haul! Thanks for posting up lots of pics too.
Hope most of it is in good working order, looks like you've had some luck so far. Those are cool machines.
Looking forward to more photos as your resto work progresses.

tezza wrote:Good score there! Those Atari 130XEs. They really seem prone to yellowing (or in this case browning/greening). Should work ok though.

That Commodore monitor is worth having too.

Thanks Terry, Yes, the Browning on a couple of these is pretty bad. The monitor has had its power plug smashed of by the looks of it. I'll leave that one for a rainy-rainy day. Something that will be of interest to you (possibly) is that whilst these Atari's were collected from Taupo they had an NZ Atari Produced booklet stamped " Compliments of Manawatu TV & Sound". I recall purchasing a Dial-Up modem from them when on the Corner of the Square from the Old Palmerston North BBS Days. I think a major one was called "seventh heaven" and maybe satellite BBS.

"Manawatu TV & Sound". Gosh, that is a blast from the past!

tezza wrote:"Manawatu TV & Sound". Gosh, that is a blast from the past!

... Going on a wee tangent here but, Manawatu TV & Sound is still going strong however market has diversified. Do you recall "Computer Village"? Computer Village was in church street and then I think the Plaza ( Just after the "Plaza" replaced the P.D.C Dept Store and the big fiberglass Kiwi ). I would spend hours annoying staff and watching the latest scrolling demos on C64's and Amiga`s Historic Computer Village site. I also recall buying Sinclair Spectrum cassette tapes from a large retail bin from David Bryce Electronics in Fielding. The David Bryce building still had Commodore signage high in the windows up until only approximately 6 months ago.