The most valuable item in your collection

[WelshWizard]

I'm on the lookout for it's big brother, the Atari 800.

looks like if one comes up on Trademe it will be a fight to get it then

Oh yeah, you're in for a good ol' scrap. I've been looking for one for 15 years

Only if a good 1200XL PAL comes up the its the big guns coming out

[lizardb0y]

looks like if one comes up on Trademe it will be a fight to get it then

Oh yeah, you're in for a good ol' scrap. I've been looking for one for 15 years

Only if a good 1200XL PAL comes up the its the big guns coming out

For me the 800 has sentimental value, whereas the 1200XL is only "collect-the-whole-set."

[tezza]

For me the 800 has sentimental value, whereas the 1200XL is only "collect-the-whole-set."

Yep, the 1200XL doesn't interest me at all, but I could see how it would be of value to the completionist.

On the other hand the 1978-1979 Atari 800 is of note historically, looking to compete in the personal computer market against the Apple II, Commodore PET, Sorcerer, TRS-80 Model 1 etc. They were sold in NZ but seem to be extremely rare! I've never seen one in the flesh.

They are a little more common in North America (via e-bay) but then there is the PAL vrs NTSC and 110V issues, so I've never been tempted to import one.

[falco]

Hehe, I get to do a little dance of joy - I have a couple of them! One PAL, one NTSC... I think I only have the two. The thing I'm missing is the correct drives for them, 810 was the number I think. Would be very keen on one of those!

Mike

[tezza]

Hehe, I get to do a little dance of joy - I have a couple of them! One PAL, one NTSC... I think I only have the two. The thing I'm missing is the correct drives for them, 810 was the number I think. Would be very keen on one of those.

Two! Now that's just being greedy

I nearly bought an NTSC one once on e-bay. However, I never went through with the deal because there seemed to be too many potential problems getting it to display properly on a NZ TV. Have you had a go with yours?

[lizardb0y]

I only have one 810, so I can't even offer to trade for an 800

[Gibsaw]

I nearly bought an NTSC one once on e-bay. However, I never went through with the deal because there seemed to be too many potential problems getting it to display properly on a NZ TV. Have you had a go with yours?

I used to feel this way too, that I'd prefer the local 230v PAL version for convenience, but now I've come to expect the opposite. The american machine is (usually) the machine as it was originally designed, so the NTSC ones tend to be "straight" NTSC, which most modern TV's can handle, rather than some horrible hybrid "NTSC with PAL Timings" hack to sell to the overseas market. (Apple!)

... but as an afterthought and a bit of history, the one machine I had that could display my //e (non-enhanced PAL rev.B) correctly was the "composite in" on my old "National" NV-370 VCR. (We're talking the corded remote here, people.)

It functioned as a great RF encoder for our old TV and straightened up the funky signal to "proper PAL" for me. No such thing as "AV Inputs" on the old TV we had at the time and a colour monitor was absolutely out of the question for me in the mid 80's.

[falco]

I've never had any problems with NTSC - so long as the TV in question is able to handle the encoding well (as most mid to high end TVs have been for many years) it should work fine! The TV I was using when I was last messing about with these was a Sony back-projection CRT, and that would happily detect and display almost anything. My parents are getting rid of an early 90s Panasonic Gaoo, which I might grab for exactly this purpose; my current TV is a bit large for convenient classic computing use!

Re the drives, someday I'll spend a bit of time in the US, and chuck some cash and/or time at getting a few of them. I have a number of 400s as well, so I should get drives for them. Most of the accessories I have for the machines are the later, XL-style ones, which don't look right with the early machines.

Mike