The standard-issue new hire question at Avogadro was always "what was your first computer?" Well, mine was an Atari 800, and a fine little machine it is - my mother, bless her heart, kept it safely tucked away for most of the last 15 years and then sent it up to me a little while back when she was cleaning out her basement - and it still runs great!

Yes, those are real 5 1/4 in floppies underneath the console, one of which still works. The collection of pirated games (disabling their primitive copy-protection schemes was one of my specialities in high school) mostly still load, along with some very lame ones that I wrote myself.

The 300-baud joystick port modem is also still semi-functional, but larger numbers (like 9) tend to make the pulse-dial skip, so I haven't successfully connected to any BBS's yet (apparently there are still a few active, mostly in Canada).

That's Jeremy playing the original Atari 800 Pac Man ROM cartridge. The other house favorite is Star Raiders, still among the best of all time.

p.s. you Commodore people suck eggs.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 05, 2005 at 9:05 AM.