Why I love My ATARI Computer (And even Atari Corp!) =========================== Josh Renaud ===================================== Atari. A simple Japanese name. Interestingly enough, it means 'Stalemate'. I own an Atari. Four, actually. I have two Atari 800s, one Atari 130XE, and an Atari 520ST. For five years, I have grown up on Atari equipment, games, and BASIC. My first home computer was an Atari 800. I learned to program in BASIC in about one week. I was about 8 years old at the time. Not too long after, my uncle sent my dad a 520ST with lots of games and stuff. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I knew Nintendo was what all the other guys had, but I loved my Atari. I played Time Bandit, Megaroids, Sun Dog, and lots of others. After two years, I got an Atari 130XE. It had everything! 128k, oodles of disks, a double-density drive with the US Doubler, BASIC XE, and AtariWriter (+). It was a joy! I had it hooked up to my TV downstairs, and everyhting! There was a BBS program called OASIS that apparently my cousin had set up. Back then I didn't know what a BBS was, but writing messages to myself was fun! Then I joined ACE-St.Louis. I stayed on with my dad for a year, before we dropped out due to financial troubles. But I cointinued to program and experiment on ym XE computer. (Totally forgetting the ST all the while.) Then on a visit to my cousin's, he gave me a cheap 300 baud modem. I hooked it up. I couldn't find a program that worked with it, though. It was around this time I joined ACE again. Terry Shoemaker, the Editor and local SysOp of Gateway City BBS, helped me out, and on May 7th, I logged onto my very first BBS. From that time on, I became aware of the outside situation. Atari's financial troubles. Competition from Mac, IBM, and Amiga. It all dawned on me. But all this depressing news actually revived me! I got onto the C-Net 8-bit sub and posted! I was going! I even had an article published in the ACE Newsletter. In that same newsletter I read about the Falcon/030 computer. This, I thought, would bring Atari back! Well now it has been released (Or at least that's what I hear from Bob Brodie) Will it help Atari? I hope so. I love Atari so much, I cxan't see it die. In a recent article by Tim Holt in AIM, he states that Atari is dead. I don't think it is. I think that in the midst of all it's troubles. It's pulling out of North America (A saddening prospect), all the pressures, that the Atari Computer is doing much better. Shareware, PD, games, WPs, all kinds of stuff! A new magazinem Atari Classics, is out. The 8-bit had never been better! But noone buys 8-bits anymore. how will the Falcon do? Will it lift Atari out of the sand? Will the new 64-bit Jagaur game system help Atari? I can't answer any of these questions. I can say, though, that Atari is alive! I just hope it doesn't end the way it was named....... In a stalemate............... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Josh Renaud is a user on X-Net and C-Net. He calls Flash and Gateway City BBSs He can be reached on those places. He has been an Atari user for 5 years... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Please reprint as you feel necessary!!