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It’s a true shame Jay Miner died in 1994. I really think someone would have gone one past Amiga on the journey from the Atari 8-bit. Learned to program on a A

It’s a true shame Jay Miner died in 1994. I really think someone would have gone one past Amiga on the journey from the Atari 8-bit. Learned to program on a Atari 400, and very glad their was an easy to get, affordable, non-technical parent friendly option for those at the lower end of the income scale.

tyingq 9y ago
Oh, but the crap keyboard on the 400. I got a good deal on an 800, so wasn't subjected to it. Good for you for powering through it though. Edit: Lol on the downvote. It was a membrane keyboard that actually fought touch type and encouraged hunt-and-peck. It truly sucked...a friend had one so I'm commenting from real world experience. Consider that "open source" at the time meant retyping code from long passages in a printed magazine. A time when the competition had at least decent keyboards. (C64/Coco/99-4a/Apple ii/etc).
- 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
  Yep. It's like writing code on a microwave oven keypad.
  - ddingus 9y ago
    With that, "yes, you pressed it" beep.
- dahart 9y ago
  When I was a kid, I thought the 400 was the coolest looking computer of them all because of the membrane keyboard. They truly sucked to type on though.
- kabdib 9y ago
  I wrote my first game (in assembly language) on an Atari 400, because it was all I could afford on my college student budget. It was a fun machine to program. You could get into a zone on the keyboard where you just tapped lightly and could achieve a decent typing speed, but it was never truly comfortable.
  - protomyth 9y ago
    It was pretty amazing to program in assembly and work with the Antic, etc. chips. I got to compare it to the Apple IIe and the Atari 8-bits were really much better because of the added capability of those custom chips.
- vidarh 9y ago
  Brian Bagnall's books on Commodore argues that one of the reasons the VIC-20 and later the C-64 got proper keyboards was a combination of a costly mistake Commodore did on that front with one of their PET models that got slammed for the poor keyboard, combined with Tramiel seeing it as a way of making the VIC-20 look like a more expensive computer next to the Atari 400.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    Makes sense, in retrospect. My C64 keyboard was awesome. I took touch typing in high school on old school typewriters, and the C64 keyboard seemed natural and fast to me. I had gotten a steal of a deal on it... basically another high school kid bought one and didn't understand it, so I got a fire sale price on it. My friends had inferior things like Timex Z81's or similar, so I was soaring past them just on touch type ability. And my middle school had a relationship with DEC, so we had decent VAX/VMS 11/780 backends with VT-200 terminals. Truly most of any of my success was, "right place at the right time", versus any real mental advantage on my part. I'm truly grateful for advantageous timing. It helped me more than any skill of my own.
    - acomjean 9y ago
      We had a zx. Mini membrane keyboard without a space bar (space key to the lower right). The Apple //e keyboard was a relief (as was not having to use tapes) We were living large with the 16kb memory expansion though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      Could have sworn that Commodore started out making typewriters, so they should know how to do keyboards (and the value of them).
      - tyingq 9y ago
        It was calculators, not typewriters, but your point stands for the same reasons.
- placebo 9y ago
  After squeezing all the potential I could off my VIC-20 (and there was way more than meets the eye), I bought a 2nd hand Atari 400 which was fitted with an actual keyboard. Never asked them how they did it and never bothered to check if this was something you could add for a price or whether it was a home-made hack by the guy I bought it from - anyway, many fond memories of endless hours of gaming, though all those gaming hours meant that I developed and experimented on it far less than the previous VIC-20 ... :)
  - protomyth 9y ago
    There were keyboard kits you could buy. I ended up buying an Atari 130XE instead since I didn’t have the money earlier. Dad bought me a 48k kit for the 400 which required some soldering. The Sinclair computers (sold under Timex in the US) had membrane keyboards also, but had really cheap and easy to install full keyboard kits. Sinclair doesn’t get enough credit as a computer pioneer.
- ddingus 9y ago
  I had one. It was horrible, but it looks futuristic. https://goo.gl/images/kvQzMm https://goo.gl/images/kvQzMm Replaced it with a real keyboard the moment I could.
- karmakaze 9y ago
  I had one of the first batches of Atari 400. The keyboard on it was great, once it got broken in. Since then, I'd also had an 800 and other 400s but the their /keys/ really were crap. Fave was still that original 400 keyboard. My Dad and uncle started running an Atari store named CompuPlace at the Jane/Wilson mall way back when after noticing my avid interest in computers. That link-up got me some great stuff: 'de re Atari' and pre-release ST docs, Chicago CES.
- nasalgoat 9y ago
  I saved up my allowance to buy a real keyboard kit and a 48K upgrade kit for my 400. It was quite the computer after that, until they came out with the 800XL with 64K and an excellent keyboard, and I got that.

tyingq 9y ago

Oh, but the crap keyboard on the 400. I got a good deal on an 800, so wasn't subjected to it. Good for you for powering through it though. Edit: Lol on the downvote. It was a membrane keyboard that actually fought touch type and encouraged hunt-and-peck. It truly sucked...a friend had one so I'm commenting from real world experience. Consider that "open source" at the time meant retyping code from long passages in a printed magazine. A time when the competition had at least decent keyboards. (C64/Coco/99-4a/Apple ii/etc).

0xcde4c3db 9y ago
Yep. It's like writing code on a microwave oven keypad.
- ddingus 9y ago
  With that, "yes, you pressed it" beep.
dahart 9y ago
When I was a kid, I thought the 400 was the coolest looking computer of them all because of the membrane keyboard. They truly sucked to type on though.
kabdib 9y ago
I wrote my first game (in assembly language) on an Atari 400, because it was all I could afford on my college student budget. It was a fun machine to program. You could get into a zone on the keyboard where you just tapped lightly and could achieve a decent typing speed, but it was never truly comfortable.
- protomyth 9y ago
  It was pretty amazing to program in assembly and work with the Antic, etc. chips. I got to compare it to the Apple IIe and the Atari 8-bits were really much better because of the added capability of those custom chips.
vidarh 9y ago
Brian Bagnall's books on Commodore argues that one of the reasons the VIC-20 and later the C-64 got proper keyboards was a combination of a costly mistake Commodore did on that front with one of their PET models that got slammed for the poor keyboard, combined with Tramiel seeing it as a way of making the VIC-20 look like a more expensive computer next to the Atari 400.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Makes sense, in retrospect. My C64 keyboard was awesome. I took touch typing in high school on old school typewriters, and the C64 keyboard seemed natural and fast to me. I had gotten a steal of a deal on it... basically another high school kid bought one and didn't understand it, so I got a fire sale price on it. My friends had inferior things like Timex Z81's or similar, so I was soaring past them just on touch type ability. And my middle school had a relationship with DEC, so we had decent VAX/VMS 11/780 backends with VT-200 terminals. Truly most of any of my success was, "right place at the right time", versus any real mental advantage on my part. I'm truly grateful for advantageous timing. It helped me more than any skill of my own.
  - acomjean 9y ago
    We had a zx. Mini membrane keyboard without a space bar (space key to the lower right). The Apple //e keyboard was a relief (as was not having to use tapes) We were living large with the 16kb memory expansion though. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Could have sworn that Commodore started out making typewriters, so they should know how to do keyboards (and the value of them).
    - tyingq 9y ago
      It was calculators, not typewriters, but your point stands for the same reasons.
placebo 9y ago
After squeezing all the potential I could off my VIC-20 (and there was way more than meets the eye), I bought a 2nd hand Atari 400 which was fitted with an actual keyboard. Never asked them how they did it and never bothered to check if this was something you could add for a price or whether it was a home-made hack by the guy I bought it from - anyway, many fond memories of endless hours of gaming, though all those gaming hours meant that I developed and experimented on it far less than the previous VIC-20 ... :)
- protomyth 9y ago
  There were keyboard kits you could buy. I ended up buying an Atari 130XE instead since I didn’t have the money earlier. Dad bought me a 48k kit for the 400 which required some soldering. The Sinclair computers (sold under Timex in the US) had membrane keyboards also, but had really cheap and easy to install full keyboard kits. Sinclair doesn’t get enough credit as a computer pioneer.
ddingus 9y ago
I had one. It was horrible, but it looks futuristic. https://goo.gl/images/kvQzMm https://goo.gl/images/kvQzMm Replaced it with a real keyboard the moment I could.
karmakaze 9y ago
I had one of the first batches of Atari 400. The keyboard on it was great, once it got broken in. Since then, I'd also had an 800 and other 400s but the their /keys/ really were crap. Fave was still that original 400 keyboard. My Dad and uncle started running an Atari store named CompuPlace at the Jane/Wilson mall way back when after noticing my avid interest in computers. That link-up got me some great stuff: 'de re Atari' and pre-release ST docs, Chicago CES.
nasalgoat 9y ago
I saved up my allowance to buy a real keyboard kit and a 48K upgrade kit for my 400. It was quite the computer after that, until they came out with the 800XL with 64K and an excellent keyboard, and I got that.