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To: Paul Engel who wrote (55033)	5/3/1998 4:00:00 AM
From: Jeff Fox	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

Paul, re:"software with that Atari 800?" It actually had a rather complete offering. Visicalc spreadsheet, a word processor, a terminal program and lots of games. A bunch of stuff was converted over from Apple II as both used the 6502 processor. (6502 was a knock-off of the Motorola 6800). Good thing that the programs were efficient as the disks held 85Kb each. The Atari was a very nice product for its day. For instance it had a daisy chain serial port to string up the printer, modem and disk drives. Now we have USB. It also had a custom graphics controller that was miles ahead of others. Dare I say that if all you need is a spreadsheet and to use the internet, then this is all the power that you'll need! Well - the modem did top out at 300 baud :( For newbies, the 6502 was an improved knock off of the Motorola 6800 8-bit processor. It was the first "RISC processor" businesswise, in that it was said to be elegant "done right" - destined to bury Intel and the 8085. The Atari was priced at only $800 vs the gastly expensive Intel based stuff. It was the computer for the masses! All hail MOS Technology Inc. ! (Of PA - not to be confused with MOSTEK of TX). Or was that Silicon Systems Inc.? Whatever. Paul, I even have my old bible, "An Introduction to Microcomputers" by Adam Osborne. How's that for relics? Jeff