45 years ago, at about this time, my parents joined the home computer revolution. I think they did it at least partially with the idea that it would give their children skills or opportunities in life that we might have otherwise not had. They were probably right about that.
So, Dad picked out an Atari 800, with the RAM expansion board to take it to the full 48 KB. [1] He also opted for the expensive 810 floppy disk drive, which stored 90 KB per disk! The cost of the two together was about CDN $2100, a huge amount at the time.
If you had approached me at that time, using an 8-bit processor at less than 2 MHz, and told me that today I would be able to buy a computer with 2 (!) >100 MHz 32-bit processors (and 6 times the memory of that Atari) for CDN $2.50, delivered, and that it would be small enough that you could lose it down the back of the couch cushions, I would have thought you were out of your mind.
We truly do live in an amazing technological future. With all the Big Tech crap being pushed on us all the time, I think it's too easy to lose sight of that.
[1] Wikipedia's page on the Atari 8-bit series says RAM came on 16 KB cards, and that the 800 needed 2 add-on cards to reach the 48 KB max capacity. I distinctly remember the machine having only one additional expansion card, which must have been 32 KB. So Wikipedia would appear to be incorrect about this.
#8bit #Atari800 #Atari8Bit #Atari #computer #HomeComputer #computing #retro #Pico #RaspberryPiPico
