Tuxedos, Breakout, and 4k of RAM

Atari famously introduced Pong in the 1970s, on what we'd now call a game console (the Atari 2600). Well gosh, said the marketing folks, how about a whole home computer? This way parents would drop big bucks so that little Junior would get all computer-edumacated. Pong would be the sugar coating to launch a thousand hackers, if you'll let me mix my metaphors.

Behold the Atari 400 home computer. It had a CPU, 4k of RAM, a slot for software cartridges, and a steep price tag. The keyboard was a touch-sensitive film, rather than full-motion keys. Kind of weird, since you would typically see these in industrial environments, and the Atari was definitely not designed for that. Maybe they were worried about coffee spills.

I don't remember the home of 1978 being this much fun. With the price tag, maybe only people who owned Tuxedos could afford it:



The Atari 400 was pretty quickly replaced by the Atari 800, which expanded to a whopping 48k of RAM. It still had the goofy cartridge slot (getcher Tux on and let's play Breakout!), but at least it had a real keyboard.


Alas, all things must end, and Atari was no exception. High flying in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Space Invaders made the 2600 one of the best selling Christmas presents of 1979), the company was poorly managed and went under. I actually had a job interview with a company (Ford Aerospace, which also went under; I didn't get caught because I didn't take the job) that had taken over Atari's tricked out Earthquake-proof headquarters. One of the guys who interviewed me described being in the building during the 1991 quake, and seeing the shockwave approach from his office window. The shock passed by with no effect, as the huge shock absorbers in the basement did what they were designed to to.