Comment by criddell

This is really cool.

My first computer was a TI-99/4a but the computer I really wanted was an Atari 800. Years later I finally got an Atari, an Atari ST, and I loved that machine.

So many times I've had eBay open with some vintage computer on the screen and my mouse hovering over buy-it-now, but I just can't do it. Most recently it was a TI-99/4a with a fully loaded peripheral expansion box that I couldn't afford in 1983.

I'm not into retro gaming (they are unforgiving and often not very fun) and I can't think of anything else to do with it. I've thought about some basic home automation tasks, but these old machines draw so much power it feels bad. So I know it would become décor (or as my grandmother would say - just another damned thing to dust. She wasn't into tchotchkes).

I sometimes think about how wonderful it would have been if Atari, and Be, and Amiga, and all the other 80s machines had survived and we had a diverse market of computing ideas. I suspect though that the end would have been the same. The Electron people would have showed up and paved over everything unique and interesting in each of these machines.