Re: Apple II vs Atari 800

[heuser.marcus@freenet.de]

On Apr 25, 6:08 pm, "Ensor" <none@localhost> wrote:
>
> The technical reference manuals were available pretty early
> on, in the UK at least

Any date?

> (though we got the machines a couple of years after the US).

Same with Germany. I saw the 400 and 800 models in shops
around 1981 - but I'm not sure that this is the earliest date
they were available. I got my 400 in March or April 1983 and
getting to know the machine took quite some time as I didn't
have the funds to buy many books back then. Especially not
from overseas as having a "personal computer" was still a
new thing in Germany at that time and German books were
just beginning to arrive on the shelves.
The C64 really accelerated things here and a plethora of
books were made available - surprisingly having a good effect
on books for other computers, too!

> On top of that they even went to the trouble of creating the
> "Atari Program Exchange" (APX) to encourage the creation
> and distribution of user generated software.

When did they establish APX? The earliest game I found
(the well known Eastern Front 1941) is from 1981 - same
date as De Re Atari, which was mostly written by the same
author (Chris Crawford) and contains some "free advertising"
for the game ;-)

> The technical details of their consoles (VCS/7800/Jaguar)
> were always kept secret, but the micros were "open books".

The discussion was about *when* the books got opened,
not *if* the books got opened.

bye
Marcus