peter@unm-la.UUCP (bill peter) (09/02/86)
Excuse me if this question doesn't belong in this newsgroup, or if it's been asked many times, but what would be a good game computer for purchase? My 3-year old likes my Macintosh, but it's not a good game machine, and I'd like to get him a system which runs Pac Man and Pole Position (especially in color--unheard of on the Mac!). Principal wish of mine would be a system with excellent graphics that I can plug into an RGB switch on a television set, and relatively cheap software. What is the best Atari for this purpose? Are the commodore 64's a better alternative? I've heard about the Atari 800 XL and the 5200 and 7800...which of these are best? Could a child simply plug in the cartridge game and play? Thanks in advance for any help anyone can give me...I can't work at home anymore until I get another machine.... bill peter ihnp4!lanl!wkp
jhs@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA (09/02/86)
I recommend the Atari 800XL, which is currently selling at Toys R Us for $69.99. Also available mail order at that price if Toys R Us is sold out. (In fact I recommend buying a second one as a spare!) The 800XL can be used to produce RGB output if you are willing to build up a special circuit for the purpose (basically requiring 1 IC). The trick is to bring out the CHROMA signal separately and keep it separate into the chroma input of the NTSC decoder chip. The NTSC composite output has a filter to band limit the Chroma to keep it from spilling over into the luminance signal. If you decode the COMPOSITE signal this band limiting will limit resolution to far less than you can get by handling the Chroma separately. I am told that if you use the unfiltered LUMINANCE and CHROMA signals as the starting point and design the circuit carefully, the resolution of an RGB output can be made essentially as good as any RGB monitor can resolve. A relative of mine has been helping a friend design such a converter, and I might be able to get some design hints, maybe even a schematic diagram if there is interest. The 800XL, unlike the video game units, can be expanded into a fairly useable general-purpose home computer for word processing, learning programming, and even fairly serious business applications. In this day and age of megabytes, it is easy to forget that a 1.78-MHz clock and 65K bytes used to be considered a darn powerful computer! (More than a PDP-8 for example.) -John Sangster jhs@mitre-bedford.arpa P.S. - Currently the 1050 disk drive is selling for around $125 mail order. A TV set, 800XL and 1050 is enough to do some serious applications with. The Commodore is considerably more expensive, the disk drive is slower, and those who really know say the operating system is a real kludge compared to what Atari provides.