laba-1aj@web-4e.berkeley.edu (John Kawakami) (10/28/89)
I think this discussion had gotten wayyyyy too depressing. It's degenerated into Darek v. everyone. I'll try to point out that there are some things the 8-bit can do CHEAPLY and effectively. I think it's possible to get real cheap if you don't get a disk drive and printer (that's a $500 savings if you get the requisite two drives.) Terminal emulation. With the XEP-80 and a SX212 (total extra cost $170 or less) you almost have a pretty decent terminal emulator. "All" that needs to be done is to get an XEP term program copied onto a cart :-) I admit it sounds like a pain in the *ss to realize now, but I imagine that some dealer would be able to make a package like that. LOGO. LOGO is a good language to learn computer science in. The Atari has (had?) a very powerful LOGO interpreter once upon a time. Maybe someone still has some carts. You might need to get a disk drive if you want to actually write somthing useful in it, but for teaching things like recursion, language parsing, trees, list processing, and data structures, you can get by without a drive. The book _Computer_Science_LOGO_Style_ had its examples done on an Atari (and it's a good intro to computer science too!) Playing games (of course.) Video Titler for cheapskates. I've used my family's old 800 for that purpose many times. Sure, you don't have Genlock, but you can hack some pseudo-amazing things in BASIC without ever turning the disk drive on. If you could ROM some neato animations... :-) :-) :-) If you have an 800 you can get the chroma/luma info separate: maybe this can be used directly by hi-8 and/or super-VHS. :-) With a PR: connection you can be the terminal for a high powered QMS 1240 DPI PostScript compatible laser printer. Just Imagine :-) :-) :-) :-) & John Kawakami & laba-1aj@web.berkeley.edu & Live each day as if it were your first