Talk:Atari 8-bit computers

Rename to "Atari 8-bit computers"

"Atari 8-bit family" is not a contemporaneous term, as mentioned in the article. That the word computer is omitted makes it sound like it includes 8-bit consoles, like the 2600, 5200, and 7800. "Atari home computers" was used prior to the Atari ST being released. "Atari 8-bit computers" has historical precedent and is the most obvious term.

I suspect "family" came from considering the Atari XEGS as a console, though it's just a 65XE in a different form factor. With 1400+ links to Atari 8-bit family, this is a far-reaching change, but it would be good to get rid of this invented "family" designation.

References:

1. The Neverending Story manual, 1986
2. ANALOG Computing, April 1986
3. Atari Explorer, Summer 1987
4. Antic, December 1988

Dgpop (talk) 21:02, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

This issue was discussed already four years ago, and no one cared enough to oppose, so - I've just went with it. Let's see how it goes with the others.

There are other articles to be renamed, but I'll leave them for now. --Krótki (talk) 07:07, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

Brilliant! I'll keep an eye on this! Dgpop (talk) 17:02, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

There is no reason to mention Byte's imaginary "trinity" in an Atari article.

It is not hard to see the '77 "trinity" was actually just the Radio Shack MicroComputer System. Take a look at the Apple ][ price list from '77 and '78 and note the price of a mid-range system. Now look at the list price of a brand new '77 or '78 Toyota Corolla. See how the computer and the car cost about the same? Note that there were also very few programs avalable for the computer. Almost nobody was buying Apple computers to use at home in '77 or '78. Most machines were bought for use in schools. Apple sold about 7700 microcomputers for '77 and '78 where Radio Shack sold about 185,000. Radio Shack sold more microcomputers than all other manufacturers combined. Byte's "trinity" never existed and the fantasy article should never be quoted in a historical document. 2604:3D09:7A7D:50E0:C9E4:5DF4:B059:5EFF (talk) 22:39, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

Wiki editors fought tooth and nail to keep IGN's absurd claim that the Jaguar's controller is the worst ever, something that anyone who knows anything about video games knows is obviously false. The "editor" who wrote that piece of clickbait complained that the keypad is too complex, ignoring the fact that Star Raiders on the 2600, which used a keypad, was considered the first "killer app" for home video gaming. He ignored that the Intellivision and ColecoVision both shipped with keypads, without people complaining about being overwhelmed by complexity, and he ignored that PC gamers often use keyboards for gaming. Then, there was the Atari 5200's joystick which was incredibly poor in terms of usability but also broke quickly. There are other examples that are far far worse than the Jaguar's controller, too. This particular example shows how egregious Wikipedia's standard has been for what is considered a reliable high-quality source. It shows this site's gamer fanboy roots, where fanboyism about gaming rags like IGN trump anything close to reliability. By contrast, a methodical thoughtful comparison of different controllers (which concluded that the Fairchild Channel F's was the worst — a reasonable claim since the original model's controller didn't have a single fast action button and movement and the action buttons interfered with each other by being contained in the same joystick head) — that article wasn't allowed on the claim that it wasn't a good-enough source. So, IGN can create pure clickbait garbage and be high-quality and a real intelligent objective comparison isn't. I would hope this site has improved since I last raised these issues but I have my doubts. ~2026-47828-28 (talk) 18:54, 23 September 2026 (UTC)

The Fairchild's controller also used wire that was too thin a gauge to be reliable (causing the joysticks to permanently be unable to move upward) and they were hardwired to the console. ~2026-47828-28 (talk) 18:57, 23 September 2026 (UTC)

While the original Fairchild controllers were terrible (because of the thin wiring gauge — you couldn't even play some games after the first controller failed and the lack of a separate action button) at least it has the excuse of being extremely early in gaming. It was also designed specifically to perform well for the built-in hockey game. The Atari 5200's controller, by contrast, has no excuse. The same goes for the Color Computer joysticks (the small type), which were incredibly poor-quality. But if we're restricting ourselves to gaming systems, there is absolutely no objective way to rank the Jaguar's controller below the Atari 5200's, nor the Intellivision's, nor the ColecoVision's. And that's without looking at more obscure systems that came out later which were even worse. Yes, the Jaguar's controller needed more action buttons for its time to be better for fighting games. That was really its only significant issue and it's a minor one because it only affects one gaming genre. Since the controllers weren't hardwired people could use the one Atari offered that had extra action buttons. ~2026-47828-28 (talk) 19:08, 23 September 2026 (UTC)

Merge proposal - "Atari 800XL" translated from German Wikipedia

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Last year, an "Atari 800" article was created by translating from German Wikipedia, which we decided to merge into the main Atari 8-bit computers article. The history repeats, this time with the Atari 800XL article. Translated from DEwiki last week, it has the same issue as that "Atari 800" article: it is not specific to the 800XL computer model, but covers topics applicable to the whole 8-bit computer line. Only the "History" and "Reception" sections seem to contain information specific to the 800XL. The rest of the article's content overlaps with the Atari 8-bit computers, Atari 8-bit computer peripherals and Atari 8-bit computer software articles: if this content were to be moved to these articles, the "Atari 800XL" article would remain rather short on substance.

I propose to move the relevant parts of "Atari 800XL" to the three mentioned articles, and make it again a redirect to "Atari 8-bit computers".

Also note that the article's translator works for "Open Knowledge Association" and is currently drafting a translation of the "Atari 400" article, which is likely to have the same issues.--Krótki (talk) 08:46, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

@Krótki I was not aware that this was happening, nor the issues surrounding the "Atari 800" article. If this has been an issue with other similar articles, I believe it's best to do as you propose and I will do the same with the rejected Atari 400 article. Thank you for letting me know. Krimsonbat (talk) 00:55, 21 August 2025 (UTC)

I agree that 800XL doesn't make sense as a standalone article. There's too much overlap. It's also verbose and overly detailed, so be careful about what gets merged into the main article. Dgpop (talk) 02:52, 28 August 2025 (UTC)

Agree on merge and redirect. Prune the 800XL page of anything that's already covered and move anything novel (as well as any new sources) into this and the peripherals/software articles. If it hasn't already been done, perhaps redirects should be made for Atari 400/600XL/1200XL and any other models as well to ward off future duplication of effort? MrAureliusR_{Yell at me!} 02:30, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

Hi all! I am the author of all those fine Atari articles in German Wikipedia. You may have noticed already: I think every Atari model except those from the XE series deserves its own article. There is enough server space for all of them. There is some overlap? There are lots of other articles with overlap in Wikipedia, too. So what? Btw., I found this translation in en Wikipedia by pure accident, nobody told me. Also I am not credited in the version history of the article. That's not fair, Schnurrikowski (talk) 14:52, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

Now I had some time to check your Atari 8-bit computers. I think that article is somewhat confusing to people who never have heard of Atari 8-Bit stuff before. For example, the info box states two different versions of the CPU - but then shows the image of an Atari 800! As for the details: "The user-installable RAM modules in the 800 initially had plastic casings but this caused overheating issues, so the casings were removed. Later, the expansion cover was held down with screws instead of the easier-to-open plastic latches" But my article is verbose and overly detailed? Lol. Best regards, Schnurrikowski (talk) 10:57, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Remember to WP:AGF...

There WERE two different CPUs used -- and infoboxes only allow a single image, and the Atari 800 is a good representative of the whole line. I don't quite understand what your criticism there stems from. Secondly, if you see things you think should be removed because they are overly verbose, you can be bold and edit them yourself or propose edits on the talk page.

Thirdly, community consensus here on the English Wikipedia at least has been to keep the Atari 8-bit machines in a single article. So we'd need to change that consensus with good reasoning to split the article into multiple per-machine articles. MrAureliusR_{Yell at me!} 01:51, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

The Atari 8-bit page as it is right now seems to be laid out fairly similarly to other computers of the eras with multiple models, such as the Amstrad CPC, the Atari ST, or the Commodore 64. Some of those have sections on particularly notable hardware revisions linked to larger articles covering information specifically about that model. It seems the new Atari 400 and 800 XL articles cover a lot of the same topics in fairly similar manners, which makes me think they don't need to be separate. I think a better approach would be to add this information to the main page, and then split off sub-sections for each model if they become too large in size. InvisibleUp (talk) 04:52, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

I don't think the 800XL qualifies as being unique enough to really need a whole separate article, as it appears to just be a cost-reduced 800 with additional RAM. Ditto with the 600XL and the 400. If any split needs to be made, the XL line should all be one page. InvisibleUp (talk) 05:05, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Krótki, pinging you to let you know there's consensus to merge this now, if it's something you're still interested in. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 20:15, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

  Y Merge completed FaviFake (talk) 23:21, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

I did a post merge clean-up pass. Much of what was brought over was a detailed chronology of pricing and production issues for the 800XL, which was out of place with the flow of the existing article. I trimmed it way down. I kept most of the "Eastern Bloc" info, but moved it to a separate section at the end of History. Dgpop (talk) 02:16, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for merging the articles, @FaviFake! Dgpop (talk) 02:18, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the cleanup! I mostly decided to do a full copy-paste in the hopes that someone like you would clean it up, since this was one of the oldest pending merges. FaviFake (talk) 07:32, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

No source proof on this

I suggest to remove the following: The resulting system was far in advance of anything on the market. Commodore was developing a video driver at the time, but Chuck Peddle, lead designer of the MOS Technology 6502 CPU used in the VCS and the new machines, saw the Atari work during a visit to Grass Valley. He realized the Commodore design would not be competitive but he was under a strict non-disclosure agreement with Atari, and was unable to tell anyone at Commodore to give up on their own design Waskomo (talk) 21:27, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

If anyone can find a reliable source for keyboard quality

When I was young, I tried the 65XE keyboard in a store and it was, without a doubt, the mushiest keyboard I have ever experienced. It was shockingly bad. It would be helpful, particularly since this article already mentions a concern about the 600/800XL keyboard quality, to have more info about the keyboard quality, especially in terms of how it compares with the competition of the time. ~2026-47828-28 (talk) 18:45, 23 September 2026 (UTC)