Unboxing a 1984 Atari Peripheral, 25 Years Later 154
Harry writes "When you come across a 1984 Atari Touch Tablet for sale cheap--in the original, unopened box--it would be a crime against computer history not to buy it, open it, install it, and use it, and to document the whole process with photos and commentary."
...no (Score:4, Insightful)
Jesus, I mean, come on. This sort of story isn't helping with changing perception of geeks, is it?
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Collector's Item (Score:2, Insightful)
I always thought geeks loved to play with arcane tech, making this an ideal story.
We do, but that's what used arcane tech is for. You see the huge deal about this being an unopened box? It's now no longer an unopened box, and he ruined a perfectly good collectible.
Re:Collector's Item (Score:5, Interesting)
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Or maybe he's attempting to combat the idea that something should have greatly increased value just because nobody ever bothered to use it before.
Anyone trying to do that fails by definition. Things have value because people give it value, not through decision by committee.
Basically, even if you don't think it makes sense that "something should have greatly increased value just because nobody ever bothered to use it before" the fact that other people are actually willing to pay more because nobody ever bothered to use it before is enough reason for you not to use it. You can sell it to those people for the price they are willing to pay and maximize
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No, it is completely logical if the utility that you gain by enjoying the use of the item exceeds the utility you would have gotten from the money gained by auctioning it to the highest bidder.
Re:Collector's Item (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it is completely logical if the utility that you gain by enjoying the use of the item exceeds the utility you would have gotten from the money gained by auctioning it to the highest bidder.
Not really. You can sell to the highest bidder, buy a cheaper used product, and still get all the enjoyment of using it AS well as getting a profit. Win-win.
If you're going to argue that there's a greater utility to opening the box and using the new product, then you are admitting that the unopened box is worth more.
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Not really kidding either.
Just enjoy the things you have and don't be so obsessed with amassing ever more.
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Thinking like this (maximizing profit, despite having enough already) is what killed our economy.
Yes, but it also birthed it.
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If you're going to argue that there's a greater utility to opening the box and using the new product, then you are admitting that the unopened box is worth more.
Well, if you read the article, the author clearly gained enjoyment from opening the box:
"It's incredibly satisfying to open up product packaging sealed some 25 years before. Like bubbles of atmospheric gas encased in Cretaceous amber, there's authentic 1984 Atari factory air trapped inside every box. They say that if you twist your nose just right during a full moon, you can even smell a hint of Nolan Bushnell's Old Spice."
It's also possible that the author made more money by writing and publishing his
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Except that the former doesn't depend on its unopenedness, while he could have sold it, and bought a dozen used ones just to play with via the latter.
Then again, how much money does this really involve? Probably not even in the hundreds of dollars, so the hassle of selling it and rebuying a used one probably out
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Then why do people like buying new cars? Using a new device can be better than using a well-worn device.
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Or to put it another way, "They just don't make 'em like that anymore."
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How could you pass up on the 1969 427 Stingray? They just don't make them like that anymore....
I did drive an 03 Corvette and I will say that they are very, very nice and pretty quick off the line nothing really beats a classic. Lots of parts still around for those early muscle cars and the best part is that you don't have to deal with fancy complicated parts breaking like electronic ignition, fuel injection, ABS, etc. You just need an air gun, a good set of sockets and some pretty deep pockets. :)
Re:Collector's Item (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it's a status symbol.
Re:Collector's Item (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey, wait, are we talking about tulips [wikipedia.org]?
You know, oddly enough, making teh bux isn't the most important thing in life. If I get my hands on a new-in-box peripheral for one of my older computers, screw resale. I'm opening the box, hooking it up, and using it. That's the real value.
Frankly, the entire "minty-mint" collection mania is pathological. The perceived sale value boils down to "how much can I fleece a clueless schlub for?". And that's illogical.
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Hey, wait, are we talking about tulips [wikipedia.org]?
Not exactly. It's not that there's a bubble that inflates the price of the unopened peripheral due to speculation. It's that the unopened box is always demonstrably worth more than the opened box. It's a limited supply thing. There are less unopened tablets then there are open ones. By opening up you are literally removing value.
You know, oddly enough, making teh bux isn't the most important thing in life. If I get my hands on a new-in-box peripheral for one of my older computers, screw resale. I'm opening the box, hooking it up, and using it. That's the real value.
Do you not see the flaw in your reasoning, though? If the real value to you is in the use of the tablet, then you wouldn't mind buying an used one that does the same thing. H
Re:Collector's Item (Score:5, Insightful)
This is clearly a clash of value systems. And, although my value are mostly utilitarian, that's not consistently so. My GP comment has a clue to the inconsistency: "older systems". Yup, I collect old personal computers and software. That's not rational from a pragmatic POV. But, OTOH, I actually use them. I wouldn't pay collector NIB NOS prices for, say, an Amiga 1000. (Pretend such a thing could legitimately be found. Besides, I still have mine from 1986.)
Again, if you or another collector gets a warm fuzzy feeling looking at your sealed 1977 Kenner Luke Skywalker figure, great. Me, I'd wanna play with the thing.
So, in the realm of serendipitous discoveries of neat old tech toys: If I find a nifty piece of retrotech that I can play with, at a price I consider reasonable solely on the "play" value, I'm buying. And using. If that destroys it from your perspective, so be it. I'm getting what I value out of it. If you want it, for whatever your reasons, you'd better find it first.
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On the other hands, finding shiny-new apples is easy.
Finding a shiny-new Apple Touch Tablet will become impossible after the last one is unboxed. When something is common, sure go ahead and open it up, but if something is rare (like a never-opened C64 or IBM PC) you should try to preserve it in that state for future generations.
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Alternatively, you could leave it sealed forever until someone decides to do magnetic resonance imaging of the contents COMPLETELY wiping out the contents of the Atari DOS disk. (You insensitive clod)
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"how much can I fleece a clueless schlub for?"
How dare you denigrate the Congressional Credo!
;^)
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Frankly, the entire "minty-mint" collection mania is pathological. The perceived sale value boils down to "how much can I fleece a clueless schlub for?". And that's illogical.
That is what socialists call subjective valuation. It's a natural instinctive behavior for all mammals, and it's at the core of capitalism; capitalism wouldn't be what it is without it, concentration of wealth and all. Socialists identify it as a key ethical failing of all human economies, and set voluntary adoption of objective valuation of goods AND labor as a primary goal of a cooperative, rather than competitive, economic system. We haven't evolved to a point yet where a pure socialist economy is pos
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What is the objective value of fresh water?
One value, and it has to be the same for a village on the edge of a desert as it is for survivors of a shipwreck in an overloaded lifeboat in the middle of Lake Superior.
Objective value is a destructive myth.
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Or maybe he's attempting to combat the idea that something should have greatly increased value just because nobody ever bothered to use it before.
Damnit, I already unboxed the Zune-demo I got from work...
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Then you thought wrong, Yay you managed to plug-in and use something from 1984.. Congrats... Errr?
Old tech only interests some... (Score:4, Insightful)
I always thought geeks loved to play with arcane tech, making this an ideal story.
Some do. Some don't. I fall into the don't category. I guess I'm not very sentimental. I love learning about history of it and admire how clever some of the solutions were in the face of the limitations of the day. There are some wonderful lessons to be learned. But I'm also old enough to have used some pretty arcane tech (by IT standards anyway) and I remember it's limitations well. There are very good reasons we don't use it anymore.
Personally it's not the tech but the information that I worry about. Old formats that we have lost the ability to read. The hardware exists to communicate and facilitate information. We can create new hardware but we can't always create new information.
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...Cut to a rain-soaked freighter in the Atlantic (Score:5, Funny)
That belongs in a museum!
Re:...Cut to a rain-soaked freighter in the Atlant (Score:5, Funny)
We have top men working on it now.
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Re:...Cut to a rain-soaked freighter in the Atlant (Score:4, Funny)
Re:...Cut to a rain-soaked freighter in the Atlant (Score:2)
Is Indy a pushing robot now? No wonder Indy 4 movie was awful. [grin]
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This sort of story isn't helping with changing perception of geeks, is it?
Should geeks really care about how people perceive them? If that were the case I would think we would be going out of our way to not be seen as geeks in the first place. When you are lucky enough to find something that is a delight, rejoice in it and screw what people think...
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Sounds more Ferengi to me.
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Explain to me what an "objective" valuation is?
14 pages... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:14 pages... (Score:5, Funny)
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Woah now. (Score:5, Funny)
I'm using my 1984 Atari Touch Tablet you insensitive clod; one 535 x 383 resolution picture per page is a lot to ask for.
Re:14 pages... (Score:5, Insightful)
All but one comment on the site itself about the article were bitching about that. I, like many of the posters there, decided to forgo pages 2-14.
Re:Here is your peice of herring (Score:5, Funny)
Who has time to click a page 14 times
Someone who has the time to read the first page of it, read comments about the page, and then spend five minutes constructing a complain explaining why he wouldn't click "next"?
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Fair enough. Posting is certainly more constructive than reading about quarter-century-old tech.
Re:14 pages... (Score:5, Insightful)
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True, they put adseeds in the ground in the beginning of autumn and harvest them late junuary. My great-great uncle had an adfarm and since he lived in a small village in the proximity of my aunt I used to pass his farm. Every winter I look and feel an inner sense of joy looking at huge tracts of fully-grown ads.
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I stopped at page 3. Oh a picture of the back of the box and 2 sentences. Wow journalism at its finest!
Annoying format. (Score:5, Insightful)
I happen to RTFAs, but I can't stand the image-and-a-few-sentences-per-page format. Especially when each page has to load a bunch of pictures and javascript. I can stand it when these slideshows open up a new window with only the slideshow's content, but this is too annoying.
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http://blog.andreineculau.com/2008/06/repagination/
Now your problem is solved, as long as developers use increasing page numbers as their way to separate paged content.
Re:Annoying format. (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah. Exactly what I was looking for. An extension to Firefox that doesn't work with Firefox 3 and hasn't been actively worked on since 2006. Witness the power of open source!
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Diluted content, diluted adspace (Score:4, Interesting)
Not only is the content distributed among 14 pages in bite-size pieces, but those pieces take up roughly 1/72nd of the page space allocated. Along with the much-lamented dilution of content across excessive pages, do advertisers realize that their paid-for links may be up to 10 page-downs below the article?
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So do what I do since I hate slides too... Click on the each page number into tabs in background. Then, use ctrl-w to close each one when done. :)
Instead of annoying slides with ads, how about making subscription accounts that show all pictures in one page and no ads? I am sure some people would willing to pay for that.
I am so excite! (Score:1, Redundant)
But the software was pretty decent for 1984, and I considered myself proud to have known the Touch Tablet in its authentic Atari glory.
He forgot to mention how completely worthless it is now and was the day it was made.
Collector's value (Score:1, Insightful)
When you come across a 1984 Atari Touch Tablet for sale cheap--in the original, unopened box--it would be a crime against computer history not to buy it, open it, install it, and use it, and to document the whole process with photos and commentary.
Can you hear it? Thousands of collector's voices screaming in mutual anguish.
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Allow me to add something (Score:5, Funny)
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Arcane Game (Score:1)
I liked them in my childhood, then I went away for a long time, I barely used a computer except to type up
It's been 24 years and the floppy still worked? (Score:3, Insightful)
They sure don't make 'em like they used to. None of my 3.5" floppies would survive more than a couple of formats, and I'd be lucky to be able to read them on more than, what, 3 or 4 different machines.
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Its been 24 years and the cartridge still worked? (Score:4, Funny)
The software wasn't on floppies. It was on cartridge.
A true geek would have opened the cartridge to see if it contained UV EPROMs or proper ROMs. EPROMs still working after 24 years would be fairly impressive, too...
I loved mine! (Score:2)
The touch tablet led to me creating the first decent computer art I ever did as a kid. I even used it with a drawing program that I wrote in Atari BASIC. Wow. Feeling old now. I hate nostalgia stories like this. :-(
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Now that makes me feel old, they changed the terminology. And the fact that we had like maybe 15 Amigas
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Do you remember the KoalaPad? That's what I had on my Apple //c back then.
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I just bought a Koala and a Commodore 64 on eBay this week. I've been feeling nostalgic of late, and started making chiptunes using VICE and GoatTracker (a SID composition tool for Linux and Windows), and got to thinking that I'd enjoy tinkering with the real thing. Saw the Koala going for like eight bucks on eBay and couldn't resist.
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Same memory came back to me, but it was with a TRS-80 coco and its touch tablet, which was really just a grid of buttons. Ahhh, memories.
The real crime is... (Score:3, Insightful)
...opening a sealed original package. Cut its value on the collectibles market by 50%, easy.
The Computer History Museum has one of these [computerhistory.org] but it is not in original packaging. Original packaging, even when opened, greatly adds to the historic, research (and sale) value.
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None, of course, unless we're going to pretend there's some archaeology-grade research activity going on in computer museum collections. And even that analogy is faulty; I don't believe that Egyptologists even fantasize about finding 9th Dynasty new-old stock.
Naah, this is just collector angst. Apparently, they think a sealed box gathering dust has greater utility than, say, the actual utility of the artifact in question.
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Is this kind of thing really in demand by anyone though? I have a NIB Atari 5200 Trakball from 1983 [atarimagazines.com]. That's earlier than the peripheral in this article. Am I sitting on a gem that deserves to be preserved for future generations? What is the privilege of taking care of this artifact worth? Anyone out there want to buy it and preserve it? Or should I open it up and get on the front page of ./?
Re:The real crime is... (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been shopping for old computer crap on eBay lately (for nostalgia rather than collectibility), and I suspect your 1983 NIB Atari 5200 trackball would bring ten, maybe fifteen bucks (but I haven't been shopping for Atari game gear, so I'm really guessing). If ten or fifteen bucks, and reclaiming the space it takes up in your house, is worth more than the trackball to you, you should sell it. Part of the fun of these old machines and things is that they are dramatically cheaper than when we were kids. We couldn't have every cool peripheral and game back then, because it would have been cost prohibitive. Today, with stuff going for tens of dollars, even things that were very expensive back then, we can pick up just about anything we like and satisfy those old lingering curiosities. And, then, when we get bored with it...pass it on to someone else at about the same low price.
One Paragraph Per Page (Score:5, Informative)
There needs to be more warning that it's one of those paragraph per page
advertising sites. I looked at the first page and then came back to slashdot.
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There needs to be more warning
about posts that have forced
carriage returns for no reason
whatsoever.
You did what? (Score:2)
I looked at the first page and then came back to slashdot.
Why leave in the first place?
Didn't they have a goofy name? (Score:2, Interesting)
My computer teacher in the early 80's had a weird name for touch panels-something like Koala pad? Does anyone remember that?
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>Koala pad? Does anyone remember that?
Sure. It was supposedly "low cost" but when we were working for $3.35/hr, nothing was low cost. Later, I got my hands on an X-Pad and a TRS-80 Color Computer - that was pretty neat. I wasn't until 2008 that I ever had another tablet, a Wacom Bamboo.
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Yes, it was part of the Koala paint package. My father had it for the Atari 400. The hardware had a touch pad, two large buttons, and a stylus.
He taught me how to use it; explaining that drawing a line was like stretching a rubber band. Because of his analogy, i was always afraid to make the lines too long for fear they would snap.
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Sounds like it was actually the name of a product back then, from 1984. Check out Wikipedia regarding it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KoalaPad/Painter [wikipedia.org]
I also remember hearing it called that.
Just curious (Score:1)
Old Spice or Old "Old Spice" TM? (Score:1)
I do not wish to smell either one.
This is not worth mentioning! (Score:4, Insightful)
Show me a blog or article walking through a hack adapting the device for use under modern PC hardware and I'll look more closely. This is just "retro computing" and while it is a little interesting, it isn't THAT interesting. We get it. In the old days, we thought it was awesome and now it looks worse than pathetic.
Wire up a USB connector and write a driver to support it under Mac OSX, Linux and Windows.
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Here I was expecting to see something like that and I all got after all the clicks was some guy plugging an Atari peripheral into an Atari computer.
Make yourself famous record a video of yourself plugging a PS/2 mouse into a computer and using it with Vista.
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Wire up a USB connector and write a driver to support it under Mac OSX, Linux and Windows.
It can be done. The Touch Tablet shows up as a pair of paddle controllers. The following device will therefore cause it to show up as two joystick axes:
http://www.atariage.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=267 [atariage.com]
easter egg (Score:3, Interesting)
Tablets in 1984? (Score:1)
Profit? (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Buy old computer peripheral SIB (Still in box)
2. Document opening and usage
3. Place on website w/ ads and promote
4. Get Slashdotted so that works still appear but pictures (and ads!) don't
5.
6. Profit
Don't mind the whining noise you hear (Score:2)
That's the outcry of collectors all over the planet crying over the opening of a 25 year old box.
Real cruelty would have been to invite them for the grand opening. I would have paid to see a video of their reaction.
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If I had one, you'd find the video of me opening it on YouTube by now.
I never really got the NRFB craze. Things are made to be used. They are put in boxes to shelter them from damage during transport. Could anyone tell me the reasoning behind buying something just to put it on a shelf (make that, something that has a practical use besides being put on a shelf)?
I'm pretty sure the NRFB loonies are the same that value virginity for the same odd reason. Nobody opened it before, I can be first. Happened to me a
Link to all images (Score:2)
Simply:
http://technologizer.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/atari_tablet_XX.jpg?w=535&h=361 [wordpress.com]
Where XX = 0 to 13.
Damnit! I just got one, too (Score:2)
I just bought one of these from B&C ComputerVision. It was also new-in-box, and is a very cool little device. My 2yo son likes having me draw things (usually octopuses) on our big TV. No Wacom drivers or X11 config to mess with. Don't even need to wait for it to boot up. Just click the power switch and you're drawing about 2 seconds later. :) (My brother had a Koala Pad for his C=64, and I was jealous... it wasn't compatible with my Atari. I'd have had to convince my parents to buy me the Atari fla