Thanks AIO we do our best to put out good content and feedback like yours means a lot! :-) We weren't able to get in touch with David, and with everything going on I'll be honest it slipped my mind. Thanks for subscribing!

@@Operation8Bit Ahh, I talked to David myself about a PC speaker program he had earlier but he never got back to me about it

Just got here.Its really good.

Please reduce the sound of the static in your intro as well. Thanks in advance.

So glad the loud startup sound should be fixed in later vids. Excellent video and informative!

Good. I thought you were on about the intro as in the beginning while you were talking. The ident came on and RIP speakers while lying in bed turned up listening to you

The crash definitely resulted in a shift to home computers. Atari under Warner was in a bad spot as their exposure to the console crash was immense and their home computers had been quickly losing ground to the newer and cheaper C64.

It was the diabolical C64 and its nefarious progenitor the VIC-20 that helped *cause* the video game crash, and you were part of the problem! Just kidding (the C64 was my first computer back in the day, too), but seriously, yes, this was probably one factor among several major ones that led to the crash of 1983. It wasn't just game consoles, but to a lesser extent coin-op video arcades experienced a bit of a recession, at least for a couple of years until the public's interest returned. Filling the gap were the 8-bit (and later 16-bit) home/personal computers that Commodore had effectively convinced the North American public a few years earlier were preferable to consoles, because you could play games and do actual work on them, too. The main barrier to entry was price, with computers being far more expensive than game consoles, but then Commodore released the VIC-20, which was priced like a console, and started a price war with the rather capable (for an 8-bit computer) C64 that knocked a number of competitors in the computer field out of the business or marginalized them. Commodore weren't necessarily wrong, as the Atari VCS/2600 would be the last console that I, for one, would ever buy (not counting the vintage collection I've built). And at the time, the games on computers were getting better, while the games on consoles, especially the VCS, had been getting worse, which was another major factor in the crash. By the way, this wasn't the first console crash. There was another that the VCS itself started in 1977 by acting like a black hole that gobbled up the whole business, causing just about every competitor from the first generation of consoles to close up shop and liquidate their excess inventory at fire-sale prices. It just wasn't an overall crash because the VCS was the whole market at the time. The 1983 crash was of a different kind, it was really only a thing in North America, and it was computers that took over gaming for a couple of years, at least.

Glad to get some confirmation on this. Pretty cryptic way to identify the different models, but I couldn't find anything else.

You and me both...

They did. It was called the Atari 800. Same hardware. It was used to develop the 5200 games 😉

The Atari 400, which shares the same hardware architecture as the 800 and 5200, was originally intended as a game console with a membrane keyboard (like the Odyssey 2) for more complex games and beginning programmers to learn BASIC, while the 800 with its full-stroke mechanical keyboard was intended as a full computer for getting real work done (plus games). But since the 400 was already a computer, regardless of the intention, it ended up being sold as a cheaper alternative to the 800, and Atari's rival console division ended up without a console to sell, except for the aging 2600, of course. They would eventually come out with the 5200 (a 400 with less RAM, no keyboard, a different case, and different controllers) when the 2600, the popularity of which lasted much longer than Atari had expected, began to show signs of weakness and strong competitors such as ColecoVision had appeared (the 2600 had been holding its own against the Intellivision and expectations), but by then it was a bit late and for some crazy reason they decided to make the 5200 software-incompatible with the Atari computers. Obviously, given the history, and what it really is, it would have made no sense to turn the 5200 into a computer. We can say that it would have made a great computer, though, because it was a great computer first! By the way, looking back, it seems that no one was able to successfully make a console into a computer or vice versa--they all either failed technically or on the market or both. The 2600 was supposed to become a computer, but that never really happened. The 400 computer wasn't really considered successful as the 5200 console. Mattel failed badly in their promise that the Intellivision would become a computer. Coleco mostly succeeded in making the ColecoVision into the Adam computer, but the Adam had a lot of problems and failed on the market. And in Europe, the C64GS, which was the C64 turned into a console, failed badly because it wasn't much cheaper than the computer and, being compatible with C64 software, didn't have a the keyboard that the software needed! Theoretically, it seemed that consoles could be computers and vice versa, but in practice, this concept failed miserably, especially for Coleco, which went out of business entirely, largely because of the Adam's failure--for whatever reasons, computers were computers and consoles were consoles, period, and this paradigm has yet to change. The only exception to this rule that I can think of is the Commodore MAX/Ultimax game console (which like the 400 has a membrane keyboard), which was a dismal failure in Japan (got destroyed by Commodore's own VIC-20), being turned into the C64. So this transformation can work, but it only did work exactly once, and only the full computer was successful, so I guess there are no examples in which both the computer and console versions were successful.

Yea, a light bulb as more CPU power and jaw-dropping amounts of RAM compared to the machines of 1980.

Oh.... I am so jealous. I saw them too.

Yep mine too ... Never got it to work with a tape deck. The Funct key then searching for the operation. The option of one low res multi colour image Or 7 frames of 1 colour animation. Parents bought to see if we would use a real computer (got a cpc 664 a year or so later) So another Australian compumate user!

You probably heard me correctly, but as Spaky points out every so often in his comments... I do drink alot when were shooting these videos so I probably flubbed the line. 😀

I think that actually trying to program with the thing is just as noble and heroic. It can take all day to fill up the 128 bytes of memory. ;) Just kidding, but yeah, it even has an IDE and debugger, which is going above and beyond. Clearly the developer was focused on actually teaching how computers and computer languages worked, as opposed to just enabling one to program. That was definitely the right thing to focus on in this case.

I'm fascinated by it, too, and was back in the day, but note that while in theory it could be done, in practice it never worked out well, for one reason or another.

Thanks RPB,,, we're working hard to make sure that doesn't happen again.

Yeah, when the intro music started playing, it nearly deafened me. My ears aren't so young, either. Especially because I'd turned up the volume due to the soft spoken narration in the intro sequence.

Thanks aropis, we try to come up with fun topics that we think everyone will enjoy. Glad you liked this video.

Thank you Robert! We try very hard to keep the quality and it's great to hear back from our viewers that we're (apparently) succeeding! 😀

Surely someone has done that already.

Alot of decent smart phones cost $100

We picked it up on Amazon, but I don't think the company that made it is around anymore. (www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MGB3SAA)

Thanks for the feedback Fabrico. We're working on leveling out the audio in our upcoming videos.🙂

@@Operation8Bit That will be awesome. Your content is very interesting and I will be looking for your upcoming videos.

As stated in the video, we did contact with the National Video Game Museum in Frisco TX where the Graduate was last on public display. We spoke with the curator directly and he informed us that the owner had retaken possession and also wished to remain anonymous. Given the rarity of this particular system, we respect the right to privacy that the owner has conveyed, and we decided not to peruse the matter any further.

We spent a ton of time researching this video and through that we found scans of the magazines on archive.org

@@Operation8Bit oh ok, you should but the sources on the description

No kidding. I was wearing headphones...

Sorry about that... we're trying to do better and we will :-(

We tested on the Atari 2600+ and unfortunately it's not compatible.

OK, I did a Google search and got some info... but what pray tell (for the rest) is the BIT60, and how did you get your hands on one? Enquiring minds need to know.

@@Operation8Bit In the 2600 Connection Newsletter (Issue #30 - Sep / Oct 1995) you can find my review. You should be able to find online or order a copy of the individual issue or a Compendium copy of Vol.2 (#20 - 50) from eBay in physical form or PDF to download.

Thanks Joerg, glad to hear that I didn’t completely butcher the pronunciation! Question for you: How old were you when you got the Heicomputer and at the time did you feel that it was a decent home computer or did it just make you want a Commodore or ZX-81 even more?

@@Operation8Bit Must've been about nine years old. I couldn't afford a VIC-20 (two friends had one) or even a Commodore 64 (that one was brand new), but I did have an Atari 2600 jr., so I was kinda hoping I would at least be able do some of the fun programming stuff (text based, mostly - you've probably seen how much of an adventure game could be squeezed into a measly 1.5K of RAM) my friends were doing. Sadly, the tape with the programs hasn't survived, but it did teach my quite a few things about programming, like bubble sort. It also made it more than clear that I would need a more powerful machine eventually, so I started saving up for the 64 right there and then ;)

Exactly the feedback we were hoping to get it helps validate the conclusion that we came to. Thank you for sharing your experience!

Well, the c64 got released a year earlier for ~600 usd. This addon did cost 80 bucks, so there surely was some headroom there. For the same money you could have gotten an atari 400 probably though. Its a shame it came out so late. On principle this would have been a viable way to learn programming on a tight budget.

@@haraldhimmel5687 The price of the C64 rapidly dropped, though. Introductory prices were always an attempt to recoup as much development money as possible from the wealthy and impatient, but the need for sales volume always drove the price down sharply before long. The Atari 400 for $80?! I don't think it ever got that low. Even the cost-reduced XL series that followed on were never that cheap. That was Timex Sinclair 1000 territory.

Or the venezuelan ones

I had a cartridge called a Super Charger that you plugged into a cassette player to load games from tape. I never saw one for sale in a store and I never seen another one. I got mine in a trade.

Hi Kay... thank you very much for taking the time to provide such a well thought out constructive comment! 🙂 As you can tell we are just starting out and we're still learning, so this type of feedback is super helpful as we look to improve our content.

Same thing, I don't remember a "crash" but I do remember Atari going down the tubes on some of their titles. Like you I moved on from my Atari to a C64 and then just started playing games on that. A few years later when the NES came out, I switched to that console. But if you read the magazines from the time, they said the US market had "virtually disappeared". Which is ironic considering one of the magazines that said that was Electronic Games, a periodical dedicated to Video Games and filled with ads for them. archive.org/details/Electronic_Games_Volume_03_Number_03_1985-03_Reese_Communications_US/page/n7/mode/2up

@@Operation8Bit I had a quick glance of the link and yes it's full of games. I guess many game journalists of the era were focused primarily on consoles and tended to ignore home computers. Which is strange as the c64 was such a dominant system here in Australia and other regions. Another part of the "narrative" that I find questionable is that the NES came along and saved the industry.

@@fordprefect80 definitely the C64 was dominate in Australia. It was Apple ][‘s at school and C64 at home. I personally had a TRS-80. After much programming and many games, the BBS revolution hit and that became the next big thing.

What also often lets carts die are cold solder joints. Just reflowing everything often brings it back to life.

Actually the 6507 can address 8K. Atari used the top address line to differentiate between the cartridge and internal hardware, so the biggest cartridge possible without bank switching is 4K with the other 4K being repeating copies of the hardware registers and RAM.

I noticed the reference to Universum in your video. I was watching and then it was... hey wait, those guys made a PONG clone as well?

@@Operation8Bit I wonder who the original manufacturer was. It looks *exactly* like the Radio Shack one, as opposed to the Hanimex.