The Atari Haul

On the 1st of June 2022, I filled my car with the 2nd largest computer haul to date for 8-Bit Boyz, the first one being the “Rick Collection” that is still being shipped bit by bit at a time. This current Atari Haul is by far the largest one that I picked up in one big swoop, filling my whole car from the front passenger seat to the very back.

 

Here is why I have dubbed this the “Atari Haul”.

 

The Atari Haul was a complete shock to me in the number of items, as I thought I was going to see a few retro components and instead ended up with many great systems, but first, let me catch you up on how this came about.

 

It all started back in the early fall of 2021 when I found a Commodore 1571 disk drive on eBay for a great price and I noticed the seller lived out here by me. I contacted the seller whose name is Barry and arranged a day and time when I could go pick up the disk drive to avoid paying the shipping. To my surprise, when I arrived at Barry’s home, he had other Commodore items on a table that I could not walk away from.  That day I ended up driving away with the 1571 disk drive I intended to pick up but also with a VIC-20 in the box, a couple 1541 disk drives in the box, and a few  other goodies. During that visit, Barry mentioned to me he has an Atari collection and some old Macintosh equipment, so at that point, I knew I would be back.

 

Over the following weeks from that visit, we kept in touch from time to time and he would tell me how he was putting items to the side that were both hardware and software for me to look at one day. Once we got past the holidays and into the new year, I checked in with Barry very briefly just to keep in touch and after that, before you knew it about 4 months passed, so I figured I should reach out to Barry and arrange a meeting to see what he had put together. I sent an email and almost immediately I got a response, but this time it was from his wife. She told me Barry had recently passed away but had set aside all his old computer hardware and software for me and she wanted to arrange a day when I could come by and look through the collection he was working on.

 

On June 1st, 2022 I was finally able to go by and meet Barry’s wife, who is such a nice lady. She walked me to the back sunroom where he would take his photos of items he would list on eBay and, to my surprise, the room was filled with at least 5 stacks of large boxes. She told me to go through everything and see what I would be interested in. Right then, when I saw the Atari ST computer and monitor boxes along with an Apple Mac Performa box and open boxes of boxed software, I knew this was going to be exciting. I spent some time going through everything and was shocked at some of the items that were still like new in the box and other items that I knew were quite rare. After much time and sorting, we both came to an agreement and I started to load everything into the car. I must have made at least 20 trips from the car to the house and back, carrying items and packing them like the ultimate Tetris game, making sure everything was secure for the ride home. Barry’s wife could not believe I wanted everything, let alone my excitement about such old technology and boxes of old manuals.

 

So, this is the majority of what was in the “Atari Haul”:

• • Commodore 1541 disk drive
  • Apple Macintosh Performa 6115cd
  • Performa 128meg RAM upgrade
  • Performa 1gig internal hard drive upgrades
  • An extra Apple Mac color monitor
  • 2 SyQuest drives
  • 3 Extra Performa 6115 motherboards with ram
  • 2 complete Atari 1040STf systems
  • 1 complete Atari 520Ste system
  • 3 Atari SC1224 color monitors
  • Extra ST mice
  • Many original Boxed software applications & games
  • Original & copied manuals
  • Atari Magazines
  • Atari external modem
  • 7 Various types of Atari joysticks
  • An Atari hard drive
  • Spectre GCR for the ST to run Mac software on the ST
  • Various types of old PC floppy drives (3.5”, 5.25” & Iomega Zip)

The Atari ST is new to me as when it was at its peak, I was a Commodore Amiga user, so I never really used an ST back then. However, it has been on my list for a few years and now I have not one but three to play with and learn on, along with all the many accessories and software. I plan to share my Atari ST adventures as I already have done a few projects that I will be posting along with other projects I am currently in the middle of working on, so be sure to keep an eye out for more to come in my “Atari ST Adventure”!

In the meantime I will leave you here with some more photos of  the “Atari Haul”.

The Collection unloaded from the car.
No items were damaged for these photos. 😉
   

      

A few photos of items unboxed, software being sorted and organized