Here I have an Atari 65XE, this is my first Atari 8 bit machine, and is one of last models of what's known as the Atari 8 Bit family, which started in 1979 with the 400 and 800 models, and continued through to 1992 via the XL series, and finally to the XE series, which includes the 65XE and 130XE, and the Atari XEGS (XE Game System). The Atari 5200 was a related machine with almost the same hardware, but software was not compatible
All the machines in the 8 bit family have similar hardware, running the MOS 6502 at 1.79MHz, they mostly differ in styling, connector ports, and the amount of RAM available, from 4K in the 400 to 128K in the 130XE
The Atari 8 bit family was the first computer to use custom coprocessor chips, and was more advanced that contemporary machines of the era, which led to it being a popular games machine, although this is the first 8 bit Atari computer I've ever seen in real life
Alongside the 65XE was the 130XE, both these models were announced at the same time as the Atari ST, and have somewhat similar styling. But the XE models were notoriously unreliable due to poor quality RAM chips and printed circuit boards, however the XE I have works perfectly, if you ignore the jail bars on the BASIC screen
The keyboard is pretty nice to type on, but the layout is a bit different to what other machines used, the row of five keys along the top, which you would assume are the function keys, are labelled, Help, Start, Select, Option, and Reset. The reset key is only a soft reset and will retain a BASIC programme in memory, there is an LED in the lower right corner. You can see it's very similar in style to the Atari ST, but is quite a bit smaller.
On the bottom is quite a lot of cooling vents, and the product label with serial number, you can also see the exposed PCB of the cartridge and expansion ports
The left side has no ports, and the right has two Atari style joystick ports
The rear of the machine is where it gets interesting, on the left is what's labelled as the peripheral port, this is the SIO port, you could attach many different devices like printers, modems, cassette drives, and floppy drives to this port and they would automatically configure themselves and just work, it even supported daisy chaining devices together. You could say this was an early form of USBNext to that is the cartridge and expansion ports, the expansion port does look very much like a SD card slot
Alongside that is the monitor port, this gives composite and an S-Video signal, then an RF connection for a television
Then you have a 7 pin DIN power connector, and finally the power switch
Here's a close up of the badge, mine still has the protective film attached, and the function keys
Here is the Atari XC12 cassette drive, it does look like a more angular version of the Commodore Datasette
The bottom of the unit and SIO plug
I have the instruction book for the XC12 as well
The PSU is quite large and heavy by today's standards, but is typical of the era
Standard RF lead which was common across all machines at the time
Software
You may notice the cassettes got mixed up with the covers, and I didn't notice at the time, but this is what I got with the machine
The first cassette has a small bug-byte logo on the front and contains
Side 1: Savage Pond, Up Up And Away, and Cloak of Death
Side 2: Leaper, and Quest For Eternity
The second cassette contains
Side 1: Star Raiders, Asteroids, and Missile Command
Side 2: Centipede, and Airstrike 2
Star Raiders is considered the best game on the system, or killer app
Anyway, the listing said the machine was fully operational, although I will admit, I've never had any experience of the Atari 8 bit line, even through emulation, so I don't know what to expect here
But switching on the machine showed a blue screen and a slow buzzing noise for a couple of seconds, which was concerning, but then the machine stopped buzzing and a ready prompt and a cursor appeared. Interesting to note, there are no copyright messages or BASIC version displayed on the screen, just a ready prompt and cursor. but typing my usual BASIC programme worked perfectly.
There are jail bars visible on the screen, but many different machines show these on this TV, so it may be the TV exaggerating the problem
My usual BASIC programme running great
LIST
10 PRINT "IANWILLIAMHILL.CO.UK"
20 GOTO 10
READY
RUN
Time to load a game, but typing the usual LOAD command results in a rather unhelpful error, and so does trying LOAD ""
I had to look in the instructions and to load cassette software you have to power off the machine, and hold Option and Start when turning back on, which gives you a static cursor in the top right, then you press play and then return to load the software
It's interesting to note, that Atari BASIC, is not a re-badged version of Microsoft BASIC, like many other machines of the era used
While the game is loading you can hear the signal from the tape through the TV, it is structured similarly to BBC Micro cassettes in that it loads the data in small blocks separated by a single tone throughout the loading process
Trying Centipede first, the loading screen cycles through all the colours available
Still going, but then...
Second attempt and it loaded perfectly
Trying Star Raiders now, it loaded first time. You can see the XC12 still has the protective film on the badge, just like the computer
After doing some research I discovered there is a self test mode built in to ROM, which you can access either by typing BYE in BASIC, or holding down the Option key on power up, so I ran all three tests and it passed them all
However you may note the jail bars are much more pronounced on the self test main screen, than any of the other test screens
But this machine is in immaculate condition and has been well looked after, and I am happy to be it's next custodian for the foreseeable future
?EXTRA IGNORED ERROR