Dick's Gadget Warehouse

It’s not a gadget, but still very interesting. It’s my December 1984 “Buyer's Guide” copy of Antic Magazine. I saved it because of the buying guide. It’s amazing to go back almost 30 years to see the antiquated technology at sky-high prices. I’ll tell you a few of them, but first here’s a mini history of Antic via Wikipedia: Antic was the name of a home computer magazine devoted to the Atari 8-bit computer line (Atari 400/800 and compatibles). It took its name from the ANTIC chip, which produced the Atari line's graphics. The first issue was published in April 1982. While it began as a bimonthly magazine, within a year it had gone monthly. The last issue was in June–July 1990. All told, 88 issues were published. A "Best of" book was also published. And now back to me. I was so excited when I bought the Hayes Smartmodem 1200! Aluminum case, blinking LED’s, wow. Listed at $699 in the Buyers Guide, I paid “only” about $450! I also bought the Indus GT Atari-compatible drive, listed in the guide for $499.99. I believe I paid about $350. Back then printers ran $300 to $700, but you also could add $100 for a printer interface and another $100 for a printer buffer. That was so you didn’t have to wait a l-o-n-g time for big documents to print! I also paid more than $50 a printer cable! Amazing stuff from almost 30 years ago is such a curiosity today.

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