I was having another think about THE 800XL and its apparent lack of an SIO port. It seems otherwise to be a gorgeous machine with a functioning keyboard.

The website of the company currently trading under the Atari name does say you can

Load your own games and software from USB flash drives with cartridge, disk and cassette image support.

What's not clear is if the latter two emulated media types are writable. If they're not, this sadly is a consumption-only machine.

With no writable media, it's impossible for a new generation to rediscover the creative possibilities which made the original 8-bits so exhilarating. They were bursting with possibility.

If Atari have missed that key point, they're not worthy custodians of the name.

https://atari.com/pages/800xl

#atari #retrocomuting #creativity #learning #discovery