So, do people an old-school Atari computer would work for things like word processing and maybe email? Because it looks like that OS is so old, an LLM wouldn't know what to do with it, and so uncool, a fascist wouldn't suck it into nostalgia.
Asking for a friend.
Oct 17, 2026, 3:14 PM@dnkboston It would need some kind of network interface to get email. what kind of atari do you mean? (they made a few over the years 😬)
@rasur Is the "newest" model a bad answer?
@dnkboston @rasur The ST range has a very good keyboard layout but most (ST(F(M))(E)) have mushy keyboards, bad even by the standards of a cheap rubber dome
most have a 4MB ram limit, and an OS that needs patches loading to support multiple fonts and replace its dog slow UI rendering code. models before STE have soldered in ram
they have a proprietary disc bus called ACSI. SD card adapters are at least plug and play
everything is expensive because of midlife crisis dads
@kyle_pegasus Fricking midlife crisis dads @rasur
@dnkboston @rasur for real i have seen a 150x price increase on these computers since 2011
@kyle_pegasus The business of reselling our repackaged, gilded memories is the real business of our time. LOL actual change and progress.
@rasur
Oct 17, 2026, 3:14 PM@dnkboston unfortunately there are lots of fascists in the retro space and lots of them are trying to slop up apps for old computers
that said I’ve had the same thought for the Amiga and done a little research into the Atari ST too. the ST has a full open source OS available which is cool, and you can swap out its kernel for an open source version of MiNT, a somewhat Unix-like multitasking kernel which I think has networking support
@zzt Thank you! I'm not going to rush to do this, but I'll start researching for next year.
And also WTF? I was not and am not a gamer, but I got the vibe of the time, so eww.
We are way past enshittification.