Switch into GRAPHICS 9 mode (16 shaded bitmap mode). Use a Display List Interrupt (DLI) to change the colors down the screen. You can arrange it to get a nice grid of 16 hues of 16 shades == 256 colors!

The paletted colors were actually only out of 128 colors. (16 hues of 8 shades)

More useful, though, are some of the software-driven tricks for drawing more colors on the screen. One simple one interlaces between 16-hue and 16-shade pixel modes, combining to give you any of 256 colors (albeit a little washed out), anywhere on the screen. In glorious 80x192 pixel resolution. (Not a typo)

Or cycle between 3 16-shade modes, one Red, one Green, one Blue, and you get 4096 colors, anywhere on the screen. (Or do it at higher horizontal resolution and get 64 colors or 8 colors.) There are GIF and JPEG viewers for Ataris that have been around for _years_ that use these modes.

Even fancier tricks give you 30 shades of grey at 160x192, some obscene number of colors at 160x192, etc.

In fact today (before this post appeared on Slashdot), someone contacted me about the character-set (you know, "font"? :^) ) driven multicolor text mode I came up with a decade ago that let me do cell/tile-based graphics and get 13 colors on the screen. (Simply toggle the font at each Vertical Blank Interrupt -- no need for Display List Interrupt tricks.) I wrote a puzzle game with it.

Anyway, he pointed out that those huge-pixel (80px across) modes can be "applied" to any graphics mode (try GRAPHICS 2:POKE 623,64:?#6;"abcd"), and therefore a similar frame-flickering trick could be made to get lots of large, multi-colored tile graphics on the screen.

Lots of stuff you can get ANTIC and GTIA to do; a few of which are 'artifacts' or 'bugs', but all consistent across the platform. :)

(Heh - I wonder if a single person will care about that braindump I just presented.)

Don't talk like that to your ancestors! (Remember who designed the Atari 400/800, and who designed the Amiga! :^P )

Ooh! And that reminds me... need Contiki and for someone to build a decent Ethernet or Wifi adapter. :)

Thank god Black Ops didn't throw you in "get the crap beat out of you" prison for copying games back then.

Hrm. Tried holding the [Select] button down while you turn it on? That _should_ boot it into Missile Command, if my Google-fu is working for me.

Heh. I _already_ can't seem to get a replacement keyboard from Dell. :^( (They've got all sorts of wireless crap they can sell me.) Maybe I didn't dig around the service section of their website long enough.

"Does it run Linux?"

Sadly, no. But I love it anyway. :) Everything else in the house does, though. (The SmartStor NAS, the Roku Netflix Player, the TiVo DVR, my laptop, my wife's laptop, our toddler... oh wait, not yet.)

Digital in the same sense that a ball-based mouse on a PC is digital. Though the Trak-Ball I have also has a switch to change between trackball and joystick mode, so you can play joystick-based games with it.

Heh, crap. It was late, and I've got a toddler, so I do appreciate corrections. ;)

XEGS was actually just an XL/XE with built-in Missile Command and a funky, detachable keyboard. (The Atari 5200 game system was also similar to the 400/800 (predecessor to the XL/XE), so a lot of games were identical and/or pirated+ported.)

Plus... sound _always_ works on my Atari, unlike the latest version of Ubuntu ;^P

I just bought one of these from B&C ComputerVision. It was also new-in-box, and is a very cool little device. My 2yo son likes having me draw things (usually octopuses) on our big TV. No Wacom drivers or X11 config to mess with. Don't even need to wait for it to boot up. Just click the power switch and you're drawing about 2 seconds later. :) (My brother had a Koala Pad for his C=64, and I was jealous... it wasn't compatible with my Atari. I'd have had to convince my parents to buy me the Atari flavor.)

Because _everything_ should run Tux Paint, especially if it's easy to draw on (e.g., touchscreen).