Mac/Atari Fusion: About this site

About this site...

In 1982 I bought my first real computer, an Atari 400. Over the next few years I also acquired an 800 and an 800xl, played a lot of games, taught myself to program in BASIC, FORTH, and a bit of 6502 assembly language, and a got head full of knowledge about this really amazing home computer system.

In 1984, around the time I began thinking about switching to a PC (remember the Mindset?), Apple introduced the Macintosh. As a graphic designer, I could see lots of possibilities in this friendly little black & white box, and, within a month of their introduction I bought one.

For a while, I had both a Mac and an Atari sitting side by side--the Mac for work and the Atari for play. But as the Mac matured, my old Atari machines began to gather dust and eventually went into storage. Of course, pack rat that I am, I never got rid of any of them.

So, while I've lived and breathed Mac stuff over 15 years now, I still get nostalgic over my old Ataris and use them now and then.

I have occasionally tried to come up with different ways to integrate the two systems. Early on, I figured out how to transfer files between them, and even figured out a way to view Atari .PIC files on my Mac II. I made Mac screen fonts based on the Atari screen font and later TrueType fonts.

A few years ago I discovered the Internet, and soon after was amazed to discover people all over the world still using those "obsolete" Atari 8-bit machines. Not only that, there were emulators and other ingenious ways to use them with modern personal computers.

Participating in and exploring this fascinating subculture, I noticed that many were Mac users. But aside from Chris Lam's Rainbow Home Page, most of the Atari 8-bit resources available on the Internet tend to be PC- or Windows-oriented with not much information specifically for those of us who use Macs.

Hence, this site. If you are a fan of both Macs and Atari 8-bit computers and want to know how you can use them together, this is for you.

I've include mostly Mac-oriented info and links here (as opposed to Atari-oriented links), but some of the links here will lead you to more general Atari 8-bit information. Please drop me a line if you have any comments or anything to add to what you see here. Enjoy!

Mark Simonson