On a recent visit to my parent’s, my Mom reminded my Dad to show me something he found while rummaging around in his old office. But first, a littl

Goto 10: The Newsletter for Atari Enthusiasts

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2024-04-29 09:30:04

On a recent visit to my parent’s, my Mom reminded my Dad to show me something he found while rummaging around in his old office. But first, a little background to lead into the story.

In the 90s, before eBay, a common way to sell things online was to do a Usenet auction. For those that don’t know, Usenet was one of the original parts of the internet that predated the World Wide Web (which is what most refer to as the internet today). Usenet was essentially a giant message board, with various groups using syntax similar to today’s domain names. For example, there were many Atari-related groups within comp.sys.atari, such as comp.sys.atari.8bit and comp.sys.atari.st. Atari 2600 game stuff could be found in a slightly different area: alt.atari.2600. If you were into BASIC, you might have liked alt.lang.basic.

Anyway, there were groups for just about any topic. Google Groups use to provide access to Usenet, but that shut down recently. I have not accessed Usenet in 25 years, so I don’t know much about it these days. My understanding is that it is not used much and its usages might be less than legal, but it is still around.