"Turn back" is in Fraktur over the station entrance of Wangerooge. The pretty brick building was built in 1905. Almost as old is the "island messenger". The local newspaper publishes 2200 copies per month - although only 1311 East Frisians live here. "Turn back" could also be the motto of the technology with which Hans-Friedrich Stenzel has worked for decades, as "Inselbote" publisher, editor-in-chief and printer owner.

From 1985, he managed text and address files on an Atari 1040 ST. When Stenzel switched from lead-acid to offset printing, there was no sensible interface between the computer and the typesetting system. "In a trade magazine, I read about the Atari TT with the Calamus program, which it seemed to be," he says. "We loved the many possibilities."

The purchase was cheaper for the small business than what Apple, IBM and Co. offered. Soon the complete system was equipped with an Atari calculator, scanner, laser printer, image setter. "From there, the 'island messenger' had really arrived in the computer age," says Stenzel.

Even today, Calamus runs on all his computers, even if he has purchased Windows PC for the typesetting work. The Atari was only used for film exposure, until screen and CD-ROM drive flabbergasted. "I recently disposed of the imagesetter," says Stenzel. "Now he stands there, the faithful Atari, waiting for his rare mission - that's history!"

No tinnitus yet? The dot matrix printer does that

Like Stenzel, Atari users have been at the front for at least a few years. Players were enthusiastic about the devices early on, musicians as well. In the mid to late 1980s, Atari's home computers were considered state of the art. The expensive computers of the Apple Macintosh were not widely used, the Commodore Amiga and the Schneider computers were worth considering.

Meanwhile, the Atari ST series was one of the technological top-class: For about 1800 marks got a compact built-in computer keyboard with good black and white monitor and drive for rugged 3.5-inch disks instead of 5.25-inch flimsy diskettes. To the gray box there were programs for word processing like 1st Word Plus (simple) or Signum (more sophisticated) and Calamus for desktop publishing, plenty of games anyway. You could make the floppy DJ or get yourself a buzzing, thousing 20 MB hard drive. What was missing for tinnitus was done by one of the usual 9 or 24-pin printers.

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Atari's roller coaster ride: Foreshadowed and suspended

Countless semester, master and diploma theses flourished on Ataris. And this at a time when universities often forced their students to MS-DOS courses. Those who wanted to change only one directory on an IBM computer ("Dose!") Had to memorize endless chains of command. Installing programs was the plague - and cholera to work with.

On the other hand came with the first Atari an eye-opening experience in the house: Hey, that goes without saying! The monitor showed easy-to-understand icons, you could intuitively learn the handling, programs opened a double-click, and the trash was a trash. A triumph of the graphical user interface.

Primitive tennis on the TV

With innovative, affordable products, Atari has gained a fan base following "their" brand through ups and downs. As early as 1972, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney had founded the company in California, borrowing the name from the Japanese board game Go. They wanted to earn money in the early boom of video games on "arcade machines", cabinet-high flicker boxes in casinos. In the early years Steve Jobs, the later Apple co-founder, was an engineer at Atari and developed the game "Breakout" with Steve Wozniak.

The breakthrough came with Atari Inc. "Pong": The primitive video tennis found its way into the living room via a console, which was connected to the TV. Also the game "Space Invaders" became a huge success. And the Atari 2600 was the first console with a joystick to be revolutionary, but the development was so costly that partnered with Warner Communications in 1976, a precursor to Time Warner.

In 1979, the first Atari home computers were sold. Five years later, after the crash of the US video game market, Warner ejected in 1984, the console and computer division and later withdrawn from the business also partly with casino machines.

Atari Games, as the game manufacturer was called from 1984, landed a series of arcade bestsellers with "Marble Madness" or "Gauntlet". But that went downhill and the last owner Midway Games 2009 broke. Most recently, Time Warner secured the trademark rights to Atari Games.

Lost the connection

Detached from the ups and downs of the game manufacturer, the Atari Corp. bundled from 1984 the consumer electronics. On the joystick sat Jack Tramiel: The Commodore founder, pushed out of his own company, built Atari to their most powerful opponent. But first he dismissed most of the staff, closed down facilities, buried projects. Tramiel had promised investors to triple their sales within a year. So he beat the development of the Atari ST in just five months. The 520 ST sold off in April 1985 dazzling and was especially popular with recording studios, because of the MIDI interface for musical instruments.

However, in the game consoles and handheld devices, others were always one step ahead: Nintendo with the N64 and the Game Boy, Sony with the PlayStation, the Sega products. Atari's last attempt, the console Jaguar, was taken off the market in 1995 - nothing but horrendous development expenses and a heart attack that befell Sam Tramiel, son and successor to Jack Tramiel.

Meanwhile, the home computer business had broken in as well. The merger with the hard drive manufacturer JTS to JTS Corp. sealed 1996 Ataris Finish: Name Off, Management Off, Development Department Off. Shortly before the JTS bankruptcy In 1998, a subsidiary of the gaming group Hasbro bought for five million US dollars the rights to the brand Atari and some Atari products.

The same company is still twitching

Atari was still not dead. In 2001, the French gaming company Infogrames paid $ 100 million for Hasbro's computer gaming activities, including the Atari trademark rights. And knew the sounding name to appreciate: Starting in 2009, the whole group operated under Atari SA, but weakened so much that Nolan Bushnell experienced his "turn back".

The Atari veteran was about to turn the tide, but the miracle did not happen. In early 2013, Atari, Inc. and Atari SA filed for bankruptcy. Both companies continued to reschedule with new partners.

Today, Atari is primarily a distribution of games that are developed externally for mobile devices, web browsers and social networks. There is no hardware production for a long time. A re-entry has not excluded the current CEO Frédéric Chesnais - but that's already over two years ago.

That's how Atari's fans feed in what the used market offers. That is a lot. Complete 520 or 1040 ST, including screen, printer, joystick and games, change hands at prices between 20 and 200 euros. The sturdy boxes are often fully functional, sometimes giving sellers even a one year warranty.

Some of the many former Atari fan clubs around the world are still active today. Some fans and trade magazines have also survived, at least online. Enthusiasts are still writing new programs for Atari and trading them like exotic stamps.

Even offspring for the scene

A scene meeting point is Herten in the Ruhr area, home of the Atari Bit Byter User Club founded in 1985 (ABBUC). He claims to be the largest in the world with 400 members and publishes a magazine quarterly, in true style on disk.

On the Internet, the club offers chats and forums, in the real world, a repair service for Atari computers and accessories. In the "ABBUC Bundesliga" will be drawn on ten matchdays from a list of 80 Atari 8 -bit games ever one to which the players compete. And in a hardware and software competition, there are several thousand euros to win.

Among the "atarians" are by no means only 8-bit geeks who got stuck in the Computer Stone Age. The scene is dominated by tech-savvy laymen and IT professionals. There are even offspring: ABBUC offers courses for beginners who buy their first Atari computer, including the children of computer fans back then.

Where is this enthusiasm rooted? "The Ataris are one of the first generation full-fledged home computers, offering color on-screen, good sound, and a wide range of software," said ABBUC's Florian Dingler, "you not only consumed, you also programmed and worked creatively."

And they are so beautiful retro, these Ataris.