I promised John I'd do a 'Your Page' quite a long time ago, so here it is!¢¢Hello all! My name is Philip Phantom though you can call me The Philosophical Phantom (actually, my name isn't Philip Phantom at all, but my name has been changed to protect the innocent - ME!).¢ I've owned an Atari 8-bit computer since about 1984. I bought an 800 computer quite cheaply then but I soon upgraded to an 800XL. By the way, I still have the 800 and it still works fine!¢ The addition of a disk drive took a little longer and I didn't join these ranks until 1988. I saw a 1050 disk drive for sale in a local paper for 90 pounds. Not bad I thought so off I went to buy it.¢ Having a disk drive opened a whole new world of Atari computing to me. Now I was waiting seconds instead of minutes for a game to load. Sheer bliss! There was still the problem of all those tape games I had amassed being transfered over to disk but a quick crash course on machine code helped a lot as I wrote a little program to port over the files to disk and then I simply looked at the loader to see where the main part goes in memory. If I was sure I knew where everything went I'd write a little disk header to load the main code into the specified address. This was about 80% successful but I just couldn't transfer over English Software titles and Firebird budget games gave me a little trouble (I still loved 'Warhawk' so much I'd load it from cassette).¢ It was around 1991 that I finally took a step up and bought an Atari 520STE. I bought it in the full knowledge that I'd never leave my 8-bit to rot and this is still true to this day! By the way, if you think piracy is rife on the 8-bit you should see the ST!¢ Nowadays I haven't that much time for any of my computers due to my work. At the end of my shift I'm just too tired to even think about computing and usually just flop in front of the TV and fall asleep.¢ I used to think about buying an Amiga or a PC but have decided not to due to lack of time already mentioned. My son has a Sega Mega Drive which we bought for his 4th birthday. I don't play on it at all. Why is Sonic so popular? I just can't control the stupid hedgehog! Do your reflexes slow down as you get older? My son whizzes along with it but it causes me lots of problems. Also, why are cartridge games so expensive? My son has 9 games which cost me over 200 pounds! One game I bought him was completed the same day! 30 pounds for one day! Nowadays my son only receives games on his birthday and christmas. Needless to say he plays on my two Atari computers lots more than he does his console! He really likes Preppie and he's a big fan of Zool and other colourful platform games (Rainbow Islands, Parasol Stars). I tend not to play two player games with him because I hardly ever win! John has often bragged about being the Sensible Soccer King and (modesty aside) I'm not too bad at it myself. I've invited John down to my house a couple of times but he just hasn't got the transport (or so he says!). Shame, I'd love to give him a "proper Sensible Soccer pasting!" (was that Manc enough John?).¢¢This disk will self destruct in 10 seconds!¢¢The Philosophical Phantom¢
