It was owned by the University across the street (Colorado State University). The mother of one of my friends was a Systems Programmer. We had a blast learning all about the machines.
The Atari 800 was my first personal computer (i.e. one I had at home). I bought one when they first came out and learned 6502 assembler language and had a blast.
I had experience with assembler language on larger computers (DECSystem 20 and CDC 6400 in high school/, IBM System 360/44 in college then IBM System 370/145 at work) but having my own personal computer was incredible. Of course I moved on to the IBM PC when it first came out (and learned 8086 assembler language), and many PC compatible computers after that, until I retired and got my first iMAC (Intel x32 and x64), then now to my M1 Macbook Pro.
The prompt doesn't say to pick a random number. I asked to pick a number from 1-1000 and it chose 7,381. Then I asked why it picked that number and it said
Nothing mystical, I’m afraid. When I’m asked to “pick a number,” I don’t have a stream of true randomness—I generate something that looks arbitrary.
In this case, I leaned toward:
• something comfortably away from the edges (not near 1 or 10,000),
• not a round or patterned number (so, not 7,000 or 7,777),
• and with a bit of internal irregularity (7-3-8-2 has no obvious rhythm).
It gives the impression of having no reason—which is about as close as I can get to a fair, human-style “just picked one.”
>Jim Sanborn planned to auction off the solution to Kryptos, the puzzle he sculpted for the intelligence agency’s headquarters. Two fans of the work then discovered the solution.
As a customer, if I can't do a chargeback in the case where you don't provide the advertised services, I simply won't do business with you and will go to one of your competitors.
The original Commodore was known for a super cheap computer that made it practical for people to have one at home, as well as innovative graphics for the time.
I don't know how that might translate into modern times when everyone has a home computer (a telephone at least). Maybe a computer targeted to pre-teens?