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What is in an e-mail address

By Dwight R. Johnson aka. J.J.

For those who have followed the history of Atari Electronic Show in Chicago and Atari Corp contact-
computers in the mid-80s, you may have heard of ed several local Atari Users Groups to supply club
the Atari 1400XL and 1450XLD series of computers. members to help man their booth during the show.
As a dedicated Atarian I immediately placed the To my delight, I was selected from Lake County
1450XLD on my wish list. Unfortunately, the 1400 Atari User Group to represent our club to work the
series did not make it into production 4-day show. In fact, I had the opportunity to work
for Atari at CES for three years. During the shows, I
With the demise of the BBS's (Bulletin Board Sys-
tems) in the 90's and the introduction of the internet, got a firsthand look at some of the newly developed
email was a new way of communicating by sending Atari computers including the Stacy (Atari's laptop),
an email. Once signing up for a series, I was di- the Atari PC, and of course the Atari 1450XLD.
rected to create an email address. I selected Our job the first day was
jj1450xld as my email address but was informed that to help set up the dis-
it was too long because of character limitation on play and tear it down
MegsiNet.com, Still want to use this address, I short- the last day. During the
en my address to jj1450xl for my initial email ad- show, we were there to
dress. As I switched from MegsiNet to AOL, Com- answer questions and
puServe, Apple, Gmail, and Yahoo, I continued to keep the equipment
use the jj1450xl on all services I signed up for. running. I even got to
meet Lenard and Samu-
el Tramiel the sons of
Jack Tramiel (who pur-
chased Atari Corp in
1984) as well as a few
Atari software and periph-
eral developers. During the
show, Atari would have big
-name stars appear in their
booth, and one year, and
one year I had the pleas-
ure of meeting George C.
Scott and got a signed
photo from him. Along with
stars, Atari also hired sev-
Atari was a major player in the computer world in the
early 80s they were one of the first complete home eral models to help in the
computers on the market. The new 1400XL and booth, and one year I was
1450XLD were being shown at the 1985 Consumer (Continued on page 10)

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