''Page 6'' (subtitled ''Atari Users Magazine'' and later known as ''Page 6 Atari User'', then ''New Atari User'') was an

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independe ...

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

publication To publish is to make content available to the general public.Berne Conve ...

aimed at users of

Atari Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French publisher Atari SA through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc., founded in Sunnyvale, Ca ...

home computers. It was published between 1982 and 1998. The magazine supported both the

Atari 8-bit family The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE, ...

and later the

Atari ST The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first per ...

models.

History

The magazine had its origins in the newsletter of the

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the We ...

User's Group, an independent Atari club based in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

. Les Ellingham was appointed to be the editor of the newsletter, but decided to produce a magazine with broader appeal instead. He remained editor of ''Page 6'' throughout its entire run of 85 issues. Although

subscription The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service. The model was pioneered by publishers of books and periodicals in the 17th century, a ...

-only for most of its life, it was available through

newsagents A newsagent's shop or simply newsagent's or paper shop (British English), newsagency (Australian English) or newsstand (American and Canadian English) is a business that sells newspapers, magazines, cigarettes, snacks and often items of local ...

during the late 1980s and early 1990s. When ''

Database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases ...

'' ceased publication of the original ''

Atari User ''Atari User'' was a British computer magazine aimed at users of Atari home computers, and published by Database Publications (later known as Europress) between 1985 and 1988. ''Atari User'' was a general-interest computer magazine, containing ...

'' magazine in 1988, ''Page 6'' bought the rights (and subscriber list), and renamed their magazine, firstly to ''Page 6 Atari User'' in February 1989 and then to ''New Atari User'' in June of the same year. The latter was simply ''Page 6'' under a different (and more newsagent-friendly) name, and had next to no continuity with the original ''Atari User''. The editor Les Ellingham had declined the offer to edit the original ''Atari User'' when approached by Database Publications in 1985. Due to "high interest rate, reluctance of the news trade to support smaller circulation magazines and reducing advertising income", New Atari User had to be withdrawn from retail sales and become subscription-only with issue 59 (December-January 1993).

Title

The magazine was named after the area of memory in 8-bit Atari computers covering locations 1536–1791 (or $600–$6FF, where the "$" prefix indicates

hexadecimal In mathematics and computing, the hexadecimal (also base-16 or simply hex) numeral system is a positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of 16. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using 10 symbols, he ...

notation). Memory is divided into "pages" of 256

byte The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable uni ...

s (the first being page 0), making locations 1536 (256×6) to 1791 be "page 6." Page 6 memory is neither used by the

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

nor by

Atari BASIC Atari BASIC is an interpreter for the BASIC programming language that shipped with the Atari 8-bit family of 6502-based home computers. Unlike most American BASICs of the home computer era, Atari BASIC is not a derivative of Microsoft BASIC a ...

programs Program, programme, programmer, or programming may refer to: Business and management * Program management, the process of managing several related projects * Time management * Program, a part of planning Arts and entertainment Audio * Progra ...

and so can be used to store the short

machine code In computer programming, machine code is any low-level programming language, consisting of machine language instructions, which are used to control a computer's central processing unit (CPU). Each instruction causes the CPU to perform a ve ...

routines without them being overwritten.

References

External links

Officially authorised ''Page 6''/''New Atari User'' website

The Page 6 Magazine Library
at the Centre for Computing History 1982 establishments in the United Kingdom 1998 disestablishments in the United Kingdom Atari 8-bit computer magazines Atari ST magazines Bi-monthly magazines published in the United Kingdom Video game magazines published in the United Kingdom Defunct computer magazines published in the United Kingdom Home computer magazines Magazines established in 1982 Magazines disestablished in 1998 Mass media in Birmingham, West Midlands Mass media in Staffordshire {{UK-compu-mag-stub