Page 6


Page 6 was an independent British publication aimed at users of Atari home computers. It was published between 1982 and 1998. The magazine supported both the Atari 8-bit family and later the Atari ST models.

History

The magazine had its origins in the newsletter of the Birmingham User's Group, an independent Atari club based in England. 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-only for most of its life, it was available through newsagents during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
When Database ceased publication of the original Atari User magazine in 1988, Page 6 bought the rights, 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 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.

The title

The magazine was named after the area of memory in 8-bit Atari computers covering locations 1536–1791. Memory is divided into "pages" of 256 bytes, making locations 1536 to 1791 be "page 6." Page 6 memory is neither used by the operating system nor by Atari BASIC programs and so can be used to store the short machine code routines without them being overwritten.