High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The ATASCII character set, from ATARI Standard Code for Information Interchange, alternatively ATARI ASCII, is the variation on ASCII used in the Atari 8-bit family of home computers. The first of this family were the Atari 400 and 800, released in 1979, and later models were released throughout the 1980s. The last Atari 8-bit computer, and therefore the last computer to use the ATASCII character set, was the XEGS (short for "XL Extended Gaming System,") which was released in 1989.