I acquired this rare Arabic Atari 65 XE on February 26, 1999. It has three main differences from your average 65 XE: the keyboard contains the Arabic alphabet as well as English letters, the name plate shown above includes Arabic the Arabic logo NAJM means Star and best of all it includes unusual system ROMs. The ROMs include Arabic and English character sets as well as the abilities to type from righttoleft in Arabic mode or lefttoright in English mode. I first saw this computer at the 1998 World of Atari show in Las Vegas. It was one of the many items up for auction. I bid on it, but didnt win it no one did as the reserve price wasnt met. I was saving what little cash I had left after two days in a Geekville candy store to bid on a rare European Atari, model 800XE. I won that auction. Anyway, after six months I still regretted not getting the obscure Arabic Atari. So I contacted the company that had put it up for auction, Best Electronics. Surprisingly, they still had it. It was apparently lost in a warehouse somewhere, and they happened to find it around the time I asked. So, its mine now. How rare is this machine? I dont really know. There is no label or serial number on the bottom. In my searches with Dejanews, Hotbot, Excite, etc., Ive found no other references to this machine. Bradley at Best guessed that Atari might have made 10 or 15 to test in the Arabic market.The computer outputs an NTSC standard signal, so it is compatible with U.S. televisions. This makes it easy to get screenshots. Ive been told that in Iran, TVs are not NTSC compatible so this was clearly a prototype that was to be tested by U.S. technicians.

Website: http://www.savetz.com/vintagecomputers/arabic65xe/