Atari 2600

The Atari 2600 was developed and produced by Atari.

Details

The Atari 2600 was released in 1977 by Atari, Inc. It is a part of the [second generation] of home videogame consoles. It's original name was the Atari VCS, which stood for 'Video Computer System'. However, once the Atari 5200 was released in 1982, it was re-branded as the 'Atari 2600'. Most people who weren't super nerds just called in the Atari.

The Atari was so successful, that it is largely given credit as the cause of both the first video game boom, and the video game crash of 1983. IGN called it "the console that our entire industry is built upon".

The Atari was typically bundled with two joystick controllers, 2 paddle controllers, that shared the same plug, and one game, either Combat or Pac-Man.

Technical specifications

• CPU: 1.19 MHz MOS Technology 6507
• Audio + Video processor: TIA

   Playfield resolution: 40 x 192 pixels (NTSC). Uses a 20-pixel register that is mirrored or copied, left side to right side, to achieve the width of 40 pixels.
   Player sprites: 8 x 192 pixels (NTSC). Player, ball, and missile sprites use pixels that are 1/4 the width of playfield pixels (unless stretched).
   Ball and missile sprites: 1 x 192 pixels (NTSC).
   Maximum resolution: 160 x 192 pixels (NTSC). Max resolution is only somewhat achievable with programming tricks that combine sprite pixels with playfield pixels.
   128 colors (NTSC). 128 possible on screen. Max of 4 per line: background, playfield, player0 sprite, and player1 sprite. Palette switching between lines is common. Palette switching mid line is possible but not common due to resource limitations.
   2 channels of 1-bit monaural sound with 4-bit volume control.

• RAM (within a MOS Technology RIOT chip): 128 bytes (additional RAM may be included in the game cartridges)

• ROM (game cartridges): 4 kb maximum capacity (32 kb+ with bank switching)

• Input (controlled by MOS RIOT):

   Two screwless DE-9[1] controller ports, for single-button joysticks, paddles, "trakballs", "driving controllers", 12-key "keyboard controllers" (0–9, #, and *) and third party controllers with additional functions
   Six switches (original version): Power on/off, TV signal (B/W or Color), Difficulty for each player (called A and B), Select, and Reset. Except for the power switch, games could (and did) assign other meanings to the switches. On later models the difficulty switches were miniaturized and moved to the back of the unit.

• Output: B/W or Color TV picture and sound signal through RCA connector (NTSC, PAL or SECAM, depending on region; game cartridges are exchangeable between NTSC and PAL/SECAM machines, but this will result in wrong or missing colors and often a rolling picture.)

Controllers.

Like many old systems, the peripheral devices ranged anywhere from kid's stuff, to hardcore radical.

The future

Software

Programming / Hacking details.

Mods

Video

The Longhorn Engineer's AV/S-Video mod for Atari 2600 4-switch[1]