Exploring The Atari 800 - Teardown Of Their First Home Computer From 1979
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 มิ.ย. 2024
- The Atari 800 was Atari's first home computer and was released in 1979, alongside it's cheaper variant, the 400. Originally intended as a games console successor to the 2600 and pivoted at the last moment, it has a very interesting modular architecture and a custom chipset designed by none other than Jay Miner. So let's take a look inside and learn a little bit about the story and how this machine works!
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Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:32 8-Bit Computer Story & The 5200 Connection
01:51 Differences Between The Atari 400 & 800
02:56 Outside / Ports / Connectivity
05:59 Information On Cartridges & Under The Cartridge Flap
07:09 Removing The Top Panel - RAM & OS Cards
10:33 The Underside Of The 800 - Labels & Whatnot
11:48 Teardown Begins - Bottom & Note On RF Shielding
13:15 The Internal Speaker
14:38 Removing The Top Case & Keyboard Assembly
15:43 Power Supply Board
17:07 Internal Chassis / RF Shielding
17:39 Motherboard - PIA & POKEY Sound Chip Info
19:15 CPU Card - ANTIC / GTIA / 6502 Info & Test Edge Connector
21:55 Outro / Conclusions & Thanks
Music Credit:
Royalty-Free Music From Epidemic Sound: www.epidemicsound.com
#atari #retrocomputing #8bit - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Some more interesting information in addition to what was mentioned in the video:
- Atari's engineers developed the 800 using Cromemco Workstations. This was an S-100 bus machine similar to the Altair and Imsai and early 800 prototypes were implemented as S-100 cards, allowing DMA transfer between the host and the proto-800. This more than likely influenced the system's modular design.
- The RF shielding was of course a 2-way thing - not only to prevent interference from the Atari's RF modulator to external TV equipment, but also to protect the Atari itself from external interference. These older 2 sided PCB designs without a groundplane were very prone to external interference.
- The edge connector was indeed for factory testing.
- The POKEY audio chip was, of course, also used in some 7800 cartridges to provide extra audio capabilities, most famously Ballblazer. There's actually a stereo audio mod that you can make to these 8-bit computers that requires a second POKEY, so donor copies of Ballblazer are in demand!
- Jay Miner worked alongside Joe Decuir to design the custom chips, and this team were also responsible for the 2600's chipset, most famously the TIA as mentioned in the video. Although not as widely known as Miner, of course it's only fair that he also gets some credit. He also went on to work on the Amiga chipset as part of a team that also included Glenn Keller and Ron Nicols.
Many thanks to Chris Collins for emailing this additional info over to me, it's all in the name of education and historical preservation so I'm more than happy to share it here with his blessing. 🙂
The CPU-Board actually has a date stamped right on it: 1383 - which is a bit higher than the one on the 6502, if I heard correctly.
I wonder if the Cromemco s100 machines are the same type used with the factory test edge connector? It would make sense.
Wasn't the POKEY also used a lot in ATARI arcade machines like "Gauntlet"?
I forgot how great a game Ballblazer was.
The amiga before the amiga! These computers were ahead of they're time, Especially with the chipset designed by wizards. As much as i love the 64 the atari is a beastly machine.
I bought my 400, later greatly modified by me before getting an 800XL, then 1040STF, because of a series of articles in Byte magazine about its unique for those days custom graphics and sound chips by Jay Miner et al of later Amiga fame.
@@winstonsmith478 thats awesome! What'd you have done to your 400?
Ah yes. My first computer back in '83 as a budding 16yr old programmer. I had to return the first one to the shop because it wouldn't recognize the BASIC cartridge and the replacement had bare memory boards instead of the nice cartridges, and screws holding the cover down instead of the little brown cams - I remember feeling distinctly miffed. I was always a bit disappointed at the lack of any expansion port, not realising at the time that all the cartridges were sat on a bus system, which was probably just as well, as I'd have probably blown it up. The crummy BASIC forced you to use machine code to make decent use of the impressive hardware, and the 6502 was a great processor to learn how to code from the ground up. After a near 40-year career in software development, I can say this is the machine I cut my teeth on. Thank you Atari.
Thanks for sharing! I'd love one of those early machines with the memory cartridges and cams, I'll have to keep an eye out for one. 😁
I found my Atari 800 for a really good price and it was in fantastic, near-mint condition (and operational, which most of my purchases have not been, since I can fix these things anyway), but I kind of liked the look of the old RAM/ROM cartridges, too, and the classic brown cams that I was familiar with from the old days (I never owned one in the 1980s, but played with them in the store as a kid in the 1970s). I went ahead and bought it anyway, and haven't had any regrets, especially since finding out that these later-manufactured 800s are more reliable precisely because they don't have the older, less reliable DRAM chips that cook themselves inside plastic insulation. I wanted to eventually acquire an older 800 anyway, but I wanted (and still want!) way too many things (many brands and models of computer, and game consoles, too), so this is the only 800 I have, and I love it regardless.
One of the best keyboards I ever used in the 8-bit era. (I played SO much M.U.L.E. on that thing...) Early 800's had latches for the top. That way you could add more RAM from the stock (up to 48k). They were covered with a case on them too, so that they weren't exposed. Looked like flat, wide carts. :)
You can clearly see where the high price of the 800 came from. Man, this computer is built like a tank! 😁
Nope! tanks were built like this computer! ;-)
My friend had an 800. We used to joke that in case of nuclear attack, we could all just crawl inside of his 800 to ride it out. I could never understand why they thought they needed 10 pounds of stamped aluminum thick as your hand to block RF signals. Maybe it was designed to function as a heatsink, since they were probably having issues early on with overheating RAM, as it was initially shipped inside those awesome plastic packages. (My buddy had overheating issues with his 800 and eventually removed the plastic packages, which mostly solved that problem.)
Nolan Bushnell wanted the 800 to be an open design like the Apple //, or to at least have an expansion bus of some sort at the back. Which certainly would have been possible, given the CPU and graphics chips sat on just such a bus. They could have exposed that card along with the RAM, instead of forcing you to disassemble the machine to get to it. But Warner management overruled him and he was headed out the door anyhow, so it didn't happen. Idiots.
Honestly, Atari should have cost-reduced the 800 into a single-board computer by the end of '81 and launched something like the 1200XL, which ended up not being released until the end of 1982, cost a fortune, and had a slew of annoying issues. They should have discontinued the 400 at the end of '81 and just released the 800's replacement with 16K of RAM and placed a single RAM expansion slot somewhere in the machine - the back or a trapdoor on the bottom - that could accept a 32k RAM card, taking it to 48k. If they'd done that and released it at a reasonable price, it would have done a lot to move more of the machines and blocked the Commodore 64 from being such a runaway success.
Great video! I’d also add that some of the team that worked on that “ahead of its time” SIO port went on to work on the original USB port!
My dad bought one of these at Lasky's in Bromley in the early 80's. He quickly upgraded it and I remember him plugging in those big plastic memory boards. A lot of money in the early 80's. Wonderful computer, there was a whole Atari scene that gravitated around 'The Silica Shop' in Sidcup Kent UK. Great memories
It honestly LOOKS highend when you tear it all apart. The upgradeability is pretty novel as well.
It's amazing how well built it is. Proper 1970s American engineering.
I was lucky enough back in the day to have the Atari 800 and the commodore 64 both which i still have today with they boxes also.
Rich kid!
@@WinrichNaujoks Yup millionaires
I bought an 800 in Dec of 82, and still have it, and it still works
I bought my 800 in 1980 and the RAM cards were accessible by sliding two small brown levers where you have screws in yours. I removed the plastic casings from them after hearing about overheating. Also, I had a CTIA chip in my machine but a few years later my parents bought a 400 just to play Pac-Man on and I was able to swap out the CTIA and GTIA chips between the computers so I could play one of the Lucasfilm games which wouldn't run with a CTIA. Also, my 800 had two 'minus' sign keys on the keyboard-- the 'equals' key next to the return was incorrectly at the factory. Boy, were those the days. I'd kill to find that very machine again because the memories that I had with it were top notch!
The three digit's stamped into the bottom of case is actually the factory date code. The first two digits are the build week and the third is the year. Mine has 083 for the 8th week of 1983.
GREAT video, thanks!!
Atari went above and beyond with RF signal leak prevention with the 800's shielding, which is as silly as it is highly impressive.
the cartridge design to prevent dust build-up was also forward-thinking as the NES onward lacked it and everyone had issues cleaning them!
The 8k RAM carts are an oddity as, for some unknown reason, few wanted them. a few exist without the plastic and metal casing. A lot fewer do and are big collector items now.
I loved how the 800 was designed like big typewriters of the era, but were not as noisy. loved the internal speaker for "beep" keypress sounds.
Loved the art deco aesthetic of the 810 and 815 drives.
The 800 software releases were in big boxes with sumptuous artwork. Even a communications program, Telelink, had great artwork and it eoulfnt look out of place in Studio 54 - that's how cool it looks. They all look great on a bookshelf. Designed for business and family, Atari really was aiming for everybody. it's honestly really cool.
Wow, the A800 was the first computer I ever used as a kid. It was at a friend's house, his parents let us play and learn on it. Then I was sent to a computer camp that used A800s... then I got a VIC-20 for myself and went on to other Commodore machines, but the 800 was my first ever contact with a computer.
Great video. My favourite machine ever. I'm lucky to have the 800 along with the data cassette deck and floppy drive.
I went from zx spectrum to the 800xl from Dixon's with floppy drive. What a great time to be into computers.
I purchased my 800 some 12 years or so ago. Drove about 70 miles to pick up all the boxes.
It was actually my last retro purchase.
My dad got a few of these in the early 2000s when I was in high school. I took home the Atari 800XL and still have it, although it isn't working because my mum stored it in her garage for years.
What a well built machine. I can't think of a computer from this era that was built this well before everyone else started making cheap plastic knockoffs deliberately built to make user expansion almost impossible. Jay Miner was not just an electronics genius but he fought hard to make his machines the best he knew how and always paid a price for sticking to his guns.
The 800 had an amazing keyboard. Loved it for years.
the loudspeaker just chills in there. I like him.
Crikey! 42yrs! Crazy how time passes us by :( ❤️🇺🇸🇬🇧
RS-232 dates from 1960 and was an established standard at the time.
I had a TRS-80 PC-2, which was a rebranded Sharp PC-1500 that was introduced in 1981 and it had an expansion that included a printer/plotter _and_ and RS-232 port. Modems were being sold at Radio Shack. I think it's safe to say that RS-232 with the 25-pin connector was used for microcomputers from their beginning.
Ah, I knew someone out there would pick up on this and that's fair enough. Indeed, RS-232 was a much older standard - in fact Atari made their own SIO to RS-232 adapter, the 850 Interface Module, which was released alongside this machine. That said, it certainly wasn't common on the British computers of the time that I grew up with - the likes of the Acorn Electron and the Sinclair machines, so that's probably what I had in mind when I made this unscripted offhand comment.
I had an Atari 400 with a tape drive as a kid. It had memory cards, too. Those were the days - users groups, BBSs. Nowadays, tech is better, but I still miss those days. Thank goodness there is emulation!
I talked my mom into buying me an Atari 400 back in the early 80s.
Wanted an Apple II, but those were crazy expensive.
Christmas rolls around and under the tree was not an Atari 400 but an 800!
She talked to one of her friends who owned a computer for his business and he advised her to get the one with the real keyboard.
I have no idea how I got the money together, I guess I mowed lawns and did odd jobs? But I ended up buying 2 floppy drives. The Atari one and another one called Rana I think, that was supposed to be able to copy protected disks and do a few other tricks.
Also had an acoustic modem that I used to connect to early bulletin boards.
And of course all the joysticks, paddles and the keypad controllers.
All the ram cards originally came in a kind of cartridge housing. Only later did they have bare cards like that.
The ROM was also a long cartridge like that.
Thank you for the great video! The internal speaker was also used for key click sounds when typing. This model was my first computer, back in 1983 when I was a teenager. I still have it. I wish I had the box it came in. Last time I saw the box was in the 90s, and I can remember the huge sticker on it that proudly announced that said something along the lines of "Now with 48K!"
Hehe, that was a lot of RAM in those days!
The speaker could be used to increase the sound beyond the 4 channels pokey provided. It was a weak sound, but available.
@@technicaltaurus1 It could also be used to play back digital samples. Someone digitized a couple of seconds from the chorus of Van Halen's cover of "You Really Got Me" and it played back over the keyboard speaker. That was mind-blowing in 1982. I think some videogames might have used it as well. The later models did away with the keyboard speaker - the sound was routed thru the main sound output to the TV screen over RF, or via the audio out on the monitor output.
The monitor output supported separate luma and chroma signals - what would come to be known as S-Video - over half a decade before JVC invented S-VHS and the new y/c standard. It was much cleaner than composite video - I hacked together an S-Video cable in the late '80s for a friend's 800 and plugged it into her new 19" TV that had S-Video inputs, and text was dramatically clearer on-screen. The 1200XL I believe did away with the y/c output, but later machines brought it back IIRC. The signals were still present on the motherboard of the machines that didn't output y/c video though and you can hack it back on with a few mods.
I owned an 800 as a kid and loved it. Got an 800XL for Christmas and it was even better.
Great video Rees! My favourite part of Atari 800 is it’s beautiful colour palette, have you noticed it too? There’s something about it’s video output, it may not be very sharp or high res but it’s so soothing and never gave me a headache unlike the ST.
I'll be covering the games and how they compare to other systems of the time in a future video!
ever play "Masters of Time"? While not the greatest, it's by no means bad, and it's far more pleasant to look at and interact with on the 800 than C64 for color and sound. The C64 has less jaggy squares but that's it's only advantage.
@13:27 the beeper would also beep at every key press, so I very quickly added a switch to be able to turn it of (not knowing about "magic POKEs" yet) as it annoyed the hell out of my parents.
Great video , my mate had the Atari 400 as I got my 1st Atari computer the 600xl with a massive 16k
Thanks!
Great video Rees. Really well engineered machines!
Don’t know if anyone has mentioned it but the POKEY chip was also used in a number of Atari arcade machines, including Gauntlet!!!
Very good point and a great POKEY fact!
Very nice overview Rees! Thank you for showing this. I loved the sound with which the cartridge cover opened.... Very Halloween like :D
This machine had such a cool technical design, far ahead of its time. The USB like connector, you mentioned, the expansion slots etc. really cool. Didn't know that at all.
Great show and tell. I have two of these and a 400 all still working
Nice Job, Rees! That was my first computer and it kicked ass!
Right cartridge slot was mainly for cartridges-based utilities like "Monkey Wrench" that added capabilities to basic (when basic is in the left slot) and to the operating system.
They were quite forward thinking with the RAM cards as an upgrade method instead of having to solder them onto the motherboard. The Pong game was Atari's first console in 1972 but the VCS/2600 was their first console with of course interchangeable games. Thanks for another informative and well put together video. :)
I love my Atari 800. Although, my 800XL with Sophia DVI output is my "go to" machine for Atari 8 bits. But yeah, that 800 is built like a tank. Very sturdy. Not many people know it supports S-Video. In 1979. Before S-Video was a standard. A simple cable is all you need and you get brilliant displays.
Oh yes. I do love the styling of the whole XL range - I need to get one for the collection!
What a cool video, once more, from you. I had it in PiP mode playing while I was editing a video (audio was not important so I could focus on your video).
Also yes I laughed with the alooominum. :)
one of your most interesting videos, totally want one now
Nice upload today. Thanks for sharing.
Thankyou - and thanks for watching. 🙂
@@ctrlaltrees Great and thanks very much for replying to my comment. I have a new video out now on the update of my layout plus a special remembrance too.. Hope you like and share.
Thanks for the hit of nostalgia! I had the Atari 400, so it was not long before I replaced the keyboard with a mechanical one. It was every bit as good as the 800 once it had that upgrade. I liked the Atari Computer system so much that -now in the far future year of 2021- I've started working on brushing up on the old skills and writing a new game for it. The tools for programming old systems are so much better today, so development should be much accelerated once I get reoriented.
You're welcome! I'm a developer in my day job, I'd love to make time one day to work on a game for these retro systems. I reckon I'd probably pick the Atari 8-bits as well, great platform.
I believe the engineer(s) that designed SIO went on to design USB.
I don't have much as far as memories. I do remember always going to the electronics department when we would go to our local Hills department store, and just oogleing at the display. I do remember the salesman telling me that the 400's keyboard was not very good for a long time because you would have to keep pressing harder on the keys to make them read, and after a while, the keys would stop working. Not sure if that was his selling point for the 800 though. I remember wanting one so bad, but my parents would keep saying those home computers were a fad, and not worth it because something bigger and better would eventually come along and these would be forgotten. Unfortunately, neither of my parents lived long enough to even see the end of the 800 line. I sort of missed most of the excitement as I seemed to have missed the years of computing from about '85 until '94 when I bought a 486. I really wish I would have been able to get one of these when I was in middle school though.
loved this computer i got mine in jan 1980 for my birthday and xmas combined
It would have been great if Atari would have kept 4 joystick ports - that might have made a distinguishing difference between it and the C64 that might have helped the Atari sell more machines to the gaming crowd (which was quite a large crowd as many many users used the Atari & c64 primarily for gaming)....
Interesting you pulled this 800 out today Rees. Just reading Breakout:How Atari 8 bit computers defined a generation, on the Libby south west libraries app. It has lots of juicy history of Atari in it. Well worth a read (especially since its free). Lovely video.
Thanks for the recommendation, I love a good Atari book but I haven't read this one yet so I'll check it out. 🙂
Sweet! Had one of these as a kid - my first computer.... when I sold it I got than I paid myself because it was apperantly a good floppy drive.
Now this is the video I've been waiting for! The Atari 800 is my favourite computer that I don't own 🤣 I've long admired it from afar though and did get to use one a few times at my mate's house back in the early eighties. Its such beautifully styled machine. I don't know if I'll ever get to own one as they are not very common here, as I'm sure you know. It's on my list though.
Anyway, great video Rees. Very interesting and informative. Keep up the good work fella.👏
Thanks so much for the kind comment. Seems this one has gone down very well - I was stripping it down for cleaning anyway so I'm glad I decided to hit record!
Get one before they get even more expensive, which I'm sure they will. I have several examples each of Atari, Commodore, Apple, and other computers, but my Atari 800 is one of the most prized because I just love its design and how it feels to use (nice keyboard, too, for a vintage 8-bit computer).
Excellent video Rees. Never seen one of those open. I am struggling to get one at a fair price...
what a coincidence. last weekend I just picked up a boxed Atari 800, two disk drives, the little keyboard addon, and a handful of games.
Nice! I have that keypad thing too, pretty much useless but it does look cool on the desk next to the computer 😁
@@ctrlaltrees i do remember reading a handful of games and programs support it.
It was the first home machine with custom co processors, a "usb" type of connector, an extensive palette of 256 colors and Antic's beeping sounds (keyboard) raised the number of sound channels to five. It's specs remain at the top until the MSX2 machine(85)came into the picture.
It's actually the GTIA that does the keyboard clicks.
Excellent video. I think the internal speaker was also used for audible keyboard 'clicks'. The build quality of these early Atari's was impressive, and I should imagine, fairly expensive to manufacture for the time. It's interesting comparing this PCB to the later, much more integrated 800xl model :)
Thanks for the kind comment. The speaker was indeed used for the typing "clicks" - it's been far too long since I've done anything other than play games on one of these. 🙂
@@ctrlaltrees Here's a video where that 'click' is used musically, in tandem with the POKEY sound chip :) On later Atari machines, the click sound was routed through the normal TV speaker if I recall correctly: th-cam.com/video/q7_uxjQ-WLM/w-d-xo.html
True, although the XL series seems to be made of sturdier exterior plastic. Not that I've ever put them to the test on that.
@@alaggan Correct, and it is still the GTIA chip that generates the click, for anyone who might be wondering. From the point of view of software, there is no difference, and doing it this way not only does away with an extra speaker that isn't really needed, it allows the user to control the volume or turn off the sound.
I've always considered this an odd aspect of the Atari's design (especially the 400/800): having two separate ways to output sound, out of the box. It's comparable to the Apple II with a Mockingboard or other sound card installed, although that's an aftermarket add-on, so it's not so strange, while every Atari comes with a built-in POKEY chip. The Atari 400/800 plays _Ultima III_ and _Ultima IV_ the same way, too, regarding sound, with the music coming from the TV/monitor/speakers and the sound effects coming from the internal speaker.
I remember when the ram expansion cards and the bios cards came with a plastic shell with the top marked, it was a cost cutting measure why they were removed.
I started with a Commodore Pet, then an Apple 2e, then an Atari 800 for along time until a 8086 then an
8088. Then since a
286, 386, 486 and findly an amd k62. Then when with the P4.
The amd with win 98se was my most fun, although I miss my Atari 800.
stuff that can go into the right cartridge slot: 'magic dump II'... some screen printing program, or 'a few kilobytes of more ram' bringing it above 48K
My Atari 800 came with 48k stock when it was new as you mentioned.
Monkey wrench used the right contrage slot.
I believe at least the earlier 800s had metal shielding under the cartridge/expansion slot lid to complete the shielding of the main case in order to meet the very stringent FCC RFI standards later much relaxed to the great benefit of Commodore's later introductions. You removed the lid on your machine in a way that I couldn't see if yours also had that shielding in the lid. I think the mostly metal cases originally used for the expansion cards were also RFI related with the added benefit of ESD protection.
The sound of this cartridge slot flap is brilliant. :D
Great video! I think the idea of the modular CPU on a card design was in response to the paranoia caused by TI when they just announced one day they were going into the calculator business and they would not longer be shipping out chips to manufacturers. Atari wanted to make sure they had plenty of what they would have a hard time multi-sourcing. The whole Atari 8 bit story was sad in that the machines were released and never given a chance to develop properly. The TI99 4/a sold close to the same number, and was a similarly priced, and much less capable machine. To be fair I would say that this machine (the 800) was really made to compete with Apple, as all the components you would need were released with the system. But sadly a lack of support from corporate was the death of this machine.
Sadly the "lack of support from corporate" seems to be a recurring theme throughout Atari history. Very bizarre.
The relative lack of support from the rest of the industry, particularly on the software side, was the real problem, and there were reasons for this. To start with, Atari initially wanted to make most of the software themselves, so they kept the specs close to the vest. Any other company that wished to develop software for this computer had to be approved by Atari and pay a steep price to know all of the secrets. A decent library of software was developed despite this, but it badly lagged the wide-open Apple II in this regard, and the computer's adoption was slow. Even though the Atari 800 was more advanced than the Apple II and slightly cheaper, it was still out of the reach of those who weren't sure about why they wanted/needed a computer, as well as those who simply couldn't afford one, of course. The 400 outsold the 800 by 2:1 due to its significantly lower price, but it was kind of viewed as an expensive toy because of its membrane keyboard. In addition, the Apple II had an 80-column solution that caught on, and a rugged, reliable, fast floppy drive, so it had advantages for business/productivity use that were stronger justifications for buying a computer in the first place than being better at games. The Atari had so much potential, but the 810 was a clunky drive that was slower, lower in capacity, and less reliable than the Apple Disk II (the 1050 is much better, except for speed, but it came along years later).
Commodore then released the VIC-20 (first as the VIC-1001 in Japan the next year and then elsewhere as the VIC-20 the year after that, which was 1981), which despite being technically inferior was still useful as a beginner system, and most importantly it was the only "cheap" computer that had a "real" (traditional mechanical) keyboard. Most every other computer in its price range had serious limitations and a membrane or "Chiclet" keyboard, and even the high-end Atari 400 had a membrane keyboard, so the VIC-20 at least looked like a "serious" computer in comparison, and at a low price on top of that. It very quickly became the first computer model to sell over 1 million units, and really put Commodore on the map. Moreover, technical information about how to program it was immediately made available for a low cost (just buy an inexpensive book published by Commodore from the book store), so despite its limitations and in part because of its sales numbers, everyone got on the bandwagon to support it. Then the C64 was released the next year (1982), also with cheaply and easily available (and thorough) documentation, and the industry jumped on it even faster. By this time, Atari was belatedly developing the less expensive XL series, although they would start off on the wrong foot with the overpriced 1200XL, which failed on the market. The 800XL would eventually become their biggest seller, but Atari lost money with each unit sold, while the C64 was profitable at the same or lower price point. Atari also released technical documentation for free around this time (circa 1983), but Commodore had stolen their thunder, and Atari was in huge financial trouble from this and their recent failures (after having tremendous success) in the video game console market.
The latter was reported on the mainstream news, so everyone was aware of Atari's troubles, and I think this was another factor that limited the support their worthy computer received from the industry and consumers alike. The C64 was also worthy on a technical level, but did what it did for cheaper, and was selling like hotcakes. Indeed, Atari probably would have soon died if Jack Tramiel, Commodore's founder who had recently been fired from his own company (a long, sordid story in itself), hadn't bought the company from Warner Communications, put his own fortune into it, and tried to compete against Commodore. We can hardly blame people for being wary of buying or supporting a computer that looked as though it would soon be orphaned. Support didn't disappear overnight, but over time it did, and not that slowly, either.
Commodore would commit their own suicide later for equally or even more stupid reasons, but my point is that Atari kind of brought what happened on themselves in the late-1970s and early 1980s, and almost went out of business way back then. Unfortunately, the Atari 8-bit computers paid a price for this, but it didn't come out of nowhere, and for example Apple hung around for much longer (they only exist now because of Microsoft's massive bailout years later, and succeed because of the iPhone, but I'm talking about the 1980s here) because, in addition to the huge school contracts they got with the Apple IIe (starting in 1982), they had tremendous support from the industry due to their openness from the start (ironic considering Apple today, but it was originally Steve Wozniak's vision that prevailed until Steve Jobs' opposite vision finally won out). Despite selling far fewer units than the C64, the Apple II series has a software library, including games, that rivals that of the C64. What if Atari had been as open as Apple and Commodore had been from the start (and therefore less greedy)? What if Atari had beaten Commodore to the consumer market with a lost-cost, high-capability computer? The 400 was just as capable as the 800, but cost half as much just because of its keyboard. Really? Perhaps the 800 was overpriced, then. The Apple II series certainly was, but Apple managed to find their market anyway, while Atari never really did (it was Commodore's market by then). And of course timing and luck played their usual roles, but Atari the company was hardly blameless. This is not bizarre at all. It's just business.
I don't know about that, as the MOS 6502 was already available from multiple chip fabs (a deal struck before then-calculator-manufacturer Commodore acquired MOS as a direct result of TI's decision to make their own calculators and jack the prices of their calculator chips sky-high), including Rockwell and Synertek, in addition to MOS itself. All I know is that the Atari 8-bit computer was originally developed on a back-plane system (perhaps to make trying different components easier and quicker), and for whatever reasons this was carried over into the final design rather than reintegrated. It was nothing unusual for the time, as S-100 computers had a similar architecture, which was based on minicomputers that came before them. Atari did not depend on TI for anything (maybe they bought some 7400-series TTL chips from them occasionally, but they sourced those from everywhere).
The TI-99 series pretty much got caught in the same "trap" that Atari's computers did. They were too expensive to compete against the Commodore VIC-20 as a home computer, and could not directly compete against Apple II as a productivity computer without better peripherals and a seamlessly integrated and well-supported 80-column capability. The latter plus the openness of the Apple II gave it more software support that helped it sell despite how overpriced it was. Apple II computers, like all 8-bit computers, didn't begin to sell in the millions until the 1980s, but being so much cheaper to make, Apple still made a nice profit on limited sales, while Atari fell below expectations. If it wasn't for the 2600 selling like crazy, Atari would have been in trouble sooner, as Warner Communications wasn't exactly the ideal parent company. The VIC-20 was truly disruptive in how quickly it cornered the home market (while the Apple II went on to take over the education and small business markets), and TI and Atari were stuck in the middle with computers that were too expensive. TI got clobbered and left the personal/home/micro computer business to refocus on chips and calculators, while Atari got by with the 2600 until that faltered, and the company found itself in trouble, with Warner desperate to dump it before their stock got dragged down any farther.
Except for the disastrous 1200XL (overpriced and not as compatible as it should have been), Atari actually did the right thing with the XL series, but were a year late, as Commodore quickly followed up the VIC-20 (the best-selling computer at the time) with the perfectly-positioned C64 (cheaper to make than the Atari XL series, and more or less as capable overall), and the rest is history. Lest I come off as a Commodore fan-boy, Commodore made lots of dumb mistakes, too, like the 264 (TED) series computers, and the C128, which while pretty popular and successful, as well as a nice computer, never really got anywhere in its own right (mostly because it had a good C64 compatibility mode). But for a while, they could get away with their mistakes because they happened to do so well with the VIC-20 and C64 (and the Amiga on the 16-bit side). In fact, effectively it was some of Commodore's money from Jack Tramiel that enabled Atari to survive for another decade despite declining sales and support (the ST got some traction on the 16-bit side, but was always behind the others, I think).
It wasn't the Atari 8-bit computer's own qualities that caused all of these problems, at least directly. One would think that being such a cool, advanced 8-bit computer should have made it more successful than it was, even dominant since it came 3 years before the C64 that would eventually "eat its lunch" and become the top-selling computer model of all time, but in business it takes more than being good or even great (although this helps) to succeed.
Great video. Been curious about the atari 8 bits but never seen one in person and always been curious where they fit vs eg c64, spectum, etc
i really wanted one of those; but i could not afford, great success.
FCC: We’re worried about interference from these new computer things, please add some shielding to them
Commodore: Tinfoil backed cardboard OK?
Atari: Make it nuclear bomb resistant? righto.
Atari did like their shielding although you can tell it was just for show as they didn’t solder it down 😏
They changed the rules just after the 800 was designed, so thats why the Atari is a tank and Commodore is not.
To be fair to Commodore, the machine they brought out at the time of the 800 was the PET, which had a solid steel case with built in monitor. By the time the VIC20 and C64 came out the FCC rules had changed and that level of sheilding wasn't required. If you look at other contemporaries like the early Apple ][ and the TRS-80 they also had heavy sheilding.
Very informative, thanks Rees. Never seen inside these to that level. I had one many years ago and sold it for not a lot! Been looking for one recently but prices are sky high now, when they do come up for sale. I notice yours is an NTSC model and I was actually looking at importing one from the states as they are obviously still more plentiful there and you get a lot more for your money. Can I ask if you have any issues with colours etc and compatibility with UK released software on yours? Many thanks.
I bought a 16k 800 and the Atari cassette player. Pretty soon I bought the memory cards and bumped it to 48k and one of their huge disc drives. Later I bought another drive and the external printer box and hooked it up to a dot-matrix printer. There was a bug in the interface that meant it stopped printing three-quarters of the way down the page but I found if you then hit the space bar it would jump back into life and print the rest of the page. 'Course having spent all that money I then bought an 800XL and new drives fitted with Happy chips to deal with copy protection. Later still I bought a 130XE and gave the 800 away. Still got the XL in the loft. After all that I bought an ST and dropped the 8-bits altogether, but looking back they were halcyon days which later machines, for all their increased power, never quite caught the magic again that those early eight-bitters had.
I really need to do a video about those happy chips, it's a very interesting story. 🙂
Can't you use Sega Genesis controllers in the Atari 800 as well? The Atari 800 was my very first computer, I have so many fond memories of that computer and the 300 baud modem. Calling up local BBS's, message boards, downloading software, being able to type faster than the modem could transmit. Flame wars with Apple II(Crapple) users, TRS-80(Trash-80) users, Commodore(Commode)users. Fun times.
I expanded my ram to 48k but had a bad ram expansion that would overheat. I had to run a small fan blowing into the back of my Atari 800 to keep the ram cool enough so it wouldn't crash lol.
Yep, the Genesis controllers work great in anything that supports an Atari joystick!
Gorgeous computer but.... 4:13 .....that is all I ever connect my vintage computers to! I have spent a long time finding and repairing 1970's and 80's CRT TVs for this. (maybe I like the misery)
What a beautiful machine, i wish Mattel had released theirs like this instead of promising but never delivering...
When i was a kid, a friend had the 400 and we played a lot with it, it had Basic too but that keyboard sucked.
Also unlike the 2600, those cartridges are metallic, you can't feel that by watching a video and you didn't mention it.
That modular design would have allowed easy upgrades, how forward thinking.
I reckon that hidden edge connector was for adding more expansion ports.
I had a 800xl in the day. The 'war' between Atari and Commodore was similar to VHS and Betamax. In the end it came down to software (games), and what was available. One wasn't really any better than the other.
Yeah, each was better than the other at some things, but overall they were a pretty even match--too close to call for me. But the C64 had more advantageous timing and circumstances that resulted in much greater support from the software industry, and arguably for most applications, including games, it was easier to program to a certain level of quality or refinement (thinking of games here, especially more typical arcade-type games and RPGs). I'm sure some would disagree with me on the latter, but I've programmed both in assembly language for many years, and for whatever reasons, I usually find the C64 a bit easier to program (doing the same things on the Atari requires more unorthodox techniques and tricks, which is fun, but is more challenging and costs more if one is considering whether it is worth porting something to the Atari for profit).
The 6520 pia chip has both its 8bit ports connected to the joystick direction lines, 4 each per port. Some interesting things were made that plugged in 1 or more of those ports. The control lines of each PIA port went to the SIO port.
POKEY (pot and keys) looked after the paddles, keyboard, sound, SIO, random number generator and has some timers. The guy who did the serial part went on to design USB as part of a team.
GTIA (CTIA) looks after sprites, collision detection, keyboard speaker, console keys, joystick triggers and colours.
ANTIC has Lightpen input and runs its own program, also memory refresh. 400/800 only also has reset key on one pin.
The diodes you speak of near the controller ports are actually capacitors. Also inductors that look like green resistors.
The ANTIC doesn't really run its own program, it processes the display list, which is a sequential list of graphics modes to be displayed on each "row", which consists of one or more scanlines. The only other thing it can set on its own is the address from which to fetch graphics data, which it will do when a certain bit is set on the byte containing the mode number. Another bit tells the ANTIC whether to interrupt the CPU so that it can do other things at that point, such as changing color registers.
By the way, the C64 can do the same things, it just does them in a different way. Rather than having to read through a display list during each screen refresh, the VIC-II chip interrupts the CPU on specified scanlines to change modes, addresses, and colors. It's a simpler system that nevertheless gets the job done while taking less silicon, which not only allows it to have a single graphics chip versus two, there was room left over for a more advanced sprite system.
@@IcyTorment It depends on how you look at it. If the designers themselves considered the list of modes (plus a couple of flags each) a program, then they wouldn't have called it a display *list* . Let's look at another example for comparison: the C64's color maps (up to three color maps, depending on the mode) and more specifically its multicolor character/text mode. The color/attribute map in this case sets the main color of each character cell, but it also has a bit that determines whether the corresponding cell is multicolor (4x8 pixels, four colors) or hi-res (8x8 pixels, two colors). Is it a program or just data? The VIC-II chip reads these bytes (instructions?) sequentially and acts on each one concerning one of the colors and also the mode of each cell (therefore it can change modes 40 times on each line in this manner!). This is not so different, in my view, from the list of modes to display on the Atari.
@@IcyTorment I think another reason so many people consider the ANTIC a coprocessor that runs its own "program" is that it's a separate chip from the GTIA. The logic is that the GTIA is the graphics chip, so the ANTIC must be the graphics coprocessor, which seems to make sense, except that this is an irrelevant implementation detail. Every graphics subsystem must have a front-end, which fetches and often organizes the data into various modes, and a back-end, which creates the actual video output and often creates additional modes through various interpretations of the data coming from the front-end.
Some of the earliest graphics subsystems, such as those of the Commodore PET and Apple II, used many chips, with less integration than in later computers. These two had both graphics front-ends and back-ends plus memory buffers, but some computers and video game consoles lacked one or more of these features. For example, the early Sinclair computers (before the Spectrum) only have a back-end and memory buffer, and used the Z80 CPU to act as the front-end, feeding the back-end (on one or more chips) graphics data on each line. And earlier, the Atari VES/VCS/2600 console only has the TIA back-end graphics chip, with the 6507 CPU as the front-end and no RAM buffer (only ROM and determining what to display on each raster line on the fly).
The Atari 8-bit's graphics architecture is based on that of the 2600, with the GTIA serving as the back-end instead of the TIA. But because there was not enough room left on the GTIA for a front-end, an additional chip, the ANTIC, was added for that, and of course it reads its data from memory buffers. For comparison, most later computers of that era have a single graphics chip, such as the VIC on the VIC-20 and VIC-II on the C64, that have both a front-end and back-end on the same piece of silicon. Like the ANTIC, they read from memory buffers and run in a loop that continuously updates the display. They don't have display lists in system memory, but they do run their own sequential processes, so effectively they are all coprocessors, of a sort. This is different, in my view, from computers that depend on the CPU to act as the graphics front-end. Display lists are unique (as far as I know) to the ANTIC on the Atari, but as I described in my previous comment above, the VIC-II has an attribute map/list that directs it to automatically change modes, too. What I wouldn't do is compare the ANTIC to a CPU or say that it runs a program, which kind of implies the former. In addition, real graphics coprocessors do much more. The ANTIC is really a graphics front-end, which most other computers have integrated with their graphics back-ends.
By the way, in the mid-1980s Atari tried to put the ANTIC and GTIA together on one chip, but for whatever reasons it didn't work out. These attempts were called the CGIA and KERI.
It has the same styling as an old electric typewriter :D
That heavy RF sheilding is why the Atari 800 was used by many amateur radio operators - the damn thing was almost silent in the RF frequencies.
The Atari 8-bit computers are my favorite 8 bit machines, and the line that I am actively collecting for.
wow it was really advanced for it's time
If I had the space, I would have this set up. But, assuming there was space and time, I would want it to do something practical other than games. Maybe temperature or something modest like that.
A very interesting video, thankyou! I don't k ow if you noticed the 800 and 400's have and Atari key. This was not continued on later models! One day o will get me an original 800 or 400, meantime I have the 800xl and 600xl :)
I keep meaning to make a video all about the Atari key. One day. 🙂
Your computers have the same key in terms of function (inverse characters). It just doesn't have the Atari Fuji logo (unfortunately--having an Atari key is cool).
I used to love the smell of a new Atari!
rs232 was standardized a looong time before the atari 800. kinda dating back to the 1960s :P however the sio bus largely simply is rs232 with some different voltage levels and somehow (pulldown, probably) modified to do point to multipoint. also autobauding. but unlike commodore serial bus, not some 'failed attempt at cooking up their own interface' just standard chips also used for normal rs232. (see thing is. if you would ever get the commodore serial bus to work in it's intended implementation, it can well do speeds over a megabit/s or higher (just that the chips are rated for 1mhz and as such the shift register would also be rated for 1mhz but hey that still leaves 7 cpu cycles or so per byte to transfer that serial byte). however the 6522 was a screwup, the 6526 was a screwup too, and a few times of 'omg we should just throw away failed production run chips, nah just use them anyway' further on you end up with a bitbanging crappy slow interface on the few functions of the chips that did still function :P... ataris interface however is normal off the shelve rs232 stuff with 'something else' than a max232 behind it allowing it to have multiple devices without things catching fire (probably the exact same chips used in commodores bus, voltage is probably standard 'high' and any chip can pull it down, rather than the other way around). but with normal rs232 framing. also the actual working part is just txd, rxd and gnd. the rest of the pins in that weird and unobtanium even back then molex connector are for 'other things' than just data transfer (cassette etc).
Good stuff! I had to replace the power input board (?) on one of my Atari 800's and actually got it to work again. Now I have a buzz from the TV (using an s-video cable to retrotink mini) on my other 800. It had been fine, so what next? The cpu board? I will of course replace all components one at a time such as power supply, video cable, retrotink etc before going inside the box. Any ideas? I'm a rookie.
Interesting. A buzz sounds like something isn't grounded properly, or it could happen if you've replaced the original linear power supply with a switch mode supply. Because of the way switch mode power supplies operate, they can create RF noise that can manifest itself in the form of buzzing audio or interference on screen on these older machines.
@@ctrlaltrees Thanks. I will give it a try.
I had two of these and they beat the Commodore 64 hands down.
The basic certainly made graphics and sound easier to program
It depends on what you want to do.
There was a debugger Right cart.
I'll give this much to Atari. These were far better made and built than the Commodore 64.
I like the design of this one better than the 800xl.
I almost wish I hadnt sold my 800 a few months ago
Really interesting architecture. Did anyone ever use those expansion capabilities for anything interesting? Different operating systems? Replacement CPU/TIA?
I know of a modern CPU board replacement called the "Super Color CPU Card" but it doesn't add any new functionality other than a much improved video output. It is interesting that the modularity of the machine wasn't more widely exploited.
Yes there is an 80 column card, 3rd party 32K RAM cards and some more. Not a lot of expansions were released but some. Atarimania has a FAQ that covers almost everything about the platform including internal expansions for the 800.
Was that edge connector used in arcade cabinets. There were Boulder dash and Flip Flop arcade cabinet based on Atari 800. At least First Star Software used atari hw in cabinets.
Interesting thought - I'll have to look into that.
You could hook up a box to the sio port that had standard rs232 ports and standard printer parallel ports
Indeed, the Atari 850 Interface Module - it was an official add-on that was released alongside these machines. I only learned about it after this video was released. 🙂
I was thinking how could Sony Vaio manufacture the Atari 800. They didn't exist until decades later. It wasn't until I saw the tag that I realized you were saying "Sunnyvale".
I've always been curious about this system. On paper it seemed comparable to the C64 but launched three years earlier. I look forward to seeing it in action!
C64 vs Atari 8 bit "on paper" can be a little misleading. The C64 has a bit more advanced video and sound with the VicII and Sid, but Atari had a bit faster CPU. That allows the Atari to multiplex sprites and torture PoKEY a bit more then the C64 could with its video and sound, so they come out really close.
One way of looking at it: PAL C64's have better games, because at 50hz refresh there are a few more CPU cycles per frame than an NTSC C64. The Atari 8 bit on the other hand have a LOT more CPU cycles per frame (Pal or NTSC) because the CPU is at 1.79mhz rather than about 1mhz.
Both are great systems anyway though. I have had both and currently have a couple C64's and an Atari 65XE
@@bitset3741 I seem to remember the Atari disk drive ran at 19.2kbps whereas the C64 ran at modem speeds (2400bps?). Dunno if the fastload cartridge bumped it up as fast as the Atari. I had one friend with each computer and remember the Atari's drive just worked, and quickly. The C64's was slow and somewhat unreliable. Fun playing games on both, though.
Actually the atari had a much more flexible video chip set. And could also do more colors on screen. A lot of games didn’t use it, but it was there.
@@bitset3741 The C64 can also multiplex sprites with raster interrupts, and its sprites (at the programmer's option) could each have double the horizontal pixel density (for finer detail) of the Atari's players or 3 colors (plus transparency) versus one. Additionally, the C64's sprites are just as fast and easy to move vertically as they are horizontally, as they have Y position registers, while the Atari's CPU has to work harder to shift graphics data in order to move players vertically. The C64's sprite system is definitely better.
As for the POKEY, in order to do what the SID does on its own, the Atari CPU must emulate waveforms and ADSR envelopes for each channel, other forms of modulation such as ring modulation and hard sync, and high-pass, mid-band, and low-pass filtering. On top of that, the SID has 16-bit frequency resolution for each voice, while the POKEY only has 8-bit resolution, which is insufficient for playing music in tune. The POKEY's 4 voices can be paired to get 16-bit frequency resolution, but then there are only 2 voices, or it can offer a single in-tune voice for music plus 2 8-bit voices for sound effects, while the SID has 3 in-tune voices. Really trying to do all the SID does is going to take most if not all of the CPU's cycles, and varying DMA contention with the ANTIC chip has to be accounted for, as well. Frankly, the more the CPU has to do, the more the Atari's sound system seems like a glorified version of the Apple II's beeper. At least it's versatile, which allows it to do more than the nearly ubiquitous AY-3 chips (and very similar TI sound chips) used in most computers of that era, but the SID automates all of these synthesis functions to allow the C64 to generate rather sophisticated sound with very little work being done by the CPU, which is kind of the point of having coprocessors and a chip set.
As for the CPUs, the Atari's CPU only runs at a full 1.79 MHz when its screen is blanked and DMA is turned off. How many cycles the ANTIC "steals" via DMA depends on what is being displayed, and with the most commonly used graphics modes, the Atari's CPU is effectively only about 17% faster than the C64's, not anywhere close to the 75% (1.79 versus 1.02 MHz) that their clock speeds appear to suggest. The C64's CPU and VIC-II share memory in a different way (like the Apple II) that halts the CPU much less often but only allows it to run at 1.02 MHz (NTSC).
@@radellaf The C64's default serial bus protocol in ROM unfortunately limits disk transfers to about 3200 bps, but there are some caveats and additional information that we have to be aware of in order to make a fair comparison. First of all, this 3200 bps is the measured rate, while the Atari's 19.2 kbps is the specified rate. In reality, the Atari's measured rate is lower, only like, I forget, maybe 3 times the C64's rate. Obviously, that's still better, but the Commodore disk drives are reprogrammable from the computer by software alone, so there are (and were, almost from the very start) software "fastloaders" that sped up disk transfer rates on the C64 tremendously. Typically, a C64 fastloader resulted in transfer speeds about twice that of the Atari, depending on factors such as disk interleave. And the best fastloaders were far faster than this. In fact, the _Vorpal_ fastloader that is built into _Winter Games_ , for example, transfers data significantly faster than the Apple II running ProDOS does (comparing the same game here). That's hard to believe, but obviously true when running them, and this is faster than I've ever seen Ataris transfer data.
Much commercial software came with fastloaders built in, so drive speed wasn't an issue, although many C64 users aren't aware of this because the cracked, pirated software they used almost always had the fastloaders removed. However, it is still possible to use fastloader cartridges or replacement ROMs (e.g. JiffyDOS) to get fastloader capability for all software. Of course, this is less than ideal, but it worked, was a popular option, and my main point is that it wasn't the drives themselves that were slow, nor did the C64 have to be. Why this happened is a long, strange story, but it wasn't intended to happen at all.
As for reliability, the 1541 often went out of alignment due to (of all things) heat building up from its internal power supply. Banging the head to find track 1 alone didn't mess anything up, but add some heat, and the darn thing kept getting misaligned--it isn't serious and is easy to fix, but it does make the 1541 seem unreliable. The 1541-II that came along a few years later, however, is far more reliable. Is it fair to bring up the latter in this discussion? Yes, because the Atari 810 was also kind of unreliable, while the 1050 that came along a few years later was solid. Sometimes it takes additional time to really get things right.
All those edge connectors mean lots of contact cleaner needed!
Oh they've all been thoroughly cleaned now, trust me 😁
Always been a fan of the 400 and 800 . Grew up with an Atari 400 with disk drive and cassette . Still have it , upgraded it to 48k , still works great and I picked up another 400 and a couple of 800s as well as some XL models over the years cheap . Even just 10 years ago they were criminally undervalued with most people nearly giving them away . I have about 70ish cart games , a handful of disk games , and maybe 10 cassette games . I always felt sorry for my friends who had Atari 2600s , those games were so bad comparatively .
Thanks for sharing! Agreed, it's amazing just how advanced these were compared to the 2600 considering there was only 2 years between them. The Atari 8-bit home computers have some of the best arcade conversions out there.
Hey, I had fun with the 2600, and I own and still play with a couple of them today. Sure, the games were necessarily crude, given the hardware limitations, but some were and still are quite playable and fun to play. I for one don't need your pity! 😝😉
@@rbrtck At my best friend's house we played the heck out of Frogger and ET on his 2600 lol . We had a lot of fun with it to be sure . The game that stands up the best today I think is Demon Attack , it's crazy how good it was on all platforms including the 2600 .
I've collected a lot of 2600 variants over the years because of the good memories . I have a Vader , a 2600 Jr , a Sears Video Arcade II , a bunch of Coleco Geminis , and even one of the hard to find Colombia Home Arcades . I haven't collected a lot of the games though , 13 of the essentials I think . I'd much rather play them on the 400 . I'd highly recommend an Atari 8-bit computer if you can pick one up , you won't want to go back .
@@ctrlaltrees Well, the Atari 8-bit computers, even the 400, cost a lot more than the 2600. Jay Miner, who led the chip set design teams for both, originally wanted to include an ANTIC-like chip to drive the display (TIA chip), but that was ruled out because of cost, and the 6507 CPU alone was left that responsibility, which is a major limitation. So it's not that they couldn't have done better, even in 1976, it's that the 2600 had to be cheap enough to be profitable even at the low prices of the mass consumer market.
The 400/800's main competition seemed to be the Apple II, which obviously allowed for significantly higher cost. The thing is that the Apple II was cheap to make despite its high retail price, which made Apple highly profitable, while Atari priced themselves out of the home/mass consumer computer market and could not compete with the Apple II in its markets (hobbyists, "rich" people, small businesses, and schools later on), either, since the Apple II was an "open" system that had tremendous software and other industry support, while Atari kept the technical details of their computers a secret, except to companies that paid a hefty price, for three years. Atari belatedly tried to make their computers cheaper for the mass consumer market, but Commodore had grabbed control of that market with the VIC-20 and more importantly the C64, which being newer and based on lessons learned from others, was able to more or less match the Atari overall (with different strengths and weaknesses) at a lower cost. Atari would drop their prices to match, but took huge losses as a result, at least until the even cheaper XE series was released, but by then it was too late, and support continued to decline.
Yes, it was impressive how much more advanced the 400/800 were over the 2600 and, for that matter, everything else in 1979, but this came at a price. Things might have worked out differently if Atari had been as open as Apple and Commodore right from the start, but we'll never really know. And if the 810 floppy drive had been as fast, stored as much, and been as reliable as the Apple Disk II, then the 800 might have had a real chance against the Apple II in its markets (the 1050 is a much better drive than the 810, but it came along much later). These are all ways in which even a technologically impressive computer for its time like the Atari 8-bit can under-perform in the market. It's also interesting to look at the computer that "won". The IBM PC was solid in many ways, but lacked so much capability for the price it was ridiculous. It only had a beeper for sound and CGA graphics weren't so great. But it was also dead-easy to clone, and once prices dropped as a result, it started to gain all of the capabilities it lacked with expansion cards and rapid research and development. IBM was soon knocked out of the business, so they didn't win, but their generic design did, even over the likes of the Amiga.
@@rbrtck The main bonus of the Atari 400/800 and C64 was that their games were (at least in the US) more widely available than the Apple II . I could buy cartridges at every department store and drug store and disk games at several different locations most notably Toys-R-Us and Best Products that we had locally . You couldn't just walk in anywhere and see Apple II games like you did Atari games .
I wonder how much the shielding made up of the cost of the system? That's a huge piece of "aloominum."
It does make you wonder. Although aloominum was much cheaper in those days 😉
Have you conisdered lubricating your flap? It seems quite dry and squeaky...
-Dx
Now I know how Mark Fixes Stuff feels...
The top case on mine has levers to release the lid? Are these machine related to PDP's? I thought the Atari used faster but pricer ram chips to run closer to 2mhz -like the bbc?
I've seen them with the levers before but mine didn't come with them - either they went missing over the years or these later machines didn't have them. It's not really related to the PDP at all, just laid out in a similar way to all of those '70s machines with everything on a card on a backplane - the PDP was just the first example that came to mind. 🙂
@@ctrlaltreesThanks for your reply. I'm interested in how the Atari 400 and 800 managed to run at nearly 2 mhz in 79. The acorn BBC two years later while faster still, could only do it with special RAM which even delayed its launch as it was in short supply?
No, the Atari's system bus, CPU, and RAM all run at a speed of 1.79 MHz. However, the ANTIC chip "freezes" or temporarily halts the CPU whenever it needs to in order to "steal" cycles for DMA to drive the display. In the most-used graphics modes, this means that its CPU is effectively running at about 1.14 MHz (without player-missile graphics or PMGs) or 1.069 MHz (with PMGs active).
For comparison, the Apple II effectively runs at 1.0205 MHz, the VIC-20 at 1.023 MHz, and the C64 at 0.9629 MHz (no sprites) and 0.9428 MHz (with 8 sprites active). The system bus and RAM on these other computers all run at 2.045 MHz, and actually, all of their CPUs are clocked at exactly half that speed, but the Apple II pauses a tiny bit on each scanline to allow the color clock to get to the right phase (saving a few transistors the others use to do that immediately) and the C64 has a relatively small amount of DMA for graphics (much smaller than on the Atari), which slows its CPU down a bit (a worthwhile trade-off).
So the Atari isn't really much faster than the others in terms of speed--just a little bit, not nearly as much as the numbers might suggest. On the other hand, the BBC Micro or "Beeb" really does run twice as fast, with its bus and memory running at about 4 MHz and its 6502 CPU *actually* running at 2 MHz. It does this by, you guessed it, using the then-new, much faster DRAM chips from Hitachi. The Atari uses the same class of DRAM chips as the others.
@@ctrlaltrees Later 800s came with the full 48K installed as standard, so with no need to upgrade (supposedly), bare DRAM boards were used instead of the plastic-encased ones, and the cover was screwed on instead of being locked and unlocked with levers. Another reason for doing away with the plastic cartridge-like DRAM cases was that this design sometimes caused DRAM reliability/longevity issues due to trapping heat.
As for the backplane, this was common not only with minicomputers but the S-100 computers of the time, and Atari's development system for the 400/800 also utilized a backplane design so that they could swap components conveniently. While this didn't necessarily have to be carried over into the final design, I think the developers liked it, so it stuck. It also helped reduce the footprint of the computers. The later XL series were more tightly integrated (for one thing, they use a special variant of the 6502 called the 6502C or Sally chip, which integrated a bunch of additional circuitry required by the Atari design) so they had less discrete circuitry and required less board space, so this wasn't necessary, and of course putting everything on one board was cheaper.
@@rbrtck Thanks for the great reply, its allowed me to understand how these machines ran at the speed they did. I didn't know that dma access had that much effect on the cpu's speed, my lack of knowledge meant i thought it was a free ride, but your description shows its effect on the CPU having less access when it is in use. Also for the bbc, it does have amazing speed compared to its 8 bit and some 16 bit rivals. I now see why it has those expensive ram chips, but the Atari did not use them (though I don't think they were even available at that time). cheers.
Actually, the internal speaker makes key click noises when typing and I'm pretty sure indicates floppy access too. I only have a Pac-Man cart for my A800 atm, though.
Night Mission pinball uses it for audio, sounds like a speccy.
@@andrewclegg9501 That actually makes a lot of sense since the game is an Apple II port.
Oh nice! Yes, I'd forgotten about the keypresses - it's been so long since I did anything other than play games on this machine. 👍
I seem to remember loading from cassette was press and hold start while powering on, didn't the internal speaker Beep then?
@@thepirategamerboy12 I wonder if this feature, which is implemented separately from the POKEY chip, was included for Apple II-type sound from ported games. I can't think of another justification for it, to be honest.
Can you peek inside the 8-bit Ataris that look like min STs please?
The XE? I'll add it to the list! I have to say they're much less interesting though, everything was consolidated onto one board by that point. 🙂
@@ctrlaltrees Sounds ripe for cutting down and mobilising 🤔
Great video. I love my 800XL...and I love Atari...and I think Atari computers were absolutely brilliant...buuuut...I will always argue that when looking in the rearview mirror, Atari should not even have gone down the road of making computers at all! Chalk it up to Apple-profit envy or whatever, it was NOT a good move in retrospect. Maybe financially, yes, but legacy-wise heck no! They were a video game company and they should have focused on making a proper successor to their hit product, the VCS/2600. The 5200 was a poorly engineered machine and was obviously an afterthought of a product. Atari was not an incompetent company, so there is no way they did not know that people would want backward compatibility (at least with a reasonably priced adapter) from day one. The controllers were also clearly rushed out the door with too little testing. Despite being based off the powerful 800 computing system, The 5200 flopped and It's clear to me that it flopped because their corporate baby was the 800. After the 5200 flop, there was the sad and desperate 7800 which also flopped and the Jaguar fiasco which added salt to the wound. Only the Lynx was innovative and kind-of well done. People think I'm crazy when I say this, but I'm convinced that had the 5200 been focused on properly and correctly engineered for success, Atari may have been able to weather the "83 crash" and still go toe-to-toe with Nintendo and SEGA (but of course with a console different than the 7800 we got, probably totally different). Instead, the company known for video games traded their existing, wonderful legacy for a wonderful, amazing Computing legacy...that only lasted 8 years or so. whoop-de-do. Who, besides us nerds even remembers that Atari made computers at all? Even the swansong ST's, awesome as they were , were obliterated by the PC clones almost immediately, say by 1987, so Atari only really enjoyed a whole, eight years of computer relevance? Wow. Not a good trade in my opinion. I rub people the wrong way when I say this, but I think they should have let Jay Miner focus fully on a worthy successor to the 2600 and Atari's legacy as a video Game company probably would not have gone down the drain so fast. I have a similarly "controversial" theory for Coleco, Inc. as well that rubs ADAM fans the wrong way! The ADAM (which I do personally love for what it tried to be) was such a colossal mistake/flop that I always say that Coleco (in retrospect of course, hindsight is 20/20) should have made a Super Colecovision instead of a home computer and might have actually created a slightly better legacy for itself in the process...all debatable of course, but I don't think my points are nearly as controversial as some nostalgia-blinded people make them out to be :-).
Some very good points here. Indeed, they should have played to their strengths and stuck to the consoles. The 5200 could've been huge - it was certainly an impressive system but let down by those controllers (an easy fix if they wanted to) and lack of corporate support internally as it was seen as a competitor to their computing business. The rest, as they (and you) quite rightly say, is history.
I have no problem with anything you've said, except that I'm glad everything worked out the way it did regardless, including the many mistakes that companies made, because it makes that era more volatile and interesting than it otherwise would have been, in my opinion. It gives us more things to talk about, as well.
The 5200 had the powerful core of the 400/800, although it wasn't the most ideal architecture for the kind of games typically found on consoles. I'll probably take some flak for saying that, but I think the best, most amazing games on the Atari 8-bit are types like 3D perspective and other types that are seldom found on consoles. The ColecoVision console, which was the 5200's contemporary, has always (then and now) received high praise for the accuracy of its arcade conversions, despite being based on the inferior TI graphics chip (essentially the same one used in the TI-99/4A). Yes, it was inferior overall, in my opinion, but with 32 sprites (max 4 on each scanline, but the multiplexing was in hardware, making it easier to program well) and more usable modes of greater than 160 horizontal pixels, it was a good match for the kind of games that most people played on video game consoles. The 5200 could most assuredly do almost everything needed to match or exceed the ColecoVision's capabilities, but that takes a lot of work (time and money!) and advanced techniques, some of which were only developed recently. Now, this wasn't the 5200's main weakness (you've already described those), but my point is that its strengths didn't come into play nearly enough to give it a decisive edge over its competition. Those who owned an Atari computer knew better, but this didn't help the 5200 at all. Sometimes I wonder how things might have turned out differently if the Atari 400 had been marketed as a console (as Atari had originally planned to do) rather than as a computer. That was never going to happen, given the infighting between the computer and console groups, but what if?
As for the Adam, it was kind of a rebirth of the TI-99/4A, in an improved form. The consensus is that what killed it, more than anything else, was its defect rate, which was off the charts (a strong majority of units either didn't work out of the box or failed very soon) and made the mainstream news (as did Atari's financial woes, which didn't help them, either). It had all the publicity it needed, as well as the benefit of the Coleco brand at the time, but Coleco couldn't get it working well enough in the time frame they wanted, and that got plenty of publicity, too. There were other flaws with the system (which I considered kind of cool overall), but the bottom line is that enough of them have to actually work in order for the Adam to have succeeded. Coleco actually bit the dust, largely as a result of the Adam's failure.
The main thing I get from hindsight is that generally it wasn't (and probably still isn't) a great idea to mix computers with consoles, despite how tempting it was because of their obvious similarities. In addition to the aforementioned examples, Mattel's attempt at making their Intellivision into a computer failed miserably...twice. That was a selling point, so they got dinged on it by lawsuits and the government, on top of the commercial failure. And although it was an incredible success as a console, the NES started out as a console that was meant (at least in Japan) to be convertible to a computer, which didn't work out so well. Few think of the next example, but the Commodore 64 initially failed as a console in Japan known as the MAX Machine (or Ultimax). It was similar to the Atari 400 in having a membrane keyboard, but was marketed as a console. This is the reverse scenario to the others, since its conversion to a computer was both technically successful (Commodore had made computers before) and wildly commercially successful. But it utterly failed first as a console, for whatever reasons. And then, years later, the C64 failed as a console again as the C64GS, which was a nonsensical machine because many C64 games require a keyboard (DUH!). Additionally, the C64GS cost almost as much as a C64, so you might as well buy a C64 and play games on cartridge instead--at least you'll have all the keys the games require. The lesson: some products were meant to be consoles and some were meant to be computers. There were many failures on the technical level, but even the ones that were both good/great consoles and computers only succeeded as one or the other.
Can you not replace the ribbon cable with a specially designed flexible PCB.
I'm sure there are a few options, that could work. But would rather keep it original if I can! 🙂
mine had the CITA chip but I got it upgraded gtia was late 1981
Did you keep your CTIA chip? Those are rare and coveted as a collectors' item, at least by some.
@@rbrtck no the shop did it I never thought at the time lol I was 15
@@brianwild4640 The same thing would have happened to me. I just wanted to let you know, in case. There's a reason those things are rare! 😉
get some games. Defender, star Raiders, Joust rocks on this system.
48K standard there because the 16K boards do not have cases
I left a positive and informative comment. Why was it removed?
Just do your own video and you can censor whoever you want.
I haven't removed any comments, hopefully you can see from all the interaction here that I love chatting with people. 🤷♂️
I've checked my "Held for Review" section and can't see anything in there. Apologies for that, this seems to be happening more and more with TH-cam just lately.
@@ctrlaltrees thanks for checking. My comment was that your handwritten label shows it was a 1979 machine originally. 947 means 47th week of 79, but as you mentioned, many internal cards are dated much later. Please check the datecode on the POKEY chip.
The 800 looks and feels quite sturdy compared to the Atari 65XE, which feels squeaky and brittle.
Oh yes, a product of a completely different era at Atari... 😕
@@ctrlaltrees Definitely a happier era full of promise. Atari had no choice by the mid-1980s, however. They had to find some way to chisel into the incredibly price-competitive mass consumer market, having failed to crack other markets for various reasons (some being of their own doing). They had no choice but to let Jack Tramiel have his way because Commodore was killing everyone. He liquidated the XL series for a loss on each sale (the 800XL is easily the most popular Atari model, and the vast majority of them were sold at a loss to help maintain market share and industry support). After that, the XE series *had to* be significantly cheaper to make or else Atari might as well have closed down at that point. Meanwhile, the C64 got even cheaper to make but nevertheless improved in quality as its design was refined. Commodore had their own chip fab, which reduced cost, and the C64 has a single LSI chip (VIC-II) for graphics. Atari tried to design a single chip that was compatible with the ANTIC+GTIA combination, but both prototypes, called CGIA and KERI, did not pan out, putting additional pressure on the XE series build quality. Many hate on Tramiel, but without him and the money he had made from Commodore (from which he was fired by people who would later run Commodore into the ground for no good reason), Atari might not have survived the early 1980s.