expansion pics requested

[Zwackery]

I've hunted around and so far have come up empty, so would someone be nice enough to post some pictures (preferably including a close-up or two) of the 7800 expansion port? Even better would be one with the port in place and one with the port hole present, but connector removed, for comparison purposes. Thanks in advance!

[Zwackery]

Well, okay, here is a picture of a 7800 with what I think is the expansion port hole, but no connector present.

 

[Rik]

Well, okay, here is a picture of a 7800 with what I think is the expansion port hole, but no connector present.

 

EDIT yes you are correct,,the 7800 expansion port is on the side

Edited July 23, 2007 by Rik

[Lemmi]

here is my original 7800 that i bought a month after it was launched

[Shawn]

here is my original 7800 that i bought a month after it was launched

 

 

ooohhhh, expasion port /homer voice

[Breakpack]

Ok,I'll bite

 

Here's mine

 

[Lemmi]

here is my original 7800 that i bought a month after it was launched

 

 

ooohhhh, expasion port /homer voice

 

 

ok i know people want these but is there a link as to why? or a short answer?

i cant remember why

 

much better pic Breakpack, i took mine under a small floresent light

[Shawn]

here is my original 7800 that i bought a month after it was launched

 

 

ooohhhh, expasion port /homer voice

 

 

ok i know people want these but is there a link as to why? or a short answer?

i cant remember why

 

much better pic Breakpack, i took mine under a small floresent light

 

Cause it's the first model of a many. IF you come across one with the port you wanna sell, drop me a line please.

[Zwackery]

thanks for posting the port pics!

 

I was curious as to what it looked like - and that it is actually labeled on the unit is pretty interesting - and was mainly interested in it from a "first release" perspective.

[doctorclu]

How rare are these BTW?

 

And what were they supposed to be used with? I heard a LAser Disc unit, but anything else aside from that?

[Lemmi]

here is my original 7800 that i bought a month after it was launched

ooohhhh, expasion port /homer voice

ok i know people want these but is there a link as to why? or a short answer?

i cant remember why

much better pic Breakpack, i took mine under a small floresent light

Cause it's the first model of a many. IF you come across one with the port you wanna sell, drop me a line please.

 

ahh ok

i just checked the other 2 i have and those dont even have a cut out of the area, its a solid case bottom

i think the one i sold Ataripitbull might have had the expansion area but i cant remember, and i think his kid dropped it so im not sure he has it anymore

[Gregory DG]

People want them for the same reason they want a heavy sixer or a 4-port 5200. Because it was the first.

 

There hasn't been anything released for the expansion port. I wonder if the keyboard/computer attachment Curt was working on will utilize it?

[+Mitch]

People want them for the same reason they want a heavy sixer or a 4-port 5200. Because it was the first.

 

There hasn't been anything released for the expansion port. I wonder if the keyboard/computer attachment Curt was working on will utilize it?

 

No, the 7800 keyboard uses the 2nd joystick port.

 

Mitch

[toymailman]

I recently got a boxed original 7800 with expansion port from eBay. Didn't even know such a thing existed until it showed up in the mail and I opened it up. I saw "Expansion Port" with the connector pins in the unit and went "hunh?".

 

After reading through this thread I now know there was never anything made for it, but does anyone know if anything was planned for it? Just curious. Thanks!

[mimo]

The Atari 7800 was designed to be flexible and expandable and even had

an expansion port for future peripherals to tap into the system bus and video circuitry. One such peripheral was a LaserDisc Interface system.

 

From the Atarimuseum

[toymailman]

Thanks! Would the laser disc add-on have made the 7800 the first system to use an optical format? Interesting.

[Mot]

The Atari 7800 was designed to be flexible and expandable and even had

an expansion port for future peripherals to tap into the system bus and video circuitry. One such peripheral was a LaserDisc Interface system.

 

From the Atarimuseum

 

Warner Brothers owened Atari and had movie rights! Like Firefox 1982

And they had the Arcade game Firefox this game showed parts of the movie from the laserdisc player and you played with computer graphics on top. See the pictures.

 

So if they could bring that home!

[Bruce Tomlin]

(of course a boards search for "7800 expansion port" just couldn't have been done before starting yet another expansion port thread)

 

The "expansion port" was only for video input from an external device.

 

The main problem would have been that the laserdisc would have been really expensive. You think the PS3 release price was bad, imagine paying the equivalent of $1000 today just for the player so that you could play two or three release games, which would have been rather like the crappy Sega CD rail shooters, and maybe Dragon's Lair if they could get the rights, and an expectation of only a few more games at most. Oh, sure, you could have played laserdisc movies, but that format went nowhere until it got CD audio in the '90s, and it became a niche Home Theatre format.

 

The secondary problem would have been that the 7800's pixel clock wasn't right for video overlay. It was missing half a pixel clock per scanline, and didn't have an interlace mode. So the laserdisc player itself would have needed special circuitry to allow output of an off-standard video signal, and the discs would have also needed to be off-standard.

 

And you still would have needed another cable to control the damn laserdisc player, since the "expansion port" was video signals only. So you would have needed an inline adapter cart, or put expensive interface circuits on every cart. Don't forget, you aren't going to be able to load any software from the disc Laseractive-style primarily because the digital signal didn't even exist until '93 or so, so every game has to have its own cartridge! Though at least the Pokey's enormous size was because it had I/O port for a keyboard interface, so including a Pokey would give a chance for I/O.

 

IMHO, the whole thing was clearly a stupid idea that really never would have worked due to technical reasons. And even if it would have worked, it would have been too expensive to generate enough user base to keep games in production. Never mind that after Tramiel took over there was no way they would have created such a niche product.

 

Seriously, has anybody ever done anything with their 7800's expansion port other than using it to easily identify a first-run unit? Do we even have evidence that Atari got anything working with it in the lab?

[Ferret75]

I got the second (out of three I think) model.

 

It has a hole where the port is, and you can see the huge system chip.

Talk about protection from dust, huh? -.-

Edited May 17, 2008 by Ferret75

[Atari Dogs]

The Atari 7800 was designed to be flexible and expandable and even had

an expansion port for future peripherals to tap into the system bus and video circuitry. One such peripheral was a LaserDisc Interface system.

 

From the Atarimuseum

 

Warner Brothers owened Atari and had movie rights! Like Firefox 1982

And they had the Arcade game Firefox this game showed parts of the movie from the laserdisc player and you played with computer graphics on top. See the pictures.

 

So if they could bring that home!

 

Shouldn't the Mindlink hook up to the expansion port to play Firefox?

[Mot]

The Atari 7800 was designed to be flexible and expandable and even had

an expansion port for future peripherals to tap into the system bus and video circuitry. One such peripheral was a LaserDisc Interface system.

 

From the Atarimuseum

 

Warner Brothers owened Atari and had movie rights! Like Firefox 1982

And they had the Arcade game Firefox this game showed parts of the movie from the laserdisc player and you played with computer graphics on top. See the pictures.

 

So if they could bring that home!

 

Shouldn't the Mindlink hook up to the expansion port to play Firefox?

Yes but you had to think in Russian to make it work.