Atari: Diminishing Efforts?

[atariksi]

POKEY does the POTs (8 of them) and they are slower to read than digital lines as in PIA. GTIA reads the trigger lines. LDA 54016 reads the exact state of joystick on Atari 400 at any time whereas LDA $E800/$E801 reads the POTs (on A5200) that are only valid during VBI.

 

Does POKEY also read the keypads?

...

Yeah, $E809 would be where the keycodes can be read.

 

A400 was essentially a console -- they just had to stop painting the letters on the membrane keyboard.

 

>Except it still had the problem with lacing security/lockout (again not fully addressed until the 7800).

>Otherwise the 400 (and 800) have the issues of bulky, expensive cases (especially the excessive RF sheilding) and unconsolidated boards. It should be repackaged with a well consoliated, single circuit board and cheaper, smaller case...

 

What security? Atari 400 is less bulky than Atari 5200. True, original ataris had more boards and that needed to be consolidated to make them cheaper to manufacture.

 

>...handeling it like with the 7800 would have been nice. (or a separate module/adaptor) If they made the cartridge slot compatible with 2600 games a-la 7800, I think they should have used a distinct cartridge design for the new system's games, preferably slightly wider so as to not fit in a 2600, and certainly recognizable as not a 2600 cartridge. (using a completely different cartridge slot like the 5200 did would solve this too, and if using 7800 type carts wouldn't work with anyway, you might as well do that)

 

Yeah, I also like things to be backward compatible but it seems they purposely made them incompatible whereas CV made their system Atari 2600 compatible with an add-on module.

 

In most respects CV hardware is limited compared to A400/A800/A5200. But better hardware doesn't necessarily sell better as even modern computer/console sales show as well.

 

>The important thing was being superior to the 2600 and Intelivision, which it pretty much was, compared to the 5200/A8 it had higher resolution and the dedicated video RAM, but the A8 had a lot of other advantages. (like sound, color and other video features)

 

I see artifacting when I run the CV on my TV so don't think that was an optimal resolution to use given it's not a multiple of the color clocks on TV.

 

Both A400 and A800 were before A5200. A800 came with 48K (at least mine did) and you can easily plug in RAM cards if it didn't without unscrewing the machine. I know some A400s also came with 48K (already soldered I guess). But there were 3rd pary boards like RAMCRAM or something like that to upgrade the memory: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=290330343293. There's a RAM card inside the machine (not soldered) and chips are socketed like most chips in the A400. There was also a keyboard that was removed (shrunk to 4-bits rather than 8-bits). Then you have disk drives made incompatible because they mapped the SIO to the expansion connector.

 

>I was speaking specifically about the 400, I know the later 800s were produced fully expanded to 48 kB, I'd gotten the impression that the 400 didn't go past 16 kB as shipped, but I could be wrong. And socketed or not, from what I've heard/read the RAM expansion boards for the 400 had to be soldered in. (on a semi-related anedote, my dad was recently talking about how you piggybacked the RAM chips onto the ST 520 board to expand it to 1 MB)

 

The 48K expansion for A400 required soldering if you already didn't get it with the machine. I have an 520ST with the piggyback 1MB RAM upgrade, but A400 used the same memory slot it had-- just added a few jumpers on the backside for the 48K expansion.

[+thegoldenband]

Actually, Coleco was sued on a couple different occasions over similar issues. In 1984, they were hit with several class-action suits for allegedly concealing problems with the design and production of the Adam, with allegations of some insider trading as well. In the mid-1970s, I believe they were either sued or investigated by the FTC for allegedly overstating their profits or something similar, though I can't find a reference right now (but I'm quite sure I read it recently).

 

So on the one hand you could say that given that history, the figures are less likely to be reliable, but OTOH you could also argue that the lawsuits would make Coleco execs particularly paranoid about dotting their i's and crossing their t's. It's hard to really assess without knowing the merit of the lawsuits and/or results of any investigation, though by Spring 1984 I suspect they were already starting to plan their pullout, and CV wasn't their main source of revenue (the Cabbage Patch Kids had taken that mantle), so there's arguably less incentive to fib. Many companies were hit with litigation in the crash years, too -- allegations of mismanagement and wrongdoing were leveled at pretty much all the major players.

 

I agree that the figures don't prove anything per se, but I think they do represent significant evidence, and they're the only thing resembling concrete numbers (especially for the 5200) that seem to be available -- so IMO we're better off taking them into account than disregarding them.

 

There definitely is uncertainty implied in "over 1 million", and that's no doubt because the exact numbers were as yet unknown. In the case of the Atari figures, though the console had recently been discontinued, there were obviously still units yet to be sold in warehouses and retailers' shelves. Curt Vendel's sales figures for 1986-1990 listed about 100,000 copies of Super Breakout sold (more than any other title), and since that was the pack-in game for the 5200, it's a fair bet that roughly the same number of consoles were sold during that period. That doesn't tell us anything about 1984-1985, unfortunately.

Edited August 7, 2009 by thegoldenband

[kool kitty89]

What security? Atari 400 is less bulky than Atari 5200. True, original ataris had more boards and that needed to be consolidated to make them cheaper to manufacture.

 

Security as in lockout, so no more 3rd party software without licencing. (the 7800 only went into 7800 mode after authentication, otherwise staying in 2600 mode) Granted some companies couild probably find ways around it (legally) depending on how the lockout system was designed. (and if all else fails, piggybacking off an authentic cartridge was the other option, with the accompanying cost of course)

 

Yeah, the 5200 was bad in that respect too, at least it used a single board though (I'm almost positive of this), still the bulky size, additioanly, weight, and materials certainly added unnecesary cost, both in manufacturing and distribution. (packaging/transportation) Should have started the size of the 5100/5200 Jr. and later been further consolidated.

 

Yeah, I also like things to be backward compatible but it seems they purposely made them incompatible whereas CV made their system Atari 2600 compatible with an add-on module.

 

True, but that's mainly incompatibility with the 400/800 in these circumstances, which is understandable in some ways as they seemed to be trying to elliminate independent 3rd party sales. (though the changes made to the 5200 really wouldn't have been very foolproof in this respect, more of a deturrent to 3rd party A8-bit developers, thogh perhaps it had more to do with the rivalry/lack of cooperation between the console and computer devisions at Atari)

In any case, added hardware, or a different design entirely would have been necessary for out of the box 2600 compatibility. (had the 5200 been as close to being 2600 compatible as it was 400/800 compatible, that would be a different issue.

I still think the best would have been a combination of A8-bit and 2600 hardware (preferably making some use of the old portions, like TIA's added sound and RIOT I/O, if you didn't make custom modifications to GTIA to include TIA compatibility and just add the RIOT), worst case, just keep the 8-bit hardware as close to the computers as possible (maybe add 2 buttons to the controllers via the pot lines), but definitely add the lockout feature to avoid the whole problem with 3rd party games, which would also necessitate incompatibility with the 400/800 cartridges, though software compatibility could still have been closer than with the 5200. (and any additional features like the pot-line butons, TIA sound, or RIOT I/O being used exclusively, the former 2 not even being necessary for direct ports of A8-bit games, and as to the latter, I'm not sure how different RIOT is from PIA)

 

I see artifacting when I run the CV on my TV so don't think that was an optimal resolution to use given it's not a multiple of the color clocks on TV.

 

Hmm, is it at the top and bottom of the screen? If so, that would probably be stuff in overscan (outside 192 lines), if it's a modern TV, this is to be expected, otherwise, I'm not sure what that's due to. (some Master system games used the same vertical resolution, the A8-bit and 5200 also used 192 lines, and the master System, NES, and SNES all operated in 256 pixels wide as standard) Particularly people with PAL TV's will notice the overscan problems as more lines can be displayed. (240 opposed to 224 or les on older sets)

 

The 48K expansion for A400 required soldering if you already didn't get it with the machine. I have an 520ST with the piggyback 1MB RAM upgrade, but A400 used the same memory slot it had-- just added a few jumpers on the backside for the 48K expansion.

 

OK, thanks for clearing that up, do you know if 48 kB was standard on all late 400s or optional?