7800 Signature edition

[svenski]

I saw a couple of photos for this and there was also a white version.

 

Was this a real Atari product or a knock off?

Edited November 11, 2010 by svenski

[jaybird3rd]

That was a prototype for what was intended to be a new batch of 7800 consoles. From an earlier thread:

 

That was a project for O'Shea's, I believe, to help sell the overstock 2600/7800 cartridges that they had. They apparently balked at the cost of manufacturing new consoles (and have since scrapped the cartridges), so there were only a few prototypes made. I don't remember if these are the same as the "7800 Signature Series" prototypes or if that was a separate project.

 

That's my recollection, anyway; Curt would know for sure.

 

Jaybird pretty much summed it up.

 

We did a new case design, replicated the original 7800 boards, bom's and such, provided all of the chip data for the TIA and MARIA and it was then up to Oshea to finance the tooling up. He was looking at around 80K for the plastics and about 240K for the chip dies, so he was trying to find factories in China that would do the work, make the systems and he would sell I think it was 200K units with 5 games each and then pay the factories back. Well, as you can imagine, no one jumped on that opportunity. Plus he was also going to have to pay Atari a 500K royalty as well.

 

So nothing ever came of it and that was back around the end of 2003 and that's when I started tinkering around at first with Verilog then just learned straight VHDL, about a year later I had a working TIA core and by January 2005 a fully running system was demo'd at the NY Toy Faire into what would become the Flashback 2

 

Curt

[svenski]

It's a new 7800 console case with an ordinary 7800 board inside it. It was done by Curt Vendel some years ago; I think it was intended to be a tie-in with O'Shea's, to help them liquidate the glut of new 7800 games they had at the time by offering new 7800 consoles to go with them. The project didn't get beyond the prototyping stage and there were only a few "signature series" cases made, and O'Shea's has since scrapped most of the games.

 

Thanks for clearing that up for me .

[jaybird3rd]

Thanks for clearing that up for me .

I updated my previous post with a link to an earlier thread on the subject, and some better information from Curt himself (certainly a more authoritative source than me!).

[svenski]

Thanks for clearing that up for me .

I updated my previous post with a link to an earlier thread on the subject, and some better information from Curt himself (certainly a more authoritative source than me!).

 

Hi mate, thanks again. Can't believe the royalty Atari were asking for .... wow