GTIA release date?

[+Philsan]

According to Wikipedia

The CTIA is used in early Atari 400/800 home computers. It was replaced by the GTIA in later revisions of the 400 and 800, and in all subsequent members of the Atari 8-bit family. No CTIA-equipped Atari computers were shipped to Europe. By 1981, all Atari computers were equipped with the GTIA chip.

Do you know when was GTIA marketed?

1980 or 1981?

[miker]

According to information in Atariki article. GTIA was mounted in 400/800 models from November 1981 on.

[sloopy]

the GTIA was to be the Video chip for the A8, it just wasnt ready yet, so the problem areas were not put in and the stopgap was called teh CTIA...

 

sloopy.

[Rybags]

Fairly sure my friends here had Atari 400s in 1981, before mid-year (PAL, so GTIA-only).

 

Do any of the series have the year/month stamped on the IC package?

[jacobus]

The GTIA I removed from an 800 is stamped © 1979

 

 

I remember when I bought my first 400 (July 1982) that there was a great deal of concern that it might be CTIA - turned out not to be, but I think it's an indicator of how deep Atari's supply pipeline was at the time.

Edited December 27, 2010 by jacobus

[Rybags]

I'd take that with a grain of salt... every chance they just made the stamps in 1979 and never bothered to change the date to reflect the actual time GTIA went live.

[jacobus]

I'd take that with a grain of salt... every chance they just made the stamps in 1979 and never bothered to change the date to reflect the actual time GTIA went live.

 

Yes - and the technology in question was copyrighted in 1979 - it just took a little while to work the bugs out.

[BillC]

Fairly sure my friends here had Atari 400s in 1981, before mid-year (PAL, so GTIA-only).

 

Do any of the series have the year/month stamped on the IC package?

The 3983 in the bottom line of text in the picture jacobus supplied, Post #5, may refer to manufacture in week 39 of 1983.

 

I also just checked a 600XL with a Serial Number date stamp of 413, with a GTIA manufactured by IMP with a date code of 8249. This GTIA chip doesn't have the Copyright information stamped on it.

 

Bill

[atariksi]

According to information in Atariki article. GTIA was mounted in 400/800 models from November 1981 on.

 

Maybe in Europe. I have yet to get a machine that had a CTIA in it from Ebay-- and I have bought/sold over 25 Atari 400s/800s. The oldest Atari 800 I bought was at end of 1980. Maybe I got lucky or maybe they started putting the GTIAs in some high end machines earlier than other machines or maybe it was a test machine.

[BillC]

According to information in Atariki article. GTIA was mounted in 400/800 models from November 1981 on.

 

Maybe in Europe. I have yet to get a machine that had a CTIA in it from Ebay-- and I have bought/sold over 25 Atari 400s/800s. The oldest Atari 800 I bought was at end of 1980. Maybe I got lucky or maybe they started putting the GTIAs in some high end machines earlier than other machines or maybe it was a test machine.

Just because it had a GTIA chip in it when it passed through your hands doesn't mean that it was manufactured that way. The majority of software was written for the GTIA chip and some didn't display properly with CTIA, so a lot of CTIA chips were replaced with GTIA.

 

I received my first Atari, a 400, for Christmas 1980 and it came with only 8K RAM & CTIA. I upgraded it to GTIA at the same time I upgraded it to 64K memory in 1982/1983.