kencrisis Posted July 10, 2004 Share Posted July 10, 2004 Sorry if this has been covered before, but I was wondering what "2600" means -- I assume there must be some trivial history to the naming and some fan of such trivia here who would know. Was it a version number, something related to the innards, something picked out of the blue, something else? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt Vendel Posted July 10, 2004 Share Posted July 10, 2004 It was really not significant at the time, the original Pong consoles all started out at C-100 and the model #'s progressed. The unreleased Atari Tank was to be CX-4600 which is interesting since it was before the 2600 came out. The original joysticks were the CX-10 from Tank which were then adopted for use by the 2600 and became the CX-40's Curt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted July 10, 2004 Share Posted July 10, 2004 Oh c'mon Curt, you know better than that! It's no secret that Nolan (and quite a lot of Atari's engineers) were the hardware hacker types, and, well.... http://www.2600.com/ So where did "2600" get its name from? http://www.slais.ubc.ca/people/students/st...n/phreakers.htm And now things have come full circle-- http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,,58710,00.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariLeaf Posted July 10, 2004 Share Posted July 10, 2004 The unreleased Atari Tank Curt Interesting, what's this? I never heard of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindfield Posted July 10, 2004 Share Posted July 10, 2004 Yeah... and the first 100 2600 units shipped with a free Cap'n Crunch whistle. :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy_Dude Posted July 10, 2004 Share Posted July 10, 2004 Yeah... and the first 100 2600 units shipped with a free Cap'n Crunch whistle. :-) I wonder if someone could programme a blue box cart Oh, and put it in a blue cart too Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bjk7382 Posted July 10, 2004 Share Posted July 10, 2004 I am not sure of the 2600 name other than it is the model number they gave to the VCS and people started calling it the 2600. I also read somewhere that they named the 5200 and 7800 pretty simply. 2600 + 2600 = 5200 2600 + 5200 = 7800 I am sure they had people working on that round the clock to figure those names out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susuwatari Posted July 10, 2004 Share Posted July 10, 2004 Remember these guys were in a bathtub smoking some pot when they came up with the 2600 design and concept. For all we know, they took 2600 just becausethey wanted to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Room 34 Posted July 10, 2004 Share Posted July 10, 2004 I am not sure of the 2600 name other than it is the model number they gave to the VCS and people started calling it the 2600. People didn't start calling it the 2600 until Atari started explicitly marketing it as such, and that didn't happen until 1982 when the 5200 came out. Before this, although its model number had always been CX2600, it was marketed as the "Video Computer System"... but as anyone who was alive at the time will tell you, people simply referred to it as "Atari." Even Atari themselves... i.e. "Have you played Atari today?" As to the origin of the assignment of 2600 as its model number? No one (other than the stoners who were there at the time and still remember anything that happened before about 1984) seems to know for sure, but the logical conclusion is the hacker reference described by ZylonBane above. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Tomlin Posted July 11, 2004 Share Posted July 11, 2004 Yeah... and the first 100 2600 units shipped with a free Cap'n Crunch whistle. :-) I wonder if someone could programme a blue box cart Oh, and put it in a blue cart too I already did, with my "red box" demo. It just needs the frequencies changed. I thought that regular DTMF was more important (since blue boxing tones are pretty useless these days), and with DTMF A, B, C, and D, there weren't enough keys left to put the 12 blue box tones anyhow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Tomlin Posted July 11, 2004 Share Posted July 11, 2004 Hmmmm... maybe I could use the difficulty switches as shift keys? Looks like I'll have to update my red box demo real soon now. (Even though I really want to get to work on my 7800 project.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mos6507 Posted July 11, 2004 Share Posted July 11, 2004 I think the 2600 designation is just a coincidence with the phreaking scene. The reason is that I think that is because I really don't think the designers had that much to do with the internal numbering scheme for Atari products. Remember that the designers referred to it as Stella during development, neither VCS nor 2600. And that pattern followed for Colleen ,Candy, Sylvia, Val, etc... I think marketing came up with the product numbers and names. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rockman_x_2002 Posted July 11, 2004 Share Posted July 11, 2004 Well somewhere the number 2600 must've played a roll. If you think about it: 1 x 2600 = 2600 2 x 2600 = 5200 3 x 2600 = 7800 Conspiracy, anyone?... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mos6507 Posted July 11, 2004 Share Posted July 11, 2004 Well somewhere the number 2600 must've played a roll. If you think about it: 1 x 2600 = 2600 2 x 2600 = 5200 3 x 2600 = 7800 Conspiracy, anyone?... If the 2600 were really n then: 1 x n 2 x n 3 x n So there is no great conspiracy other than the original coincidence of the 2600's name itself. There is nothing that unusual about naming things like that. It's like the Audi 2000, 4000, 5000 or the Amiga 1000, 2000, 3000 or the 286, 386, 486 or the Motorola 68000, 68020, 68030, 68040, 68060. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Tomlin Posted July 11, 2004 Share Posted July 11, 2004 Or... Atari 400, 800, 1200? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WildBillTX Posted July 11, 2004 Share Posted July 11, 2004 Is the phone phreaking reference why Sears called their 2600 version "Tele-Games'? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rockman_x_2002 Posted July 12, 2004 Share Posted July 12, 2004 If the 2600 were really n then: 1 x n 2 x n 3 x n So there is no great conspiracy other than the original coincidence of the 2600's name itself... But it still doesn't answer why they chose 2600 as n in the first place. I mean the whole "phreaking" thing (no pun intended) is clever and is a bit suspicious. Still... I have a sinking feeling that may not be where 2600 came from here. Unfortunately, "Why 2600?" may be a question like "How many licks to the center of a Tootsie Pop?" The world just may never know... Unless we can somehow as Mr. Bushnell what his thinking was on the subject, anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogueleader Posted July 12, 2004 Share Posted July 12, 2004 Well somewhere the number 2600 must've played a roll. If you think about it: 1 x 2600 = 2600 2 x 2600 = 5200 3 x 2600 = 7800 Conspiracy, anyone?... If the 2600 were really n then: 1 x n 2 x n 3 x n So there is no great conspiracy other than the original coincidence of the 2600's name itself. There is nothing that unusual about naming things like that. It's like the Audi 2000, 4000, 5000 or the Amiga 1000, 2000, 3000 or the 286, 386, 486 or the Motorola 68000, 68020, 68030, 68040, 68060. True but 286, 386, 486 DID mean something. It was the processor speed wasn't it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+kheller2 Posted July 12, 2004 Share Posted July 12, 2004 Well somewhere the number 2600 must've played a roll. .... There is nothing that unusual about naming things like that. It's like the Audi 2000' date=' 4000, 5000 or the Amiga 1000, 2000, 3000 or the 286, 386, 486 or the Motorola 68000, 68020, 68030, 68040, 68060.[/quote'] True but 286, 386, 486 DID mean something. It was the processor speed wasn't it? Er.. no. That would be the second number... 486DX2/50 or 486SX25 etc.. x86, where x refers to the "generation" (which really isn't correct either) of the chip. Pentiums were 586 chip and as I recall there was some trademark or copyright issues with Intel trying to protect a number. Similar to MS and TM part of a house's construction. I always wanted to start a copy called MacroSoft run by Gill Bates and release the Doors OS. But I digress. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rockman_x_2002 Posted July 12, 2004 Share Posted July 12, 2004 True but 286, 386, 486 DID mean something. It was the processor speed wasn't it? Not processor speed, but processor type. 286, 386, 486, 586, Pentium, Pentium II, and so on. Didn't really have anything to do with the speed, but just specified different processor types far as I know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spongebue Posted July 12, 2004 Share Posted July 12, 2004 don't forget about the 8080 and 8088 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogueleader Posted July 12, 2004 Share Posted July 12, 2004 Oh, well I stand corrected. Thank you very much! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tsukasa Posted July 12, 2004 Share Posted July 12, 2004 I think that there were processors before the 286. The 8086 was it's predecessor, wasn't it? Was there ever a 186? BTW atari 400 x 13 = 5200. 5200 "twice as powerful as" 2600. 7800 "has power of 5200 and 2600" There was also the 2600 jr. proto, "2800" = 400 x 7 I think that the guys at atari had some sort of fixation on the number 400. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindfield Posted July 12, 2004 Share Posted July 12, 2004 Yes, there was an 80186, along with an 80188. They were released in '82 as the successors to the 8088. They weren't used for much -- mostly as embedded controllers. It wasn't 'til the 80286 that Intel processors gained popularity in PC (specifically IBM PCs) again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindfield Posted July 12, 2004 Share Posted July 12, 2004 I think that there were processors before the 286. The 8086 was it's predecessor, wasn't it? Was there ever a 186? BTW atari 400 x 13 = 5200. 5200 "twice as powerful as" 2600. 7800 "has power of 5200 and 2600" There was also the 2600 jr. proto, "2800" = 400 x 7 I think that the guys at atari had some sort of fixation on the number 400. The 2800 wasn't the Jr. proto, it was Atari's attempt to market the VCS in Japan with a new, high-tech design. It was released in Japan for a very short while. In North America, it was released by Sears as the Video Arcade II. The case design was by the same fellow who went on to design the 7800, which is why it looks very similar (albeit without all but one the buttons and LEDs). Atari did have a prototype, lower-cost 2600 protoytpe with integrated controllers that (IIRC) was assigned the model number CX2000. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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