Computer History: 1979 Atari 800 - Part 1
59Computer History! We talk about 1979 released Atari 800, a very important vintage computer whose architecture endured for almost 13 years.
Atari 800 and Atari 400 (its cheaper version) were released together. The system used initially cartridges but a host of peripherals were added: disk drives (Atari 810), tape drives, interface modules (Atari 850), external keypads, modems, etc.
The processor is the venerable MOS 6502 running at 1.8Mhz. It featured between 8Kb and 48Kb of RAM. For video it could output 24x40 character text mode as well as up to 160x96 graphics resolution with 128 colors.
The Atari 800 had actually 2 cartridge slots (which was unique) but very few games or software use the second (right) slot.
The follower to Atari 400 and 800 was the 800XL which added more memory (64Kb) and featured only one cartridge slot.