Atari 2700
Encyclopedia
The Atari 2700 was an unreleased console by Atari, Inc.. Intended for release in 1981, its main standout features were wireless controllers that featured a combination of a joystick and paddle. The fire button was touch-sensitive, as were the buttons on the console. The Reset and Select buttons were relocated to the controllers themselves. The 2700 also featured a storage bin at the top of the console to store the controllers.
Focus groups used to test the system noted that the controllers were comfortable, sleek, responsive, and very easy to use, but design problems caused the console to be withdrawn just as it was about to be released. The controllers had a working radius of 1000 ft; this meant the 2700 could affect nearby 2700s, as well as other remote controlled devices, such as garage doors and TVs. It is unclear how many of these systems exist today. Despite the 2700s failure, Atari released wireless controllers in 1983. However, to correct the interference problem, the controllers became bulky, hard to control, and had less battery life, which is why the controllers never became huge sellers.
The basic case design for the Atari 2700 was later used for the Atari 5200
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Focus groups used to test the system noted that the controllers were comfortable, sleek, responsive, and very easy to use, but design problems caused the console to be withdrawn just as it was about to be released. The controllers had a working radius of 1000 ft; this meant the 2700 could affect nearby 2700s, as well as other remote controlled devices, such as garage doors and TVs. It is unclear how many of these systems exist today. Despite the 2700s failure, Atari released wireless controllers in 1983. However, to correct the interference problem, the controllers became bulky, hard to control, and had less battery life, which is why the controllers never became huge sellers.
The basic case design for the Atari 2700 was later used for the Atari 5200
Atari 5200
The Atari 5200 SuperSystem, commonly known as the Atari 5200, is a video game console that was introduced in 1982 by Atari Inc. as a higher end complementary console for the popular Atari 2600...
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Technical specifications
- CPU: MOS Technology 6507MOS Technology 6507The 6507 is an 8-bit microprocessor from MOS Technology, Inc.It is essentially a 6502 chip in a smaller, cheaper 28-pin package. To do this, A15 to A13 and some other signals such as the interrupt lines are not accessible...
@ 1.19 MHz - Audio+video processor: TIATelevision Interface AdapterThe Television Interface Adaptor is the custom computer chip that is the heart of the Atari 2600 game console, generating the screen display, sound effects, and reading input controllers. Its design was widely affected by an attempt to reduce the amount of RAM needed to operate the display...
. 160 x ~192 pixelPixelIn digital imaging, a pixel, or pel, is a single point in a raster image, or the smallest addressable screen element in a display device; it is the smallest unit of picture that can be represented or controlled....
, 128 colors (121 of them actually different from each other on NTSCNTSCNTSC, named for the National Television System Committee, is the analog television system that is used in most of North America, most of South America , Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories .Most countries using the NTSC standard, as...
, 114 on PALPALPAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system...
), 2 channel mono sound. - RAM: 128 byteByteThe byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer...
s (plus up to 256 bytes built into the game cartridges) - ROM (game cartridges): 4 KBKilobyteThe kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...
maximum capacity (32 KB+ with pagingBank switchingBank switching is a technique to increase the amount of usable memory beyond the amount directly addressable by the processor. It can be used to configure a system differently at different times; for example, a ROM required to start a system from diskette could be switched out when no longer...
) - Output: B/W or color TVRF modulatorAn RF modulator is a device that takes a baseband input signal and outputs a radio frequency-modulated signal....
picture and sound signal