Atari VCS/2600 - different TIA chip versions

[stonic]

Wasn't the TIA in the 7800 designed by a clone maker who originally created it for the Coleco Gemini console? I remember hearing the Atari 7800 designers talk about that once.

Never heard that before (do you have any links to that?). It's possible that was the case under Tramiel (sounds like something that penny-pincher would do..). If true, that should be the case with the 2600 "JR"s as well. Need to check more of those. However, I have 3 (1984) Rev A 7800s here - Two use an AMI and the other a Synertek, so that doesn't appear to have been the case originally. Atari should have had plenty of TIAs in stock by then, with at least 3 different chip manufacturers making TIAs for them, but who knows what happened after Tramiel took over. Whatever inventory Atari had of them might have been thrown out or sold off between 1984-86.

[Steve W]

It was in a presentation done by the creators of GCC about the founding of their company and the design of the Atari 7800. They're audio files and they were hosted on this site, but I can't seem to find any links to them now. They were interviews from (I believe) CGE 2003. Steve Wozniak, Jerry Lawson (Fairchild Channel F), the Blue Sky Rangers, Activision's and Imagic's founders were all there. The Digital Press site's been so chopped up I can't find it anymore.

[stonic]

The CGE keynotes are back online, in the 'scans and sights' section. The keynotes you mentioned were from CGE2K4, not CGE2K3, but there wasn't any GCC keynote.

[Night Driver]

Interesting. I never knew there were TIA variations.