Television Interface Adaptor
The Television Interface Adaptor (TIA) is the custom computer chip, along with a variant of the MOS Technology 6502 constituting the heart of the 1977 Atari Video Computer System game console. The TIA generates the screen display, sound effects, and reads the controllers. At the time the Atari VCS was designed, even small amounts of RAM were expensive. The chip was designed around not having a frame buffer, instead requiring detailed programming to create even a simple display.
Atari 2600
The motherboard of the original six-switch Atari VCS. The 40-pin TIA chip is on the left. The center 28-pin is the MOS Technology 6507, and to its right, the 40-pin MOS Technology 6352 Ram-I/O-Timer (RIOT) chip. The cartridge insertion slot is to the immediate right of the RIOT chip.
Rainbow effect visible in Barnstorming game
The Atari 2600 is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System, it popularized microprocessor-based hardware and games stored on swappable ROM cartridges, a format first used with the Fairchild Channel F in 1976. The VCS was bundled with two joystick controllers, a conjoined pair of paddle controllers, and a game cartridge—initially Combat and later Pac-Man. Sears sold the system as the Tele-Games Video Arcade. Atari rebranded the VCS as the Atari 2600 in November 1982 alongside the release of the Atari 5200.
The first Stella prototype on display at the Computer History Museum
The second VCS model has lighter plastic molding and shielding, and a more angular shape, than the 1977 launch model.
From 1980, the VCS has only four front switches and a capital-letters logotype.
CX30 paddle
