Inside the Atari 800

Thirty years ago, video game pioneer Atari released its first two entrants in the home-computer market: the Atari 800 and 400 computers. Originally retailing for $US1000, the Atari 800 shipped with 8KB of RAM, upgradable to 48KB. Its little brother, the Atari 400, was priced at $US550. The Atari 800 began as a next-generation follow-up to Atari's groundbreaking Atari 2600 video game console. Upon seeing Apple's success in the early personal computer market, Atari executives ordered their engineers to turn the new hardware into a personal computer system, which became the 800. To celebrate this anniversary, let's peek inside this classic machine to examine its advantages and drawbacks.