Inside the Atari 800

It's the 30th anniversary of this 8-bit PC classic. We celebrate the occasion as we always do, by tearing the product apart and showing you the pieces.

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.

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