{{citations, date=January 2015 Atari System refers to two arcade system boards introduced in 1984 for use in various arcade games from Atari Games. Two versions of the board were released, Atari System 1 and Atari System 2.

Atari System 1

The ''Atari System 1'' was Atari Games' first upgradeable arcade game hardware platform. Introduced in 1984, the System 1 platform was used for the following games: *'' Marble Madness (1984)'' *'' Peter Pack Rat (1985)'' *'' Road Runner (1985)'' *'' Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1985)'' * ''Relief Pitcher'' (1986) (unreleased prototype) (Note: In 1992 Atari Games released a different game titled ''

Relief Pitcher In baseball and softball, a relief pitcher or reliever is a pitcher who enters the game after the starting pitcher is removed because of fatigue, ineffectiveness, injury, or ejection, or for other strategic reasons, such as inclement weat ...

'' which used completely different hardware) *'' RoadBlasters (1987)'' The hardware used a large circuit board with a

Motorola 68010 The Motorola MC68010 processor is a 16/32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1982 as the successor to the Motorola 68000. It fixes several small flaws in the 68000, and adds a few features. The 68010 is pin-compatible with the 68000 ...

main CPU running at 7.159 MHz, a

MOS Technology 6502 The MOS Technology 6502 (typically pronounced "sixty-five-oh-two" or "six-five-oh-two") William Mensch and the moderator both pronounce the 6502 microprocessor as ''"sixty-five-oh-two"''. is an 8-bit microprocessor that was designed by a small te ...

sound CPU running at 1.789 MHz, a system

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...

, text and graphics display hardware, and control interfaces. Two large edge-card connectors allowed a "cartridge board" to be plugged in; the cartridge board supplied the main program ROMs, sound program ROMs, graphics ROMs, graphics shift registers, a "SLAPSTIC" copy protection chip, a

Yamaha Yamaha may refer to: * Yamaha Corporation, a Japanese company with a wide range of products and services, established in 1887. The company is the largest shareholder of Yamaha Motor Company (below). ** Yamaha Music Foundation, an organization estab ...

YM2151 The Yamaha YM2151, also known as OPM (FM Operator Type-M) is an eight-channel, four-operator sound chip. It was Yamaha's first single-chip FM synthesis implementation, being created originally for some of the Yamaha DX series of keyboards (DX21, ...

FM sound generator, a

POKEY POKEY, an acronym for Pot Keyboard Integrated Circuit, is a digital I/O chip designed by Doug Neubauer at Atari, Inc. for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers. It was first released with the Atari 400 and Atari 800 in 1979 and is included i ...

and (for some games) TI TMS5220 LPC speech synthesis chip. System 1 was capable of generating a max resolution of 336 x 240 with 256 colors from a palette of 1024 colors. Converting one System 1 game into another generally required replacing the cartridge board, attraction marquee, control panel, and in some cases installing additional controls (e.g., foot pedal for Road Blasters). Several games (most notably '' Gauntlet'' and '' Gauntlet II'') used hardware that was electrically very similar to System 1, but implemented on a single board rather than using a cartridge board. Early System 1 boards and cartridge boards used large numbers of

7400 series The 7400 series of integrated circuits (ICs) are a popular logic family of transistor–transistor logic (TTL) logic chips. In 1964, Texas Instruments introduced the SN5400 series of logic chips, in a ceramic semiconductor package. A lo ...

TTL chips. These boards were later replaced by the functionally identical "System 1 LSI Main" and "LSI Cartridge" boards, which used ASICs for reduced manufacturing costs. Modular or upgradeable video games were not commonly offered by the major video game companies in the 1970s and 1980s, because it was more profitable to sell an entirely new machine. System 1 and the Japanese

JAMMA The (formerly the , abbreviated JAMMA) is a Japanese trade association headquartered in Tokyo. JAMMA is run by representatives from various arcade video game manufacturers, including Bandai Namco, Sega, Taito, Koei Tecmo, Capcom, and Konami a ...

wiring standard were attempts to move to a modular solution, though there were many smaller companies that sold conversion kits for competitors' hardware.

Atari System 2

Very soon after the introduction of the Atari System 1, the Atari System 2 was introduced. The System 2 platform was used for the following games: *'' Paperboy (1985)'' *'' 720° (1986)'' *'' Super Sprint (1986)'' *'' Championship Sprint (1986)'' *'' APB : All Points Bulletin (1987)'' * ''Accelerator'' (unreleased prototype) * ''Gremlins'' (unreleased prototype) Probably the most noticeable difference between the System 2 and

System 1 The Macintosh "System 1" is the first version of Apple Macintosh operating system and the beginning of the classic Mac OS series. It was developed for the Motorola 68000 microprocessor. System 1 was released on January 24, 1984, along with th ...

games was the fact that the System 2 used higher-resolution graphics. The video resolution was 512x384 and as such a medium-resolution monitor was used. The hardware was similar to its predecessor in the fact that it used two main circuit boards. In this case it used a "CPU board" and a "Video Board". The

EPROM An EPROM (rarely EROM), or erasable programmable read-only memory, is a type of programmable read-only memory (PROM) chip that retains its data when its power supply is switched off. Computer memory that can retrieve stored data after a power s ...

s were split between both boards. The main CPU was a

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president un ...

(DEC) T-11

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circ ...

running at 10 MHz. The sound CPU was a MOS Technology 6502 running at 1.789 MHz, and the sound chips used were a Yamaha YM2151 running at approx. 3.579 MHz, 2 POKEYs at approx. 1.789 MHz and a TMS5220 running at 625 kHz.

External links

System 16 - The Arcade Museum - Atari System 1 Hardware

System 16 - The Arcade Museum - Atari System 2 Hardware

Atari System 1 driver code in MAME

Atari System 2 driver code in MAME
* The cod
t11
here is an example that emulates the DEC CPU within the MAME program. Arcade system boards Atari arcade games 68k-based arcade system boards