In 1979, Atari released the Atari 400 and 800, groundbreaking home computers with adapted graphics and sound chips, four joystick gates and the possibility to perform the most advanced home videos of their era. These machines, which were sold for $ 549 and $ 999 respectively, formed a leap into consumer-friendly personal computing, with their modular design and serial I/O-bus that provided USB. Now, 46 years later, a hobbyist has shot the system hardware back to a size that seemed to be Science Fiction in the 1970s.
Poolse ingenieur Piotr “OSA” Ostapowicz heeft onlangs “Atarino” onthuld “, wat 's werelds kleinste 8-bit Atari Computer-herschepping kan zijn, volgens de retro-computersite Atariteca. Het hele systeem – processor, grafische chips, geluidshardware en geheugencontrollers – past op een module van slechts 2 × 1,5 centimeter (ongeveer 0,79 x 0,59 inch), which is about the size of a stamp.
The creation of Ostapowicz reinves the classic Atari XL/XE architecture using modern FPGA technology (field-programmable gate-array). In contrast to software emulators that simulate old hardware (and modern recreations they perform, such as the Atari 400 Mini Console) on a complete computer system of another architecture, Atarino reproduces the original Atari components faithfully at the logical level, which can maintain the vintage software while the compatibility with original peripherals is retained.
The Atarino is only slightly larger than a Polish currency of 1 Grosz.
Credit: Piotr Ostapowicz
“The current project is not strictly a clone of Atari, but actually, well, I form a machine that is compatible with the 8-bit computer itself, but it was made based on the framework that I made some time ago,” said Ostapowicz Atari Online PL in a January 2024 YouTube interview.
A range of some of the 8-bit computer systems from Atari released in the 1970s and '80s.
Credit: Atari
The project, which started more than ten years ago and was first publicly demonstrated in December 2023, includes a 6502C processor, antic and gtia -graphic chips, pokey sound chip and memory controllers on a single UP5K FPGA chip. Despite the small size, the system can run up to 31 MHz at clock speeds – false faster than the 1.79 MHz of the original hardware.
Smaller, faster and positioned for future projects
While Atarino maintains broad compatibility with classic Atari software, Ostapowicz says that he has improved the original design in various ways. For example, the 6502 processor core follows the physical chip specifications, but adds new instructions. The memorial system uses independent channels instead of the “Cycle -Stelen” approach of the original (where the graphic chip temporarily stops the CPU to gain access to memory), which improves performance.
