Custom Atari 2600 PC by Hard Drives Northwest

Fast-forward 30 years, and still have some serious fans of all things Atari. Feeding on this energy, to develop a modern arcade - eight classic Atari games using HTML5 and supporting multi-touch. You can see and play these at . What’s more, the team that built these games has created an so that you can build your own games for the Atari platform.
As a part of this classic Atari re-launch, a limited quantity of original Atari 2600 gaming consoles were retrofitted with modern PC internals. I was fortunate enough to get my hands on one of the Atari 2600 boxes that was put together by , and I’ll have to say it’s one of the coolest “case mods” I’ve ever seen!

How much more processing power we have compared to the original:

1.) Atari 2600 (1982): MOS 6507 Processor, 1 thread @ 1.19 MHz.

2.) Custom Atari 2600 PC (2012):Intel Corei7 2600S Processor, 8 threads@3.4 GHZ

So we basically have: 27,200 MHz / 1.19 MHz = ~22,857 times the processing power! That’s more than any kid from 1982 could wrap their head around…

To startup this PC, you slide the power switch up and hold it momentarily. You may recall that the original Atari 2600 had a switch what would stay in the “on” or “off” position. This build involved swapping the original switch with a momentary switch (game reset). On this Atari, the game reset switch is hooked up to the PC reset line- so you have to be careful since it’s labeled “game reset” (it does more than that).

I hooked this Atari 2600 PC up to a 47” TV and had to try out running in IE10 on Windows 8. The first game I tried out was Combat, and I was surprised at how much more sophisticated this updated version is. No “ping pong ball” projectiles to be seen, instead there are missiles that shoot out of the tank cannon complete with animated smoke.

You can spend a lot of time playing these new games, especially when inspired by the classic lines of the Atari 2600! If you are inclined, this PC would also make a great dev box to write some of your own updated Atari classics with.

There’s one more awesome detail on this Atari 2600 PC that makes it truly special: it’s been signed by Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell. How cool is that!


 

In case you wanted to know more about this project, here are the build details:

• Motherboard: Intel Executive DQ67EP
• Processor: Intel I7 2600S, hyperthreaded quad core, 3.4 GHz
• RAM: Kingston DDR3 8GB
• Storage: Intel 520 Sata 120GB
• Graphics: ASUS EAH6570/DI/1GD3(LP) Radeon HD 6570 1GB 128-bit DDR3
• Power Adapter: PICO PSU-160-XT 192W