This tiki/wiki contains technical information about the Atari 2600 game system. The purpose is to provide a central repository of technical data, tips and tricks that will make it easier to find out how things work on the machine. This is a bit of curated collection and central repository for all the technical stuff that's previously been spread all over the web, and occasionally lost to history.
Contributions
If you can contribute to pages, please feel free to do so.
This site is free to use, and draws on contributions from lots of people.
Conventions
We are real programmers here, and 1K is 1024 bytes. None of this quiche-eating SI-unit rubbish for us!
Tutorials
| Programming for Newbies | A complete beginner's guide to programming the '2600 in assembly language. |
Hardware Registers
| TIA | Details of the Television Interface Adaptor registers |
| PIA | Peripheral Interface Adaptor (RIOT) |
Techincal Stuff
| Playfield Timing | An in-depth study of timing writes to playfield registers |
| Clock Speeds | Clock speeds for NTSC, PAL, PAL-M and SECAM systems |
| Memory Map | Where everything lives in the 6507's address space |
| Colour Definition | Explanation about colours and differences on systems |
| Collision Matrix | Easy-to-use collision register details |
| Sound | Explanation of how sound works |
| Sound Frequency and Waveform Guide | Details on sound registers |
| Bank Switching | Complete list of bankswitching schemes and how they work |
| 48 Pixel Routine | A walkthrough of the famous 48 pixel routine |
| Introduction to Processor Hardware | A look at the access to the address and data bus |
| TIA Hardware Notes by Andrew Towers | Analysis of how the machine works from a study of the schematics |
Resources
| Stella Programmer's Guide | The original! |
| TIA Technical Manual | A bit more hardware-centric |
External Resources
| The {stella} mailing list | an amazing historical archive of homebrew programming in the late '90s and early 2000's. Full of tips and tricks. |
| Atari VCS/2600 TIA ChipsA comprehensive list of TIA variants | |
| Atari 2600 TIA Schematics and backup | at AtariAge |
| playerpal 2600 | online tool lets you edit player graphics and animations |