Autopsy of an Atari 2600

you should open up an nes next.

Olpus Bonzo you're wrong, just look at the case the speaker holes are present in the original model, the heavy sixer, and even on the original sunnyvale heavy sixers the case was still mostly empty space, spend some time at atari age you'll find the information you need there. the design originally was going to have stereo sound built in but was moved to the tv output as a cost saving measure
this wasn't uncommon in early consoles both the fairchild channel f, the telstar arcade and the rca studio 2 had built in sound and numerous dedicated consoles did as well including atari's pong units ,

I don't know where the user "masschamber" read of the built-in stereo for the Atari 2600. It's totally misinformation, the case of the 2600 was such large because it was recycled from the original Atari VCS case to keep the cost down: they only removed the wood faceplate and covered the more holes with a sticker. The explanation for such a big case is that the motherboard of the first version of Atari VCS, known as "heavy sixer" (because of the six lever on the front), was bigger and heavily shielded against electromagnetic waves, and featured a daughterboard for the cartridge entrance. Only some years later Atari produced a shrinked down 2600 nicknamed "2600 jr." that used more or less the same mainboard as the Atari 2600A.

Atari VCS "heavy sixer": http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/2600/atari2600.html

Atari 2600A (the one disassembled by iFixit): http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/2600/atari2600a.html

Atari 2600 "jr.": http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/consoles/2600/atari2600jr.html

I built a joystick for my Atari800 a couple of weekends ago as a project (I say built, I essentially just stuck existing parts together to make a custom joystick). It taught me how much we've advanced since the good ol' days of the Atari, everything was so basic compared to modern day controllers.

actually a large reason for the large case is the 2600 was going to have built in stereo sound, the internal speakers were scrapped and sound was moved to the output but the case was already designed

Wow, look at those resistors! They're huge!

Those are the kind of resistors you pick up at radio shack to mess around with in a physics class.

The 2600 is the most durable system I've ever had.

@kain_kusanagi

Ahhh, then it's understandable ^_^

@ghost_of_fazz

They took about a 4 switch unit which was a later redesigned motherboard inside the same case. The older "Heavy Sixer" had 6 switches and a much larger motherboard taking up most of the internal space due to a very large heat sync.

I know this because I have both versions as well as the even smaller 2600 Jr which was a total case redesign to look more like the 5200 and later 7800.

Wow, that's a lot of wasted plastic.

I guess green-design was not popular back in the day :P

I would still fuck it up.

I broke my dad's Intellivision when I was like five by hitting the power and reset buttons at the same time. I've been traumatized ever since.

Can't imagine it would be too complicated inside a 2600. I took apart a few Nintendo Entertainment Systems, and they take about a minute. And they're almost hollow.