The Atari 400 and Atari 800 were released by Atari in late 1979 as a follow up to the successful Atari Video Computer System (VCS). Unlike the VCS, the 400 and 800 came with keyboards as well as more powerful hardware and more RAM. Having recently acquired an Atari 400, let me talk about some of the issues I have encountered with it.
The Apple II was distinctive when it was released because it was the first microcomputer and the only one of the "1977 Trinity" of consumer-friendly computers (TRS-80 and Commodore PET being the other two) to come with any kind of audio capabilities built in. Those capabilities were primitive, a speaker that could be clicked in software by the CPU. Other computers followed with sound chips built in like the Atari 400 and 800, the TI 99/4 & 4A, the Commodore VIC-20 and 64 and so on. But the Apple II was more flexible than any of its 8-bit competitors in having expansion slots to allow for less expensive and less bulky expansion options. Eventually games began to look at some of those expansion capabilities, and in this article we will talk about how they explored them in terms of sound.
