Atari TIA

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The Atari Television Interface Adapter, or Atari TIA for short, is a special electronic component from Atari, Inc. that is used in the Atari 2600 game console .

The chip is responsible for creating the television picture and as access for controlling the hardware and for displaying the game graphics. So that the chip could be manufactured particularly cost-effectively, the TIA does not have a video RAM for storing the graphics, but instead generates each image line individually. The data for this come from registers for the background color, some registers that represent half of a line and can either be mirrored or displayed repeatedly from the center of the screen, and five special graphic objects:

  • Two 8- pixel lines representing the Player 1 and Player 2 sprites . These graphics could only be displayed in one color and the size of the sprites could be stretched by a factor of 2 or 4.
  • A sprite "ball" - A line that was the same color as the playing field. This sprite could be one, two, four, or eight pixels wide.
  • Two Sprites "Missiles" - A line that was the same color as the player. These sprites could be one, two, four, or eight pixels wide.

The TIA can also read out and output the collision behavior of the individual objects. The TIA registers allow the programmer to define the position of the graphic objects and their color. The TIA is also responsible for providing two channels for sound. After all, the TIA is responsible for the input query: It can recognize and process the signals from digital joysticks and analog paddles.

Programming the TIA is a very difficult task. The limitations of the processor could turn the implementation of certain game ideas into a major challenge. Today, however, these limitations are viewed as an interesting challenge by a number of amateur programmers who continue to develop games for the Atari 2600.

In the following years Atari expanded the design of the TIA for the Atari 400 and Atari 800 home computers with the Color Television Interface Adapter.

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