The 5200 Prosystem adapter: should it have been the other way around?

[Prosystemsearch]

Its known that not long before Atari Inc. was split in two during the height of the video game crash, they were developing an adapter that would allow the 5200 to play 7800 games. It was shown 1 or 2 times in official catalogs, then never heard from again after the corporate split in which Warner sold the console and computer divisions of Atari to Jack Tramiel. Overall, do you think that Atari had it going, or should they either have scrapped it at an early stage or should they have instead made a Supersystem adapter that allowed the 7800 to play 5200 software on the 7800? Also, what happened to the engineers responsible for the designing of the adapter after the splitting of Atari Inc?

[kiwilove]

It's highly unlikely that this was feasible economically - because the two systems are so very different.  Incompatible with one another.

There's little point in making a 7800 play 5200 games as well.  The 7800 was not designed by Atari - but by an outside independent company who wanted to design a better game system.  There's a podcast interview somewhere about it all - on Antic?

 

You may as well say how about making a hardware adaptor that allows a 5200 to run Atari 8-bit carts or vice versa?  But even though they are basically the same kind of hardware - it's still not feasible to do this because they are still different systems.

It's much easier to convert the software - which people have done.

 

Harvey

[Prosystemsearch]

1 hour ago, kiwilove said:

It's highly unlikely that this was feasible economically - because the two systems are so very different.  Incompatible with one another.

There's little point in making a 7800 play 5200 games as well.  The 7800 was not designed by Atari - but by an outside independent company who wanted to design a better game system.  There's a podcast interview somewhere about it all - on Antic?

 

You may as well say how about making a hardware adaptor that allows a 5200 to run Atari 8-bit carts or vice versa?  But even though they are basically the same kind of hardware - it's still not feasible to do this because they are still different systems.

It's much easier to convert the software - which people have done.

 

Harvey

And yet Atari was able to make and release a VCS adapter for the 5200,  even though the 2600 had less RAM and uses a different CPU than the 5200. In addition, an unlicensed 3rd party made the Super 8 adapter, which allows the SNES to play NES and Japanese Famicom games as well as its own software. 

Pic related.

[+darryl1970]

If the 7800 had a 5200 adapter, people could have played games with the volume up. Haha! (But seriously...)

 

In all seriousness, I love the layout and concept of the 5200 joysticks, but they were not production ready.

A 5200 adapter for the 7800 would have required people to buy $50-each, unreliable, joysticks. That's another reason a 5200 adapter would have been a tough way to go.

 

I understand why people never gave the sticks a chance. If I hadn't been able to fix mine, I would have hated them too.

The analog control, along with the keypad, added a lot to games like RS Baseball. Self-centering would have made the adjustment easier for those lacking in co-ordination.

 

The 7800 adapter would have definitely helped me to feel less abandoned. However, I would have been bewildered by the lacking sound. That may have changed if Atari made it to the point of adding onboard sound chips. Being naive at the time, the adapter would have kept me from feeling the disappointment that the 5200 never saw its true potential. I wouldn't have felt abandoned. So, from trying to put myself into where I was in 1983, I think the adapter to play 7800 would have been the best user experience.

[Lynxpro]

6 hours ago, darryl1970 said:

If the 7800 had a 5200 adapter, people could have played games with the volume up. Haha! (But seriously...)

 

In all seriousness, I love the layout and concept of the 5200 joysticks, but they were not production ready.

A 5200 adapter for the 7800 would have required people to buy $50-each, unreliable, joysticks. That's another reason a 5200 adapter would have been a tough way to go.

 

I understand why people never gave the sticks a chance. If I hadn't been able to fix mine, I would have hated them too.

The analog control, along with the keypad, added a lot to games like RS Baseball. Self-centering would have made the adjustment easier for those lacking in co-ordination.

 

The 7800 adapter would have definitely helped me to feel less abandoned. However, I would have been bewildered by the lacking sound. That may have changed if Atari made it to the point of adding onboard sound chips. Being naive at the time, the adapter would have kept me from feeling the disappointment that the 5200 never saw its true potential. I wouldn't have felt abandoned. So, from trying to put myself into where I was in 1983, I think the adapter to play 7800 would have been the best user experience.

 

Atari Inc's engineers designed the CX52L self-centering joysticks but they were never produced. Atari Museum has pictures of them.

[+darryl1970]

13 hours ago, Lynxpro said:

 

Atari Inc's engineers designed the CX52L self-centering joysticks but they were never produced. Atari Museum has pictures of them.

Thanks. I know. I have visited the site. I really think that could have turned around the fate of the 5200. They really started to show the system's potential toward the end of life.

[TrekMD]

I saw a prototype of this in the Video Game Museum.  I thought it was a cool idea.  My guess is that this would do the same thing the 2600 "adapter" does.  It is just a compact version of the console that plugs into the 5200 and uses the console simply to show the games on the TV screen.

[Lynxpro]

On 11/13/2019 at 8:41 AM, TrekMD said:

I saw a prototype of this in the Video Game Museum.  I thought it was a cool idea.  My guess is that this would do the same thing the 2600 "adapter" does.  It is just a compact version of the console that plugs into the 5200 and uses the console simply to show the games on the TV screen.

 

Well, if someone desires to create a modern PCB to do this, it would be wise to access the 5200's on-board POKEY - for modded and homebrew 7800 games - in addition to simply using the 5200's power and AV signals.

[TrekMD]

That makes perfect sense.