Atari 5200

Atari's failed attempt to follow up their wildly popular 2600. Released on May 21st, 1984, the 5200 was a failure mostly for it's poor design, awkward controllers, and lack of 2600 backwards compatibility. For specs, it features a MOS 6502C, 128/256 colors, 16 KB of RAM, and a varying set of resolutions that can go up to approximately 240p.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_5200

Operating Systems (MOS 6502C)

Inbuilt “Monitor Program”

This mostly just detected minor information about the game inserted to the 5200, if there was one inserted at all.

Version & Revision Guide

For general information, see the Game Console Revisions Overview.

This guide has been essentially depreciated by the excellent work of our friends over at consolemods.org. It is linked below.

https://consolemods.org/wiki/Atari_5200:Atari_5200_Model_Differences

Versions

There are two versions of this console, arranged chronologically.

“5200 (4 controller ports)” (1982-1983?)

While this version has 4 controller ports, it’s major downside is including the “RF Switch box”, a stupid attachment that contains literally every input for the Atari 5200 that isn’t a controller. Thus, a large element of unreliability and risk come along with this version, because a broken box means no power and no video output for your 5200.

“5200 Super System (2 controller ports)” (1983-1984)

RECOMMENDED OVERALL

Despite removing two controller ports, this version is the superior one of the two. While the RF switch box still exists, the power and channel select switches are now on the console itself, instead of the box. Furthermore, one can use any standard RF box, which eliminates the reliability issue. Lastly, the memory addresses here have been changed to support an Atari 2600 adapter, which the 4 port models only have in certain later revisions.

There are no revisions within either version. LOWEST PRICE and BEST RELIABILITY couldn’t be assigned.