The Atari 7800 was the follow-up to Atari's less then successful 5200. The 7800 was developed in 1984 but was shelved by Atari until 1986 when they brought it out to compete with the Nintendo Entertainment Systems (NES). Were as the 5200 borrowed it's technology from the 8-bit computer line, the 7800 was an entirely new design, but was still backwards compatible with the Atari 2600. The 7800 has all of the 2600 hardware in it, but when running in 7800 mode it uses an entirely different graphics chip (the MARIA) and has expanded RAM and cartridge space.

Specifications:
- CPU: 6502C (custom, NOT 65C02)
- RAM: 4K, high speed (mostly VRAM)
- ROM: 52K max
- CPU Clock: 1.79 MHz
- Graphics Clock: 7.16 MHz
- Slot Config: Most CPU lines + video/audio
- CPU Available: over 90