Inside the Atari 800

It's the 30th anniversary of this 8-bit PC classic. We celebrate the occasion as we always do, by tearing the product apart and showing you the pieces.

The Atari 800's expansion options were limited. Atari avoided an Apple II-style internal card bus, instead relying on an external serial port for peripheral expansion; access to this port was through a 13-pin connector on the side of the unit.

A limited number of peripherals (including disk drives, printers, and modems) could be daisychained together through this port. Though this serial-based expansion method was reasonably user-friendly, it suffered from slow speeds and large tangles of cords.

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