• CPU: Motorola 6502C (8-bit) 1.78 MHz
• RAM: 16K
• Colors: 256, 16 on-screen
• Resolution: 320×192
• Sound: 4-channel

MESS currently supports cart dumps for Atari 5200 in .rom, .bin and .a52 format, using the “cartridge” (cart) device.

The 5200 featured a controller with an analog joystick, numeric keypad, two fire buttons on both sides of the controller and game function keys for Start, Pause, and Reset.

MESS supports two Atari 5200 bios dumps. You can switch between them, changing the -bios parameter. At command line,

"-bios 0" or "-bios default" = a5200

"-bios 1" or "-bios alt" = a5200 (alt)

Most games are playable. See a5200.hsi for a fairly exhaustive compatibility list.

The Atari 5200 was introduced in 1982, and was actually designed to be a competitor to the Intellivision, before ColecoVision entered the market. Developed under the name of “Pam” (Atari, at the time, typically named projects after well-endowed female employees), Atari considered releasing it with that moniker; PAM in this case an acronym for “Personal Arcade Machine”.

The 5200 shared much of the architecture of the Atari 400/800 computers, but featured a different cartridge connector and completely different controllers. Non-centering analogue joysticks which offered a full 360 degrees of mobility, were both innovative and unreliable. Other controller features included a keypad, and an ahead-of-its-time pause button.

The Atari 5200 suffered from its initial incompatibility with the VCS/2600 (an adapter was later released) and fierce competition from Coleco. When Warner Communications sold Atari Corp. to the Tramiels in 1984, they quickly removed it from the market.

• The initial 1982 release of the system featured four controller ports, where all other systems of the day had only two ports. It also featured the innovation of the first automatic TV switchbox, allowing it to automatically switch from regular TV viewing to the game system signal when the system was activated (previous RF adapters required the user to slide a switch on the adapter by hand). A single cable coming out of the 5200 plugged into the switch box was used for both electricity and the television signal.

• The 1983 release of the Atari 5200 saw a scaled down controller port (2 instead of 4 ports) and a change back to the more conventional separate power supply and standard (non autoswitching) RF switch. It also saw changes in the cartridge port address lines to allow for the Atari 2600 adaptor released that year. While the adaptor was only made to work on the 2 port version, modifications can be done to the 4 port to make it line compatible. Furthermore, towards the end of the 4 port production run there were also an extremely limited number of 2600 adaptor compatible consoles produced. These much harder to find 4 port versions can be identified by an asterisk in the serial number.

(info on the different hardware versions based on Wikipedia)

• Atari2600.com (covers many classical systems)
• Dan B's Atari 5200 Tech Page
• Atari Age
• Atari Museum

• Jum52 (Jum's A5200 Emulator)
• Virtual Super System (Dan Boris' 5200 emulator)
• kat5200

• Atari800
• Atari++
• Atari800Win Plus
• Rainbow