Editing Television Interface Adaptor (section)

===Background===
Around 1975, Atari's engineers at [[Cyan Engineering]] led by Steve Mayer and Ron Milner had been considering alternatives to the development dedicated hardware such as application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) for arcade video games and home video game consoles. Programmable [[microprocessor]]s had reached the market, but Atari considered them too expensive for a home application.<ref name="ieee decuir"/> They were limited by cost in options for displaying graphics. At this point in time, most computer graphics were generated by using [[sprite (computer graphics)|sprites]] drawn atop a playfield, which then were translated into an analog signal for display on a [[Cathode-ray tube|CRT]]<ref name=antic>Chris Crawford, [http://www.atariarchives.org/dere/chapt02.php "ANTIC and the display list"], ''De Re Atari''</ref> Sprites would be held as a [[bitmap]] in a [[framebuffer]], requiring [[random-access memory]] (RAM). RAM was still expensive, costing tens of thousands of dollars per megabyte.,<ref name="Memprices">{{cite web|url=http://www.jcmit.com/memoryprice.htm|title=Memory Prices (1957-2012)|last=McCallum|first=John C.|date=February 13, 2012|website=jcmit.net|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121026153229/http://www.jcmit.com/memoryprice.htm|archive-date=October 26, 2012|url-status=dead|access-date=October 27, 2012}}</ref> and to display a two-color playfield on an 80×48 display would have cost thousands of dollars in memory.<ref name="ieee decuir">{{cite journal |title = Atari Video Computer System: Bring Entertainment Stories Home | first = Joe | last = Decuir | journal = IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine | date = July 2015 | doi = 10.1109/MCE.2015.2421572 | pages =59–66 | doi-access = free }}</ref> On a conventional [[NTSC]] [[color television]], maximum resolutions generally fell between 256 and 320 pixels per line, and 192 to 240 lines per screen.<ref>Montfort & Bogost, pg. 27</ref>

In September 1975, [[MOS Technology]] introduced the [[MOS Technology 6502|6502 microprocessor]], one of the first low-cost microprocessors on the market. Mayer and Milner arranged to speak to the chip's designer, [[Chuck Peddle]], on using the 6502 as the basis for their programmable video game console. Over the course of a couple of days, the basic design of the Atari VCS was laid out, with Peddle offering Atari the use of the lower-cost [[MOS Technology 6507]] processor and the [[MOS Technology 6532]] RAM-I/O-Timer (RIOT) as the core of the design.<ref name="atari fun chp5">{{cite book | title = Atari Inc: Business is Fun | first1 = Marty | last1 = Goldberg | first2 = Curt | last2 = Vendel | year = 2012 | isbn = 978-0985597405 | publisher = Sygyzy Press | chapter=Chapter 5 }}</ref> Using a [[breadboard]] prototype for the display adapter atop a 6502 testbed system, Milner was able to demonstrate the ability to program a simple version of their ''[[Tank (video game)|Tank]]'' game. [[Joseph C. Decuir|Joe Decuir]] was hired on to help convert Milner's proof-of-concept to a functional prototype, sufficient for Atari to give the go-ahead for the development to continue.<ref name="ieee decuir"/>

While Decuir worked on the design of the rest of the system, [[Jay Miner]] focused on making an ASIC for the display adapter.<ref name="ieee decuir"/> Early on, the ASIC display adapter was named the Television Interface Adaptor (TIA).<ref name="ieee decuir"/> The cost of RAM remained high as the team began its design, and thus the option to use memory-based framebuffers was dropped from the TIA's design.<ref name="ieee decuir"/>