What are the 6502, ANTIC, CTIA/GTIA, POKEY, and FREDDIE chips?
Some of the following text is taken from De Re Atari (Atari#APX-90008), a book published by Atari through the Atari Program Exchange (APX) and copyright 1982 by Chris Crawford, et al. See http://www.atariarchives.org/dere/ where the full text of De Re Atari is now available online. The internal layout of the Atari 8-bit computer is very different from other systems. It of course has a microprocessor (a 6502), RAM, ROM, and a PIA. However, it also has three special-purpose (LSI) chips known as ANTIC, GTIA, and POKEY. These chips were designed by Atari engineers primarily to take much of the burden of housekeeping off of the 6502, thereby freeing the 6502 to concentrate on computations. While they were at it, they designed a great deal of power into these chips. Each of these chips is almost as big (in terms of silicon area) as a 6502, so the three of them together provide a tremendous amount of power. Mastering the Atari 8-bit computers is primarily a matter of mastering these three chi
