Zogging Hell!!!

The 7800 has a distictive wedge styling. In fact it looks a bit like a small drawing board or a preachers lecturn. On several occasions I have been tempted to stick some watercolour paper to it with gaffer tape and start painting. The 7800 was the successor to the slightly unpopular (if that's the right word) 5200 (which was of course the successor to the 2600). It improved on the 5200 with better graphics and sound and some suprisingly foward thinking controllers. It's a pity Atari dropped the four controller ports that were the revolutionary new part of the 5200's design. The 7800's abilities mean't that early arcade games could now be converted perfectly, and some of the conversions for this console are excellent. The 7800 was also entirely backwards compatible with the 2600 (unlike the 5200) and so had a huge array of excellent games already available for it. 2600 games on the 7800 aren't enhanced but they benefit from the clearer picture and sound. There is also a slight speed increase, which makes some of the 2600's slower games seem slightly more playable. The 7800 also played host to a Mario game, probably the only one that didn't appear on one of Nintendo's own formats.
The 7800 was hampered due the delay in it's release (mine was dated from 1989) eventually coming out in 1987. By the time it was eventually released, home computers were on the verge of the golden age of the 16bit era and a 8bit console looked decidedly old fashioned. Besides this Nintendo's NES and Sega's Master System also had a iron like grip on the console market. And then there was Atari's usual lack of any sort of marketing...

Specs

(From Wikipedia)

CPU: Custom 6502C, Speed: 1.79 MHz, drops to 1.19 MHz when the TIA or RIOT chips are accessed (note: This is Atari's custom 6502 known as SALLY which can be halted to allow other devices to control the bus)

RAM: 4 KB (2 6116 2Kx8 RAM ICs)

ROM: built in 4K BIOS ROM, 48K Cartridge ROM space without bankswitching

Graphics: MARIA custom graphics controller with 160x240 (160x288 PAL) resolution or 320x240/288 resolution displaying a 25 color palette out of 256 colors (16 hues * 16 luma), different graphics modes restricted the number of usable colors and the number of colors per sprite. Direct Memory Access (DMA). Graphics clock: 7.16 MHz

I/O: Joystick and console switch IO handled byte 6532 RIOT and TIA

Ports: 2 joystick ports, 1 cartridge port, 1 expansion connector, power in, RF output

Sound: TIA (STELLA) video and sound chip, same as the 2600. Only the sound is used in 7800 games. Both video and sound is used in 2600 games. Optional POKEY sound chip on cartridge for improved sounds.

The console has the usual difficulty switches for compatibility with 2600 games.