The Atari 2600: The Box That Launched A Million IT Careers

In a world where videogame experiences are becoming ever more lifelike, it's hard to imagine that people once played games that ran on just 4 kilobytes of RAM. But when the Atari 2600 was released in October 1977, millions of kids (and adults) quickly fell under its spell.

In addition to bloodshot eyes, sore thumbs and carpal tunnel syndrome, the Atari 2600 opened many kids' eyes to the capabilities of technology. For some enterprising youngsters, opening the Atari 2600 console and modifying it to do things other than play games was the first step on a path that ultimately led to a career in the IT industry.

But while the curious young minds of today tinker with the Xbox to run Linux, the challenge of modifying the Atari 2600 was far greater, due in large part to its limited system resources, according to solution providers.

As a teenager, Matt Hymowitz, president of GMP Networks, a Tucson, Ariz.-based VAR, remembers building a hardware interface to the joystick port on the 2600 to control the lights and stereo system in his bedroom. The challenges of working with the 2600's MOS 6507 microprocessor, which offered a mere 8 KB of addressable memory, gave Hymowitz an early introduction to the challenges of working with embedded systems.

"Today we have an almost unlimited supply of system memory and resources, but there are valuable lessons to be learned in working with very limited systems like the 2600," said Hymowitz.

Modifying modern day consoles like the Xbox is fairly straightforward, but the limited resources of the Atari 2600 made hacking it a more formidable challenge. Kelly Keeton, a physical security engineer with Seattle-based integrator Network Computing Architects, says that modifying the 2600 required just as much imagination as technical ability.

NEXT: The Call of the Joystick