Thanks to Benjamin Gudehus who posted this on Google Plus: a six-part youtube presentation of a 1997 reunion of the original Atari 2600 team.

Stella at 20 Part 1/6



Featuring among others Jay Miner, Joe Decuir, Ron Milner, Steve Mayer, Nolan Bushnell.

The good stuff starts about 4min24 - Atari needed to build a multi game system for $25-$35 parts, and at that time Chuck Peddle turns up at Wescon and launches the 6502 for peanuts, outperforming the 6800 by 3 to 4 times according to the speaker.

Just after the 9min mark they show the prototype and a Jolt board makes an appearance.

They mention that dropping from a 40pin to a 28pin package saved a dollar in costs, that the Stella chip has 5 thousand gates (and is named after a bicycle, despite subsequent codenames being women's names)

Also mentioned that they saved 25cents by choosing a low pin count connector for the cartridge, only allowing a 4k ROM and no room for R/W or clock, and by summer of 1978 they were already regretting that.

Cheers
Ed

(We reposted to our mos6502 page... the aim there being to draw people here, rather than vice-versa.)

History of Atari featuring Nolan Bushnell:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOUxetHEn6Y

This hour and a half video is mainly about Atari and not about the 6502. They talk a little about Activision. They give no credit to Jack Tramiel.