CX-2500
 The tan CX-2500 formerly owned by Curt Vendel | |
| Model code | CX-2500 |
|---|---|
| Internal codename | Unknown |
| Production date | 1982 |
| Produced at | Sunnyvale (both units) |
The CX-2500 is a forerunner to the Atari 2600 Jr produced by engineers at Atari's main headquarters in Sunnyvale as a reaction to the CX-2000 also being produced by the WCI lab in New York. Seemingly made as a reaction to the new hardware layout of the CX-2000 negating its intent for cost reductions, the CX-2500 reuses an existing four switch VCS/2600 motherboard in a large plastic shell with integrated controls recycled from the also unreleased Atari 2700, albeit not wired to the motherboard to function as intended.
Versions
Beige plastic
The more widely known of the two models, this unit was recovered by the late Curt Vendel and displayed on his Atari Museum website[1] and currently resides with the National Videogame Museum as part of the Curt Vendel collection. The metal stems of the four switches on the motherboard have been replaced with cheaper plastic covers with a red plastic used for the power switch. Internally the controllers inside are nonfunctioning, the only one having hardware installed at all being the left controller with the bare assembly of the Atari 2700 wireless joystick being installed on a plastic mount built into the bottom case. Overall the system is essentially a very large and tanklike version of a 1982 "Darth Vader" system, which could be argued to potentially cost less than the CX-2000 via just housing existing motherboards as-is while reusing part of the main feature of the cancelled 2700 program.
Black plastic
Unknown to the world until 2018, this model is currently missing from public location awareness due to being sold on eBay by Curt Vendel himself for over $10,000 USD without any disassembly photos provided to show if there are any internal differences[2]. The defining visual feature of this is its switch to using the black plastic associated with Atari's home game systems instead of the beige plastic used for their home computer line. The auction did provide more and higher quality photos of the CX-2500 overall, revealing that the system would come with a built in winding area to store the lengthy RF cable as Atari seemingly didn't want to move to a RCA jack on a breakaway board, a move which would only come with the Atari 2200 and subsequently the 2600 Jr.
Although the auction page wasn't archived at the time, a thread on AtariAge[3] revealed it was sold by Curt to a museum somewhere in Los Angeles with no other information provided since and the museum's name not being known.
Gallery
Note: some photos are of a lower resolution due to being taken 20+ years ago as of 2026 by way of Atari Museum.
Atari Museum
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An overhead view showing the large size of the system and its own version of integrated joysticks -
Angled view of the entire system to show how deep its casing is -
Inside the CX-2500, showing unfinished controls and its reusing a whole 2600 motherboard
Atari Compendium
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An angled overview of the missing black unit -
Close up view of the name badge and cart slot -
Side profile of the large casing -
Rear of the unit showing how flush the 2600 board's ports were to the casing -
View of the bottom with the winding posts for the RF cable -
A screenshot of the auction of this unit in 2018
