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Interview with Gilbert Duncan Harrower, creator of the Pong clone


Nateo

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Hey all - I posted this is the Dedicated Systems forum, but since that section is undervisited, just thought I'd post it here as well in case there's others who might be interested.

Anyways, I managed to find and interview the inventor of the AY-3-8500! It was very enlightening to learn about major developments in video gaming outside of Silicon Valley.

 

https://thegeekiverse.com/interview-with-gilbert-duncan-harrower-inventor-of-the-pong-on-a-chip/

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for posting this, it's very interesting to see how these came to be. And it shows the usual management myopia of not taking risks until somebody proves viability of an idea on their own.

 

There are now projects trying to recreate this chip in FPGA hardware, e.g. this one: https://nerdstuffbycole.blogspot.com/2019/01/?m=1

 

It's possible that soon we can play these on a modern TV.

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Weird. Why a FPGA? You only really need to convert the video signal from the chip to HDMI. Or is that because making it in FPGA would be cheaper than recreating the chip like it was BITD?

FPGAs are better at recreating chips and electronics circuits accurately, and there are several FPGA boards out there it could run on. An accurate open source implementation is also a good way to document the chip for future generations.

Edited by Newsdee
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Fair enough. It's strange that getting a "blank board" and recreating the chip on it cost less that remaking the actual chip, but I suppose I should stop being surprised by such things today :P

Although ti's probably because I have little idea of how many FPGA models or such exists. Given that FPGA are usually used to recreate whole machines I always though they were meant to recreate whole CPU and such, not just a bunch of TTL gates.

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FPGAs (and their smaller cousins CPLDs) have been used in a bunch of products, they are not used to implement whole machines usually. The XRGB-Mini has an FPGA powering it, as well as Everdrives. Even the Retro Freak had a tiny FPGA to help dump carts.

 

To clarify the FPGA is not necessarily a board (its just a component) but the board is what makes one useful for a given purpose. You'd want video out and inputs to reimplement computers and consoles, for example.

 

That said, my comment was thinking about a broader reimplementation so as to add HDMI out and analogue controls in a whole system. It could easily be a MiSTer core.

Edited by Newsdee
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Fair enough. It's strange that getting a "blank board" and recreating the chip on it cost less that remaking the actual chip, but I suppose I should stop being surprised by such things today :P

 

FPGAs are composed of thousands of logical building blocks which can be configured via software. They are much less dense than fabricated hardware, but the advantage of being re-programmable in seconds is very useful (prototyping, hacker/DIY projects, console emulation, etc.) Logic density has also increased by massive amounts. The ICE40LP8K I'm working with can store nine or ten copies of the AY-3-8500 (although it lacks the IO), despite costing less than 10$ and being close in size to a grain of rice.

 

 

It could easily be a MiSTer core.

 

I'm planning on getting a hold of a MiSTer board and porting the circuits to it once I get them working on my test board. MAME emulation is another goal to work towards, a tool like Verilator should be able to do much of the work. Along with the AY-3-8500 there are over two dozen discrete game chips out there that could also use emulation. (Atari Pong + Videopinball, Coleco Telstar, Color-TV game series, etc)

 

 

I'm sure the Intellivision forum would appreciate a follow up regarding their favorite console.

 

I'm not an Intellivision fan, but I'd love to hear more about it's hardware and creation from Mr Harrower sometime. I'll keep my eyes peeled for your next interview!

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