processors?

[liquid_sky]

Does anyone know the processors that run the old PONG systems? I dont think it is the AY-3-8500 or the MM-57100 ORR the SN764XX. I have read at the Pongstory page, I found a ton of info on the Pong-on-a-chips, but no information on the actual chips in the pongs.. I took mine apart, all I suceeded in doing was knocking some wires loose.. the table on the page has an almost complete listing of chip and system, but no info on my pong iv...

 

[ 07-23-2001: Message edited by: liquid_sky ]

[liquid_sky]

On closer looking, it was a GI chip, but still not sure, its not a AY-3-8500 i dont think, because that one had like pong hockey and other games on it... but it is a GI, so that cuts down the search radius a little bit

[mos6507]

Atari dedicated units all use their own proprietary chips that were developed in-house and not released to other companies.

 

Other pong on a chips were licensed to various companies.

[liquid_sky]

Thanks, thats odd tho, i read at david's site that it was a GI that ran pong on a chip and some ataris.. oh well, now i know

[Gunstar]

As far as I know, none of those old dedicated machines had processors as we know them today...they were hard-wired machines with no programmable "chips." The "processors" were basically the entire board, including all the transisters and diodes and capaciters, etc. Any chips in there are really know more than just the very basic of design, a few transisters. If I'm correct, it really woudn't have any general or standard type of "processor" to speak of...

[Gunstar]

Oops! exchange that last "know" for "no."

[liquid_sky]

do you know any more about them>? im curious about the color controls when you win a game, it cycles colors and blocks but each color is set to a certian vertical area of the screen

[Gunstar]

quote:

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Originally posted by liquid_sky:

do you know any more about them>? im curious about the color controls when you win a game, it cycles colors and blocks but each color is set to a certian vertical area of the screen

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Sorry, my knowledge about them is all second hand derived from similiar conversations on the "bit-ness" (8-bit, 16-bit, etc.) of systems and the topic of old electronics not really having any "bit-ness" came up and went into more detail about the lack of programmable proccessors...I believe that conversation took place at the classic gaming forum hosted by Atarihq, about a year ago.

[mos6507]

<<

As far as I know, none of those old dedicated machines had processors as we know them today...they were hard-wired machines with no programmable "chips." The "processors" were basically the entire board, including all the transisters and diodes and capaciters, etc. Any chips in there are really know more than just the very basic of design, a few transisters. If I'm correct, it really woudn't have any general or standard type of "processor" to speak of...

>>

 

The early arcade machines starting with Computer Space used all TTL logic chips. They had the board space to do that. Computer Space actually has a card cage with several boards on them. Even though it's older than Pong its an order of magnitude more complicated.

 

That approach in coinop just doesn't work with a home system unless you are talking about the absolute simplest of Pong units, like the Odyssey's. The original Odyssey didn't even use any TTL chips. It was all transistors and resistors and capacitors as far as I know. But it's a very limited system compared to something like Video Pinball or Stunt Cycle which has a complexity in the graphics and the game's logic flow almost on par with programmable systems like the 2600. Video Pinball came out around the same time as the 2600, so the design was probably similarly complex, but just hardcoded for those particular games. To do these, the designers had to miniaturize, i.e. make a custom chip. Atari was quite good at this, actually.

 

But Atari had to stop doing these units. While they were getting pretty good at doing CPU-less analog computer type games, it was far too expensive to keep making custom chips that were hard-wired to only do one game with a few variations. I'm sure a lot of the underlying ideas in these chip designs were carried over from unit to unit so there were inefficiencies in not being able to make these things programmable. The R&D didn't pay off enough vs. a programmable system.

 

It was Al Alcorn himself who designed the chip for the first home pong unit.

 

The Atari 2600 on a circuit level shares a lot of similarites with the older designs, BTW. It's just driven by the CPU and the memory instead of an analog circuit.

[Atari Rescue Group]

I had a couple of Super Pong consoles open at the same time, and saw that the IC chips looked different. They are from different manufactures -- the dark one has an S on the logo, has silver prongs, and has the full CO10073-03 item code on it with a 7642 date code (46th week of 1976). The white one has a logo with symbols that look like "MOS", is only 1/2 as tall as the other chip (only one layer), has gold prongs, a 4876 date code and the item code is shorter: CO10073. Both chips were made in the Phillipines.

 

The Pong-Story website only has an original Pong chip displayed on the Atari Pong page, but not the others. Anyone know of any other sites with photos of the different Atari chips for the other dedicated games?