Doc4

I'm working on getting DanBoris clean shots of the boards in the system. I'm the bottleneck right now, but I'm working on it.

I was told this came from an estate sale where the owner had possibly worked for Magnavox and that there were several prototype games purchased by the buyer as well. I'm taking everything with a grain of salt here as I bought this on eBay and I'm not trying to push the idea this is definitely a prototype but even if it isn't it sure looks like it may have been a pre-release testing unit or something to that effect. Does anyone know of or have a legitimate Odyssey2 / The Voice prototype or dev console? Curious if we could compare notes.

Seems like it would have happened years and years ago with an unreleased version of the Voice (Note that there are no vents on the right side). As far as I can tell the Voice was only ever produced with that additional ventilation. However, this has occurred to me as well and I wouldn't even know why someone would mod it this way.

I'm waiting for a couple of games to show up and I'm going to test this out. I'm not sure if these joysticks will work but they have been cleaned up.

I didn't open the Voice Module, everything in the images is in the main Odyssey2 body. There does appear to be something in the Voice Module though.

I finally had a minute to open this up and take some pictures. The Voice Module has been hex bolted to the main body (see images) which explains why it doesn't come off. I was able to remove the Odyssey2 motherboard and I believe the Voice Module would come off in one piece because I could feel the connection from the cartridge slot, but I stopped before doing that to see what the consensus was. The General Instrument board has a ribbon cable leading to the Voice Module and there are two power supply units, one for the Odyssey2 and one wired to that small power board. Controllers appear to be shot, but they are removable. I'm not very familiar with everything going on here but please ask questions and I'll do my best to answer. Let me know what you think. Note that something was rattling around in the main body and it turns out it was this smaller power board. This smaller board and the larger General Instrument board were taped to the top lid at one point (see images). Most of this tape disintegrated and wasn't holding anything down so I removed the loose bits and taped these back down with some Kapton tape. Like a weirdo, I save the old tape. Hi-Resolution images included. IMG_6877.HEICIMG_6876.HEICIMG_6875.HEICIMG_6872.HEICIMG_6871.HEICIMG_6870.HEICIMG_6869.HEICIMG_6868.HEICIMG_6866.HEICIMG_6865.HEICIMG_6864.HEICIMG_6863.HEIC

I found this article on the Voice but can anyone confirm this statement highlighted below? This could explain the two power adaptors if this was an early unit. Creative Computing Video & Arcade Games magazine (Vol. 1, No. 1 / Spring 1983 / Page 60) https://www.atarimagazines.com/cva/v1n1/odyssey.php

I haven't seen any on eBay without the vent, but I haven't been looking very long either.

Apologies, I haven't had time to open this up yet. It's on my list of things to do though. Just checking, but is it normal to not have the smaller vent holes on the right side of the Voice module, or is this just a variant?

Right!? Where is the user manual for The Voice? I couldn't find one either. I know the power supply is separate though, in this case, the console has a power supply that I can detach while there is no visible means to detach the Voice Module power. Edit based on drchuckradio's comment: I have two power connectors though I'm not sure why then. I assumed both needed power. I'll get this disassembled later and take some pics, hopefully, we can see what is going on here.

Got it, but I'm not able to remove it. Again, there is a ribbon cable connecting it to the Odyssey 2.

I picked up a Magnavox Odyssey 2 and, I haven't confirmed this just yet, but it appears the Voice module is permanently attached to the system. I certainly can't remove it. There is an old ribbon cable coming out of the Voice module going directly into a cut-out on the back of the system where it looks like it's connected directly to the motherboard. Also, the power cable on the Voice is coming out of the system body. How does this usually connect to power? I can't find a single image of that online. I'll add some images later, just thought this was odd. Maybe someone modded it and permanently attached the Voice to it? Also missing the top-right grill, it's just covered with plastic. I'm going to try to disassemble it tonight to see what is going on inside, something is rattling around in there.

Any updates on this? Very curious to know what's going on.

This has to be one of the best looking new releases for the Jaguar I've seen in a long time. Hope to see this for sale one day.

Following up on this again. SainT was able to replace my Game Drive after discovering an issue. I'd like to point out that I either have a bad SD Card or there is some sort of issue formatting these on a Mac. Once I received the new Game Drive I tried out the same SD Card and continued to get the "Memory Card Unreadable" message. I finally picked up an identical SD Card, didn't format it on the Mac, just dumped the games on it and it worked fine. I've since removed this new card multiple times with no issues. Has anyone else had an issue with Mac formatting?