Dastari Creel

Let's add to the list then. I didn't mean to imply that my list up top was comprehensive. I'm trying to create the comprehensive list. This is about historical preservation of knowledge, so that if someone's website goes down the information isn't lost forever. So yes, please, everyone who knows of some other consoles please do let me know. I will say that I'm most interested in North American releases, though, but I will record anything available about foreign ones as well.

Update: I now have the schematics to all of the Odyssey units except for the 4000. For whatever reason my source didn't have that one. They also thought that they had the 300, but seem to have misplaced it, so the only version of the 300 that I have is the photograph that someone took of one for me. I'm hoping to replace it with a greater quality one at some point, and need to find any 4000 in the wild. I hope Sly uploads his soon, so that I can compare. Either way, the best quality copies that I can find will be available from my website. Now, though, because I'm an insane completist I'm off on an Ahab like quest to track down the service manual for the model 4305 television. It must have one. There's no way that Magnavox sunk in the cost to make a TV with a built in video game system and not have a service manual. The question is, have any of them survived the test of time? Seeing as how it didn't take me too long to find the Odyssey schematics I'm optomistic that this may survive somewhere.

It's interesting, because I asked the same question here and at Digital Press, and I've come up with two different responses. Most people here prefer technology as the basis. Most people there prefer the date. That probably says something about the two communities, but I'm not sure what that is. Anyway, I'm not really sweating it, but I find the debate interesting. My interest was in seeing everyone's point of view rather than in coming to an answer per se. If there was consensus that would be interesting. Having no consenus is interesting as well. I personally find that categorizing things is helpful when drawing conclusions either about technology or marketing, so I don't think that generations are completely meaningless, but you probably need to define your terms a bit... But to the point of most people on Digital Press and as a couple of people here pointed out, the reason that they prefer the date is because they see generation as a term to analyze the marketing of systems that were around at relatively the same time. I can see the other argument too though.

Update: I find Pong Story difficult to navigate. It's not very user friendly. Anyhow, I found that David Winter has compiled his own comprehensive list that shows that I have left out many. Trying to get a "story" on each of these will be difficult, but I'm going to try. http://www.pong-story.com/mypongs.htm

Wikipedia's lists are hardly comprehensive. It's why even when looking at first gen consoles I've found different information depending on what article I'm looking at. For reference, it's the list of dedicated consoles that puts the Flashbacks as starting at 6th gen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dedicated_consoles

I can definitely see that point of view, but I'm wondering if there's a consensus, because I've seen the opposite opinion. I don't ever want to say that Wikipedia is the be-all and end-all of knowledge, but it lists the Flashback consoles in the generation for the year that they were released. It doesn't list them as Gen 1 because they're dedicated consoles or as Gen 2 because they're imitating a Gen 2 system. Whoever wrote those articles feels like release date is the most important thing.

Will that ruin the quality of the picture by running it through another device? EDIT: I can't find a demodulator with a BNC output. I can't even find one with an S-video output, which is the other kind of input that this monitor accepts. I can find demodulators with RCA outputs and I've found an RCA to BNC type converter. I assume that would work, so the question is, would my picture quality be better using a PVM monitor but having to first go through a twin-lead to coax balancing transformer and then a demodulator or, would i be better off getting a Trinitron TV where I just need to go through the balancing transformer to make the connection? This is so much of a hassle that I think that I'm going to design a dual-lead antenna demodulator at some point just for old school gamers.

Someone on Digital Press asked me an interesting philosophical question. Would the Bentley Compu-Vision count as a Gen 1 machine, because it's a standard AY-3-8500 "Pong-on-a-chip" machine or would it be Gen 2 because it released in 1983. I can see it both ways. What do you think?

It's less that I've forgotten them and more that I don't know about their existence. My sources are sketchy, although primarily it's what I can piece together from Wikipedia, Pong-Story, and a book on Video Games that was written in 1978. That's why I'm hoping that people that are more expert such as yourself will pipe up and let me know what I'm missing.

Hi, I've been doing research on the best monitors to use for gaming, and I keep hearing that the PVM monitors are the best. I'm looking at using it with some old systems including the original Magnavox Odyssey. Now, the Odyssey uses a dual-lead old school antenna type connection, but I found this adapter to convert the twin lead to regular coax. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00005T3EZ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 The PVM monitor that I'm looking at only has BNC type connectors. If I use a coax to BNC connector will that be enough? Since the Odyssey broadcasts on channel 3 or 4 I'm worried that a monitor with no TV tuner won't be able to pick up on the signal. Does anyone know if this will work?

One thing that has really surprised me is that there doesn't appear to be a comprehensive list of Gen 1 consoles. Everything that I've found online is incomplete and a few places are actually incorrect due to people misunderstanding what generation a particular console is. It also doesn't help that based on what wikipedia page that you're looking at the number of consoles varies considerably. Thankfully, someone turned me on to a book on Video Games written in the 1970's that has a fairly decent list. Between that I've come up with the following list. I'd appreciate that anyone who knows of any errors or omissions in this list would comment, so that I can create a comprehensive list. Domestic: APF: TV Fun Model 402 TV Fun Model 405 TV Fun Model 406 TV Fun Model 442 TV Fun Model 444 TV Fun Model 500 Atari: Pong Pong Doubles Sears Pong IV Super Pong Super Pong Ten Ultra Pong Ultra Pong Doubles Stunt Cycle Video Pinball Sears Speedway Sears Speedway IV Calfax: Bag-a-Tel Coleco: Telstar Telstar Classic Telstar Deluxe Telstar Ranger Telstar Alpha Telstar Colormatic Telstar Regent Telstar Sportsman Telstar Combat! Telstar Colortron Telstar Marksman Telstar Galaxy Telstar Gemini Telstar Arcade Conic International: TVG 101-4 TVG 102-4 Concept 2000: Nose T' Nose Four-Way Video Game Entex: Tele-Pong Executive Games: Face-Off Hockey/Soccer Fantasia: Fantasia 101 Federal Transistor Co: Video Sport General Home Products: Gulliver Triple Challenge Wonder Wizard Wonder Wizard Bull's Eye Wonder Wizard Sharp Shooter Wonder Wizard Scoreboard Wonder Wizard (May have had a name but unknown?) Model 7709 Heath Co: Heathkit Intercon Marketing Corporation: Colorgame Lafayette: Tournament 2000 Lloyd's: TV Sports 802 Magnavox: Odyssey Odyssey 100 Odyssey 200 Odyssey 300 Odyssey 400 Odyssey 500 Odyssey 2000 Odyssey 3000 Odyssey 4000 4305 (Ok, this is a TV, but the console was built in, so I think it counts.) National Semiconductor: Adversary Olympus Electronics: TV Sports 77 Quadtronics: Quadtronics Model Q376 Quadtronics Model Q476 Radio Shack: TV Scoreboard Richochet Electronics (Other reference says Microelectronics Systems): Color TV Game Super Pro Challenger Champion Formula 500 Richochet 8 Santron: Gorilla Game Model TG-101 Gorilla Game Model TG-201 Tele-match: 3300R 4400 6600 7700 Unisonic: Sportsman T101 Tournament 100 Tournament 102 Tournament 150 Tournament 200 Tournament 1000 Tournament 2000 Tournament 2501 Olympian 2600 Universal Research Labs: Video Action Video Action II Video Action III Video Action IV (Indy 500) Venture Electronics: Video Sports VS-1 Video Sports VS-5 Video Sports VS-7 Foreign: Binatone: TV Master MK IV Commodore: TV Game 2000K TV Game 3000H Colorsport VIII Epoch Co: TV Tennis Electrotennis Granada: Colorsport VIII Interton: Video 2000 Video 2400 Video 2501 Video 2800 Video 3000 MBO: Tele-Ball Tele-Ball II Tele-Ball III Tele-Ball IV Tele-Ball V Tele-Ball VI Tele-Ball VII Tele-Ball VIII Tele-Ball IX Nintendo: Color TV Game 6 Color TV Game 15 Color TV Game 112 Color TV Game Block Breaker Computer TV Game Philco Ford: Telejogo Telejogo II Philips: Tele-Spiel ES2203 Tele-Spiel ES2204 Tele-Spiel ES2218 Tele-Spiel ES2208 N30 Odyssey 2001 Odyssey 2100 VEB Kombinat Mikroelektronik Erfurt: BSS 01 Videomaster: Strika Strika 2 Colourscore Colourscore 2 SuperScore Sportsworld VisionScore ColourShot Videoton: TV jatek Zanussi: Ping-o-Tronic

And now I'm surprised that there doesn't appear to be a twin-lead to composite adapter out there. The twin-lead to coax adapter is fine for me, since I have an old TV, but I may want to look into creating something like that myself just for people who have newer TV's, but don't want to mod their antique consoles.

Wow, just started looking at that book on Video Games by Len Buckwater. There are a LOT more Gen 1 consoles than Wikipedia says that there were.

That makes sense for Tank II, but presumably Tank was earlier, so I wonder why that one was scrapped.

So I take it that neither one got made. What happened?

Excuse my ignorance, but what is Atari Tank II? It looks like it's a dedicated console to play a Tank game similar to Combat. Was there an original Tank console? All that I can find for Atari dedicated consoles is Home Pong, so I'm a little confused.

Google isn't perfect, as I've found with these Odyssey schematics, but I wasn't even talking about online. There may be some more information sitting in the attics of ex-employees, vendors, collectors, etc. The question is if I can find the people I need to find to ask the questions. That being said, do you know what issue of what magazine that you found that picture in?

I'm actually really surprised that no one seems to have ever wanted to do a documentary on Magnavox's foray into the gaming industry to ask questions just like this. Still, no time like the present to start asking, right? And all of this is starting to get me really excited about getting the vgarchive up and running, but have to wait for my designer to finish my logo and web banner before I debut it.

I found that picture on an old thread of Atariage from years ago, and it's what inspired me to think that maybe there's some piece of information out there that isn't well known yet.

Thank you! That will be a huge help, and thank you for the A/V mod info as well. That was going to be one of the projects that I wanted to undertake. I realize that the details of the Odyssey 5000 have probably been lost to the mists of time, but I might as well see what I can find. Even if no information exists it might be interesting if I can find one of the engineers who worked on it. For anyone interested, I'm also interested in compiling the details of the other Gen 1 consoles, but I thought that I'd start with the Odyssey, since Magnavox was the first company in the business. Once I'm doing there I'll move on to Coleco and so on until I've learned whatever I can about the first gen consoles and move on to the second. I think the third generation onward is fairly well documented, but we'll see what happens if I ever get past that point. Edit: I just checked out the archive.org website. Someone claims to have uploaded the Odyssey 100 service manual, but actually it's just the Ifixit.com "Odyssey 100" teardown document. I looked at some of the Odyssey instruction manuals that they have there, and they're scanned in as jpegs. Will that site take pdfs as well? It'd be nice if they were saved as high resolution pdfs to make them easier to use.

That's pretty much my point of view as well. Btw, what's the Magnavox model number for the 500? It's usually printed on the underside of the console. I can probably get my hands on the schematic with that piece of information. I currently own a 100 and 200 and plan to eventually get all of them, but it will definitely save me time in getting the schematics if a current owner can give me the model number. Besides the technical side, I'm fascinated by the history of video games. I've read Leonard Herman's history of video games as well as books on the history of Atari and Nintendo as well as Ralph Baer's biography about his work with video games. There are so many gaps, though. Even with Magnavox we have a fairly decent amount of information of Baer's work at Sanders and the deal with Magnavox for getting the first Odyssey made, but we have almost no information about the Magnavox side of things. We know that they changed the designs somewhat because Baer mentioned that the idea of using cards to change gameplay was a genius move that he wouldn't have thought of. So who was the engineer who came up with that idea? Who designed the box art and overlay art? Why did Magnavox make the decisions that it did? Baer's story shows increasing frustration with how much he was "shut out" of Magnavox's decision making both technically and marketing wise, so there's very little information that he gives after the Odyssey got really going. I feel like now is the time to strike with trying to research that kind of information because we've probably already lost a lot of people in the past 45 years who could have given a lot of information about all of this, but some should still be around. If we wait much longer there won't be much of anything. With this being my first journalistic project I have no idea if I'll be able to succeed, but I've at least started the slow process of trying to see if I can find anyone from Magnavox who worked on any of the Odyssey systems in any capacity to see if I can capture that part of the story of video game history. The confluence of those two endeavors - technical and historical - would be if I can find any info on the Odyssey 5000. There's a little on pong-story and there's one known picture of the Odyssey 5000 prototype, but beyond that we know nothing. It'd be great if I could learn more about that machine especially if there's a schematic of the prototype floating around somewhere.

Thanks, I'll definitely give this a look. I'm an electrical engineer by trade, but I haven't done board level electronics since college. I work on large scale industrial control systems, so this is a way for me to get back to my roots. One thing that I will note. I have a website in progress right now where I plan on storing all of the technical information that I dig up. I realize that the later systems are more extensively covered, mostly because interest in the early consoles is low. Still, I feel that someone at some point will be interested in either repairing or doing a mod project on these early systems, so I'd like the process to be easier for them when they're trying to look up info on these systems.

So, in case anyone is curious about this. I've done a little research, and discovered the actual Magnavox model numbers for the Odysseys 100, 200, & 300. This information isn't contained on any of the websites that talk about these system. These model numbers are: 100: YF7010-ORF1 200: YF7015-WHF1 300: BG7500-YE01 That allowed me to do a web search and discover the schematics for the 100 and 200 (had to pay for it). Unfortunately the scans were too wide for a single page, so they were each scanned as two pages. The problem is that whoever scanned them didn't ensure that there was overlap in the middle, so each of them is actually missing a portion of information in the middle. The schematic portion of the 100 is fine, but the troubleshooting data is missing quite a few words in the middle of sentences and some parts information. For the 200, I'm missing a portion of the schematic, which is kind of a problem. For the 300, a nice person on Facebook sent me some photos of a schematic that he's apparently had for years. He doesn't remember where he got them from, but the person who took those pictures at least understood about having overlap. I can provide a link to those below for anyone curious: http://42cast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/19944203_10154920137493924_4516805364113977292_o.jpg http://42cast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/19702327_10154920140058924_7604870395142402759_n.jpg Needless to say, I'll continue looking for better images, especially since I'll want to share these on my website, but for now these are adequate.

So, in case anyone is curious about this. I've done a little research, and discovered the actual Magnavox model numbers for the Odysseys 100, 200, & 300. This information isn't contained on any of the websites that talk about these system. These model numbers are: 100: YF7010-ORF1 200: YF7015-WHF1 300: BG7500-YE01 That allowed me to do a web search and discover the schematics for the 100 and 200 (had to pay for it). Unfortunately the scans were too wide for a single page, so they were each scanned as two pages. The problem is that whoever scanned them didn't ensure that there was overlap in the middle, so each of them is actually missing a portion of information in the middle. The schematic portion of the 100 is fine, but the troubleshooting data is missing quite a few words in the middle of sentences and some parts information. For the 200, I'm missing a portion of the schematic, which is kind of a problem. For the 300, a nice person on Facebook sent me some photos of a schematic that he's apparently had for years. He doesn't remember where he got them from, but the person who took those pictures at least understood about having overlap. I can provide a link to those below for anyone curious: http://42cast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/19944203_10154920137493924_4516805364113977292_o.jpg http://42cast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/19702327_10154920140058924_7604870395142402759_n.jpg Needless to say, I'll continue looking for better images, especially since I'll want to share these on my website, but for now these are adequate.