Practical Wireless Tele-Tennis projects (1974 & 1977)

[Yorkie]

In his introduction to the forum, Grant, ('zx80nut'), gave a link to his excellent website: http://searle.hostei.com/grant/index.html

On Grant's website I'd spotted his construction of the 1974 P.W. Tele-Tennis project, and looked it up in the PW archives as I too had built a PW Tele-Tennis project in the late 1970s for our two young sons, who were very popular with their chums who flocked to the house to have a play with it! However, in looking at the 1974 project  that Grant built, I noted how complex it was - built on six PCBs, spanning four issues of PW from July to October 1974. As I recalled, the version that I built had only one PCB and an LSI custom chip, which simplified construction enormously. It was built into quite a small console with a sloping front, and used two slider pots as hand controls, mounted in small ABS project boxes. 

I've looked into this further, and have discovered that the version that I built was from July 1977 and used the AY3-500 custom games I.C. which has four ball game options, and also two shooting games, though the shooting games weren't enabled in the P.W. project. The I.C. was sold by Watford Electronics and at the time cost £8.55 inc 8% VAT, which at 2016 prices, equates to £56.00!! How times change - this long since obsolete chip is still widely available on internet for about a fiver upwards.

Anyone interested in the two versions of the P.W. Tele-Tennis projects will find them at the splendid American History archives here:

July 1974 version (See also Aug/Sept/Oct):

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Arch...974-07.pdf

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Arch...977-06.pdf

Several videos of the Ay3-8500 IC games in use on youtube. EG:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEcv6TTjFJA

Into retro electronics and fancy building one?

Bardwells have the AY3 500 IC for £7.00:

http://www.bardwells.co.uk/product/ay-3-...-games-ic/

Two for a tenner from China inc shipping for anyone who likes a gamble!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2pcs-AY-3-8500...Swe-FU8Csw

A nice trip down memory lane for me - my sons, then aged 9 & 13,  (now 48 & 52!) had endless hours of fun with the game. My younger son still has it.

Hope that might interest someone.

[Brianc]

The last item on your list, Yorkie, is for a chip plus a 28 way DIL socket, not, as the title suggests, 2 chips! A bit of a bad description.

[Yorkie]

Ooops,

Thanks for reading the thread Brian and spotting the error in the listing!

[zx80nut]

Hi Yorkie.
Thanks for your kind comments on my page - glad it's been of interest.

Yep, the AY-3-8500 really simplified things
Before 1976, the "home" designs were normally analogue - ramp generators and triggers to draw the lines, bats and ball at the right place on the screen.
The PW build was an "act of appreciation" at what was needed back then. Thankfully the pong-on-a-chip greatly eased the problem.
If you want to build it using an Arduiono / AVR processor then I also have a page that accurately emulates the AY-3-8500 (UK and US versions) here:
http://searle.hostei.com/grant/AVRPong/index.html

Also, my (rather sad) TV game collection, most of which used the same chip here: http://searle.hostei.com/grant/TVPong/index.html

Finally, another analogue one, and a re-build of the Atari arcade (digital) version pics here: http://searle.hostei.com/grant/pong/index.html

I've got a couple of the "Paddle Battle" (pong clone) PCBs that I managed to pick up several years ago, working nicely (huge number of chips, fully digital).
   

... I must be mad

Grant
http://searle.hostei.com/grant/

[zx80nut]

...another thing that impressed me with the '74 TeleTennis articles was that it was covered over 5 magazines, so took a whopping 5 months to build
- more issues than it took to publish the "PW Easybuild Disco" (which I partly used when I first built a disco).

Goes into great detail though.

Later issues covered adding sound effects, on-screen scoring etc.

PW Publishing were very kind in allowing me to scan and publish the complete articles - the full PDF of all articles is on my page.

Happy days.

Grant

[ed731pdh]

As a side note, I find it somewhat amazing that an example of the processor chip fitted to the very first Playstation, is currently somewhere out at Pluto at the moment.