Pantechnicon
04-30-2007, 11:19 AM
Revenge Of The Black & White Gamers
By "Pantechnicon"
The Christmas haul of 1981 was a very large one. Along with my mother and brother, my Aunt Crystal was also sharing the house. My “two moms” saved for months to put as much swag under the tree for us as possible. The crowning glory of the gift lode was a brand new Atari 2600 videogame console. After giving the setup instructions a once-over, I grabbed a butter knife and began attacking the screws on the back of the large color Curtis Mathes television in the living room to attach the Atari's RF switchbox. My efforts were brought to sudden halt by a deafening noise that sounded like something between an air raid siren and Donald Duck.
"DON'T HOOK THAT THING UP IN HERE!" Aunt Crystal yelled from the opposite side of the living room, "What if that thing blows the TV up? Screw it into the TV in your room instead."
I began to whine how the TV in our room was a twelve-inch black-and-white marvel of 1970's video technology that, after two years of regular use, was at a point where it took several minutes before one could even see a picture to accompany the crackling sound. Mom did not come to my rescue and Crystal held her ground, so my brother and I moped off to our bedroom, butter knives in hand, and hooked up the Atari therein.
A couple of weeks later a rather steep electric bill arrived in the mail. The blame for this bill was placed by my aunt squarely on our poor Atari 2600. Never mind that we were living through one of the coldest winters on regional records and my aunt kept turning the thermostat up to around eighty degrees. It was the fault of “that damned videogame thing”. Our game-playing time was abruptly limited to only a couple of hours a week until the day came when my mother, brother and I relocated to another state. While our Atari playing time increased, the system was still relegated to the black-and-white television since my mother had sadly inherited my aunt’s assumption that the 2600 was an explosive device.
Over the course of the next twenty-some years I never lost interest in the Atari 2600. Owing to a general curiosity I had about electronics, I eventually developed a greater understanding of how this machine’s hardware functioned. This included the revelation that the Atari 2600 runs on only five volts of electricity. Being a direct current device, the Atari 2600 could theoretically be powered off a nine-volt battery, albeit not for very long. I began the annoying habit of mumbling unpleasant things about my aunt whenever I recalled how little electricity the 2600 utilized.
In the summer of 2005 Aunt Crystal retired and moved to the same city I reside in. Being a dutiful nephew I helped her move into her new house. Once we were done I said “Hey I wanted to show you something.” I went out to my car and returned with my Atari 2600, now modified to draw power off of a nine volt battery, which was ostensibly dangling from the power jack. I attached the 2600 to her television set and powered it on. “Do you remember this?” I asked.
“Oh sure,” replied Crystal, “That damned videogame thing. You played with that all the time.”
“I sure did. Hey, do you notice how I’ve got it running off of just that one little battery?”
“Oh, that’s pretty neat! You could take it camping with you or something like that.”
“It hardly uses any electricity at all, doesn’t it?”
“Sure looks that way.”
“Then where did you get the crazy idea back in 1981 that this thing was going to blow up our TV set or that it was our fault that the electric bill was so high?”
My aunt just looked at me, stunned. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about that stuff.”
It was as close to contrition as she would come, but I felt satisfactorily vindicated by my demonstration of the Atari 2600’s minimal power consumption rate.
By "Pantechnicon"
The Christmas haul of 1981 was a very large one. Along with my mother and brother, my Aunt Crystal was also sharing the house. My “two moms” saved for months to put as much swag under the tree for us as possible. The crowning glory of the gift lode was a brand new Atari 2600 videogame console. After giving the setup instructions a once-over, I grabbed a butter knife and began attacking the screws on the back of the large color Curtis Mathes television in the living room to attach the Atari's RF switchbox. My efforts were brought to sudden halt by a deafening noise that sounded like something between an air raid siren and Donald Duck.
"DON'T HOOK THAT THING UP IN HERE!" Aunt Crystal yelled from the opposite side of the living room, "What if that thing blows the TV up? Screw it into the TV in your room instead."
I began to whine how the TV in our room was a twelve-inch black-and-white marvel of 1970's video technology that, after two years of regular use, was at a point where it took several minutes before one could even see a picture to accompany the crackling sound. Mom did not come to my rescue and Crystal held her ground, so my brother and I moped off to our bedroom, butter knives in hand, and hooked up the Atari therein.
A couple of weeks later a rather steep electric bill arrived in the mail. The blame for this bill was placed by my aunt squarely on our poor Atari 2600. Never mind that we were living through one of the coldest winters on regional records and my aunt kept turning the thermostat up to around eighty degrees. It was the fault of “that damned videogame thing”. Our game-playing time was abruptly limited to only a couple of hours a week until the day came when my mother, brother and I relocated to another state. While our Atari playing time increased, the system was still relegated to the black-and-white television since my mother had sadly inherited my aunt’s assumption that the 2600 was an explosive device.
Over the course of the next twenty-some years I never lost interest in the Atari 2600. Owing to a general curiosity I had about electronics, I eventually developed a greater understanding of how this machine’s hardware functioned. This included the revelation that the Atari 2600 runs on only five volts of electricity. Being a direct current device, the Atari 2600 could theoretically be powered off a nine-volt battery, albeit not for very long. I began the annoying habit of mumbling unpleasant things about my aunt whenever I recalled how little electricity the 2600 utilized.
In the summer of 2005 Aunt Crystal retired and moved to the same city I reside in. Being a dutiful nephew I helped her move into her new house. Once we were done I said “Hey I wanted to show you something.” I went out to my car and returned with my Atari 2600, now modified to draw power off of a nine volt battery, which was ostensibly dangling from the power jack. I attached the 2600 to her television set and powered it on. “Do you remember this?” I asked.
“Oh sure,” replied Crystal, “That damned videogame thing. You played with that all the time.”
“I sure did. Hey, do you notice how I’ve got it running off of just that one little battery?”
“Oh, that’s pretty neat! You could take it camping with you or something like that.”
“It hardly uses any electricity at all, doesn’t it?”
“Sure looks that way.”
“Then where did you get the crazy idea back in 1981 that this thing was going to blow up our TV set or that it was our fault that the electric bill was so high?”
My aunt just looked at me, stunned. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about that stuff.”
It was as close to contrition as she would come, but I felt satisfactorily vindicated by my demonstration of the Atari 2600’s minimal power consumption rate.