Round Ball generator for Magnavox Odyssey

[DavidWinter]

Hi there,

Just a quicker to tell you that I successfully rebuilt the round ball generator used in the 4-player Odyssey project. Although there is no surviving hardware, I used the documentation to rebuild it, and it works amazingly well. Ralph Baer was convinced that the schematic didn't work, but I went ahead. We finally admitted that there is some very clever tricks which generate bell-shaped signals which, once combined, form a round ball.

The only drawback to this 4-hour project is that I had to salvage two spot (player) generators from one of my Odyssey units to use their original transistors, which are no longer available (I didn't try to determine modern replacements). Hence why I faked player 2 on the right because the real picture showed player 1 and the round ball only, the generator for player 2 being removed from the Odyssey unit used for testing.

http://www.pong-story.com/pics/odyssey/round_ball.jpg


David Winter

[AtariBuff]

hats off to you, David, for keeping the spirit alive :) :) :) :) :)

[tom]

Hia David, great to hear from you. Hope all is well in beautiful France, I hope to return for some days hopefully soon.


Great news indeed about the round ball generator,
shame you had to salvage some parts, though.

[DavidWinter]

Well I salvaged a spare unit I got for free so none of my boxed Odyssey consoles was used. I'll try to find equivalent transistors though, it would be nice to make a small number of these, they would be good trade or sale items... :)


David.

[rbudrick]

Wow, haven't seen you post in a while. :)

Excuse my ignorance, but what's the story behind this? Can you tell me about it's use a bit?

-Rob

[tom]

Making them and selling, very good idea indeed.
Count me in, I'll buy one.

[Mattiekrome]

Wow, a member since 12 Nov 2002, and a total of 15 posts... Talk about lurking! Nice to meet you David, and I am also quite curious about what this round ball generator is all about :hmm:

[DavidWinter]

Indeed I hardly post on this forum and the newsgroup, simply because I'm only a historian and collector, rather than somebody who makes homebrew stuff like games, extensions, etc.

Also, I have a quite complete collection of early game consoles, so I hardly buy these games, and so, hardly post on the forums although if I did that, I'm sure I would find a couple games I'm looking for. By games I mean, early video game consoles, not cartridges.

If you didn't know me before, you can check my Pong-Story site at www.pong-story.com. Almost every game pictured there is from my collection. I also used to have the original documents written by Ralph Baer and his collegues in 1966/69 at Sanders Associates, but I recently gave them to the Smithsonian Institute. Ralph and I also worked on the early video game display at the Museum of the Moving Image in NY.

What else ? Well, just ask !

Concerning Odyssey 1 stuff, here's the homebrew/unreleased stuff known to exist:
- Active cartridges designed by Ralph Baer (Tennis with sound, Squash with sound and moving wall)
- Special extension for target shooting games (more on this later when I have built it).
- Round ball generator
- Composite video output for modern TVs so that you no longer use RF signals, and have a much better picture quality. I will post the schematic soon.

What could be done:
- 4-player (or more) extension
- On-screen scoring (any sort)
- Sounds on collision detection
- Background color and/or colored paddles/ball

Unfortunately, life is too short...

David.