PONG - the Backstory by Jonathan
Sometime in the 1970’s I became ill and couldn’t attend school. Only a matter of weeks before, my dad had bought a kit from a local electronics store. I don’t know if it was for him or me, but I suspect it was a chunk of money at the time. We’d made the kit and my young mind was bent on how this one big IC (integrated circuit) could generate all the video needed to play the game. Being very young at the time and only just discovering the new microprocessors my mind quickly moved on.
Then the illness struck, confinement and boredom followed. Practicing Pong! at more and more difficult levels went on for days. I loved the zen of it, and remembered the game for years afterward.
Fast forward to 2022(ish), and I discovered surplus chips on the ‘net. Curiousity overtook and I soon had a couple sitting in my electronics drawer (with loads of other bright ideas). When our company Bored Owl started taking on life, it seemed a good prospect for a small project to test all our equipment for building printed circuit boards and 3D printing parts. And so our Pong! game was born.
… and now, when no-one is looking I like some quiet practice on the office TV!
PONG - Technical Design
Our take on the classic 1970’s PONG video game, locally designed and built in the Illawarra in our Makerspace using the original chip AY-3-8500. Fun for all ages (4+) in single player mode or against an opponent.
The unit is built on two stacked PCB’s. The lower one has the standard AY-3-8500 circuitry with the IC, voltage regulator, an oscillator and the sound and video output circuitry. Although it was taken from the original manufacturer’s data, some aspects needed tweaking: particularly the values of the hand controller pots and the video output buffer that wasn’t adequately designed for 75ohm composite video inputs. We quickly solved those issues though.
The upper board is more modern and quite our own design. All the circuits we’d ever seen used toggle and push button switches to select the game a playing mode. Our take uses touch sensitive buttons to cycle the game and playing mode and. Each button is service by a single touch IC fed into counter circuits to generated the right signals and LED’s provide feed back.
The design of the touch buttons uses a novel technique where we 3D printed the button using conductive plastic. These were then glued to the metal pads on the PCB with conductive glue. The button tops protrude above the laser cut and engraved fascia.
All the housing components are 3D printed, including the three part player actuators, the main case, buttons, cable clamps and even the frame we insert in the shipping box!
The project has served us well to prove that the Makerspace we have built functions nicely and can give us great output.
We’ll post a PONG! update as our development of the next PONG! version progresses.
Until then we hope you enjoy a game of PONG!.
