AY 3500

From: Van Burnham <van_at_wired.com>
Date: Mon Oct 26 14:45:16 1998

Hi there...

If you look at any of the early (1976) Radio Shack TV Scoreboards, they all
contain a skeet/shooting mode with light gun. The chip contained six
games...four variations on ping-pong (doubles/hockey/soccer, etc) and two
shooting variations. Look at the Wonder Wizard Bulls-Eye and others for
examples of this. The AY-3-8500 was developed in the Scottish labs of
General Instruments in 1975. Magnavox was somewhat involved in the
development process, some of their sub-contracted engineers did visit the
labs to test the chips. Aside from them, Radio Shack, Coleco, and Radofin
were among the biggest clients. There was _huge_ demand for the chip, so
much so that they (GI) couldn't fill all of the orders. Many of the smaller
clone-makers went under as a result. The only "clone" chip I am aware of
was developed at National Semiconductor, they marketed a machine called the
Adversary in 1976 containing this technology...

I have more info if you're really interested.

xoxo van


>::>Anyone know anything about the famous AY-3500 chip, manufactured by
>::>General Instruments, heart of a zillion Pong clones?
>::
>::What do you want to know?
>::
>::For pinouts and examples of use, you would find construction articles in
>::then mid-late 70's issues of _Radio-Electronics_ and _Popular
>::Electronics_ quite useful.
>
>Okay, I'll check those out. What I was interested in was what variants
>exist, how it was programmed, and if there were any clones. There's an
>obscure Commodore Pong machine called the TV Game 3000H, which sounds a bit
>like the Magnavox Odyssey 3000, except the TVG 3000H has a light gun mode
>which I haven't seen on any others (except maybe the Telstar?).
>
>Any ideas?
>
>--
>-------------------------- personal page:
>http://calvin.ptloma.edu/~spectre/ --
>Cameron Kaiser Information Technology Services Database
>Programmer
>Point Loma Nazarene University Fax: +1 619 849
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>ckaiser_at_ptloma.edu Phone: +1 619 849
>2539
>-- The most valuable antiques are old friends.
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Received on Mon Oct 26 1998 - 14:45:16 GMT

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