[Dylan] sent in this amusing use for an O-Scope. The entire thing was implemented using six chips – four logic chips, 2 op-amps and 13 pots. Hit the video after the break or check out the project page.
18 thoughts on “O-Scope Pong”
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That has to be one of the most interesting things I have seen in a while. I love it when people take a “step back” and implement things in hardware, instead of using microcontrollers or some form of computer.
This is kinda sad, really… Complete waste of expensive lab equipment. Why not just buy a PSP or something to mess about with?
Anyway, if it didn’t say “after the break”, I would never have realised there were ads on this site… Thank you, oh wonderful Adblock Plus…
P.S. Please don’t slag me off for being a ‘troll’. I mean it all in the nicest possible way…
I like the idea, but it doesn’t look so good in operation.
Are the paddles even changing the ball’s course or is it just a looping display with movable paddles?
@Suggestable –
“kind of sad, really” is a compliment, then?
Sure, this may be a “complete waste of expensive lab equipment”, but alot of people don’t have the money to spend and “buy a psp or something to mess about with”.
Personally, i just don’t see fit to give sony a dime for their hardware.
Plus, this IS a hack website, so there’s going to be off-the-wall stuff. Maybe tomorrow you’ll submit something that you’ve done with your psp?
As for the ads, they’ve got to support this site somehow, right?
Oh suggestable, that “waste” of lab equipment started the very video game craze that inspired the PSP so many years later. In fact, pong was originally made in this exact fashion.
A fun little hack, although it does look a tad glitchy.
Love this stuff.
Absolutely bonkers. I love it when people come up with completely -bizarre- ideas and then go ahead an implement them using completely non-standard methods. I mean, using an o-scope as a video monitor for an all-analog “gaming machine”… What the hell? That’s Brilliant!
Absolutely love this hack. I may just build it too for the sheer cool factor. The twitt who claims this is sad must be a byproduct of the 90s childhood that completely obliterated one’s interest in true hacks. I’ve seen so many of those kids who, if it doesn’t run on some consumer equipment, just ain’t interested. This is a very riteous hack, and my hat is off to the designer. Kudos to you. It’s a minimalist design that can be expanded upon, and it shows the greenhorns out there that there was life before the compiler (or assembler, for that matter).
nothing new… :-p
http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/history/higinbotham.asp
Hey! I am a child of the nineties, bit I will agree, there doesn’t seem to be much interest in things of the sort from my peers. Everybody seems to like “clean and tiny” and don’t really want to get their hands dirty, it is really quite sad.
The implementation is what makes these kind of posts fun. There’s nothing new about a DIY Pong game.
I recall seeing an oscilloscope Pong project in “Popular Electronics” back in the late 70s (back when owning your own Pong game was still a big deal.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_Electronics
Good ol’ “Popular Electronics” – I still have a stack of back issues that I’ll have to put on eBay – someday. :-)
A friend of mine built a similar device for (single-player) break-out on an oscilloscope some 10 years ago. However it was using two digital chips instead of an all-analog solution. The circuit fit nicely on top of its 9V battery too.
@Suggestable
I don’t know what’s more asinine; the fact that you’re more impressed with Adblock Plus that you found on Digg earlier today rather than an analog pong game that runs on the kind of oscilloscope you can pick up on eBay for $10, or the fact that you think ‘I’m not trolling’ is a get out of jail free card.
Oh, and dude, regular Adblock with Filterset G is a lot better and less bloated than the plus version.
Back to Digg and eBaums’ with you, and I mean that in the nicest possible way :D
It’s a nice little device. I don’t think it’s a ‘hack’, though, since it’s an (as far as I can tell) original design and not a modification. I think I’ve seen something similar in my magazine library.
And it is pretty much how video games got started got started. It was a much more frivolous use of equipment back then, due to the expensive computer and probably costly extra machinery.
And whats with the term ‘o-scope’? I’ve never heard it before today, and it sound like it has the potential to be adopted by snots.
Never heard the term “o-scope”????
Perhaps not an original idea, but cool nonetheless. I agree with the sentiments that it was done with hardware instead of ucontrollers…
I built a scope clock a while back… they’re good converstaion starters ;)
http://www.webx.dk/oz2cpu/clock-scope/scope.htm
holy crap, that’s cool. okay, yes, the game doesn’t look great, but getting that functionality out of six SSI chips is definitely a nice hack.
What an excellent blog, I’ve added your feed to my RSS reader. :-)