As we read [Adam]’s writeup for an extremely tiny video game system through coke bottle glasses, we’re reminded of the countless times we were told that sitting, ‘too close to the Nintendo’ would ruin our eyes. We’ll happily dismiss any article from a medical journal that says there was any truth to that statement, but [Adam]’s tiny video game system will most certainly hurt your eyes.
A few years ago, Atari sold keychain-sized joysticks that contained classics such as Pong, Breakout, Centipede, and Asteroids. [Adam] apparently ran into a cache of these cool classic baubles and immediately thought of turning them into a stand-alone video game system.
For the display, [Adam] used a CRT module from an old Sony Handicam. These modules had the right connections – power, ground, and composite video input – to connect directly to the Atari keychain games. The result is a video game that’s even smaller than a postage stamp. The picture above shows the tiny CRT next to a 25mm postage stamp; it’s small by any measure.
Well, if you want to go just for how small the viewable display area is, you could couple them with a CRT display I saw at the IEEE show in the mid 60’s – it was so small, you had to look at it under a microscope [about 0.05″ across], or even the one this guy made:
http://www.sparkbangbuzz.com/crt/crt6.htm
That link is a damn fine hack on its own.
The entire site is full of win.
Take this for example:
http://www.sparkbangbuzz.com/els/zincosc-el.htm
Isn’t that the curve trace for a memristor instead of a negative R ??
I have a couple of those tiny CRTs, one with 3 wires as described from a busted Sony camera and another from JVC that has 7 wires. I haven’t figured out 7 wire version yet.
I have one from JVC with only 5 wires that has been sitting around for about 2 years now, and I can’t find a pinout for it anywhere! I was originally going to make a pong or tetris portable with the arduino-tvout library
Disassemble the entire viewfinder. They often have stuff like LEDs put in. I have one with 6 wires, and after all it’s GND, +5V, Video, LED 1, LED 2, LED GND or something like that. Had it hooked up to my Commodore 64 at a time…
Btw while I’m at it… I built TinyPONG on a HD44780 character LCD in a single 5*8 pixel char cell. And that was in 2010.
Good for you. I hope someone gave you a cookie.
Besides the fact that my mother (who last week i had to explain what the pause button did) was better at pong this is a really fun little project XP
Great minds think alike, I made a Tetris game almost identical to this in 2008, with the same display even!
http://www.decadecounter.com/vta/articleview.php?item=547
I used Rickard Gunee’s PIC chip Tetris code, which has been floating around the internet for years and crams an entire Tetris game with sound and NSTC output into 1k of memory.
Your tetris game is awersome! Great job!
Quick, somebody email this guy!
http://media.techeblog.com/images/gaming_mouse.jpg
The lenses on these viewfinders make great inspection magnifiers.
With the extra wires, one is often the on-screen stuff. Establish ground then look for a ‘lytic with a plus rating and make it hot and see if it lights up.
Why TVOut don’t accept to use it’s print/println to print String variables?