Remember Video Volley? No? We don’t either. It looks like it was a very early video game console that could play tennis, hockey, or handball. In this video, [James] tears one apart. If you are like us, we are guessing there will be little more than one of those General Instrument video game chips inside.
These don’t look like they were mass-produced. The case looks like something off the shelf from those days. The whole thing looks more like a nice homebrew project or a pretty good prototype. Not like something you’d buy in a store.
Even inside, the wiring looks decidedly hand-built. The cheap phenolic PCB contained a surprise. The box does have a dedicated “pong” chip. But it isn’t from General Instruments! It’s a National Semiconductor chip instead.
The controllers are little more than sliding potentiometers in a box with a switch. We wonder how many of these were made and what they sold for new. If you know anything, let us know in the comments.
We still see the occasional project around a General Instruments chip. If you really want a challenge for a homebrew pong, ditch the pong chip and all the other ICs, too. If you want to read more about the history of the pong chip, you’ll probably enjoy this blog post from [pong-story].
Pong machines are the 70’s equivalent of the all-in-one TV game joysticks of the 2000’s.
Pong consoles. Building them was more fun than playing them..
A really strange device. PAL circuitry similar to the Philips Odyssey 2001 (MM57105, 4.43MHz Xtal) and US style 300Ω RF terminals don’t match, there are not many countries where you could sell this combination.
The MM57105 appeared in some electronics magazines outside the US, e.g. Elektor DE 1977-11, Elektuur NL 1977-12.
TD Manufacturing, Dallas Texas that was probably part of the game development scene there back in the day.
More here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcfD-CYNid8
I think I had one of these in 1980 or so…