Hackaday alum [Todd] has been searching for an old PONG clone for the last two years. This variant is called, “The Name of the Game”. [Todd] has fond memories of playing this game with his sister when they were young. Unfortunately, being the hacker that he is, [Todd] tore the game apart when he was just 14 to build his own Commodore 64 peripherals. He’s been wanting to make it up to his sister ever since, and he finally found a copy of this game to give to his sister last Christmas.

After opening up the box, [Todd] quickly noticed something strange with the power connector. It looked a bit charred and was wiggling inside of the enclosure. This is indicative of a bad solder joint. [Todd] decided he’d better open it up and have a look before applying power to the device.

It was a good thing he did, because the power connector was barely connected at all. A simple soldering job fixed the problem. While the case was still opened, [Todd] did some sleuthing and noticed that someone else had likely made repairs to several other solder joints. He also looked for any possible short circuits, but everything else looked fine. The system ended up working perfectly the first time it was started.

The end of the video shows that even after all this time, simple games like this can still capture our attention and be fun to play for hours at a time. [Todd] is working on part 2 of this series, where he’ll do a much more in-depth review of the system. You can watch part 1 below. Continue reading “Repairing And Reviewing A 1976 PONG Clone” →