4 ms·

Revisiting the “Cansole”, because my TV doesn't have the right connectors

73 points by jgrahamc 3y ago

dools 3y ago
This is a fun project. It reminds me of a little console of sorts my brother and I had when I was around the age of 4. I remember it only as "TV Games" and I'm pretty sure it only had pong on it. It's funny to think about how much computer power went into producing the "Cansole" versus "TV Games". I'm sure it probably didn't even have a CPU, it was probably just all done in hardware.
- misnome 3y ago
  One of these "TV Master"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binatone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binatone - identifiable by the distinctive orange/black casing. I had a Mk.8 in the early 90's picked up from a junk sale, and it had an interesting set of pong-a-likes.
- blincoln 3y ago
  Most of the dedicated Pong-style game consoles used a chip (or chipset) designed for a specific set of related games.[1] The Wikipedia photo of the TV Master[2] is a great example of switches that correspond to most of the pins on the AY-3-8500. [1] http://pong-story.com/gi.htm http://pong-story.com/gi.htm [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Binatone_TV_Master_Mk_IV.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Binatone_TV_Master_Mk_IV....
ajsnigrutin 3y ago
If anyone is interested in how a tiny game can be developed on a really small shitty, cheap and low-performance) chip, here's a nice video from Bean Heck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZsWqOuJFKI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZsWqOuJFKI (part 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq30EdgSpOY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq30EdgSpOY (part 2, result at ~1:18:00)
- jgrahamc 3y ago
  That's so nice. I've played around with ATtiny84a before. You can choose the perfect chip from the Atmel line up for your application. https://blog.jgc.org/2022/12/the-rogers-watch-retro-display-and-all.html https://blog.jgc.org/2022/12/the-rogers-watch-retro-display-...
- relwin 3y ago
  Typo - Ben Heck. (he's a well-known maker)
  - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
    yeah, just noticed the typo, i was typing on my phone and yeah, thick fingers
jonhohle 3y ago
While a cheap composite to HDMI adapter _can_ work, it likely adds several frames of latency which may or may not affect gameplay. This isn’t because of the composite to HDMI conversion, but because cheap boxes like this scale the PAL signal from 576i to 720p or 1080p. It may not matter for pong, but this can be up to several hundred milliseconds compared to original discrete pong which would have had around 17ms latency from controller to display. It’s also possible that the arduino is outputting a 288p signal, like a lot of game consoles used to use, which the converter probably misinterprets as 576i which can lead to interlacing artifacts that most CRTs, for example, wouldn’t have. There are several high end converters/scalers (Framemeister, RetroTink-5X, Koryuu Transcoder to OSSC) that introduce very little latency, but obviously cost significantly more. For anyone interested in the messiness of PAL & NTSC signals and conversion to modern or even old displays, RetroRGB[0] is an amazing resource. It’s amazing to see how good old consoles can look, not only on current displays, but on CRTs with S-video or component inputs. 0 - https://www.retrorgb.com/ https://www.retrorgb.com/
- jgrahamc 3y ago
  Good point. Doesn't really matter for my rubbish Pong game but I have proper converter/scaler on order.

73 points by jgrahamc 3y ago

This is a fun project. It reminds me of a little console of sorts my brother and I had when I was around the age of 4. I remember it only as "TV Games" and I'm pretty sure it only had pong on it. It's funny to think about how much computer power went into producing the "Cansole" versus "TV Games". I'm sure it probably didn't even have a CPU, it was probably just all done in hardware.

misnome 3y ago
One of these "TV Master"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binatone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binatone - identifiable by the distinctive orange/black casing. I had a Mk.8 in the early 90's picked up from a junk sale, and it had an interesting set of pong-a-likes.
blincoln 3y ago
Most of the dedicated Pong-style game consoles used a chip (or chipset) designed for a specific set of related games.[1] The Wikipedia photo of the TV Master[2] is a great example of switches that correspond to most of the pins on the AY-3-8500. [1] http://pong-story.com/gi.htm http://pong-story.com/gi.htm [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Binatone_TV_Master_Mk_IV.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Binatone_TV_Master_Mk_IV....

ajsnigrutin 3y ago

If anyone is interested in how a tiny game can be developed on a really small shitty, cheap and low-performance) chip, here's a nice video from Bean Heck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZsWqOuJFKI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZsWqOuJFKI (part 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq30EdgSpOY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq30EdgSpOY (part 2, result at ~1:18:00)

jgrahamc 3y ago
That's so nice. I've played around with ATtiny84a before. You can choose the perfect chip from the Atmel line up for your application. https://blog.jgc.org/2022/12/the-rogers-watch-retro-display-and-all.html https://blog.jgc.org/2022/12/the-rogers-watch-retro-display-...
relwin 3y ago
Typo - Ben Heck. (he's a well-known maker)
- ajsnigrutin 3y ago
  yeah, just noticed the typo, i was typing on my phone and yeah, thick fingers

jonhohle 3y ago

While a cheap composite to HDMI adapter _can_ work, it likely adds several frames of latency which may or may not affect gameplay. This isn’t because of the composite to HDMI conversion, but because cheap boxes like this scale the PAL signal from 576i to 720p or 1080p. It may not matter for pong, but this can be up to several hundred milliseconds compared to original discrete pong which would have had around 17ms latency from controller to display. It’s also possible that the arduino is outputting a 288p signal, like a lot of game consoles used to use, which the converter probably misinterprets as 576i which can lead to interlacing artifacts that most CRTs, for example, wouldn’t have. There are several high end converters/scalers (Framemeister, RetroTink-5X, Koryuu Transcoder to OSSC) that introduce very little latency, but obviously cost significantly more. For anyone interested in the messiness of PAL & NTSC signals and conversion to modern or even old displays, RetroRGB[0] is an amazing resource. It’s amazing to see how good old consoles can look, not only on current displays, but on CRTs with S-video or component inputs. 0 - https://www.retrorgb.com/ https://www.retrorgb.com/

jgrahamc 3y ago
Good point. Doesn't really matter for my rubbish Pong game but I have proper converter/scaler on order.