video games/Odyssey

On Wed, 20 Aug 1997, Doug Spence wrote: My Odyssey had original (or at least old) red Eveready transistor batteries in it, as well. Oddly enough, they still held a charge - around 1.1 volts each with no load. The internal resistance is quite high, though, so they're not good for much current. Any interested dry cell collectors out there? :) Opening up the Odyssey and taking a look inside is on my (ever-expanding) list of things to do. From what I have read, the Odyssey was designed several years before it was manufactured (1969?). At the time, even SSI TTL ICs were impractically expensive for use in a home game system; accordingly, the Odyssey is implemented in DTL using discrete transistors and diodes. Regarding the Odyssey cartridges/wafers: My brother-in-law remembers having a book many years ago on designing homebrew Odyssey games. Given the simplicity of the hardware (the wafers are apparently just connection patterns on a PC board, with the occasional resistor or diode), it shouldn't be too difficult to do. Desiging screen overlays and interesting new games that can be played on the Odyssey hardware may be more of a challenge. I've thought about sending in the "free game" card as well, just to see what would happen. Probably the same thing that happened when I sent in the "free program" card that came with my 3b1 - nothing. Of course, I don't imagine that the extra wafer is actually already there in /etc/fixes/ on the Odyssey. :) If anyone is interested in scans of the original overlays, let me know and I'll give scanning them a try. -- Scott Ware s-ware(a)nwu.edu