24 Dec
2012
24 Dec
'12
8:47 p.m.
Certainly, as I said, he and Dabney were inspired by the PDP-6 version of
Spacewar they saw at SAIL. They were originally going to go the
mini-computer route and have an actual copy of Spacewar running on a coin
modded mini, which turned out to be too expensive to have mass produced. So
they decided to a game loosely inspired by Spacewar via TTL based state
machine after Ted designed their first spot motion circuitry.
On Mon, Dec 24, 2012 at 3:07 PM, Rick Bensene <rickb at bensene.com> wrote:
Though not a direct copy of the original Spacewar, it
is very clear that
it was inspired by Bushnell playing Spacewar on various computers.
-----Original Message-----
From: Martin Goldberg [wgungfu at gmail.com]
Received: Monday, 24 Dec 2012, 12:33pm
To: General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only [cctech at classiccmp.org]
CC: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts [
cctalk at classiccmp.org]
Subject: Re: Spacewar hardware?
On Sun, Dec 23, 2012 at 11:16 PM, Rick Bensene <rickb at bensene.com> wrote:
--
Marty
Jay wrote
That's actually not a version of Spacewar, nor is it based directly off the
game. It was "inspired by," and created by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney.
The hardware is a custom TTL based state machine (no software). They
licensed it to Nutting Associates in Mountain View. We have the full story
in our book:
http://amzn.com/0985597402
--
Marty
I also recall their being a free-standing game version of the thing.
Nolan Bushnell, of Atari fame, built what he felt could be an arcade
version of Spacewar in 1970. He built it in his daughter's bedroom.
Bushnell licensed the design to a company (I can't remember the name)
that ended up building about 1500 or so of them, calling them
"Computer Space". They are extremely sought-after collector's items
today. I have no idea what hardware was in the machines.
Rick Bensene