The "Paddle Game"

Описание: Build Project #10 - The "Paddle Game"

This episode is a bit special in multiple ways. First, it's not a restoration or repair, but a "build" style video. And to top it off, it's more of a recreation than a complete from scratch build; or at least to some extent. What's going on? I really love the very early video game efforts. Particularly what is widely considered to be the first successful game ever: Pong. Now making something like that on a modern PC or basically "whatever" computer system is more than easy. And there have been so many derivatives of the game it's crazy! Getting the original cabinet or even just a board is out of the question for me, because of the sheer collector value these fetch. So in a random night, and probably after a beer or two, I decided that I'll try to rebuild one of these, based on whatever circuit I could find. And indeed, a rather blurry copy of the circuit did show up in a google search... and so I went to town... This project stretched on and off again over the better part of three years; this is why some of the screen recordings are not quite "accurate" - KiCAD doesn't have a version control integrated, so I had to "pretend" with some of the earlier screen captures. Note that I did find and fix some issues in the circuit and maybe I added a few new ones... but I don't really mind: it works!

0:00 Intro / Overview / Schematic
2:30 PCB Design
3:52 PCB Routing Overview
5:10 Circuitry: Clock and Timing
7:12 Circuitry: Video Mixer, Horizontal and Vertical Ball Position
9:30 Circuitry: Game Control and Anti-Cheat
10:56 Circuitry: Paddles
11:50 Circuitry: Score Counter, Decoder, Pixel Generator
12:47 Circuitry: Net Generator, Sound Generator
13:35 PCB, Revision 1: GO!
15:07 Clock and Sync Generators: Check!
16:05 Video Mixer: Nope!
17:42 Paddle Generatoin: So-so...
18:35 Ball Movement and Game Control: Almost!
19:53 Ball Deflection? Whoops!
20:58 Sound Generator: Yes!
21:37 Score Counter: Rare Chip Issue
23:06 Segment Decoding Issue and Scoring Issue
24:39 Scoring Issue Solved!
26:25 Botching Solution!
27:15 Case Design and Woodworking
30:02 Paddles! / Paddle Technical Info
32:14 Revision 1 to Revision 2 PCB!
35:05 Case: Metal Work Impressions / Assemby Start!
37:25 Case: Putting the Lid on / Setup / Demo
38:54 Summary / Credits / Outtake


Music (in order)

My Train's A Comin' - Unicorn Heads
Nine Lives - Unicorn Heads
Wrong - Dan Henig
Town of 24 Bars - Unicorn Heads
Light Expanse - Unicorn Heads
(YouTube Audio Library)


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