AY-3-8500-1 Pong-on-a-Chip


During the mid 1970s, there was a pong-on-a-chip development happening at General Instrument's facility in Glenrothes, Scotland. It was discovered by Ralph Baer, who got it designed into the Coleco Telstar, launched in 1976. It played six games, but only three were offered in Coleco's first product. The GI device was the first single IC to offer multiple games and was made available to every manufacturer, launching home video games as a mass market. It marked the end of discrete systems such as the Magnavox x00 products. The Coleco Telstar was a highly integrated system with only a few external discretes for the GI chip.

In 1976 GI were selling the chip in volume for £6 (£40 today) into games that were £30 (£198 today) at the low end.

By 1977 GI had a range of game ICs, including car racing, card games, submarine and other ball and paddle variants. It also offered the CP1600 microprocessor for programmable games consoles. The CP1600 eventually became the PIC micro, which has since been shipped by the billions from Microchip.

When this IC was manufactured, GI Microelectronics had wafer fabrication facilities in Hicksville NY and Glenrothes, Scotland, and a packaging facility in Taiwan.

The Coleco Telstar is shown here : flic.kr/p/G4JbUQ, flic.kr/p/HFVtaz

Comments

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