The first interchangable game console. My brother had one back in '79, and I remember playing cart 17 (called Pinball Challenge, even though it was breakout). I was thinking of buying one off ebay when I came across MESS. This MAME-based emulation system runs Channel F carts (along with lots of other systems). Probably not interesting if you didn't play one of these back then- the resolution is a whopping 128 x 64 with 4 colors at a time out of a palette of 8! Here are some more specs.
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I quickly found out that there were only 4 ROM images floating around, none of them for cart 17. So I purchased 3 carts from a company called 4Jays. I also bought 2 of the original 8-way joysticks. These can be pushed forward, back, left and right like a normal joystick, but also twisted left/right and pulled up or pushed down. I tore apart an old keyboard and wired the joysticks to some 4066 analog switches and then to the keyboard connector. Then I worked on dumping the ROM images from my carts. The CPU in the Channel F is a Fairchild F8 which doesn't use normal ROM chips, so I wrote some software in PIC BASIC PRO to dump the carts to a PC. Here's a picture of a cart hooked up to a PIC experimenter board.Cart #3 worked, but not 10 or 17. Turns out #10 has a 2102 SRAM that MESS didn't emulate, but I downloaded the source from CVS and added a little code to make it work. There was also a hardware and a CPU emulation error in MESS. I worked with one of the authors and he fixed them, and cart 17 works. We've since dumped all the known carts. There's only a diagnostic cart that was mentioned in a service bulletin that we don't have. If you have it and would be willing to let me dump the ROM image (it won't hurt the cart), please let me know (seanriddle at airosurf dot com).I've also built a stand-alone cart dumper that I can send out- someone can connect their cart, turn on the power, and it will copy the image into serial EEPROM. The large IC socket is used to dump the game BIOS. Here's another pic.
- Saba Videoplay Saba Videoplay was the licensed Channel F-Version for the German market. It was released in late 1977 and was positively received by the press and the general public. However, the initial retail.
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Here's what's inside cart 10. This one's special in that it has an additional 2102 SRAM along with the 2 3851 PSUs (the Channel F console only has screen RAM, and uses the F8's 64 registers for scratch RAM). The SRAM is attached to the I/O ports.
Here's a closeup of one of the 3851 chips under the plastic cover. I numbered some of the pins, and used this picture to figure out how the SRAM was hooked up. The rectangle in the bottom half is the ROM array. It's just about possible in the pictures my friend took through a microscope to see the 8,192 individual bits.
UPDATE: here are a couple more pics: 3851 pic 13851 pic 2 These were taken with a USB microscope. I now think that the 0s and 1s aren't visible; I think the difference between a 0 and a 1 is between 2 layers, so it's hidden from view. I'm going to try some colored gels to see if they add any contrast, and I'll see if I can zoom in a little closer.
UPDATE2: here are pics of the Fairchild Camera and Instrument logo and what I think is the part # on the chip: 3899. Below 3899 there's a 5 digit # that you can almost read that I think is Fairchild's SL # for the programming on the chip. It looks like 31289 to me.
This flyer mentions the 3899 as being a 1K PSU with no timer or ports.
There's a 15000x15000 pixel image of that PSU after I used hydrochloric acid to dissolve the top metal layer on my decap page.
Here's a decoding of the bits in the ROM array.
I wound up buying a System I off ebay to help work on the MESS emulator. And I also purchased Saba Cart 20, Schach, off ebay. Saba Videoplay was the name of the Channel F in Germany, and Schach is the German word for Chess. This cart is special in thatit contains 6K of standard ROMs (two 2332s) as well as 2K of RAM (four 2114s). It also has an LED that turns on when the console is thinking about its move. I bought the cart from Fredric Blåholtz,a collector in Sweden. Check out his page in the links below.
The Schach cart also contains a 3853 IC. This chip converts the special F8 control signals into a full-blown address bus. That's how standard ROM and RAM were used.It also made it the ideal platform for a Channel F Multi-Cart. I removed the ROMs and put in a 27020 EPROM instead. I used the existingdecoding logic, only needing 2 diodes to get the final signal I needed. I hooked the EPROM's 6 high address bits to a 74174 hex flip-flop IC, and loaded it on writesto address $3000, which was already decoded but unused. Then I modified the demo cart ROM image into a menu-based ROM switcher. You select the game you want to playwith the joystick, then push down to start the game. It supports 32 2K games and 16 larger games (up to 6K each). When you hit reset, the menu is run again. Here are full instructions.
While I was working on the multi-game code, I came across an Easter Egg in the Demo Cart. When you get to the end of the demo, hit buttons 1,3 and 4at the same time. When you release them, the programmer's name is printed.
Fredric has communicated with the author of Video Whiz Ball and Alien Invasion, who stated that there are Easter eggs in those carts, too. I found both eggs: in Video Whizball, play a game against the computer and win or lose (it's quicker if you chose a 1-point game). Then kill the computer's man and get killed yourself.When both players are off the screen, pull up to start a new game. Choose game 43, score 67 and you'll see the egg. In Alien Invasion, start game #5 and let a blue guy die without firing any shots. With the green guy, shoot just the lowest enemy in each column. Then let all the remaining green and blue guys die without firing any more shots. Now start another game 5 and the author's name will appear at the top of the screen. Let the blue guy die without firing any shots. Play the green guy, and check out the mystery UFO that randomly flies over.Interesting info from the AtariAge guys (see links below): Adventure for the Atari 2600 was long considered the first video game with an Easter egg, butthe evidence now points to Video Whiz Ball!
Photoshop cs4 portable zip. Another fellow has written Tetris for the Channel F! GPL, no commercial use allowed.That inspired me to write a game, so I chose an easy one, Lights Out. There is a 5x5 grid of colored squares; you are trying to make them all green.You move the cursor around and push down to toggle the current square as well as the neighbors above, below, left and right. There are 64 patterns included, and after they are all played in random order, I invert red/green so that there are 64 more.I also added a few variations- game 2 uses a wrap-around grid, so that if you click on a square on the edge, the light on the opposite side will toggle as if youwere playing on a torus. Note: not all of the 64 puzzles are solvable in this mode! Game 3 only lets you click on lights that are red. All the patterns are still solvable, but they usually take more clicks.You can also select mode 2, in which only the neighboring lights are toggled, not the one clicked on; mode 3, where the pattern is an X; or mode 4, X but the center light doesn't toggle. Again, not all of the built-in patterns are solvable in these modes.I'm still working on it, but here's the game as of 6/16/2004: lights.bin and the source code lights.asm.
CREDITS
LINKS
The Fairchild Channel F is a game console released by Fairchild Semiconductor in August 1976 at the retail price of $169.95. It has the distinction of being the first programmable ROM cartridge-based video game console. It was launched as the Video Entertainment System, or VES, but when Atari released their VCS the next year, Fairchild renamed its machine.
The Channel F was designed by Jerry Lawson using the Fairchild F8 CPU, the first public outing of this processor. Notably, Robert Noyce worked on the F8 design team before he left Fairchild to start his own company, Intel. The F8 is very complex compared to the typical integrated circuits of the day, and had more inputs and outputs than other contemporary chips. Because chip packaging was not available with enough pins, the F8 is instead fabricated as a pair of chips that had to be used together to form a complete CPU.
The graphics are quite basic by modern standards. The F8 chip was only able to produce single-colored sprites, and only had eight colors to choose from at a resolution of 128 × 64 with 102 × 58 pixels with help from only 64 bytes of system RAM, half the amount of the Atari 2600. The F8 processor at the heart of the console was able to produce enough AI to allow for player vs. computer matches, a first in console history. All previous machines required a human opponent.
In the original unit, Sound is played through an internal speaker, rather than the TV set. However, the System II passes sound to the television through the RF switch.
The controllers are a joystick without a base; the main body is a large hand grip with a triangular 'cap' on top, the top being the portion that actually moved for eight-way directional control. It can be used as both a joystick and paddle (twist), and not only pushed down to operate as a fire button but also pulled up. Effectually, it had four action buttons, two more than the Nintendo Entertainment System nearly a decade later. The model 1 unit contains a small compartment for storing the controllers when moving it. The System II featured detachable controllers. Zircon later offered a special control which featured an action button on the front of the joystick.
A number of licensed versions were released in Europe, including the Luxor Video Entertainment System in Sweden, Adman Grandstand in the UK, and the Saba Videoplay, Nordmende Teleplay and ITT Tele-Match Processor, from Germany and also Dumont/Barco Videoplay - Italy and Belgium.
Saba Videoplay Wert
Our version is the UK Adman Grandstand version.
Manufacturer: Fairchild
Date: August 1976
Saba Videoplay
This exhibit has a reference ID of CH5768. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.