Fairchild Channel F Game Console Repair 

RE: Game prices. Yes, carts and ROMs jacked the price. SNES games needed more stuff on cart because the CPU was a dog. But even if we jump to the disc era (1995-present) games are still way below inflation. RE: www.usinflationcalculator.com/ 1995-2005 $50 becomes $64 so $60 was quite fair. If we take 1995 $50 to 2020 it's $84, so a $70 price (next gen only, XB1/PS4 still $60) is also fair. GAMES ARE CHEAP!

I come for the Gen-Xer singing, I stay for the Wendy's review.

I had one of these as a kid. Dad bought all the systems when they came out. We had pong then video pinball/breakout from Atari, which predated the 2600, Magnavox, Coleco and so on. What I remember most about the Fairchild were the unique controllers and how fragile they were. The games were all numbered too.

I would definitely rather pay a higher price upfront than have microtransaction loot prizeboxes. Also "special" and "ultimate" editions that cost more are very common today.

Please Ben, please stay on line. Your skillz & positivity is how the young folks may have a chance in today's workplace.

Honestly in what inputs they were capable of the Fairchild F controllers were ahead of their time.

On the inflation index it is important to note that it is not indicative to household incomes which lag far behind the inflation index. In some ways American's make less than they did in 1976.

"Let's get this out on a tray... Nice" Steve1989 is great!

Whilst I often think of the inflation thing too there are two main reasons why games were expensive to make back then - cost of manufacture of the cartridge and ease of programming 1. Carts were expensive to make, there was more variation in game prices (not every game was $60) and often this was down to how much storage the ROM chip had. Nowadays burning 100,000 Blu rays is pretty cheap and digital distribution even more so 2. Whilst games are more complex now they are easier to make due to having enough compute power to brute force most issues you may come across, not having to write in assembly and any stock console being able to be turned into a Dev kit (may be out of date on this one, pretty sure Xbox still allows this). you don't need to go to sega and plead for specialist equipment anymore

Always a good day with Ben Heck's Classic Electronics Repair and Fast Food Review

Va is basically watts not amps. So 16 VA would be around 16 watts or 1.3a at 12v

The FCC was really anal about RF emissions on home computers and game consoles back in the late 70’s and early 80’s and forced certain home computer manufacturers to modify their designs after they had been released to market. The Tandy TRS-80 Model 1 was one such machine. In some cases the need to include heavy duty RF shielding led to some compromises to redesign early microcomputers and game consoles to accommodate this requirement. Whether this was really necessary and beneficial to consumers and others is question that’s been debated. At some point in the 80’s i believe they relaxed this RF shielding requirement somewhat. Some interesting facts about the Fairchild Channel F is that it was the first console to use ROM cartridges rather then just running only built-in games like the Pong clones and other limited built-in game consoles. Now you mentioned the high cost of memory back then. The Channel F got around the high cost of memory at the time by only including 64 bytes RAM and a 2 KB video buffer which severely limited the graphics and gameplay complexity of games for the System. Few games for it are considered even decent, especially compared with the Atari VCS/2600 system, which itself has limited graphics and gameplay vs later systems (just not as limited as the Channel F. Most of the original 27 games for the Channel F released for the were educational and intellectual games vs the more action oriented Atari VCS/2600 games. This is partly why it didn’t succeed, especially once the Atari hit the stores in 1978. It would be interesting to see what a modern home-brew programmer might be able to due with the Channel F hardware but I suspect that it really was just to limited to be able to make a truly great game for it outside some simple games like Pong clones, video poker, or video bowling. Deposited its limitations and failure in the market, it remains an important part of the history of video game consoles, much like the ever more limited Magnavox Odyssey 1, the first game console to hit the market back in 1972. One good thing about the Fairchild though was it’s controllers which got good reviews and I believe Fairchild even released a version of them for the Atari 2600 you could buy as a third-party accessory at one point.

So cool watching the process happen. Thanks again for fixing (and upgrading) my Fairchild!

I had one of these as a kid, but I stupidly took it apart and never reassembled it. Eventually, parts were cannibalized or tossed, and it is no more... Except for a controller. I have a single Fairchild Channel F controller, and I am using it as my Translational Hand Control (THC) for an Apollo inspired instrument panel for playing Kerbal Space Program. Look up the Apollo Translational Hand Control, or the space shuttle's version of the THC, and you'll find it shares an incredible degree of similarity to a panel mounted Fairchild Channel F controller!

The Fairchild Channel F is such an interesting unit. Like the Apple 2, it doesn't have any sort of dedicated video chip (like the Atari 2600 or the Commodore VIC-20); it's all discrete logic. And as you noted, having an actual frame buffer was pretty rare back then. The only other console I can think of that had a frame buffer is the Bally Astrocade (itself an extremely interesting machine).

Gerald Lawson, the creator of the F1 was a brilliant and creative engineer. He was way ahead of his time. He invented a way of allowing callers to play a video on live television by using the phone's dial tone.

Every history about consoles pre 2600 I come across is “fcc emissions forced us to delay by 6 months and jack up the price so we could figure out the shielding”

Ben. I love your channel. Videos like this is the reason I keep coming back. Just makes this Gen Xer feel good.

They are not insulated pass through's, but feed through caps - the best way to feed signals into a shielded box.

Bonus food review. Love it.

Thank you for giving our neighborhood buddy's Fairchild, whose dad would buy most of the video games, toys a repair. Awesome. Legend has it that Popeyes still cooks their fries in beef Tallow. Just like we enjoyed them in 70's- 80's. Try them!

We look away for a second and now it's a wendys review

11/10 Bud content. 12/10 Zucc impression.

Actually come to think of it, RU-vid sometimes deletes comments with links, so I'll paste the appropriate info here for posterity (this is from a page called "Accessing RAM" from the VES Wiki: "To write data to video ram you have to load the x coordinate to port 4, y coordinate to port 5 and color to port 1 and then execute the transfer by writing to port 0. For compatibility with the first generation of Fairchild Video Entertainment System, especially the 2MHz PAL model, there needs to be a delay after sending the data through before the next pixel is loaded and sent. MESS will work fine without the delay but it's important for a real console or you'll get holes or gaps in what is drawn."

"Were youtubers infants in the 90s" no, ben, they weren't born until 10 years later.

I remember back in the 90's I used to go to Wendy's here in the UK, and it was one of my favorite burger places. Unfortunately they pulled out of the UK in 2000 so the only big chains in the UK were McDonalds and Burger King for many years, and these were only a shadow of the US chains in terms of the variety of meals on offer. The situation has improved, I believe Wendy's has re-opened in Reading UK with an eye on expanding back into the UK, and a number of other burger chains both home grown and international are starting to get a foothold, so maybe it will start to get easier to get a decent burger!

Holy moley that TMNT voice is on target. He could legit do voice work on that show!

The color control WOZ gave away for free to the homebrew club. And that screwdriver takes me back to my childhood, I used that thing to take everything apart before I learned to put it back together.

This was my first gaming console! In fact, it was my first time seeing "video games" and I never looked back! Cool console!

It's an interesting unit, and having grown up in that era, I'm surprised I never saw one as a kid. A friend had an Odyssey 2 (never saw an original Odyssey, but I understand those required TV overlays). I remember lots of people having the stand-alone Pong/clones as a kid.

I picked one of these up at a neighbor's garage sale for $5 sometime in the late 80's. Even 10 years old, it was still innovative with those controllers. Unfortunately, my parents threw it out sometime after I went to college.

Bud sounds exactly like my orange monster, with those little chirpy purrs.

Not sure about the US but in the UK from my experience rich kids had consoles because games were expensive. For the poor kids a single cart game was a christmas and birthday for a year. A lot of us had Amigas, an external floppy drive, an old cover disk with the label partially ripped of and XCOPY written in the exposed white part of the label. Oh and if you don't want to pay full price wait a year and get it cheap on a steam sale. You don't have to play it on release day. You won't die.

Street Fighter 2 Turbo on the SNES was £60 at launch in 1993, that's £130 in today's pennies or $170 in dollarydoos

The first video game console to use cartridges, and the first console to use a microprocessor. 😁

Odd how inflation only applies to video game cartridges, but not to abominations such as the minimum wage, or the price of hamburgers... A wendy's meal costs more today, not because of inflation (particularly the huge spike it just took) but because wendy's had to pay their poor downtrodden burger-flippers more.

$19.99 in 1976 is $98.77 in today's money. So a $60 game today would have cost $12.14 in 1976. So in a very very general sense games have gotten cheaper when accounting for inflation.

I've got one of these. Such a nice little piece of history! Also, love you pointing out video game prices over the years. I try telling people that prices are cheaper than they have EVER been and people just don't listen!

I just consumed the entirety of the Ben Heck Show and Ben Heck Hacks. I think that legally makes us friends now.

The cutaway to disassemble the son of baconator is the best. Although you only went one layer in. You should have gone further to measure the cheese displacement between patties.

the burger teardown midway through is awesome

Your MRE review of Wendy’s lunch had me laughing out loud 🤣

1:40 I'm 25. I never had a Channel F or a 2600. I never lived in that time period to see a game cost the equivalent of US$ 100. And yet I kinda agree with Ben. The world is weird.

Geocities!? I mistook you for a Angelfire guy! 😎 And that MRE-Steve setup was perfect!

The Wendy's bacon is fresh bacon that is baked in the oven, then kept in a warmer tray until another batch is needed. At least, that was how we did it when I worked there ~7 years ago 😂

It's really fascinating to see this!

2k of RAM because they needed a stack and some working memory, so likely that is all mapped into the lower 1k of RAM, leaving the other 1k for the bitmapped screen. The F8 is all 3 40 pin chips, and yes probably spent almost all of the execute time generating the screen, only having time in the blanking and retrace intervals to do the actual game. Internal 1k of ROM, so those game cartridges are likely mapped in as needed, on the CPU detecting either a set of magic bytes or an actual switch on power up. You can do a lot with only 2k of memory, remember the Apollo computers were able to fly to the moon on less than that, and at a twentieth of the clock speed as well, though they did have the advantage that they would be guaranteed no bit rot in the ROM.

First check for bus activity. Then check for Bud activity.

some good bud this video

Ahh yes, Fairchild. That name brings back a lot of memories. One of their semiconductor plants in San Jose poisoned my entire neighborhood with its leaking underground waste tanks. There a chance the chips in this video were made there. That superfund site, no joke, has a McDonalds and a grocery store sitting right where the underground tanks used to be

Man I remember convincing my mom in 1989 that yes, Phantasy Star was worth the $100 Canadian for my birthday.

10:40 Of course there's no switch to change what channel it goes to. It's always the same channel: Channel F! Also, the story behind the Channel F is really fascinating. As much as I love the VCS, it's sad that the Channel F got so eclipsed by it.

Wendy's bacon is cooked in an oven, not microwaved. They changed it about 10 years ago. It's a lot better than it used to be.

The sad part is, the 6 month single-person game is usually better. And many of those $19.99 games sold back in the day were by one or a handful of guys in six months... or less.

He lives!

2:00 YES. So much this. The "games journalists" (not journalists- they never even had a community college course on journalism, or writing) have no idea, because they aren't gamers either. I remember back when the NES first came out as a kid in elementary school and the prices on games were 80 to 90 bucks for a new game. I also remember most department stores didn't sell video games in their electronics sections because they needed to keep them secure behind glass cabinets and glass counters because of shoplifting problems, so boys had to go to the perfume counters or jewelry counters to see the games. The only time games dropped in price was in the mid 90s when the first playstation came out and all the games were done on CD so they passed the savings on production onto the consumer and games for the PS1 and the PC dropped to $40 to $50. They stayed there until PS2 started using DVD media then they jumped back up to $60 to $70. I still don't think inflation merits all the nickel and diming they are doing with some of these games and their "ultimate" packs for $150 to $200 we are seeing now in gamestop. Digital copies of games, since they don't have to make physical copies in a factory and ship them to the states, should be 1/2 the price of a physical copy. Edit: 6:40 The shielding is probably to protect the system from radio interference. Back then everyone and their mother had a CB radio/Ham Radio setup. Every vehicle had one almost and people had base stations set up in their homes, everyone used to use them to talk/eavesdrop on gossip. This caused a lot of interference in TV signals, which if you remember, the way these old systems used to plug into your TV was through the old analog coax switches that came with the game system. Someone driving by your house on a CB would cause interference in the video signal. This might be why everything was so shielded. EDIT: 8:13 BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHHAHAH NICE reference to Steve1989MREInfo

Videogames sell way more than they did in the 70s. With a cartdrige you were also paying for they materials and manufacturing of said cartdrige when today, in most cases, you are only paying for the software. Making games today is cheaper and easier than it was before due to how widespread computers are today, the exponential increase in computer power, and standardization of programing tools and coding languages. Also, "AAA" developers (the ones that sell games at 60 or more) were already raking millions, even billions, in profits every year without microtransactions, they dont need the money except to satisfy their greed. And I havent even mentioned the negative impact microtransactions have on game design or the fact that, by inflation, wages have actually decrased. Theres no valid, economic, justification for microtransactions in paid games. The inflation argument has been refuted plenty of times in the past. Great video, as always.

Hey, nice repair! Also like the automatic Bud feeder!

It looks like an oversized 8 track player, I love it.

At this pooint Bud probably thinks of you more as an unwanted roommate the auto feeder now controls the food supply.

Looks like Bud the Kitty cat is busy taking D dvd cases off the shelf haha lol

I was in high school and I bought one just to take it apart to see what chips it had. back then, I made a pong game that was published in the Radio-Electronics Magazine, I etched the circuit board using a film negative. the whole circuit used cd4000 series chips that I got from Jameco Electronics.

from what I remember Nintendo 64 games were up to 119 DM in Germany in the 90s- that would be a bit over $100 today

Back in the days when there was very little electrical noise and everyone could still listen to AM broadcast radio. The FCC would have a fit of you took todays house full of devices back in time.

I now know what size filter your furnace takes! It's a very specific kind of doxxing.

And the inventor of the channel F never got any credit 😢

You're the best Ben Heck!! Watching your videos is like hanging out with the cool Uncle I never had.

A perfect Jim Sterling impression at 1:40.

There he is!!!

ZED-EX 80! It's like the ZX Spectrum, it's the British name of the machine not just letters. It's like data the word vs Data the name in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Respect the name. Note: This applies to the ZX-81 too! 🙂 Also, a logical reason for using ZED and not ZEE in general is that ZEE sounds a lot like SEE (for C) so ZED helps differentiate the two. It's just one possible reason as many Americans ask why we use ZED, not saying you have to use it... well, except in the British product names! lol

Bud cameo is awesome. I love the small chaos in these videos.

21:45 Thanks Ben, now I have the Millennial Fair theme stuck in my head 😀

I have a TRV33 that I've dug out for some firewire goodness more than once.

The Fairchild Channel F wasn't the first home console that used cartridges. The first home console that used cartridges was the Magnavox Odyssey. The Fairchild Channel F was the first home console that used a microprocessor. (The Odyssey was purely analog. The cartridges were basically packages of jumpers that connected the circuit elements in the console together to generate the desired image elements and control responses. The circuits were made out of a total of 40 diodes and 40 transistors.) Interestingly, the Fairchild Channel F came out at about the same time as the Apple I computer. Steve Wozniak was able to program a version of Breakout in the BASIC he wrote for the Apple I in about half an hour, while doing it in hardware was normally expected to take a skilled engineer about 6 months. (The Woz did it in a weekend, but that's him. Atari decided not to produce his design because none of their engineers could understand how it worked. They went with a design that cost twice as much to make but engineers with less sheer skill than Steve Wozniak could understand.) The designers at Fairchild had independently had the same fundamental idea about the future of video games. And, of course, they were right: Very shortly afterwards, all video games were microprocessor based. There were still a lot of custom boards for quite a while until it became feasible to build relatively generic arcade machines, as sound and graphics chips got to the point where they exceeded the requirements for most games. (The old game Paperboy even had two microprocessors, a 6502 that ran the sound and a J11 that ran everything else. Most people have probably never heard of the J11. It was a single-chip implementation of the processor for a PDP-11, originally a minicomputer designed in the 1960's, built out of discrete components and using magnetic core memory. By 1982, the processor was able to be put in a single chip.) Of course, the improvements in sound and graphics for generic use ultimately killed arcade machines off by making games on home computers and consoles look and sound as good as anything you could get in the arcade, and ultimately be cheaper than coin-op games as well.

There is a podcast about how the fries were formulated to last on the ride home. It came out right before the pandemic and Wendy’s jumped on it. The lady got the idea watching food delivery guys on mopeds in Asia.

As a game developer, the soapbox rant was appreciated. My salary may suck compared to my rockstar predecessors, but at least some care to point out the disparity.

I love how ben even needs to perfect the feeding algorithm of his cat.

"Were you an infant in 1990?" I honestly think that perhaps half of them weren't born until the mid 90s, so even worse.

VA is ~watts, not amps... 15VAC @ 3.75VA is 250ma. 10VAC @ 16.5VA is 1.65A. Still about double what it needs, but not "WAAAAAAY OVERPOWERED". That's a decent margin

Ah.. Nice, I have "Luxor" branded version of this in the basement! Haven't tested it, but now I want to bring it up!

I remember when NES games were $40 to $60

That's a really cool system... I could see owning one of those if I could find one. Never heard of it before now, great video and project!!

The TRV series and XV series were often used with early skate videos. The TRV 900 is sometimes seen nowadays and the VX1000 is still very prevalent but slowly dying out

I have that exact model handycam. I use it in my side business for digitizing people's old home movies! Also: I don't need to tell you, but everyone else: for the love of all that is holy: RENDER YOUR FOOTAGE CORRECTLY! When deinterlacing your VHS, 8mm and Hi-8 tapes, double the framerate to 59.97 to preserve the motion fluidity of the source material! Encoding to 29.97 progressive throws out HALF the picture data! You've got an effective 60 fields interlace in the source, DON'T THROW THAT OUT. Okay, rant over.

LOLZ... the video game department at Montgomery Ward's.

Nice MRE Steve reference. It made me laugh.

Worked at Wendys as a teenager. our store grilled the bacon on the flat grill in the mornings and it basically sat in a hot pan till we ran out and then new ones are made. After a couple of hours the bacon gets really crispy and hard. Still they insisted on using them.

I managed a Wendy's in the late 90's/early 2000's and we cooked the bacon fresh at that time, did it change?

Bud cameo was the best

I'm curious as to why they'd throw such an monstrous power supply at a system that required so little of it. I guess on the plus side it didn't appear to patch the power through the RF modulator that would have been connected to the rear of your television.

Whoa! @24:30 did Ben homage Cathode Ray Dude?😳 Oh man that was a treat

"I'll have to run some more tests..." Oh dear god... Run, Bud!

man i always loved very old electronics, even when i was like 5 or so anything broken i would open had no idea what i was looking at but was amazing for a youngster.That burger looked not half bad lol. Still only get fast food or well eat out maybe once a year. Need to get my sausage stuffed shells in the oven lol. Bud is so dam cute, fyi the blue rubbery gloves for brushing dogs you see in the "as seen on tv" spot in the stores ( like 3 bucks on ebay) work great at getting a huge amount of lose hair. My little Calypso loves it just few mins of petting her will get huge ball of fur off of her. She just woke up from a nap but wanted to say Happy St. Patrick's Day. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qnwr9pqouRY.html. ps sorry for the plug lol didn't plan on it pps great video as always thanks

I love the lunch intermission. Get a console fixed and a food review!

You can reheat those fries with your soldering iron.

16:37 What a cuddle Bud! 😻

The Wendy's i worked at they actually cooked the Bacon. It's cooked in the convection oven like the baked potatoes. I would know, i have a gnarly burn scar down my left arm from bacon grease right out of that oven. Worked at McD's back in the day too and yeah they use that precooked microwaved on wax paper bacon. Over the years i have worked at Hardee's, Wendy's, McD's and Boogerking. Wendy's is the only one i will still eat. I haven't had Burger king in 20 years. Take what you will from that.

Lots of Bud content, A+

Your price comparison is accurate but remember there is a lot more competition between the devs/publishers now not to mention the tech was in it's infancy back then. What I can't understand is people actually getting butt hurt on you opinion and unsubbing? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Honestly, when I see crazy voltages and amp ratings, my first instinct is to just replace it with a Meanwell in a box... However, I'm glad you did open it... I've never seen a 7805 in a can package, that's amazing... Though, replacing those linear regulators with switching ones was probably a bad idea... it really exaggerated those jail bars (shown later in the video). Switching regulators just add to much analog noise.