Repairing ANOTHER Atari 1973 Atari PONG Arcade Game - What a Legend! 

I didn't realize there was a Shakey's in Charlotte, I just looked it all up pretty cool. I think i've been in both those buildings, but years after they had been changed to something else and didn't realize they used to be sweet pizza places.

Yeah I'll bet it was mind blowing seeing something on a t.v. screen for the first time, I can imagine it for sure!

Yup. The first addictive arcade game, but there were pinball machines before this and EM machines and ... well hell people have always found ways to entertain themselves for a coin :) Thanks for watching Ginkum!

@@LyonsArcade Heck, Pong itself was a rip-off of the table tennis games Ralph Baer created. That table tennis game was built into the original Odyssey game console. (I never had the original Odyssey but my parents did buy me an Odyssey 2 circa 1980. I got an Atari 2600 later. Between the two consoles, I preferred the Odyssey 2 to be honest. I also liked KC Munchkin much better than the Atari 2600 port of Pac-Man! Back in those days, the best Atari machine to own to play videogames were the Atari 400/800 computers. I was never a huge fan of the Atari 2600. Even as a kid, I could tell the 2600 was FAR INFERIOR to both the 400/800 computers and especially the arcade systems!) Atari later paid license fees on the patents of the tech Baer developed for Magnavox to avoid a major lawsuit. This was the wild west years of videogames and there were a lot of legal grey areas and people "borrowed ideas" from each other. (The definition of legal grey area -- "we haven't sued and bullied enough people yet to get our way!") Heck, half the IP defenses and lawsuit crap gaming companies like to play on each other came later with Nintendo. For many years, the successors to Atari loved to sue other companies and claimed they were infringing on Atari's legacy patents! They made more money from lawsuits in the 1990s than selling videogames! It was funny to read that considering how Atari began and the behind the scenes history of Pong! LOL /// To be honest, I never liked Pong all that much. I always found it boring but I was never a table tennis fanatic, either. I do like Breakout (preferring Super Breakout more) and that's obviously a Pong spin-off. Ralph Baer really is a name that should be better known but let's face it Nolan Bushnell was a better showman! Baer wasn't known for being an innovator in game design, either! Atari had the best game designers (for arcade games) back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It's a shame what happened to the Atari Corporation after they were bought by Warner Bros. That was the beginning of the end. I think only the Tramiels did a worse job of managing Atari later on. Even as someone who enjoyed the Atari arcade games when they were brand new and enjoyed playing them in compilations for Sega Saturn and Dreamcast I would NEVER buy a new Atari console now. (That last "Atari console" was vaporware or sold so few copies of itself people wonder if it ever was released! I think only the Polymega is a greater "cryptid console." Neither console seems to exist past prototypes their makers gave to RU-vid shills to promote them.) N obody seems to know how to market the Atari name now and the companies that have gotten the Atari name have been jokes for the last 25 years. The last good piece of hardware they sold was the Atari Lynx portable but like Sony's PS systems it wasn't well-supported. Much better hardware for its time than its competitors. A shame... The Atari fuji is still a great corporate logo! It's iconic like McDonald's golden arches and Mickey's ears...

It's a great game for sure, thank you man!

Thanks for watching King William!

I was!

I’d never heard of it!

Yep, the ones for lighting gas fires!

And what a long strange trip it's been!

Thanks for watching Mechanical Animal we appreciate it!

That must have been what they were attempting to stop!

Confirmed by Big Clive at 2:45 UvpKOJyGC3g

Thank you for watching Anton, we appreciate it as always!

Coming soon :) Someone else was mentioning that he thought these Motorolas were common to put in bronze age games when the t.v. set died...

@@LyonsArcade I think that would be true. Apart from the sound, those motorola monitors have the exact right input on them to act like an older "tv". Because the sound was so basic, the operators didn't care if they were silent. Like you, I hate a silent "Pong". Loud and proud is much better lol :)

Coming soon 😀

Thank you for watching Hope we appreciate it! See you on the next video :)

Thank you for watching Jose!

Thanks DK 265 I appreciate you watching!

I remember all the games at Carowinds when i was a kid, that was the local place that had everything, I imagine Coney Island had everything up there too!

Awww thanks!

Thank you for watching, Spider!

Thanks steamsoldier, we appreciate you watching!

Thanks Cliff see you on the next one!

I like that sentiment!

Thanks for watching Rod Man, I wonder if that’s where they had it operating?

Thanks Peter, that's nice of you to say....

Often lol. We know better though and pay accordingly 😀

That was such an early one I don't think they were able to distribute them all that well overseas yet... Thanks for watching!

Yeah, I never saw one of these in person but I have played the home version once.

They're kind of hard to track down!

I’m going to have to try one of those lighters!

Wang terminals.... mmmm love the green screen its been decades since i played bowling on 1.

It sure is!

That big green one you can still buy believe it or not, they use them on other stuff I think, I guess anything with a card edge connector on it could use that style... I like Molex stuff but it seems they always discontinue whatever part I'm looking for and I have to buy some NOS ones from somewhere!

Yup, you can feel the weight of it :)

It's got a cool look to it , and pretty fun :)

Coming soon 😀

Atari Foiled you :) I never heard that you could do that, I'll have to look into trying it on some of them :) Thanks for watching Jamesnov1970!

Well I know it worked on Missile Command and some pinball machines. Making sure it had contact on the metal, the one I had there was a wire attached which was slipped into the coin slot lol

Thank you for watching Wilder!

I have NEVER seen a Fairchild Channel F or anything like it :)

We had a touchscreen game in a bowling alley one time that if you touched the screen it would reset, we eventually figured out it was the static electricity from the carpet, we put a rubber mat under the game and it fixed it.

@@LyonsArcade lol nice, imagine the makers manual? Troubleshooting 1. "If game resets when touched, before checking 5v place a rubber mat infront of the game," ha

Yeah they had this weird thing they did where they modified the t.v. sets, they had the UHF terminals on the back, and there was a ground wire, a video, and an audio... but inside the UHF terminals had been disconnected and they sent those three lines to three specific places on the chassis... so each t.v. was slightly modded where the input went in since the audio was separate.

They're kind of tough to track down, but they made a TON of them....

No problem Scott, thank you for thinking of it :) See you next time!

Very cool looking cabinet for sure!

Yes, Yes it is :)

Whoops!

Woz.... later designed breakout I thought he had something to do with pong but he came along later...

I've seen that 5v circuit on them before but never could figure out what they use it for. I do like you said, I removed this can though because I was going to try and rig them up in the same hole but ended up having to mount them at the edge of the board where I could tie them down.... We ran into all kinds of problems with the pots that we end up covering on the next video but we'll see you then, thank you for the information and for watching Kristofer!

Think of all the quarters you've spent! Thanks for watching troygly!

@@LyonsArcade Yeah, could have retired by now.

It was less of a casual comment and more of a brag :) We fixed another one last year that I thought was the only one we'd see....

I believe you're right!

Thanks, Enzo....

Pretty much

A customer bought it and had it shipped to us, I don't know where he got it!

We don't do pcb repair (we mainly work on our own games but sometimes do complete machines) but there is a dipswitch to turn on the memory, it's dipswitch 2, switch #5, if it's off it retains memory . If that is on, and it forgets it's high scores at power up. If it's still not saving or that switch is in the right place, you need to replace the battery on the pcb....

Yeah it’s a shame I think they design them to break on their own after 46 years...

That’s a good point! I have a breakout at my house and by then they had serve buttons...

@@LyonsArcade The Magnavox Odyssey's "table tennis" game that inspired Pong had them, I believe (called "reset buttons" on the unit). There had to be something to start play because there was no coin slot.

I don't in particular know WHO ordered, though... so it's kind of fun since people can order whatever the hell they want, and I can see WHAT was ordered, but i can't see who ordered anything. It's kind of funny.

Yeah I think they did a great job on the look, it was probably cutting edge at the time...

@@LyonsArcade I was 1 year old in 73... yeah it was before the Altair home computer kit.... Big time .

No we haven’t.

I used to do that! Worked sometimes....

Atari knew what was up

@@LyonsArcade I had to replay that like 5 times lol! 🤣👍Freakin classic!

Don't let it drive you nuts, quick, turn off the computer!

I think you're right :)

It sends out composite video so yes you could hook it up to anything that takes a composite video signal. Only thing is the attraction of Pong isn't the gameplay, it's that it's a piece of history, so putting an LCD in it would be like putting chrome rims on a Ford Model T.

@@LyonsArcade Yeah, I guess you're right. The reason I asked was because I don't have a CRT TV anymore and want to build a board.

I'm not an expert but the center tap is basically it's 'ground' without it, the other two voltages will drift one way or the other... but still add up to the total it was supposed to have over both sides, you'll just get one voltage high and one voltage low. If you have the center tap connected it's going to give you the same voltage from center tap to either of the voltage lines, which is how the game was designed. The components I said not to change were some sort of capacitor, they're not paper or foil I don't think though, so I'm not sure what kind they are, I always leave them because in the past when I swapped them I couldn't get the exact specs in new caps. I have not tested the antenna circuit, no. I'm not sure if a radio would turn it off, I think it's more to do with static like you mentioned, not actual audible music but voltage in the metal parts of the cabinet.

Thanks for the help. If you turn the portable radio to an in between frequency on an AM/FM station to get static RF noise it would get pickup by the arcades antenna to turn the game off? The old radios had a variable dial to turn the AM/FM radio frequency and can get in between that sounded like RF static noise, not sure if they were thinking kids would do this to trick the coil door coil to turn on/off?The schematics should tell which values those special capacitors are, but I haven't seen capacitors that looks like those. What values does the schematic say those capacitors are? they might be tuning capacitors maybe.

We'll have it up Tuesday.

I'd love to but I've never had one in. I do have some of the gameplan pinball machines (the cocktails) that I'll be doing videos on....

We're going all new man :) See you on the next video!

Yup, they're all pretty much like that, even the later ones!

That’s a robocop arcade game behind it!

Ah.see it now. No way deadly.

The Robocop belongs to the same gentleman that owns the Pong!

@@LyonsArcade I'll tell you back in the day when I was a little kid my dad own a laundromat he would purchase his video games directly from a company so I got to go with him and I get to test out all the new video games that I want it wile my dad was purchasing games my favorite was a classic 80s pinballs I got a chance to play Black Knight when it was brand new my father preferred to be the owner instead of having somebody have their games in his laundromat

Yup #2 or so....

I believe it's Joe's brother Ronnie.

I'm Ron, Joe's Brother!

I think you didn't watch the video lol

None were old apparently it had been cleaned out at some point!

Man that happened a lot it’s surprising as many survived as we have now! I think about 90% of most titles were trashed, I think more pinballs survived because of the legs keeping them out of water....

They don't make a good warranty anymore, it's only been 47 years and the company went bankrupt 10 years in!

they were just from the past twenty years somebody had already scooped out all the old ones :)

This one was damaged apparently, it doesn't have one...

Yup everybody knows that Matt’s is still smaller though

Sometimes, just not in this instance, LOL

That’s my brother!

I see what you did there....

Better late than sorry :)

Yes, but some of them were built in 1973

Joe's Classic Video Games That’s really cool lol good to see one still around! 😁😁😁😁