Jerry Lawson was one of the most important figures in video game history and it's good to be reminded of his major contribution to the industry- the video game cartridge!
Fairchild was (and still is) a manufacturer of electronic components mostly designed for industrial and government use, so it's no surprise that the Channel F's hardware was innovative but the games they created for it were stodgy and unimaginative -- while a company like Atari who consisted of a bunch of young hippie potheads who did nothing but design video games all day was able to come up with more creative and entertaining games!
When Steve Jobs worked at Atari everyone hated him because he stank so bad - apparently he didn't believe in using deodorant because he thought the chemicals were bad. Well, we see how that turned out. The big fat Steve who ate McDonald's and never exercised is still alive in kicking.
Nope, Jobs died because he was a hippie who tried to treat cancer using homeopathic remedies. A person in his position, with his wealth, could have lived a much longer life had he aggressively treated himself with the latest and greatest in medicine. Modern medicine actually works - well at least when there is a free market involved that rewards people and companies for coming up with new cures and new technology.
He's known but he didn't invent the console and doesn't hold any patents on it. Two engineers at a small company called Alpex invented the prototype even putting the eprom game chips in plastic "cartridges". Fairchild leased/bought the technology and they converted over to the F8 (from Intel) and shrunk it down to a smaller "console" size. Is Jerry Lawson important in gaming history? Sure, but he didn't do what you think.
I always wanted this system back in the 90's, I also still have the Popular Mechanics magazine from 1976 with the Atari VCS and the Channel F being anounced to enter in the US market (with a lot of other systems that didnt got the FCC approval xD), I saw that back then and I wanted one so much. But I got instead an Atari 2600 Jr with 72 built in games (this was in 1991 as I remember), my first game, Enduro my first virginity lost, River Raid. But as far as I can tell the market back then was making a slow begining, cheap games that anyone could understand was the way, when creativity and programming techniques came, more complex things were created, so at the end the Channel F is not THAT BAD, its just how it started.. and lets be realistic... if this console is "oh-so-basic", then.... what in the flying hell would be the original Magnavox Odissey? D:
I had one of these when I was a kid. It was the first "electronic game system" I ever had! It was actually pretty cool for its time, and I enjoyed it until I got the Mattel Intellivision in 1980.
Great collab there guys. For my taste though console video games didn't get to be real fun until the Japanese entered the market and threw their weight around.
wow. love your videos but you knocked it out the ballpark with this one. 1. never heard of channel f, 2. your production value is superb (the cloning) 3. 8bitguy/ibookguy cameo perfect!
6:33 - I owned one of these back in 1979 (yes I bought it and Videocart -10 on sale along with a new color TV) . The only games I played was "Maze" and the built-in Pong. I do recall the awful video 'ghosting'! ) Probably Fairchild's attempt to get more 'colors' outta this thing!
Suddenly: Saba Videoplay & Nordmende Teleplay :) Yes, this console actually got licensed. Also: MHz means nothing - see 6510 in the C64 vs. Z80 in the ZX Spectrum Fun fact about 8-Track cases ... the Exidy Sorcerer computer used actual salvaged 8-track cases for their cartridges.
+RogerRHF it is.. and you can also move your goal post too by using the push/pull feature of the controller. (not shown in video) So there are lots of things you can control. I was impressed.
The video color selection for the 8 colors in the single pallet were not optimal: The choices were: Light Grey, Light Green, Lavender, White, Black, Red, Green, and Blue. No yellow, no orange.
ah yes back in the day when switching video cards meant playing a whole new game and not renewing your faith in the PC master race and of course 8-bit guy is here to explain it instead of making stuff on his own channel XD
I saw this console in the store when i was 7 or 8 my mother thought it was too expensive...later on i got an Atari 2600 where my love for games began. Thanks for Making this video..brought me back.
No, the CPU was not divided into three separate 40pin packages. The CPU is just one 40 pin package. The other two in the image is the program storage units (ROM), they were able to keep pin count down on the CPU by having ROM with their own logic for program counter etc and just use the ROMC control signals to control it. You did need at least two chips to do anything useful, a CPU and one program storage unit, later on these came package in the same capsule. 128x64 is the number of bits that can be addressed in the Video RAM, you don't see all of it on screen, especially since the two columns that encodes the palettes are placed on column 125 and 126. Emulators like MESS/MAME shows 102x58 pixels - you often see even less on a real TV. channelf.se/veswiki/index.php?title=VRAM
I remember when I first saw Pong. I couldn't figure out what "Magic" was used to get a TV to do. At the time, everything shown on a TV came from broadcast TV signal, so it was mind boggling how a TV could be controlled by game device.
You did a review and how it works video in Fairchild Channel F which is Cool because it's a neat unique system so how about Intellivision, a System that was great but not extremely popular and has been bashed by many Atari VCS fans and even people that follow trends and think only popular systems are good.
Do you know you could play Pacman on the grandstand of Fairchild system submarine Hunt was game system was good as well and dodgy was a lot of fun I bought is when I first came out
Jerry Lawson was in the mix with the creation of the system but its a bit more complicated. www.fastcompany.com/3040889/the-untold-story-of-the-invention-of-the-game-cartridge
Had one of these when I was a kid. Great memories. But the games were eh. Did collect many of the games and sadly, I still have them, somewhere. The console died.
I'm wondering : how exactly do 480i CRT handle a 120 pixel high raster. We all know that for the 8-bit and 16-bit consoles (and most ps1 games, etc)displayed on SD sets(480i), the raster has 200 something pixels on the vertical axis. So by by using the 240p "hack"(show only every other line, 60 times a second, wich expands the raster twice has high since it adds blanked lines on every other line), the picture here fills up a whole SD screen, with perfect alignment of 1 pixel line on each scanline. But what about a 120 something high raster, like that of the Channel F? is 1 pixel line of the raster spread over 2 scanlines?
My family had one of these back when I was a kid, though we only had the first 7 carts for it. Was still working up till about a decade ago, when it was damaged during a move. After seeing some videos on other old gaming consoles, I'm kind of curious as to how it was to program the Channel F... well other than the limited space it had.
Had that console when i was a kid, loved the game "Cat and mouse" a maze game, but the joystick controller were weak and stopped working after a couple of years or something, that was pity. I so badly want to play that game console again.
The bit about "finding" the 8-Bit Guy still in your living room hours later was priceless, and so was the part where you just joined him, and then a third guy showed up, and you all had a blast trying to beat your scores at the games you had just, more or less, dumped on, LOL. I just picked up a faulty Fairchild Channel F myself and hope to get it back to working order. Back in the 80's, I had never seen one, but I've heard about them, and Jerry Lawson, since the 90's, and my curiosity got the better of me. I wish I'd picked one up twenty years ago when they were a lot cheaper, though. @.@
Awesome episode. When I saw your doppelganger I thought for a second that the two of you were going to fight in the retro mirror match tradition. Love the show. Keep it up!
