Binatone TV game

[yesnaby]

Hello,

I saw this Binatone TV game (1970s/1980s?) in a local shop window, no idea of price as the shop was closed. I think it is the black and white picture model. Would it be worth going for?

Michael

[reelguy]

I have one of these but mine is for use only with the old rediffusion TVs. I am not sure it would work with normal TVs without modification.
Can't imagine it is worth much but I remember it in use.
Peter W .....Reelguy.

[michamoo]

I have had one of those from new and still have it. The orange cased version is monchrome only. There are two versions though as the slightly later model also had a shooting game. Both had on screen scores displayed which some other similar consoles didn't.It dates from around 1978 and think i paid about £25 for it at the time. Id go for it as some fun could still be had from playing it even now.

[SiriusHardware]

It depends on why you are interested in it. For it to be collectable / valuable it really needs to be complete and in its original box.

On the other hand, if you just want to relive your youth and have some fun then go for it.

There was a standard chip for these, made by General Instrument Microelectronics (In Scotland, I think), the AY-3-8500, which contained the basic two-player tennis, single player tennis (squash), and 'Football'. This chip (and another in the series which presented a side-view 'motorcycle' game) formed the basis of many an electronics magazine project.

The AY-3-8500 also supported two variations on light gun games, but the the gun modes were not enabled if the console manufacturer did not offer a light gun option.

The latter might be useless on a non-CRT screen anyway.

[Tractorfan]

Hi,
Oh, the memories are flooding back! We had one of these back in the day and plugged it into the aerial socket of our Hitachi telly. If you positioned the 'bats' correctly, you could get the 'ball' to bounce around the screen on its own endlessly. Hours of fun!
I also remember all the stern warnings appearing in the press about the risk of screen burn and how rental companies could charge customers for the resulting damage to their sets.
I later dismantled it and connected a Pye Lynx CCTV camera to the RF modulator input to produce a fairly decent image. This was done for my old school end-of-term play.
I think it was the first time I ever saw a 'wall wart' plug in PSU.

Cheers, Pete.

[newlite4]

I have both types. The orange monochrome version I had new in 1978. I bought the brown (Magnavox licensed) colour one recently at the car boot for £2 or so. They are worth having and take up little space.
Neil

[yesnaby]

Hello,

I never had any of the early computer/TV games. Managed to get this one for £4. It will have to wait to see if it works since I'm away from home until May 10th. Might try to find a wall wart to suit it.

Michael

[AndyHurwitz]

A word of warning. My brother had one of these which he bought new and we used it with batteries for a while. Then we connected it to a psu and it blew a transistor in the input stage. Turned out the psu input jack was wired in reverse. I rewired it and replaced the transistor and it was fine. May have been a one off, but it's worth checking.

Andy

[SiriusHardware]

At that time, manufacturers tended to choose either centre-negative connections or centre positive connections and then stuck to their choice across their product range - for example, CASIO's range of music keyboards almost invariably had centre negative connections.

If you were sourcing or replacing another power supply it was just as important to notice the polarity as it was to match the voltage. On 'Universal' power supplies with multiple outputs and a range of different sized tips, the tips were usually reversable to accommodate the fact that so many manufacturers favoured centre negative connections.

[julie_m]

Negative centre seemed to be the norm for DC "barrel" connectors from when they were introduced in the 1970s up until about the 1990s; then positive centre began appearing, and seemed to have taken over altogether by 2000.

If in doubt, connect a meter on resistance range between the centre pin of the power input socket and each end of the battery stack in turn. If you get continuity to the negative terminal, it must be wired negative centre; if you get continuity to the positive terminal, it must be positive centre.

[AndyHurwitz]

Thinking back, I think the problem was the wiring to the circuit board. I'm not sure if these had a polarity mark on the case, or if we had to open it to check, but I remember the two wires to the psu input were red and black so made the logical assumption but, if I remember correctly, I actually blew two transistors before realising that the red wire was connected to earth on the circuit board and the black one to the positive side. I think the battery compartment was wired with black to positive too but, as you don't tend to question polarity when inserting batteries, it worked fine.

I think he still has it, so I'll try to get him to dig it out sometime and check (this was a good few years back).

Andy

[emeritus]

I still have one of those GI chips, a printed circuit board for it that a friend at Plessey's made, and an article about building it that appeared in one of the electronics magazines at that time. I had just bought my first house then and couldn't afford a TV, so it went on the "round tuit" pile, where it still resides.

My cousin got one of the commercial games (possibly a Binatone) for his sons, and I had a look at it when one of the hand controls stopped working. It turned out to be a break in the control's flexible cable, which was screened lead. I noticed that the insulation of the core was white at one end and black at the other, and found a bulge midway along it. On cutting the bulge open it transpired that the core must have reached the end of the reel during manufacture, and the bared conductors of the new core had simply been twisted around the bared end of the old core and wrapped round with some tape! A new cable fixed it.

[yesnaby]

Hello,

I've now got a 9 V PSU and tried it out (I was lucky, it didn't blow up). Unfortunately the tennis game (at least - haven't tried the others) does not work properly: when the ball approaches the racket it sometimes goes 'straight through', rather than bouncing off it. Unfortunately I'm going to be away from home until mid-June so won't be able to investigate until then.

Michael

[Mad Mal]

I have one of these and the Light Gun that was used for the shooting game. The sensor in the gun can get confused by ambient light sources, so it's best to play that game in a darkened room. I found the "paddle" controlls in these tended to go erratic. yesnaby might try finding suitable replacement pots and see if that helps. Don't be tempted to clean these potentiometers with Electrolube or WD40 though. The carbon track could deteriorate. Some of these units came with a strange elastomer two button direction controller (may have been the later variants) After a brief dalliance with a "Super Colour" model these early games machines disappeared from the market. I'm trying to find the source of a sound problem on one of these "Retro" game controller games consoles. It was working fine untill a leaky battery destroyed a spring contact in the battery box. (Fixed that by using the same sized spring contact from a scrap TV remote) Nothing got on the board or the weird PCB Chip. and can only assume one of the tiny electrolytics is at fault.

[electronicskip]

I have 10 or 15 of these binatone pong games and I never pay more than a tenner tops for one ,mostly I pay a fiver for them.