deficit. But, through its problems, its management didn't lose faith in Odyssey.
The first version of Odyssey was manufactured until 1975 when large-scale-integration (LSI) parts became available. Based on the use of nine complex semiconductor chips, two improved versions of the 1972 model were designed.
The use of the nine LSI chips, custom designed for the new games, cut the total number of parts needed to approximately 200, thus reducing assembly cost and time.
Several advanced integrated-circuit technologies included newly developed integrated injection logic (I2L) were employed in the nine chips.
The first chip provides five basic functions: power supply regulation, top and bottom rebound circuitry, wall generator, horizontal sync, and vertical sync generation.
The second generates the ball and also, slaved with the first chip, is a wall generator. The third chip is the ball generator.
The logic and video summing circuitry is contained on the fourth chip. This chip detects coincidence between the players and the ball and determines the course that the ball will follow.
The fifth and sixth chips are assigned to score keeping.
The seventh chip drives the eighth chip, a character generator, which develops a matrix pattern.
The video outputs from the other eight chips are fed to the ninth chip which produces a composite color video signal. By appropriate selection from the master set of nine chips, 18 possible combinations of chips exist that could form different video game systems.
Subsequently, in 1976, Magnavox further cut the number of components needed to build a video game to 75, by introducing a single-chip LSI system. The chip contained all of the spot generator, logic, sync, multitone sound and digital scoring circuitry but offered less flexibility than provided by the multichip system.
Prior to the development of one-chip game systems, a number of companies were testing the marketplace for TV games with models using TTL circuitry. One of these companies was First Dimension Corp. founded in mid-1975 in Nashville by Norvell L. Olive. First Dimension manufactured 7000 games in time to ship for the Christmas 1975 season. Next, preparing for mass-volume production of its $129 game in 1976, it
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