exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

So this arrived today, Phoenix mug for scale as no bananas handy:


Overall in good condition bar some cable burn:


Which is also present on parts of the main body and the RF cable also shows signs of some interaction with polystyrene, so some clean up required, possibly a cable replacement.

The only other issue is the missing serve button on the player 2 controller:


But my expectation is it will be an easy fix.

It runs off batteries, seems to have a power connector for a wall wart and has a socket for a light gun, though that is missing. For just under £12 I'm not that broken up about it :)

I'll likely add this to the backlog as I'll be over in France next week and likely won't have much time this week.

Forgive me for being dense but what are those sliders at the bottom possibly for?

mrbombermillzy wrote: 11 May 2026 15:40 Forgive me for being dense but what are those sliders at the bottom possibly for?

I'd suggest that they are for difficuly/speed.

Looks like a generic panel mount button switch... well, they were generic in the 70s and 80s, goodness knows know. :-)

stephen_usher wrote: 11 May 2026 22:12 Looks like a generic panel mount button switch... well, they were generic in the 70s and 80s, goodness knows know. :-)

My thoughts exactly :)

Well, it seems the right controller is the single player controller so I've nicked the red switch top from the left controller and repaired it for now. It's just a push on cap so potentially easy to replace.

Not only that I had a play at lunchtime and it only works!!!


And for @mrbombermillzy who asked what the sliders are for, they do nothing as far as the games are concerned since they are just sliders, no electronic connection at all.

They are there to keep a tally of how many games each side has won. There is an in game score on screen and each game you win you can move the slider over to indicate your total number of games won :)

rubber_jonnie wrote: 12 May 2026 13:42 And for @mrbombermillzy who asked what the sliders are for, they do nothing as far as the games are concerned since they are just sliders, no electronic connection at all.

They are there to keep a tally of how many games each side has won. There is an in game score on screen and each game you win you can move the slider over to indicate your total number of games won :)

Thats quite amusing really. Your first assumption would have made much more sense! :lol:

mrbombermillzy wrote: 12 May 2026 14:34

rubber_jonnie wrote: 12 May 2026 13:42 And for @mrbombermillzy who asked what the sliders are for, they do nothing as far as the games are concerned since they are just sliders, no electronic connection at all.

They are there to keep a tally of how many games each side has won. There is an in game score on screen and each game you win you can move the slider over to indicate your total number of games won :)

Thats quite amusing really. Your first assumption would have made much more sense! :lol:

As it goes, my first assumption is actually covered by the 4 black toggle switches which speed up the ball, allow auto serve, increase ball angles and reduce bat size.

I'll get some shots of inside and post later.

And here are the internals:


It seems the whole thing is run by an A-Y-8500 which was a generic 'Ball & Paddle' IC as descibed on Wikipedia like this:


"The AY-3-8500 "Ball & Paddle" integrated circuit (IC, or "chip") was the first in a series of ICs from General Instrument designed for the consumer video game market. These chips output video to an RF modulator, which would then display the game on a domestic television set. It was introduced in 1976, Coleco becoming the first customer, having been introduced to the IC development by Ralph H. Baer. The lineup was later known as the GIMINI series. Approximately 5 million 8500s were sold and used in hundreds of different consoles."

So it seems this was a one chip TV paddle game wonder which probably powered a lot of pre-cartridge games systems.

stephen_usher wrote: 11 May 2026 22:12 Looks like a generic panel mount button switch... well, they were generic in the 70s and 80s, goodness knows know. :-)

As it goes, there isn't much generic about them...


So no switch as such, just a thing they threw together, probably cheaper than something like this:


Will see if I can mold a replacement out of UV resin.