Here’s a video that kind of showed up out of nowhere but is too perfect not to share; an EEVBlog video – number 1111 to be precise – which happens to be a quick tear down of the Merlin handheld game from 1978.
It’s interesting because of a fact I didn’t know – the core of the system, and basically the only seriously active component of the device, is a variant of the worlds first microcontroller – in this case, the Texas Instruments TMS1000 (Actually the TMS1100), a 4-bit microcontroller system.
I happen to have one of these little beauties in my collection, and for as simple as it is, it’s actually kind of a fun game to play with from time to time. The plastic is a little brittle, and mine has a damaged battery compartment cover (that I need to glue back together) but hey, it’s there.
A neat little device, and one that shows even back in the early days of the microcomputer revolution, system on a chip designs were commonplace, both in design theory and in practice.
Enjoy!
BONUS – Follow this link to see a die shot of the TMS1000 chip!