AY-3-8500

Six selectable games for one or two players were included:

In addition, a seventh undocumented game could be played when none of the previous six was selected: Handicap, a hockey variant where the player on the right has a third paddle. This game was implemented on very few systems.

AY-3-8500

The AY-3-8500 was designed to be powered by six 1.5 V cells (9 V). Its specified operation is at 6-7 V and a maximum of 12 V instead of the 5 V standard for logic. The nominal clock was 2.0 MHz, yielding a 500 ns pixel width. One way to generate such a clock is to divide a 14.31818 MHz 4 × colorburst clock by 7, producing 2.04545 MHz. It featured independent video outputs for left player, right player, ball, and playground+counter, that were summed using resistors, allowing designers to use a different luminance for each one. It was housed in a standard 28-pin DIP.

Some of the dedicated consoles employing the AY-3-8500 (there are at least two hundred different consoles using this chip[2]):

• Sears Hockey Pong
• Coleco Telstar series (Coleco Telstar, Coleco Telstar Classic, Coleco Telstar Deluxe, Coleco Telstar Ranger, Coleco Telstar Alpha, Coleco Telstar Colormatic, Coleco Telstar Regent, Coleco Telstar Sportsman)
• Odyssey series (Magnavox Odyssey 300, Magnavox Odyssey 2000 and Magnavox Odyssey 3000)
• RadioShack TV Scoreboard
• Unisonic Sportsman/Tournament
• Philips Tele-Game ES 2203 Las Vegas and Philips Tele-Game ES 2204 Las Vegas
• Play-O-Tronic
• Videomaster (Strika, Strika 2, ColourScore 2, SuperScore)
• APF TV Fun (Model 401)
• Sportsmaster TVG 901
• Prinztronic Micro Ten Deluxe Colour TV Game (United Kingdom)
• Ameprod Television Game 10 (one of a few consoles made in Poland)[3]
• Adman Grandstand TV game 2000
• Bildschirmspiel 01, the GDR's only game console
• Hanimex 7771

The AY-3-8550 was the next chip released by General Instruments. It featured horizontal player motion, and a composite video output. It was pin compatible with the AY-3-8500. It needed an additional AY-3-8515 chip to output video in color.

Usage

The AY-3-8550 used the No Connect pins from the AY-3-8500, so it was possible to put an AY-3-8550 on an AY-3-8500 (without horizontal movement), and vice versa.

AY-3-8550

AY-3-8610 chip from 1980

The AY-3-8610 was a major update from General Instruments. It played more games (10),[4] like basketball or hockey, with higher-quality graphics. It was nicknamed "Superstar" by GI. It was in black and white, although it was possible to add color by using an additional AY-3-8615 chip.

Prior to producing the 8610, GI created the AY-3-8600. The pin configuration was the same as the 8610, but it was missing the two rifle/target games, bringing the total number of games down to 8.

Games

Hockey, tennis and gridball on an AY-3-8610 based game cartridge

The 10 selectable games for this chip included:

Game	No. of players
Tennis	2
Hockey/Soccer	2
Squash	2
Practice	1
Gridball	1
Basketball	2
Basketball practice	1
Two player target	2
Single player target	1

Usage

The AY-3-8610 featured a completely different pinout. It, too, required an external crystal oscillator. It still had separate video output pins, and removed the dedicated sync pin.

AY-3-8610

The inside of an AY-3-8610 based game cartridge. The console for which this was made accepted other cartridges. However, unlike modern consoles, the game chip, i.e. the core circuitry, was in the cartridge, not in the console.

Atari console Stunt Cycle based on AY-3-8760

AY-3-8603 die

• An equivalent to the AY-3-8500 is the TMS1965NLA manufactured by Texas Instruments.
• The Soviet K145IK17 (Russian: К145ИК17) has a built-in counter, making it possible to use a momentary pushbutton instead of a multi-position switch to select games. The handicap game is not hidden, it can be chosen among others using this button. Since a pushbutton occupies only one pin, this IC has fewer pins.
• A competitor was the National Semiconductor MM57105.

• Full datasheets with reference designs and application notes
• Abridged AY-3-8500 Data Sheet
• Emulator