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Unsung hero: Magnavox Odysee 2

Well I could see that it's fairly modular, as far as the one plug goes. As far as anything else, I couldn't get access due to the aforementioned blocked screw. There's a RF modulator "thing" that is screwed to the case by two screws on either side. Above that there's a metal box that houses the mobo. The designers of my revision decided it would be a brilliant idea to solder the motherboard into it's metal box, and then solder ground hunks-of-thin-metal between metal box A and metal box B. Thus I can't move the motherboard box out of the way to unscrew the second screw on the RF box, and can't remove the motherboard from it's metal box because it's soldered shut (I tried to pry it open, no go with tools at hand).

If I end up getting a cart for this and liking it, I'll buy another system if this one conks out. If it survived this kind of damage, though, it might just last forever. :p

Edit: If a cart can have a copro Z80 in it, it would be conceivable to make a homebrew CP/M cart or otherwise.

Edit 2: Just looked at the pictures (didn't before for some reason) and realized that your model has none of the huge soldered-together metal boxes that are making mine a royal pain - lucky bum. :p Likely they're there for shielding and aren't that important, and someone who owned yours removed them, or they were removed in a later revision (or added in a later revision, depending).
 
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Speaking of Multicarts....


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Doing more homework (no pictures yet, still have to make sure of my own power supply). I have found this site which I joined:

http://www.evatronix-ip.com/

They have variations of the Z80 and 68000 that might prove useful in this project and also my Networking Genesis project (remember that one?). They seem to give out samples to people that ask, so you guys who do hands on might want to join to get some cool goodies (I know I am!). But you do have to register.

I cant find a multimeter at the moment, so can't plug up my O2.
 
Raven said:
Edit 2: Just looked at the pictures (didn't before for some reason) and realized that your model has none of the huge soldered-together metal boxes that are making mine a royal pain - lucky bum. :p Likely they're there for shielding and aren't that important, and someone who owned yours removed them, or they were removed in a later revision (or added in a later revision, depending).
Click to expand...

I can't find the exact date, but I believe in 1981, the FCC created a new category of rules for "Television Interface Devices," that is, the RF modulators found in video games, computers, and VCRs. Before then, devices with a built-in RF modulator (e.g. the original "heavy sixer" Atari 2600, and the Atari 400/800) had much thicker, heavier metal shielding inside, because they had to meet a more stringent part of the FCC's rules regarding TV interference. (However, I believe battery-powered devices were excluded, which is why cheap, nasty, battery-eating Pong consoles were allowed to proliferate in the '70s.)

After the rule change in 1981, built-in RF modulators became much more common in home computers since much less shielding was required, and several existing video game consoles were redesigned to reduce production costs (Atari 2600, Intellivision, etc.). There are two major variations of the Odyssey2 console -- the earlier one with silver joysticks, and the later one with black joysticks with a red Action button -- so it is entirely possible that it was also redesigned to use less internal shielding when the FCC rule change took effect.
 
Hah, that explains why Pong Consoles HAD battery options.

My Odyssey 2 has the black joysticks with red button, however, which seems to contradict the theory a tad.

k2x4b524[ said:
Speaking of Multicarts....
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Damn dude, do you have that? Are you selling? That would be awesome to avoid having to buy several lots of carts to get a good number of games for it.
 
Yep Raven, that's my cream of the crop. That bad boy came in the box of around 40 carts that i got. It's pretty much got every game made, cept 1 or 2 and those being the Introduction to Computer Programming, BUT not all games work on the odyessy 2, some are foerign versions, and some are designed for the videopac g7400. If i WERE To sell it, it would be AFTER i reverse engineered it, copied the rom, and built myself another one, and AFTER i found out the market value of such. So don't get your hopes up, yet ;)
 
AH! I never understood the battery compartments, either, thanks vwestlife!

My console here also is later and has black controllers with red a action button. So I am led to believe that there are more versions than are understood (I read the same thing).

Not sure if it's the same thing, but here's a multicart for sale new here:

http://www.classicgamecreations.com/multi.html

233-In-1 Multicart
$40.00 USD

Excellent!
 
... doh, Nathan beat me to it :p

I have the 233-in-1 and love it. Well worth the $40.
 
Putzing around on eBay for multicarts, I noticed that if you search for "Videopac", in international, lots of Phillips carts show up - but they look to be the same form factor. Is Videopac a standardized format from back then that just didn't catch on? Or did Phillips just make O2 games? :p

Edit: It seems Videopac is a series of consoles, and other brands just rebadged them - meaning the Odyssey 2 is juts a Magnavox version of a Videopac console.

Anyway perhaps I will go that route - if I'm going to spend $5 or so a cart from eBay, maybe $2-3 a cart if I'm thrifty, but can get everything for $40, might as well get everything at that ratio. I just wish I could make sure my console works before dumping that much into it - perhaps I'll wait for a cart to show up locally and if that works then shell out for the multicart.
 
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The current 233-in-1 multicart is a bargain, since it gives you all known Odyssey2 and Videopac games, including Europe-only games, prototypes of unreleased games, and some newly created games. However, you do miss out on the original game artwork, packaging, and instructions, which is often more interesting than the game itself. Also, the Mastery Strategy Series games will be nearly unplayable without the original game pieces, since they were designed to be a combination board game and video game.

Today I got lucky and visited an excellent video game store in Clifton, NJ known as Digital Press. They have games for virtually every system known to man (I even saw games on the shelf for the RCA Studio II, Bally Astrocade, Fairchild Channel F, Emerson Arcadia 2001, Vectrex, Sega SG-3000, and ZX Spectrum!), so I was able to pick up some Odyssey2 games at very reasonable prices -- 99 cents each for loose cartridges, and boxed games for $1.99 to $4.99, I guess depending on rarity and condition. They didn't have a huge stock on hand, but certainly more than I expected to find.
 
Raven said:
Anyway perhaps I will go that route - if I'm going to spend $5 or so a cart from eBay, maybe $2-3 a cart if I'm thrifty, but can get everything for $40, might as well get everything at that ratio. I just wish I could make sure my console works before dumping that much into it - perhaps I'll wait for a cart to show up locally and if that works then shell out for the multicart.
Click to expand...

I'm a huge fan of multicarts and SD/CF solutions for many classic systems. It isn't because I don't want to play the original carts or use disks, but it's a lot more reliable. Plus, it decreases the "wear and tear" on original hardware by not needed to plug/unplug things.

Even better, modern media solutions like multicarts allow me to try out stuff I didn't experience "back in the day." I often still buy the originals that I love (if the prices aren't insane), simply because of my collector "disease."

It's off-topic from the O2, but ColecoVision/ADAM owners will really appreciate the new SD card cart from AtariMax. It's a limited run, so it's a good thing to get in on the pre-order phase...

EDIT: I have been dying to get a "modern storage solution" for my TRS-80 Model 4, but haven't found anything. Does anyone have a recommendation? The best I found was the SVD which in IMO is too limited because it needs to have one disk image loaded at a time. Plus, it's a little pricey for only doing one disk image at a time...
 
Yeah I'm 20 so I wasn't around when the Odyssey 2 hit the shelves. I'm really trying to get a functional collection as far as most things go, so as long as I can play the games and the system itself is original, it's fine with me. I do understand wanting physical media, but I don't care that much as far as this system goes. As for the PC - I buy games that I already have digital copies of just to have disks and cases around, so I do understand.

Edit: I saw a Colecovision at the same place I got my O2 but it was $25 and had no games. Seemed a bit pricy since it was in shoddy condition. I thought when I read your text "hrm, maybe I can pick one of these SD carts up and invest in the Colecovision" but not at $136 - that's a bit crazy for an SD reader and firmware in a piece of plastic.

Edit 2: And their 128-in-one carts are hugely overpriced as well, also at $136. Why do they charge so much? When I saw the O2 cart at $40 I thought that was already a tad steep, but these make it look plain cheap..
 
vwestlife said:
Today I got lucky and visited an excellent video game store in Clifton, NJ known as Digital Press.
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I've been meaning to check that place out, so because you mentioned it, I went there today. Pretty cool store!
They seem to have a little bit of everything.
 
If you want to get your feet wet in programming one of these things, be sure to pick up the "Computer Intro!" cartridge, which lets you program in either assembler or machine code(!). The cartridge is pretty much useless without the instruction manual, but thankfully somebody posted a copy of it online:

http://www.ozyr.com/o2/o2comput.html

I'm surprised this cartridge ever made it past Magnavox's marketing department, but I guess they offered it as proof of their boastful ad campaign that the Odyssey2 had "the power of a computer" -- even though it lacked the CPU power or RAM to support a high-level language like BASIC.

1070b1p02.jpg
 
Nice! Assembly even! I will be looking for this cart and since the instructions are online I can refer to them or print my own off (my own little manual). Thanks!! I wonder if the same instructions will work for the new main processor..? We shall see.

According to Wikipedia there are a whole SLEW of processors that are in the same family.

I took a small ~6 min video of the O2 in action, I made sure the power supply wouldn't fry it (tip negative, whew!) so I took advantage of having a few minutes to set it all up. The keyboard is very sensetive and easy to type on. My cart is the multi cart with Crypto Logic on it, and all the keys work.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEvVrAEdMUo

Mine also comes up with junk data when there is no cart in, so yours is working fine, Raven
 
Well, I have been doing a lot of homework and lots of emailing to different people that have done things with the O2/Videopac, but it's mainly homebrew games and AV mods. Not that those aren't cool, but it doesn't make it more of a computer, just a better game system.

Does anyone know of any already done projects involving the 8048/8075/8055 and a Z80? I got the crazy idea to embed a Z80 inside the O2 so it can be the serial port controller, but I cannot find where anyone has attempted this, and I have been looking off and on for a few days now.

From all the reading up, the 8048 has to be replaced with something that can hold more code to support a serial port, there is more rom on other chips. Also, custom code must be written to make it see any data coming through it, or to access it in any way. I am thinking some sort of external drive, or at least able to send bits to another serial port (ala null modem to something else with hand typed instructions).

A lot of people are on about graphics and updating the chip, but that's not the main thing for me, the graphics are pretty good as they are (for the era) and not a major thing to me.

Any ideas on how to interface a Z80 to this?

Also, I want it to be inside the console, so there ought to be some kind of instruction to let the machine know that there is a cart in and to refer to that, OR there is no cart in and refer to data from a serial port, I figure this could be done from the Z80 side of things.

The greatest thing about a project like this one (vs. the many other projects I have tried to tackle) are that the parts are out there already, nothing much has to be developed and it's nie to work with things that are well understood (for a change, I got a bad experience working with IPv6).
 
Okay, I am at a loss. I can't find anything regarding interfacing a Z80 and an 8048/8748 or anything of the sort. If anyone has any ideas for me please post them, PM me, email me. It has been quite frustrating.

Nathan
 
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