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How does these electronic handheld games work, anyway? — Parallax Forums

How does these electronic handheld games work, anyway?

John A. ZoidbergJohn A. Zoidberg Posts: 514
edited 2011-02-10 00:00 in General Discussion
Hey there,

I've been reading those little Nintendo's Game and Watch from the net, and also having one of these equivalent before, I'm pretty curious about the hardware inside.

I wouldn't worry about PSP or Gameboy or others - because these are usually with a processor inside. However, nothing about those cheap handheld games sold for a price of Happy Meal are known at all.

My guesses are:

1.) There is no processor. It's all logic gates, and more logic gates inside. Maybe some counters and stuff.

2.) There is processor. But a very limited and a very stripped down version of the thing. Other stuff like sound and buttons are controlled by logic gates.

3.) Presence of CPLD (I doubt about this one!)

Anyone actually cracked open the chip on board thing inside the handheld game? :)

Comments

  • ForrestForrest Posts: 1,341
    edited 2011-02-08 03:03
    There's an embedded processor on those toys. Many use a NOC (Nintendo On a Chip). The original Nintendo ran on a processor very similar to a 6502 at 1 MHz with support chips.
  • John A. ZoidbergJohn A. Zoidberg Posts: 514
    edited 2011-02-08 03:32
    Forrest wrote: »
    There's an embedded processor on those toys. Many use a NOC (Nintendo On a Chip). The original Nintendo ran on a processor very similar to a 6502 at 1 MHz with support chips.

    I checked the Nintendo-on-the-Chip in the web - seems that it's all about the new NES knockoffs. I had one of those before - it's just with one chip on the board, and that's about it. No wonder the console was light. (My Micro Genius console was heavier - it has all the things NES has there)

    However, I'm still wondering those little handheld games which powered by just coin batteries, something like this:

    handheld-quake.jpg
  • AleAle Posts: 2,363
    edited 2011-02-08 05:39
    Those exist since I was a kid (early 80s) so I'd guess a very simple processor with extremely limited everything :). Just a die on pcb with a blob of epoxy on it :). If you have one then you can make a photo of the die and we can get a better guess !
  • LeonLeon Posts: 7,620
    edited 2011-02-08 06:08
    It's called chip-on-board. Red fuming nitric acid should dissolve the epoxy, but it's rather dangerous.
  • AleAle Posts: 2,363
    edited 2011-02-08 06:25
    Nitric acid... I have a bottle here... but no chips :(
  • John A. ZoidbergJohn A. Zoidberg Posts: 514
    edited 2011-02-08 06:26
    Hmm... I have a cheap $1 Tetris 999-in-one game under my desk. To my curiousity, I could dig out the chip and the die and see it under a microscope. :)
  • LeonLeon Posts: 7,620
    edited 2011-02-08 06:33
    Ale wrote: »
    Nitric acid... I have a bottle here... but no chips :(

    It's got to be the very concentrated stuff, hence the red fumes. Our chemistry teacher caused an explosion with it and lots of my classmates got acid burns.
  • skylightskylight Posts: 1,915
    edited 2011-02-08 11:34
    Leon wrote: »
    It's got to be the very concentrated stuff, hence the red fumes. Our chemistry teacher caused an explosion with it and lots of my classmates got acid burns.
    No chance of that happening in class these days with the health and safety executive looking on, shame in one respect that the schoolkids of today may be missing out on some of the interesting experiments that we used to participate in when kids.
  • tonyp12tonyp12 Posts: 1,951
    edited 2011-02-08 16:15
    The $5 handhelds uses the cheapest lowend mcu you can find.
    Take for example TI's MSP430G2001 can be had for 25cents each at 10k units.

    Maybe they even make their own asic if the it's 100k+ unit of same.
  • John A. ZoidbergJohn A. Zoidberg Posts: 514
    edited 2011-02-08 18:40
    tonyp12 wrote: »
    The $5 handhelds uses the cheapest lowend mcu you can find.
    Take for example TI's MSP430G2001 can be had for 25cents each at 10k units.

    Maybe they even make their own asic if the it's 100k+ unit of same.

    I could agree that. I believe it is not even a microcontroller sometimes. Probably they have their own ASIC.

    Wait, those games have a clock inside too. So they might be putting the ASIC for clock (counters,counters and some logic gates), the ASIC for the sound (consist of just some oscillators), and finally, the ASIC for the gaming system (could be more logic gates!). Hmm...

    I could have modelled the same thing using a CPLD... :)
  • AleAle Posts: 2,363
    edited 2011-02-10 00:00
    I'm a chemist and I have at work the right stuff :) fumehoods, gloves, concentrated acids, NO2(g) :) people that know... wait that's me ;-)

    Zoidberg: An Altera CPLD probably, as Xilinx' are a bit... small and not very flexible (You pack much more in an EPM240 as you do in a XC95144, it costs a bit more the EPM240 I mean).
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