Simon Augustin's DINGPONG Turns a Scrapped CRT Video Doorbell Into a Chunky Portable Pong Game
A GI Pong-on-a-chip and other by-and-large period appropriate components gives you an hour's tennis on the bus.
Maker Simon Augustin has turned an old video doorbell, rescued from the scrap heap, into junk pile competition for Nintendo's classic Game Boy console — so long as all you want to do is play Atari's Pong on a chunky handheld with a tiny cathode-ray tube display.
"When I saw this video doorbell lying next to the scrap container, I knew I was going to build a portable Pong console with it," Augustin explains in translation from German. "A retro-collector friend brought me two of the good old [General Instruments] AY-3-8500 Pong chips (I installed one of them in my very first Pong console, which only works when it's cold). I got the batteries cheaply from Pollin, and old leftovers, hobby items, switches, and potentiometers are also from the scrap heap."
Pong was, of course, Atari's second and considerably more successful arcade game, a follow-up to the overly-complex Computer Space. Designed by Allan Alcorn as part of a training exercise, the cabinets swept the world — and the courtroom, thanks to the bat-and-ball concept having been gently borrowed from an unwitting Magnavox and its Odyssey home console. Pong, in turn, would inspire its own clones — including single-chip implementations, like the General Instruments AY-3-8500 "Bat 'n' Ball" chip.
It's this chip that sits at the heart of Augustin's build, dubbed Ding Pong. It interfaces with the CRT display — originally designed for the Sony Watchman and made considerably more compact by being side-oriented — and buzzer of an outdated video doorbell now finding new life as a portable console. Knobs connected to potentiometers at either side of the unit provide control over the two paddles, making it a two-player game — and there's even an old-stock battery to give it just enough power for around an hour's play.
"Do you remember the [Nintendo] Game Boy commercial 'Tennis on the Bus'? This Pong port is quite bulky," Augustin admits of what he has termed "DINGPONG", "and has a rather small screen and, compared to the Game Boy, let's say mediocre battery life. The screen is brighter, though (except in bright light…)"
Augustin's full write-up is available on his website, in German with an English summary beneath.
