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57-521: The Microvision was designed by Jay Smith, the engineer who would later design the Vectrex video game console. The Microvision's combination of portability and a cartridge-based system led to moderate success, with Smith Engineering grossing $ 15 million in the first year of the system's release. However, very few cartridges, a small screen, and a lack of support from established home video game companies led to its demise in 1981 . According to Satoru Okada ,

114-406: A telephone may also bear letters which have had several auxiliary uses, such as remembering area codes or whole telephone numbers. The layout of calculators and telephone number pads diverged because they developed at around the same time. The phone layout was determined to be fastest by Bell Labs testing for that application, and at the time it controlled all the publicly connected telephones in

171-490: A 4 × 4 array of 4 I/O lines as outputs and 4 as inputs. A circuit is completed between an output and an input when a key is pressed. Each individual keypress creates a unique signal for the host. If required, and if the processor allows, two keys can be pressed at the same time without ambiguity. Adding diodes in series with each key prevents key ghosting , allowing multiple simultaneous presses. 8 leads can detect many more keys if tri-state multiplexing (Figure 1, right)

228-409: A Viewmaster. The disc spins freely and is driven by a motor. The Vectrex software generates its own frame-rate and compares it to an index signal from the glasses once per revolution. Score is kept of how many wheel rotations are early compared to the software frame rate, and how many are late. The software tries to keep these two trends equal by adjusting the power being delivered to the motor that spins

285-402: A battery was forcefully improperly oriented, while the other battery was properly oriented, the two batteries would be shorted and they would overheat. The solution was to remove terminals for one of the batteries to prevent this hazard. Due to the high cost of changing production molds, Milton Bradley did not eliminate the second battery compartment, but instead removed its terminals and called it

342-457: A costly mistake, even despite reducing its price by 25% and then later 50% in desperation to sell units. In February 1984, after losing $ 31.6 million on the Vectrex, Milton Bradley announced the discontinuation of the console and cancelled development of new games. The company's entire inventory of consoles and accessories was sold off to mass-market discount houses, where they were liquidated at

399-421: A fraction of the console's introductory price. By May 1984, Milton Bradley merged with Hasbro and after-market support ended. Prior to the Vectrex's discontinuation, a successor console with a color screen had been planned. After the rights reverted to Smith Engineering, the company made plans to revive the Vectrex as a handheld, but the imminent arrival of Nintendo's Game Boy put an end to those plans. In

456-407: A game unit that still plays but is unable to properly draw the screen. Nothing that can be done to prevent screen rot in most Microvision systems. Extreme heat (such as resulting from leaving the unit in the sun) can also instantly destroy the screen. A major design problem on early units involves the fact that the microprocessor (which is inside the top of each cartridge) lacks ESD protection and

513-430: A host through 16 separate connecting leads , plus a ground lead (Figure 1, left). Pressing a key will short to ground, which is detected by the host. This design allows any number or combination of keys can be pressed simultaneously. Parallel-in serial-out shift registers may be used to save I/O pins . These 16 + 1 leads can be reduced to just 8 by using x/y multiplexing (Figure 1, center). A 16-key keypad uses

570-558: A spare battery holder. Microvision units and cartridges are now somewhat rare. Those that are still in existence are susceptible to three main problems: "screen rot," ESD damage, and keypad destruction. The manufacturing process used to create the Microvision's LCD was primitive by modern standards. Poor sealing and impurities introduced during manufacture have resulted in the condition known as screen rot . The liquid crystal spontaneously leaks and permanently darkens, resulting in

627-408: A twelve-button keypad , with the switches buried under a thick layer of flexible plastic. To align the user's fingers with the hidden buttons, the cartridges had cutouts in their bottom (over the keypad). As different games required different button functions, the cutouts were covered with a thin printed piece of plastic, which identified the buttons' functions in that game. The problem with this design

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684-469: A vector-drawing cathode-ray tube display was made by connecting the deflection yoke in a standard television to the channels of a stereo amplifier fed with music program material. An auxiliary yoke was used to keep the raster television's horizontal fly-back high-voltage system running. The demo led to a system originally conceived as a handheld called the Mini Arcade but, as Smith Engineering shopped

741-529: A wide range of technologies that can be used as keypads, each with distinctive advantages and disadvantages. These include Resistive, Capacitive, Inductive, Piezoelectric, and Optical. The first key-activated mechanical calculators and many cash registers used "parallel" keys with one column of 0 to 9 for each position the machine could use. A smaller, 10-key input first started on the Standard Adding Machine in 1901. The calculator had

798-451: Is also a compound of MESS (included in MAME , so RetroArch too via libretro ), DVE, lr-vex, Vecx, with a Wii version called VectrexWii. Schematics for a "Vectrex Multicart" cartridge is available, allowing several games to be packed on one cartridge. There are also several people manufacturing and selling newly made games, some complete as cartridges with packing and overlays in

855-479: Is attributed to John E. Karlin , an industrial psychologist at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey. On a telephone keypad , the numbers 1 through 9 are arranged from left to right, top to bottom with 0 in a row below 789 and in the center. Telephone keypads also have the special buttons labelled * ( star ) and # (octothorpe, number sign , "pound", "hex" or "hash") on either side of the zero key. The keys on

912-442: Is directly connected to the copper pins which normally connect the cartridge to the Microvision unit. If the user opens the protective sliding door that covers the pins, the processor can be exposed to any electric charge the user has built up. If the user has built up a substantial charge, the discharge can jump around the door's edge or pass through the door itself ( dielectric breakdown ). The low-voltage integrated circuit inside

969-428: Is that pressing on the buttons stretched the printed plastic, resulting in the thin material stretching and eventually tearing. Having long fingernails exacerbated the condition. Many of the initial games were programmed to give feedback of the keypress when the key was released instead of when the key was pressed. As a result, users may press on the keypad harder because they are not being provided with any feedback that

1026-488: Is unusual and refreshing to see a product appearing on the market with its software ready to run". David H. Ahl stated in Creative Computing Video & Arcade Games in 1983 that "Vector graphics really do make a difference, and the strong line-up of games helps immensely". Since late 1995, there has been a Usenet community of hobbyists writing games for ParaJVE, a Vectrex emulator. Its emulation

1083-482: The E.161 standard for their arrangement. A computer keyboard usually has a small numeric keypad on the side, in addition to the other number keys on the top, but with a calculator-style arrangement of buttons that allow more efficient entry of numerical data. This number pad (commonly abbreviated to numpad ) is usually positioned on the right side of the keyboard because most people are right-handed. Many laptop computers have special function keys that turn part of

1140-494: The "3D Imager" and a light pen for drawing directly on the screen. The Asteroids -inspired Mine Storm was built into the system. The console was conceived by John Ross, of Smith Engineering, in late 1980 as a handheld called the "Mini Arcade". As development progressed, it morphed into a tabletop system that was manufactured by General Consumer Electronics. Strong initial sales caused General Consumer Electronics to be acquired by Milton Bradley. However, just mere months later

1197-449: The CRT is controlled using a circular knob on the back of the display. A vector CRT display such as the one in the Vectrex does not require a special tube, and differs from standard raster-based television sets only in the control circuits. Rather than use sawtooth waves to direct the internal electron beam in a raster pattern, computer-controlled integrators feed linear amplifiers to drive

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1254-471: The United States. Although calculator keypads pre-date telephone keypads by nearly thirty years, the top-to-bottom order for telephones was the result of research studies conducted by a Bell Labs Human Factors group led by John Karlin. They tested a variety of layouts including a Facit like the two-row arrangement, buttons in a circle, buttons in an arc, and rows of three buttons. The definitive study

1311-406: The Vectrex into a color 3-D experience. The imager works by spinning a disk in front of the viewer's eyes. The disk is black for 180 degrees and in some cases has 60 degree wedges of transparent red, green, and blue filters. The user looks through this to the Vectrex screen. The Vectrex synchronizes the rotation of the disk to the software frame rate as it draws 6 screens: with the right eye covered:

1368-565: The Vectrex was conceived in the late 1980s, but was shelved because of its manufacturing cost and the success of the Nintendo Game Boy . The Vectrex was conceived by John Ross of Smith Engineering. He, Mike Purvis, Tom Sloper, and Steve Marking had gone to Electro-Mavin, a surplus warehouse in Los Angeles. They found a 1-inch cathode-ray tube (CRT) and wondered if a small electronic game could be made of it. A demonstration of

1425-422: The Vectrex would succumb as a victim of the video game crash of 1983 and was discontinued in early 1984. Despite its commercial failure, the Vectrex was praised for its software library, unique graphical capabilities, and built-in monitor. Several publications lauded it as one of the best consoles available at the time. The Vectrex was the first console to have a 3D-based peripheral. A color handheld version of

1482-449: The alphabetical keyboard into a numerical keypad as there is insufficient space to allow a separate keypad to be built into the laptop's chassis. Separate external plug-in keypads can be purchased. Keypads for the entry of PINs and for product selection appear on many devices including ATMs, vending machines, point of sale payment devices, time clocks, combination locks and digital door locks. Apart from mechanical keypads, there are

1539-404: The appearance of a flat screen. They also allowed changes in brightness intensity of vector graphics to be more visually distinctive. In some cases game designers created pseudo color cycling effects, for a sense of movement, by using alternating colored patterns. In addition to players' score areas, some overlays also contained additional artwork and patterns, to add to the game's play field. Across

1596-403: The bottom of each overlay are game-specific joystick and button functions as a guide for the player. Each overlay also displayed the title and logo of each game, along with a colored border or design, to add cosmetic flair to the Vectrex (much like an arcade machine with its marquee or side art). Overlays were not required, but added to the experience in terms of the visual look of game graphics and

1653-538: The cartridge (a concept first seen with the Magnavox Odyssey , as well as some early arcade machines). Instead of physically touching the CRT screen, four tabs on the Vectrex console securely held them in place in front of it, with a small gap between the actual screen and the overlay. Made up of one to three colors for the play field area, these overlays simulate simple color graphics (on an otherwise black and white screen), helped reduced glare, flicker and gave

1710-787: The cartridge is extremely ESD sensitive, and can be destroyed by an event of only a few dozen volts which cannot even be felt by the person, delivering a fatal shock to the game unit. This phenomenon was described in detail by John Elder Robison (a former Milton Bradley engineer) in his book Look Me in the Eye ; Robinson described the issue as having been a significant enough issue during the 1979 holiday season (with up to 60% of units being returned as defective) that it resulted in significant panic among Milton Bradley staff and required extensive modifications to both later Microvision units and Microvision factories (the former being of his own design) to better dispel stray static charges. The Microvision unit had

1767-489: The console and its games was from 8 to 80 years old or 8 to Adult. There were 12 titles known to have been released. 4952 4952-56 REV A 4952-79 REV B 4972 4971 TI MP3481NLL 4952 REV - 4974 4976 4973 4975 4974 4064 4176 4177 The Microvision was featured in Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981). XGP Vectrex The Vectrex is a vector display -based home video game console -

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1824-402: The controls, LCD panel and LCD controller. The processors for the first Microvision cartridges were made with both Intel 8021 (cross licensed by Signetics ) and Texas Instruments TMS1100 processors. Due to purchasing issues, Milton Bradley switched to using TMS1100 processors exclusively including reprogramming the games that were originally programmed for the 8021 processor. The TMS1100

1881-419: The deflection yoke. This yoke has similar, if not identical inductances, unlike a TV deflection yoke. The yoke uses a standard TV core. The high-voltage transformer also uses a standard core and bobbin. There is special circuitry to turn off the electron beam if the vector generator stops or fails. This prevents burning of the screen's phosphors . This design is a great deal smaller than the electronics found in

1938-484: The digit keys arranged in one row, with zero on the left, and 9 on the right. The modern four-row arrangement debuted with the Sundstrand Adding Machine in 1911. There is no standard for the layout of the four arithmetic operations, the decimal point , equal sign or other more advanced mathematical functions on the keypad of a calculator . The invention of the push-button telephone keypad

1995-417: The disk at a high enough speed will fool the viewer's eyes/brain into thinking that the multiple images it is seeing are two different views of the same object due to the persistence of vision. This creates the impression of 3-D and color. The same 3-D effect is in fact possible with raster or film-projection images, and the shutter glasses used in some 3-D theaters and virtual reality theme park rides work on

2052-404: The filter and mask wheel. Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) is used to control the motor speed: the ratio of the "on" time versus the "off" time of a rapid stream of power pulses to the motor. In this way the software synchronizes the rotation of the wheel to the software's frame rate, or drawing time, for the combined and repeating group of up to 6 evolving images. A single object that does not lie on

2109-460: The first quarter of 1983. The launch sales were strong enough that Milton Bradley bought out General Consumer Electronics in early 1983. Milton Bradley's greater resources allowed the Vectrex to be released in parts of Europe by mid-1983 and, through a co-branding agreement with Bandai , in Japan as well. However, the video game crash of 1983 turned Milton Bradley's support of the Vectrex into

2166-431: The former head of Nintendo 's R&D1 Department , the Microvision gave birth to Game Boy , the follow-up to Game & Watch , after Nintendo designed around Microvision's limitations. Unlike most later consoles, the Microvision did not contain an onboard processor ( CPU ). Instead, each game included its own processor contained within the removable cartridge. This meant that the console itself effectively consisted of

2223-410: The free-standing, full-sized Asteroids arcade machine. During development, for a short period of time, the possibility of using the 6502 processor was considered, but later its performance was considered insufficient. Early units have a very audible "buzzing" from the built-in speaker that reacts to the graphics generated on screen. This is due to improper production grounding of signal lines of

2280-636: The idea around to developers, it evolved into a tabletop with nine-inch screen. The system was licensed to General Consumer Electronics in 1981. After a brief hardware and software development period, the Vectrex was unveiled on 7 June 1982 at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. It was publicly released in seven select introductory markets in October at a retail price of US$ 199 before being distributed nationally in

2337-560: The key has been pressed. This resulted from a keypad used for prototyping being different from the production keypad; the prototyping keypad had tactile feedback upon key pressing that the production units lacked. While the game cartridge plastic cases were beige colored in the USA, in Europe they came in a variety of different colors, and the games were numbered on the Box. The age range in Europe for

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2394-406: The left eye red image, then green, and then the blue image is drawn, and then, while the left eye is covered by the black 180-degree sector: the right eye red, green, and then the blue image is drawn. Only one eye will see the Vectrex screen and its 3 associated images (or colors) at any one time while the other will be blocked by the 180-degree mask. The prototype was made in the plastic casework of

2451-401: The low-level audio circuitry, and was eventually resolved in later production models. A " ground loop " had been created by a grounding strap added in production to meet U.S. Federal Communications Commission signal radiation requirements. This idiosyncrasy has become a familiar characteristic of the machine. The 3-D Imager, invented by John Ross, turns the 2-D black-and-white images drawn by

2508-428: The mid-1990s, Jay Smith, then head of Smith Engineering, allowed new hardware and software development on a fee- and royalty-free basis. Smith has also allowed duplication of the original Vectrex software on a not-for-profit basis to allow Vectrex owners to obtain the original titles at low cost or for free. The computer and vector generator were designed by Gerry Karr. The computer runs the game's computer code, watches

2565-429: The monitor uses to steer the electron beam over the face of the phosphor screen of the cathode-ray tube. Another signal is generated that controls the brightness of the line. The cathode-ray tube is a Samsung model 240RB40 monochrome unit measuring 9 × 11 inches, displaying a picture of 240 mm diagonal; it is an off-the-shelf picture tube manufactured for small black/white television sets. The brightness of

2622-475: The only one ever designed and released for the home market, that was developed by Smith Engineering and manufactured and sold by General Consumer Electronics. It was first released for the North America market in October 1982 and then Europe and Japan in 1983. Originally produced by General Consumer Electronics, it was later licensed to Milton Bradley after they acquired the company. Bandai released

2679-584: The original audio circuitry on the power board in favor of a module installed elsewhere within the cabinet). Keypad A keypad is a block or pad of buttons set with an arrangement of digits, symbols, or alphabetical letters. Pads mostly containing numbers and used with computers are numeric keypads . Keypads are found on devices which require mainly numeric input such as calculators , television remotes , push-button telephones , vending machines , ATMs , point of sale terminals, combination locks , safes , and digital door locks . Many devices follow

2736-549: The overall display appearance of the console. Some of the Vectrex's library consisted of ports of arcade hits, most of them brought to the console through a licensing deal with Cinematronics . The liquor company Old Mr. Boston gave out a limited number of customized Clean Sweep cartridges, with a Mr. Boston sticker on the box. The overlay was the regular Clean Sweep overlay with the Mr. Boston name, logo, and copyright info running up either side. The game itself had custom text, and

2793-401: The plane of the monitor ( i.e. , in front of or into the monitor) is drawn at least twice to provide information for each eye. The distance between the duplicate images and the angles from which they are drawn will determine where the object will appear to "be" in 3-D space. The 3-D illusion is also enhanced by adjusting the brightness of the object (dimming objects in the background). Spinning

2850-482: The player controlled a top hat rather than a vacuum . Clean Sweep was written by Richard Moszkowski. Byte in 1982 called Vectrex "one of the greatest game machines we have seen this year ... [Vectrex] is a good bet to score big with the consumer". The magazine praised the screen, stating that "it almost has to be seen to be believed; imagine playing games at home (or in the office) using vector graphics with three-dimensional rotation and zoom", and noted that "It

2907-412: The same principle. The light pen allows the user to "draw", to create images and to indicate, on the screen. It has a photo-detector that can see the bright spot of the vector-drawing display monitor when it goes by under the light pen's position where it is being held to the screen. The photo-detector feeds internal pulse-catching circuits that tell the Vectrex and its software of the event. The prototype

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2964-420: The style of the original commercially released games, others with varying degrees of packaging. New hardware has also been developed for the Vectrex in recent years, including a light pen that addressed the limitation of the original version by including buttons that replace the second controller required on the original version, and a daughterboard that addresses the well-known buzz in the system's audio (bypassing

3021-423: The system in Japan. The Vectrex, in contrast to other video game systems at the time, did not need to be hooked up to a television set; it had an integrated (vertically orientated) monochrome CRT monitor . A detachable wired control pad could be folded into the lower base of the console. Games came with translucent color overlays to place over the screen. Optional peripherals included a pair of 3D goggles known as

3078-446: The user's inputs, runs the sound generator, and controls the vector generator to make the screen drawings. The vector generator is an all-analog design using two integrators: X and Y. The computer sets the integration rates using a digital-to-analog converter. The computer controls the integration time by momentarily closing electronic analog switches within the operational-amplifier based integrator circuits. Voltage ramps are produced that

3135-482: Was a more primitive device, but offered more memory and lower power consumption than the 8021. First-revision Microvisions needed two batteries due to the 8021's higher power consumption, but later units (designed for the TMS1100) only had one active battery holder. Even though the battery compartment was designed to allow the two 9-volt batteries to be inserted with proper polarity of positive and negative terminals, when

3192-507: Was made in the plastic casework of a Marks-A-Lot felt-tipped marker pen. The Vectrex draws a spider-web-like search-pattern to track the pen's location. The software changes the pattern size as the pen changes motions and velocity in an attempt keep a continuous lock on the pen's position. The Vectrex light pen was invented by John Ross. In order to enhance the display visuals of the Vectrex, every commercially released game included its own unique translucent plastic screen overlay that accompanied

3249-554: Was published in 1960: "Human Factor Engineering Studies of the Design and Use of Pushbutton Telephone Sets" by R. L. Deininger. This study concluded that the adopted layout was best, and that the calculator layout was about 3% slower than the adopted telephone keypad. Despite the conclusions obtained in the study, there are several popular theories and folk histories explaining the inverse order of telephone and calculator keypads. A mechanically-switched 16-key keypad can be connected to

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