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What Is a Magnavox Odyssey Microprosessor?

A Magnavox Odyssey microprosessor or microprocessor refers to the Magnavox Odyssey 2 microprocessor. It is a game console that was released in 1978 that has a Texas Instruments single-chip design processor and a graphics processing unit. The Odyssey game console circuits or game cartridges plugged into the game console and the copper pins on the cards completed a circuit that would allow a pre-installed game to be played on the television.

History
- The Magnavox Odyssey was invented by Ralph Baer, who worked on it for five years before it was released in 1972. The Magnavox Odyssey was released three years before Atari PONG home consoles, making it the first home video game console on the market. Baer was one of the pioneers of the home game console industry. In 1975, he invented the microprocessor-controlled VCR-based interactive video game method. The method included systems for nesting data in video signals to allow for real-time interaction between the player, VCR-delivered pictures and micro-processor-generated action characters on a TV screen.
Odyssey 2
- The Magnavox Odyssey 2 was released in 1978 with a selling price of $100. It was sold as the Philips Videopac G7000 in Europe, as the Philips Odyssey in Brazil and as the Magnavox Odyssey 2 in the U.S. When Philips purchased Magnavox, the company sold the game console as the Philips Odyssey 2.
Circuits
- The CPU of the Magnavox Odyssey was the Intel 8048 8-bit micro-controller that had 648B of RAM. The Odyssey had removable circuit cards or integrated circuits that were used to select and play one of the built-in games on the console. The Odyessy used diode-transistor logic components, which were "pre-Microprocessor" components that consisted of a minicomputer built with discrete integrated circuits on three printed circuit boards. Collision detection during game play is done by DTL circuits. Ball direction reversal was controlled by the DTL flip-flop circuits. The circuit components that created the pixels for the ball and players used binary signals.
Peripherals
- The Odyssey 2 came with two plug-in player hand control joysticks, an alpha-numeric (QWERTY) keyboard, an antenna/game switch box and a game cartridge. There was a colored plastic overlay for the TV screen that provided bright play-field for the player sprites to maneuver around. The joystick controllers or ball and paddle symbols were controlled by analog controllers, similar to how the Atari 2600 paddles controlled games.

Classic Console Games