Make-It-Yourself projects
Video Ball: Electronics Australia, may 1976

This article features an interesting Video Ball project designed with 13 TTL chips (5 74C00 and 8 74C02). It plays the basic Tennis game with five individual settings:
- Bat or Hole for left player
- Bat or Hole for right player
- Wobble for left player
- Wobble for right player
- Player interation

This allows 32 variants. The most common variant is the inversion of a paddle to obtain a vertical line with a hole. However, the two others are unique in this design: not only a wobble effect on a player to make its paddle oscillate slightly, but also an interaction where the opponent's paddle will move a little bit when the other player moves. Game speed is adjustable using a potentiometer. More games can be imagined by placing one or two holes at specific locations. For example, Solo Basketball is obtained by inverting the second player and placing its hole on the top.

The game was also available in kit form, and a little sound add-on board designed with a 74C00 chip was made available, probably in a later issue as it is not featured in the initial article.

Click the photos to view in large scale. Larger images of the circuit board layout and implementation are given for those who want to build the project.

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If you want to build the game, you will want to view larger versions of the circuit board and its implementation layout as seen on pages 41 and 45 respectively.

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