• 1977

Hardware Description

The Grandstand T.V. Game 2000 is a classic pong system sold in U.K. It can be also found under different other brands worldwide, for example as the Univox 41N in France. The system itself seems to have been made in Korea. The electronic board is labeled "F'GAMATIC-7600". Indeed many Gamatic 7600 systems identical to this one can be found worldwide, the earliest one being a japanese Gamatic 7600 system released in 1976. The case design is not particularly original: black rectangle with two detachable controllers and a wide control panel at the top. The controllers are also rectangular with a dial to move the bat on screen and a red button each, one to serve (left player) and the other to reset the game (right player). As mostly all the systems powered by the TMS-1965 chipset from Texas Instruments, the T.V. Game Model 2000 offers 4 pong games : Football, Squash, Tennis and Practice delivered by this specialised chip (the TMS-1965 was pin-to-pin compatible with the more popular AY-3-8500 chip from General Instruments) On the control panel can be found the usual setting switches: ball speed (slow/fast), automatic service (on/off), game selection, rebound angle (20°/40°), bat size (small/big) and power switch. The system can be powered by six CM2 battery cells or through an external power supply (9v DC, 360 mW).