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Post by VectorX on Sept 29, 2012 17:21:13 GMT -5
I just wanted to know if anyone knew how much a color Vectrex would have cost. I saw on some site once that claimed it would only cost an extra $50 to give the Vectrex color but I have my doubts about that.
Does anyone know?
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Post by darrin9999 on Sept 29, 2012 19:34:13 GMT -5
I don`t know! but It would be cool to see...
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Post by VectorX on Sept 29, 2012 20:24:26 GMT -5
I assume the one prototype known to exist is still around. And it only could display one color at a time, rather than be multi-colored, like with Space Duel or Tempest. But yeah, it would be cool to see.
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Post by sj on Sept 30, 2012 13:14:29 GMT -5
Who owns it?
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Post by VectorX on Sept 30, 2012 15:21:58 GMT -5
Jay Smith.
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Post by vectrexmad on Sept 30, 2012 17:36:40 GMT -5
"Jay donated the Color Vectrex Proto to the CGE museum and also he also donated the original 1982 handmade prototype..." Ref: The Vectrex at CGE '99, www.atarihq.com/vectrex/po_cge.htm |
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Post by VectorX on Sept 30, 2012 17:46:15 GMT -5
I wonder if they've done anything with it since?
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Post by vectrexmad on Sept 30, 2012 17:50:39 GMT -5
I beleive they still had it on show at the CGE2010 so it must be a permanent CGE museum exhibit.
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Post by vectrexmad on Sept 30, 2012 18:06:16 GMT -5
I just wanted to know if anyone knew how much a color Vectrex would have cost. I saw on some site once that claimed it would only cost an extra $50 to give the Vectrex color but I have my doubts about that. Does anyone know? Well from the various reported interviews with Jay Smith, it looks like it wasn't going to be as expensive as one would have expected. That is because they weren't doing colour with 3 seperate guns (red, green, blue) which would have added considerably to the cost but rather were developing colour through using just one gun as in a conventional B&W. But the trick they were experimenting with was the use of two phosphor coats (red and green) on the CRT. By varying the voltage of the gun this would control if the emitted electrons would go through the first layer into the second to get the green, or back into the first layer to get the red. A voltage inbetween would give a third colour. $50 could have been the target bill of materials cost and of course the retail value would have depended on economies of scale, i.e. the more units they planned to sell the cheaper the component parts. Alas the video game crash, and the resulting end of the research of this novel technology. |
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Post by VectorX on Sept 30, 2012 18:37:34 GMT -5
Any idea on the turnaround on such project, if they were able to get it to work reliably and be able to mass produce it? Because the Vectrex and/or games (I forget which, although I think it was the first several games) had really fast development time. Because in that link that you gave of it being on display, it read 1983, just a year after the original Vectrex was released. I mean...wow. If that was ready by '84 or '85, if the crash hadn't happened, think of what an upgrade that would be! Now I'm depressed though in thinking about it  |
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Post by vectrexmad on Oct 1, 2012 7:02:38 GMT -5
No idea sorry. I know they were having problems to get it to work reliably (they burnt a hole in centre of the face of the tube because they tried with too much voltage on the gun).
Maybe start a new thread titled Questions for Jay Smith? This had been done on rec.games.vectrex but not many questions were asked. I think only because that group readership is getting smaller and smaller.
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Post by VectorX on Oct 1, 2012 8:19:07 GMT -5
I know they were having problems to get it to work reliably (they burnt a hole in centre of the face of the tube because they tried with too much voltage on the gun). Yeah I know about the hole, that's why I had thought it wouldn't be ready/released for another year or two. Maybe start a new thread titled Questions for Jay Smith? This had been done on rec.games.vectrex but not many questions were asked. I think only because that group readership is getting smaller and smaller. I think either Oliver of the Vectrex Museum has either been really busy or Smith has, since it's been months now since he was supposed to finish up with his Smith wiki page and he hasn't. It can take damn near forever for people to go back and forth answering questions in order to put a page up, hence why I've pretty much quit doing those for a while now. |
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Post by gliptitude on Oct 1, 2012 15:42:47 GMT -5
xx edit xxx posted in wrong forum thread somehow, comment deleted -
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