MAMEWorld Forums - News - Re: Random DU Updates *edit*

>Andrew Welburn got Ramtek Knockout. It's pre-CPU era but has some proms.

This Ramtek find by Andy is impressive. It is a Ramtek game I have never heard of. I don't know if it is listed on other various info sites. As for the Knockout name, I only know of Digital Games's product so this is news to me. I hope the proms do make it into the ramtek.c source file in case etabeta has time to cover this find.

After seeing Andy's photo of Knockout game screen image and pcb is dated 1974, it looks like Ramtek could actually be the first company that made a block type screen genre that simulates a pinball game. And it looks as though maybe Midway, Exidy and Chicago Coin joined the bandwagon the following year. That is my current guess. The odd part is Ramtek Knockout went by unnoticed for some time.

Atari's early pinball game is different so I am excluding their game from the others.

It is very interesting that Ramtek had figured things out with dip switches whereas other companies (Chicago Coin and likely Exidy as well and along with Midway) were using wire jumpers for score settings. The two dip switches have to be related to score adjustments settings (ie free game etc.) and other options such as number of coins credits for players to play game.

Hopefully some logic schematics can be found for this pcb some time later cause there will likely be no volunteers willing to hand create schematics from scratch in order to emulate the game. I wouldn't be surprised that one of the proms contains game data for ball control movement and player's paddle movements just like Clean Sweep.

http://www.andysarcade.net/pix/AA02587P.JPG

impromptu pcb info from the photo.

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Ramtek pcb 055300
1974

8 position dips @ 8F and 11E

proms:

550306-02.4b
550306-03.3b
550306-0x.2b
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Edited by gregf (04/15/15 08:56 PM)