OK, I suspect getting to, and buzzing out, the relays is going to be a big part of the reverse engineering effort. To give me a bit of a head start on that, let's tackle some simpler things first, starting with the controllers.
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| Controller front view |
The controllers are housed in black wooden boxes that measure 19.5x17.5x4cm. On the top there's a blue noughts and crosses board on a white background which is painted on the back surface of a clear piece of plastic. At the centre of each tic-tac-toe position is a clear plastic push button. These are 6mm in diameter and stand about 5mm out from the case. Above the board is a small unpainted area for a lamp to shine through, with a hand written "PLAY" label below it. This plastic play area is screwed to the top of the controller box.
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| Controller back view |
On the back of the controller is the 16 way connector that plugs into the base unit. It has pretty hefty blade contacts and an even larger locating pin.
The controller is opened by undoing seven small wood screws on the bottom to remove the base.
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| Controller internal view |
Inside, the push buttons can be seen to rest on long contact switches that look as though they may have been harvested from relays. These switches give the buttons their bouncy feel. The buttons are wider at the base preventing them being removed, and are only held laterally in position by the thickness of case top and playfield plastic.
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| Closeup of switches |
Like the base unit, the wiring is laced and neat. Having buzzed out the connections, the circuit below has been constructed (please excuse the use of an LED to represent a lamp, I couldn't find the correct symbol in the version of Eagle I have).
Switches are numbered from 1 through 9 from the top left to bottom right on the tic-tac-toe board (switch 3 is the top right position). Connector pins are numbered looking at the plug from the outside of controller with the locating pin on the left, as shown below, with pin 1 at the bottom left.
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| Controller connector - pin 1 bottom left, pin 16 top right |
Rather than using a switch matrix, it can be seen that each button closes an individual contact wire with a common, connected to pin 8. The lamp, which is wired across pins 1 and 2 is a 2.5V incandescent torch bulb with a lens envelope, shown below.
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| Play bulb |
Pins 5 and 6 are shorted together, presumably to signal to the base unit that a controller has been inserted into a particular socket. Pins 3 and 4, and the large locating pin are left unconnected.
And that's about it as far as the controllers go. They are interchangeable and wired identically.
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