Posted by Bob Ford on 11/11/06 23:27

Pardon the top post.........
and to think, I gave away one of these things in 1984.
Sounds like I could have retired from the money I could get
for it today ;-^)

On Sat, 11 Nov 2006 22:33:50 GMT, "Mark SG" <glinskym@sbcglobal.net>
wrote:

>Ending Sunday, November 12 about 11:25 PM EST (8:25 PM PST)
>
>http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=001&sspagename=STRK%3AMESE%3AIT&viewitem=&item=110052477912&rd=1&rd=1
>
>ATARI C240 VIDEO MUSIC GRAPHICS COMPONENT
>
>This auction includes the Atari C240 Video Music graphics unit with power
>supply, and a copy of the promotional material / operation manual, and
>schematics of the circuit board. The Atari C240 Video Music unit is in
>excellent shape.
>
>The Atari C240 Video Music graphics converter takes audio input from a
>stereo or other audio device and converts it into wild video patterns that
>are displayed on a TV. The patterns change with the volume and beat of the
>music. There a a multitude of controls to change gain, color, contour,
>shape, horizontal and vertical display characteristics.
>
>It was 1975 and Bob Brown (originator of home Pong) was looking for another
>consumer (home) product to design. Mega stereo systems (multi-component
>setups that were usually designed with a mixture of futuristic metal and rec
>room woodgrain) were all the rage. Bob decided to make another component
>that would take advantage of Atari's video display technology and act as a
>bridge between the television set and the stereo system. The result was the
>Atari Video Music, which Atari released on it's own in 1976.
>
>By selecting any 4 predefined shape modes and further adjusting the
>horizontal and vertical displays as well as the color and contour knobs, you
>are able to create psychedelic displays on your television. Legend has it
>that while on a tour of the home Pong manufacturing facilities, the Sears
>people were shown the Video Music prototype. One of the people from Sears
>asked what they were smoking when they designed it, and one of the
>technicians stepped out from the back room and produced a lit joint.
>
>Today, the AVM is extremely scarce, and consider yourself one of the select
>few owners should you get lucky enough to find one. It also doesn't help
>that the Video Music looks like an amplifier, and most folks will pass it up
>not knowing it's a product made by Atari. Fans of the Jaguar CD's Virtual
>Light Machine who check out the VLM's distant relative will get a major trip
>for sure! Don't expect anything better than archaic 2600-type stuff,
>however. This is 1976 we're talking about. Any receiver or amplifier can be
>attached to the Video Music via RCA style jacks. From there, you simply
>connect the Video Music to the television to produce the desired effects on
>your TV. As with most high voltage products from this area, to guard against
>static electricity and other problems make sure it's completely grounded
>before plugging in the jacks.
>
>Back in the heady days of Nolan Bushnell-managed Atari, when the home
>versions of games like Pong and Stunt Cycle were making decent money, and
>the sky seemed to be the limit, and the 2600 was nothing more than a
>promising idea on the horizon, anything could've been the next big thing.
>And not even necessarily anything that was a video game. Despite all of the
>legendary stories of executive meetings in hot tubs, on-the-job marijuana
>use, and blue-jeans-as-businesswear, it may just be that nothing provides as
>much concrete evidence of the heady, psychedelic early days of Atari as one
>of their most obscure products: Atari Video Music.
>
>Simply put, Atari Video Music was a precursor to the "CD visualizations"
>that are now commonplace in home video game consoles and computer audio
>player programs. In 2000, it caused some consternation that Sony's
>Playstation 2 lacked the colorful CD player visualization modes of the
>original Playstation - it was a standard feature and people expected it to
>be there. In 1976, however, it was hard to explain what Atari Video Music
>did, let alone why a product would be released that would create its effects
>(or, for that matter, why anybody would buy one). Video Music created
>blindingly colorful (and I don't use that description lightly), psychedelic
>light displays that would pulsate and change depending on the intensity of
>the music.
>
>Of course, this being the 70s, Video Music was strictly analog, and to
>create even the limited effects that it produces, it was quite a bulky piece
>of woodgrain wizardry. (In the Phosphor Dot Fossils game museum, our Atari
>Video Music unit sits directly underneath the massive Atari 5200, and the
>5200's footprint is only slightly larger.) A series of buttons along the
>lower front panel of Video Music, ranging in warm colors from brown to tan,
>governs the unit's basic functions (including the power switch, and whether
>or not the manual controls have any influence over the display). Above
>those, several knobs give the user manual control over intensity and various
>display parameters - allowing for solid or "donut" shaped displays, the
>degree of sensitivity to changes in the audio, and how many patterns would
>appear on the screen at a given time.
>
>It's hard to really explain just how bright Video Music's displays are. As
>this piece of hardware comes from the era when game makers were only just
>learning that high-constrast displays could do permanent damage to TV
>screens if left on for a significant amount of time, its displays are
>incredibly high-constrast and incredibly colorful - maybe it's a testament
>to a far trippier era, but it's hard to watch it directly at length. (The
>most pleasing effect, in fact, comes from turning Video Music on, getting
>the music going...and then looking at the reflection of the colors on the
>opposite wall.)
>
>The designer of Video Music, Atari engineer Bob Brown, moved on to help
>design the company's next big project, a programmable video game system, and
>his brainchild remained unique in the company's history - really, for that
>matter, in the history of consumer electronics altogether. Video Music
>remains, to this day, a hard-to-find relic of Atari's pre-Warner Bros.
>heyday in the 1970s.
>
>If you want to get an idea of what kind of patterns the Atari Video Music
>component produces, check out this site!
>
>
>
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>This Atari C240 Video Music component is in excellent condition, and is
>fully functional. Includes schematics for the circuit boards.
>
Bob Ford
Images In Motion
www.imagesinmotion.com

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