The PC-50X Cart family

The world was going through ‘pong madness.’ Developers started to create advancements onto the AY-3-8500 chip, adding colour and better sound- generally improving the whole gaming experience.

Europe did not see the release of Intelvision and Atari 2600 till the early 1980s. This allowed Pong to have a longer success. Rather then creating a new machine for each new chip, developers took the General Instruments popular line of chips and slapped them into cartridges. These carts were not like ROM carts used in later systems. They simply housed a specific General Instruments processor chip with pin outs to interface with a console. These were the PC-50X line of cartridges. Heres what they look like.


With PC-50X cartridges manufactures were able to produce a console machine which could play several g@mes instead of only one, even being able to market them at a low cost. The units themselves were made in Hong Kong, and were marketed by Creatronic, Hanimex, ITMC, Rollet, Grandstand , Soundic and lord knows how many other manufacturers.

The initial model SD-050 varied in its appearance, having various colours and designs with slight modifications and manufactures names. Although they had basically the same look and overall design, two detachable controllers and ten buttons on the top of the machine- which would be used to select different cartridges. It would be these ten buttons which would allow the public to easily identify with the console.

New models were being introduced well into the 80’s with improvements such as additional settings, more realistic sounds and SECAM colour (four colours.)