Photon () is a

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

arcade cabinet An arcade cabinet, also known as an arcade machine or a coin-op cabinet or coin-op machine, is the housing within which an arcade game's electronic hardware resides. Most cabinets designed since the mid-1980s conform to the Japanese Amusement Ma ...

produced between the late 1980s and the early 1990s in

Penza Penza (, ) is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative center of Penza Oblast, Russia. It is located on the Sura (river), Sura River, southeast of Moscow. As of the 2010 Russian census, 2010 Census, Penza had ...

Production

The Photon

was produced in the late 1980s to early 1990s by the eponymous cooperative in

. Components were purchased from the plants of

Voronezh Voronezh ( ; , ) is a city and the administrative centre of Voronezh Oblast in southwestern Russia straddling the Voronezh River, located from where it flows into the Don River. The city sits on the Southeastern Railway, which connects wes ...

Saransk Saransk (, ); ; is the capital city of Mordovia, Russia, as well as its financial and economic centre. It is located in the Volga River, Volga drainage basin, basin at the confluence of the Saranka and Insar Rivers, about east of Moscow. Sar ...

and

Nizhny Novgorod Nizhny Novgorod ( ; rus, links=no, Нижний Новгород, a=Ru-Nizhny Novgorod.ogg, p=ˈnʲiʐnʲɪj ˈnovɡərət, t=Lower Newtown; colloquially shortened to Nizhny) is a city and the administrative centre of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast an ...

. Machines were purchased from the manufacturer "Union" and the Ministry of Culture. The volume of production of automatic machines was up to 150 units per month.

Games

The Photon machine with a PC8000 () card has three games loaded on it. The game variants of the machine differ by a sign with instructions depending on the installed game. * Питон (''Python'') * Клад / Лабиринт (''Klad / Labyrinth'', ''Treasure / Labyrinth'') * Тетрис (''

Tetris ''Tetris'' () is a puzzle video game created in 1985 by Alexey Pajitnov, a Soviet software engineer. In ''Tetris'', falling tetromino shapes must be neatly sorted into a pile; once a horizontal line of the game board is filled in, it disa ...

'') Versions of the games "Labyrinth" and "Treasure" also exist for the ordinary PC8000. The versions differ due to the lack of a coin acceptor and a time counter. The following sets of games are known for the

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer developed and marketed by Sinclair Research. One of the most influential computers ever made and one of the all-time bestselling British computers, over five million units were sold. ...

-compatible machine: * Бродяга (''Brodjaga'', '' Inspector Gadget and the Circus of Fear'') * Чёрный корабль (''Czernyj Korabl'', ''Black Beard'') * Повар / Собрать Буран / Агропром (''Povar / Sobrat' Buran / Agroprom'', ''Cookie / Jetpack / Pssst'')

Technical specifications

Made on the basis of a slightly modified Soviet PC8000 consumer

computer A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...

. The modification entails replacing the ROM chips with the

BASIC Basic or BASIC may refer to: Science and technology * BASIC, a computer programming language * Basic (chemistry), having the properties of a base * Basic access authentication, in HTTP Entertainment * Basic (film), ''Basic'' (film), a 2003 film ...

interpreter with the

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...

with the game program. Also, there is no keyboard and piezo emitter mounted on the computer board for audio playback. Instead, the sound output is connected to a

tape recorder An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present ...

. The

joystick A joystick, sometimes called a flight stick, is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. Also known as the control column, it is the principal control devic ...

is connected to the standard connector of the joystick. Also known is a later version of the automaton, Foton-IK02,{{Cite web, url=http://speccy.info/%D0%A4%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%BD-%D0%98%D0%9A02, title=Фотон-ИК02 — SpeccyWiki, website=speccy.info, access-date=2019-05-21 where the

-compatible board is used. Compared to the PC8000 mainboard, its graphics capabilities are weaker, but faster.

Emulation

In 2009, enthusiasts dumped a

from one of the games for the machine (''Tetris''). Support for the machine with a PC8000 board and the first game for it was added to the

MAME MAME (formerly an acronym of Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is a free and open-source emulator designed to emulate the hardware of arcade games, video game consoles, old computers and other systems in software on modern personal computers and ...

emulator In computing, an emulator is Computer hardware, hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run sof ...

in version 0.133u1 in August 2009. The next version (0.134, September of the same year) adds support for a machine with a ZX Spectrum-compatible card.

References

Arcade system boards Computing in the Soviet Union Soviet brands Goods manufactured in the Soviet Union Arcade-only video games Arcade video games

Production

Games

Technical specifications

Emulation

See also

References