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Good morning and welcome back to the ValorosoIT channel, the channel dedicated to vintage computers and electronics. Today's video is a conference held by Andrea Contato, entitled Mesaton and Universal Game Computer, two consoles made in Italy. It was recorded last year at the Varese Retrocomputing. If you like the topics I talk about in my channel @ValorosoIT I invite you to subscribe and activate the notification bell. I am also present on TikTok, on other social networks, on Instagram, on Facebook and also on the blog www.valoroso.it, where you can find various articles related to vintage computers and electronics. Well! Let's enjoy this conference and... see you soon!
Tell us everything you can!
Well, then, the story we will tell today has quite distant origins, both in time and space. It all starts with our first protagonist of the day: Signetics Corporation, in 1961, some engineers, who leave Fairchild because they are dissatisfied, decide to start their own semiconductor company. It's something that happens often, it happened often in the United States: you had, let's say, a different idea about how to proceed with the technology. Consider that we often had to deal with technologies that didn't necessarily end up somewhere, a lot of technological dead ends. So if they didn't let you work as you wanted, you took your own company; sooner or later you would find someone who financed you. The funny thing is that some of these engineers leaving Fairchild to go to Signetics had left Shockley Corporation to start Fairchild, and some of their colleagues had also left Shockley to go to Fairchild and then rejoined when they went to start Intel. I mean, it was an incestuous industry to say the least. The fact is that the bone of contention, the problem that pushed the Signetics guys to start their own company, is the fact that they basically wanted to work with integrated circuits, something that Fairchild wasn't interested in. They sold transistors and were happy with it. It didn't even seem like there was really a market for this type of product. And, actually, I went a little too far at first. At first the Signetics people didn't seem to see clearly; the first 2-3 years business is not particularly good. Then they manage to find contracts with the military sector and things start to improve. Obviously, as we know, when a market opens up, those who are not, let's say, the pioneers but who have more money always arrive. So Signetics once again found itself competing with Fairchild who had a lot of money, because they were well established in their home market. She arrived and began to, as the Americans say, undercut, that is, to wage a shameless price war. And so Signetics finds itself in a bad situation again: it's a terrible year, layoffs begin, development project plans are cancelled, until at a certain point in 1971 someone arrives who saves the day. They invented this NE555 integrated circuit, which is so called because it has three 5 ohm resistors inside, which is used for more or less everything. They throw it in in all possible and imaginable places: it is a great miracle and brings Signetics a lot of money. So with the money, those of Signetics begin to dream and fly high again. They hire a guy who worked on the IBM 1140, if I remember correctly, which of all IBM products is the one, let's say, a little more consumer, so to speak, because they don't sell it to you, they rent it to you for $1000 a month, the equivalent of $4-5000 now so to speak. So it still cost a lot. When they say mini computers you don't have to think of a small thing, you have to think of something that costs much less than the mainframe but still costs a lot. He had worked... John Kessler had worked, I was saying, on these IBMs. They task him with developing a CPU because they are aiming really high: they want to compete with Intel which recently brought out the 4004. In short, no small feat. John Kessler gets to work, in a year, a year and a half he would have the product ready. Signetics calls it 2650: it is also a good CPU and it came out promptly in the sense that it is actually one of the first CPUs with an affordable price that could therefore be put into consumer products to come out on the market. It's a shame that it doesn't come out on the market, because Signetics is once again out of money.
When he runs out of money, he cancels everything, puts everything on the shelf and the Signetics 2650, even though it would have been ready in the two-year period 72-73, remains on the shelf for three long years during which everyone arrives: Motorola, MOS, Intel was already there, Federico Faggin's Zilog. Everyone arrives and everyone arrives before them. It takes 3 years until at some point Philips arrives. Philips is a European company, so the entire center of gravity now shifts to Europe. It's a European company that makes a lot of consumer equipment: turntables, stereo systems, they make everything. But it lacks, let's say, the semiconductor branch. He decides to make a move at Commodore. What does Commodore do to enter the computer market - no, it doesn't do it to enter the computer market, it does it to stay in the calculator market - it buys MOS which makes integrated circuits. Here, they make the exact same move, that is, they go vertical: they buy those who make the integrated circuits which they will then put in their products. The Signetics 2650 is a sort of little gift that you find under the tree. They didn't buy it for that, but once they find out that they have it, and that no one knew they had it because they never marketed it, they say: Well, we have to do something with this CPU, right? And at that point the matter finally arrives in Italy.
Here, a small aside: if you have already heard something about those consoles we will talk about, if they have talked to you, you have seen, you have read on the Internet, here, delete everything because unfortunately it is all wrong information. The point is that Philips, as I said before, has this product in hand. Philips specializes in working not with companies, not with those who produce, it is Philips that produces and sells directly to the consumer. So the new Philips / Signetics is a paradigm shift. They find this product in their hands and have to find a way to sell it and, unlike all other companies, they think in their own way. That is, they create small regional teams, there is also one in Italy and at the head is this gentleman who I will tell you who he is later. They create small regional Task Forces to which they give two or three capable engineers, some supporting technicians and then a sales person. The salesperson simply has to find the customer, propose solutions, show him that something can be done with integrated circuits and Philips chips (Signetics). And then it's up to this Task Force which belongs to Philips to find the system to produce something that the customer can then sell. So it's a whole different thing. I mean, we don't have a company that makes computers, like Apple, that goes and buys the chip and puts it in the car. Here we have a company that produces the chip that goes to the customer and says: Would you like to build a computer? Would you like to make a console? I help you, I give you the technology. And this is the key that explains everything that happens next.
Pierantonio Palerma, for those who don't know him, will later become - I'm reading this because I'll never remember it - he will become editorial director of Amiga Magazine, of Bit and PC Magazine, so he's not someone we just missed along the way. The fact is that he has just graduated in electronic engineering in Milan, as soon as he leaves they hire him at Philips and give him the leadership of this small Task Force. So he has direct contact with customers. Among the various clients with whom he has contact there is a certain guy called Alberto Neri. He is also an engineer, he is from Bologna, he came to Milan where he started working with companies such as Texas Instruments.
In reality he finally arrived at Texas Instruments, he started at SGS in Agrate, which we now know as ST Microelectronics. Alberto Neri takes care of himself... he is a technician, but he doesn't do technical work, he places orders for these companies. So he knows the suppliers and therefore often talks to Palerma. And it happens that they met in '75. But I have to take a step back. It happens that in '74 Alberto Neri, seeing that he is very good, is contacted by some colleagues and a couple of financiers who tell him: Listen, let's stop working here in Texas Instruments Italia, we'll start our own company, we'll call it Mesa. He gives in, they woo him, they make big promises: we already have customers, we already know what to do. He leaves Texas Instruments and goes to manage Mesa Spa, but the timing is the worst possible because there is austerity. What happens is that the customers who promised him that they would buy heaven and earth literally evaporate. At that point he desperately starts to find other people, other companies to sell the Mesa components to, but there is almost no one on the horizon, because austerity at an industrial level is not just a moment in which energy costs have skyrocketed, you have to drive around with alternate license plates during the week and everyone goes on foot at the weekend. It is a moment in which companies, in addition to finding themselves with the effects of the oil crisis, also find themselves after a period of 2-3 years of shortage, a bit like what is happening now. They find themselves with warehouses full of semi-finished components, so it is difficult at a time when people spend little to convince someone to buy something their warehouse is already full of. So poor Neri finds himself in a really bad situation and starts thinking lateral. So, since he can't convince anyone to buy Mesa Spa's wonderful products, he has to invent something new. And it does it 2 years ahead of everyone else.
What you see is the PC 1500, it is a computer on a board, at the center of which is the Signetics 2650. Already in '75, when he contacted Palerma, Palerma told him: I don't know, you who run the Mesa Spa have something, do you have any ideas in mind? We have these components, do you have any ideas on what we could do with them? And he answers him clearly: Let's make a microcomputer, what will it be, right? 2 years ahead of everyone else, so by the way even ahead of the Apple 1, etc. etc. The fact is that they get to work... Now I read the names because I will never remember them. They start working on this computer to which they give a very significant name: they call it Mesacomp. Be careful, then a Mesacomp 1 will pop up afterwards, it's something else. It's called Mesacomp, it never goes beyond prototype status because obviously the period isn't fantastic and to convince some Italian to spend all that money for a computer that doesn't have video, that doesn't have a printer, that already connects it to the tape drive takes a miracle. We don't have a Basic interpreter and you have to enter everything you need to enter with a hex keypad and program it in assembly, it's not really a walk in the park. In the United States they also make it because families have very different incomes. Here in Italy they remain a bit stuck there, but it's not that they don't make an effort. They are so committed to it that they call a guy called Marco Pagani, another engineer who also works with Texas Instruments, and tell him: We lack a system to connect this Mesacomp 1 of ours, which is based on the Signetics 2650, we need a system to connect it to the television. Yes, of course Philips sells us the frequency modulator, they ask us for 80,000 lire. We could never put 80,000 lire of components in a car if we really think about selling it to someone who will then buy it, we need something cheaper.
And this Marco Pagani comes out with a small device with a couple of components that costs 2-3000 lire. So he manages to reduce the price by almost 25 times. Everyone is very happy, especially Palerma is very happy, and Palerma is doing, obviously with the approval of our Alberto Neri, sending the projects to Holland. And in Holland they write them down, where the Philips headquarters are, and in Holland they write down that there is someone who developed this thing. And from there a particular trend begins whereby we have our own Task Force that works with customers, but we then keep the result of the work and sell it to others. You see that little by little all the pieces fit together.
The thing is, they make this signal converter, they also make an interface to the tape drive. Then, seeing as Palerma didn't know what exactly to do with the computer, he decided to also create a home automation system, just to... Then he connected the computer to the refrigerator, to the windows with a motor that opened and closed at predetermined times. But, as I was telling you, in the end no one will buy this Mesacomp, for the moment, and it remains there. Then Palerma sends everything to Holland. I was telling you, in Holland they say: Well, that's interesting, we could do something else with it.
What happens is that in the meantime we have arrived - let's see if the image... one second... - we have arrived in '78, in April '78, if I remember correctly. In Japan a Japanese company makes the Space Invaders cabinet and everything really changes there. There all the companies that make semiconductors... the demand is scary, hundreds of thousands of cabinets want. So imagine what's behind it: there's hundreds of thousands of pieces of furniture, hundreds of thousands of cards, hundreds of thousands, by four or by ten, of components. The CPUs, the graphics chips, everything you can imagine. The TVs... There's huge demand for all these products and Philips says: Damn, we've missed the boat again.
Why? Because no one has ever used the 2650, no one knows how to use it. With the MOS 6502, which in the meantime has become Commodore's, they did everything, they put it in more or less all the equipment. It's also in the Apple 2, so to speak, and they will also put it in a particular version in the Nintendo Entertainment System, in the NES. So it is a CPU that programmers and developers know how to use and use it. Atari uses it, Taito uses it, any company that makes cabinets uses it, imagine, they used it. Then there's Zilog, they use that too. There are also those who use Intel if they want. But no one uses our beautiful Signetics 2650 also because the documentation sucks and the supporting chips are missing. And so the time comes to spend something to create a platform on which people work, but it is not enough to create a platform on which people work, we must also teach people to work.
And again they go and call our Palerma and tell him, and here someone in Italy had a brilliant idea and unfortunately we don't know who he is because Palerma doesn't remember the name of the salesman who gave him the tip: Look, in Emilia Romagna there is a company that makes pinball machines, it's very famous, it's run by three brothers, it's called Zaccaria. Their pinball machines are loved by all Italians, you can find them everywhere, but the Zaccaria brothers have understood that the hot product of the moment is no longer the pinball machine, the hot product of the moment is the cabinet, it's the video game. But in Zaccaria no one knows how to do it, because they have worked with electromechanical equipment, none of them has ever worked with CPUs. So we need someone to teach him, someone to give him a hand in starting this production.
And the best time is right now when there is a hunger for Space Invaders and they don't produce enough of them in Japan. If we produce one ourselves, we have solved the problem: there is no need to import them from Japan. To do this, someone needs to invent something more because the CPU alone is not enough. They were invented in June '78, mind you, June '78 is the moment in which the documentation of the 2636 was published. The Signetics 2636 PVI is a graphics chip that interfaces with the 2650 and that does a lot of nice things and in short also quite cutting-edge: it has sprites, they are two-dimensional single-color sprites, but be careful, therefore in a certain sense better than the Atari 2600 graphics chip.
The 2636 has a whole host of native features so the programmer doesn't have to sit there and go crazy with the code. There are registers where you throw in the score and the score magically appears on the screen. The score is no longer a score but a timer. Just put a flag somewhere and automatically on the left we have the score and on the right we have the timer. It is a component designed specifically for making video games. Then, okay, you can also make a computer with it, if you want. We have everything ready, all we need is for Palerma to go and contact Zaccaria. Well, it's the salesman I was talking about before, who we don't know who he is. Palerma, together with other Philips technicians, goes to Zaccaria, they get to work and create a not exactly official version of Space Invaders which is called The Invaders, right, the fantasy. If you look at it, you play with it, but it's the same but at the center of The Invaders there aren't the components of a Space Invaders assembled in Japan, there is the Signetics 2650. Well, mission accomplished because first of all The Invaders produce a lot of them and therefore Philips is happy because they can invoice a lot of components. But Philips is even happier because Zaccaria now knows how to make cabinets and he doesn't know how to make them with any type of component, he only knows how to make them with Signetics integrated circuits. In fact, if you go to Mobygames or any other, look at all the cabinets that Zaccaria has made: for 4 years they will only produce cabinets on this platform. Imagine how many chips they bought from Signetics. Objective successful.
So Palerma is promoted and moved to Holland and for the moment we forget about it for a moment. Let's go back to our Alberto Neri who remained in Italy in Milan with his Mesacomp, where no one wants it. He looks around and among the various companies he can contact to buy components there is also Signetics. We need to take a step back. In '74, Signetics hasn't been bought yet, it has an office in France. He contacts them and gets an exclusive contract. Exclusivity contracts are a burden and an honor. They are an honor because, well, anyone who wants to buy a Philips component has to come to you, so you manage all the national trade of Philips products. They are a burden because if you don't have enough sales volumes, at a certain point the Philips sales representative comes and tells you: Well, it was nice working with you, but you know, now let's go to someone else who sells us more stuff. So he is faced with a dilemma. I have supply contracts that I have to make profitable, people don't buy them or in any case buy little. I have to invent something that uses the components I want to sell because I have my own little shop and people come, buy me 10 chips, I don't do anything with it, I have to sell thousands of them every day.
He started assembling radios in his workshop, after work, poor guy, assembling every kind of electronic device that uses the components he wants to sell. So people, those who are a little lazier, come to him and buy the equipment and don't know that they are increasing their turnover. But actually someone in Holland is happy because he is selling a lot of integrated circuits. And so in the wake of this reasoning, at a certain point, when word reaches him that someone in Holland has invented the graphics chip that he was missing for his Mesacomp and someone in Holland has started collaborating with a German company, at that point he puts one and one together and says: It's my time.
What happened in the meantime? Well, this is the schematic for Space Invaders. It happens that in August, so two months later, after only two months, mind you, from the publication of the documentation for the Signetics 2636, in August '78 a German company, Interton, published, sorry, marketed the first examples of the Video Computer 4000. It is a cartridge game console. In fact you see the cartridge compartment from behind with two uniquely shaped controllers with numeric keypad, 12 buttons and an analog stick, with around thirty titles. These here, suddenly, some Germans who made electro-medical equipment, started making video games.
What happened in the meantime? What did we miss? We missed that it wasn't the first time they did them. Two years earlier someone at Interton had started making consoles not with technology bought from third parties, but had developed a cassette system, the Interton Video 2000, which was absolutely original. It's similar, I don't know if you've seen, above what we have, the LEM 2000 I've already shown some of you. It's similar to the one where it's not a cartridge, sorry, it's not a modern console like the ones we see today, where we have the CPU, you insert the cartridge or put the card or the CD-ROM, so the CPU runs the program and the game plays. It's a console where there's no software, it's all hardware, and the hardware is half in the console and half in the cartridge. When you change cartridges it's like changing half the console. It's all proprietary, there are no small integrated circuits, very, very little stuff, all developed by Interton. It's quite successful locally, but when Philips says: We have more advanced technology than Atari, but no one has gotten away from us for the moment, Interton buys this technology, they get together, a collaboration, a sort of joint venture. They get together and, a little here, a little there, they develop not only the console but also a portfolio of titles, as I was saying, around thirty, no, let's say 22-23 titles more or less, to which others will be added later in the next 3 or 4 years. Every game that is developed jointly ends up in the Philips catalog with that mechanism that I mentioned before, so essentially Philips works with them, says: We gave you the technology, we helped you create a console, you also programmed some games together with our technicians. Well, go ahead and sell your console, but we keep all the projects, if someone else comes, we'll sell to them too. And this happens because... sorry. Here it is, March '79, Italy beats everyone in this round. March '79, our Alberto Neri finally puts all the pieces of the puzzle together in an operation, as I mentioned before, a completely clandestine operation. Why? Look, it's called Mesa 2, but we've been talking about Mesa Spa up until now. How come? What is this Mesa 2?
Mesa Spa is the company of which he is a minority shareholder and CEO which has to sell semiconductors, integrated circuits, etc., which is not sailing in good waters and where there is a main shareholder because they have changed hands a bit: there are people who have left, people who have joined, etc. There is a majority shareholder who is averse to any type of operation; he talked to him a bit: let's do this, let's do that... the other one always told him no. So, since he says no, he carries out a clandestine operation: he creates Mesa 2 Spa, which has its registered office in the same place as Mesa Spa, but the entrance is in the back. If you look, there is advertising. Now maybe I don't remember... no, I didn't put the advert. If you look at the magazines of the time there is advertising: the entrances are different, it is open every morning of the week, even on Saturdays. Extraordinary opening on Saturdays in '79 was a great thing. You can go there and buy integrated circuits, resistors, anything you want, and you can even buy the radio they make. And if you want, you can buy Mesaton, in assembled form (it costs more) and in kit form (you assemble it yourself at home it costs only 149,000 lire, a ton, a third of today's salary, so to speak).
He starts selling this because, first of all, the Mesacomp story was on his stomach, do you remember that? And then because it has the components. Above all because everything he was missing to make a computer, a console, now he finally has it: Philips finally provides it to him directly. He goes to Holland, literally takes cassettes like: Give me five boxes of chips with Space Invaders in them, give me five boxes of Autorace, etc. He mounts them. If you've ever seen what the Mesaton cartridges look like, it doesn't even mount them directly in resin: it puts the EPROM chip in with the pins that end up in that green rack you see, there's the little lever that blocks it. It's all very artisanal, with this body that looks like metal, it's polyurethane, and the absolutely industrial keyboard. But he produced this very advanced console because, I repeat, in some ways it is even better than the Atari 2600. In some ways. It sells 400 pieces. Here, in reality, I should go ahead for a moment... that's right, because the timeline, which in quotes is official on whatever site you go to, is wrong. It is said that the Interton came out first, then, or at the same time, the Elektor, and then the Mesaton. Absolutely wrong. The Mesaton was released a month earlier, there is evidence in the newspapers of the time: the Mesaton went on sale, advertised, and was on sale in stores as early as March '79. The Elektor TV Games Computer project was published by Elektor magazine in the April 1979 issue. So, sorry, but Mesaton beats Elektor by a month.
What is Elektor? The Elektor is an assembly kit for a computer, so it's more than a console because they also give you the ability to attach a keyboard, to attach a tape drive, it has a little monitor that you can also program for. And since in the meantime Signetics has finally woken up a bit and invested in the software, there is also Signetics Basic, so you can even program in Basic, which is a horrible dialect of Basic, one of the worst, but it can be done. And Neri knows it, and in fact the two controllers are made to be attached to each other and become a 24-button keyboard because he then had the idea of the Mesacomp stuck in his back. He also produces for his Mesa 2 an expansion card, a case with an expansion card, with the tape drive, etc., which again is made by Marco Pagani. There is always him in the middle, Marco Pagani, and with the chip, with our Basic interpreter inside, so the Mesaton with the Mesacomp 1 card, which is something else compared to the Mesacomp which was abandoned, also becomes a computer. How many do they sell? Four, so it's not very successful.
But it doesn't matter because Mesa 2 sells enough to keep the supply contract with Philips and above all it gives him enough money and trust to invest in some advertising. Several episodes here - this one was kindly recovered by Archeologia Informatica, it's on the Archeologia Informatica YouTube channel - it's a frame of the advertisement that appears on Antenna 3 during the Bustarella broadcast, chosen specifically by Neri... there's a spicy broadcast, I suppose whoever watches it will be quite interested in seeing a computer. In reality, in short, it is not as engaging as advertising. There's this one here that explains how to insert the program into the computer, the host doesn't have the faintest idea what he's talking about, quite embarrassing, but it works. Sales take off, he manages to sell 400 units of Mesaton, at which point at a certain point the magazine Nuova Elettronica comes forward and is interested in taking over the project and selling it in the form of an assembly kit attached to its magazine.
And here we arrive at the last stage of our program which concerns the Mesaton. January 1981 the project and explanation of how this console is used and built appears. It's exactly the same as Mesaton in terms of games, form and everything. Change the colour, black, and change the price: it costs more, they give it to you in the form of a kit that you assemble yourself, so damn they ask for more and you even have to assemble it yourself. But it doesn't matter because it sells a lot, it sells a thousand games, it sells 1000 copies and Alberto Neri is very happy because he gets the money he needs to give his Mesa partner the sack. He takes over his entire Mesa 2, which was half a clandestine operation, but half the money belonged to that other guy. He buys it from him, and the first thing he does after he buys the Mesa Due company is change the name. Engineer Alberto Neri calls it, IAN and if you go and look at Cologno Monzese, the IAN is still there. Currently the CEO is the daughter of Alberto Neri, who unfortunately I fear has left us because he hasn't responded to my emails for over a year and a half and she wasn't very young.
This is Mesaton: games for your TV. And at this point we move about fifty kilometers. Let's go to Bergamo. In Bergamo there is a company called Cabel Electronic, located in Curno, which entered the video game market in '77 with Telegioca. Later, if you want to jump over, I'll show you, it's a small video game console that made four games derived from Pong: the two paddles with the two tube-shaped controllers with the wheel on top that turns. It's so successful that they make another console, and this one is also so successful that they make another one and it goes on like this until 81-82 more or less, the beginning of the end of '81 and the beginning of '82, when sales of Cabel's blockbuster, the LEM 2000, of which we have an example above, begin to decline a bit. So you have to find a new computer. The founder of Cabel, Filippo Biali, together with its president, because in the meantime the company has become a cooperative company (another very strange thing that I tell you about in my book), goes to Holland, looks at the products because Philips is still selling, it's not that it has stopped selling them. He sees all these products and decides to produce a console of this type too, but he does it a little better, also because he has superior means. There is no comparison between the means that poor Alberto Neri had, who had a lot of good ideas but few means, and Cabel, which had a well-established distribution network, had good capital, a staff of 60 workers and administrators who produced hundreds of thousands of consoles and above all they knew how to do marketing.
It had a completely different level of packaging. In fact, if you go up and look at them, the box, the packaging, even just the Universal Game Computer cartridges are something else entirely. We are truly at the levels of the best consoles of the moment. However, technologically speaking, it is no longer so cutting edge. That technology is now almost 10 years old, because from '72 to '82... However, at Christmas '82 the Universal Game Computer comes out and it is a resounding success: 100,000 pieces sold at Christmas '82 alone. In Curno they are already there rubbing their hands, eh, we're good for the next 2-3 years. Unfortunately something happens called Commodore. In '83, the VIC-20 and the price of the VIC-20 is adjusted down several times. Then, to make the situation worse, the Commodore 64 also arrives which also has some nice price adjustments. At that point stay in the video game market with a console that costs half the price of a personal computer, which has 25 games because they haven't published them all, and they cost a lot, and you can do little else with it because they never thought of turning it into a computer, unlike Neri. At that point Cabel had to withdraw from the game and thus the story of these two made in Italy consoles ended.
Then there are several others, but these are, in my opinion, the most curious, born without each other's knowledge, 50 km apart and 2 years apart, but which essentially inside, if you open them, are absolutely the same. Even the games are the same and, if you want to see how the games are made, there is the book above, browse, in short we are more or less at the levels of the Atari 2600. Thank you for listening to me. If you are interested in the story, there is the book dedicated to Cabel, three other books in the Video Games series, and then my best-selling book, because I have one too, the biography of Richard Garriott. A thousand thanks.