Interesting that they did 100% incoming part inspection on their ICs going into the arcade machines. I’m not sure if ICs were less reliable then, or they just built a higher quality product.
That semi-automatic pick and place was neat.
That semi-automatic pick and place was neat.
Edit: found it... [2] tl;dr: MOS's advancements resulted in IC production success rates of 70% or more, and were markedly worse before (lows of a 30% success rate would still be considered profitable or successful).
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21847718
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology#Mask_fixing
If memory serves, it was a little of column A, and a little of column B.
I mean, an arcade board is pretty big, but the parts density is also pretty low.
iPhone X has 72 integrated circuits on the main board, and quite a few more on other assemblies.
I agree that Asteroids has approximately 100. We're really not too far apart in device count.
Then when you look at, say, pin count, there's no contest at all.