Interesting read about the SN used for PONG :
The machines were numbered at the manufacturing plant and a lot of people say erratic things about the serial numbers of their machines. Nolan Buschnell (who designed Atari PONG) explained that the serials were encoded to avoid guessing how many machines were manufactured. Serials start with two same letters followed by three or four digits. The first machines to roll off the assembly line were numbered ZZ-001 through ZZ-999, then AA-001 through AA-999, then YY-001 through YY-999 and then back to BB-001 through BB-999 and so on. Thus, the very first machine had serial ZZ-001 (see it at the Atari Historical Society) and those with serials starting with AA have machine between #1000 and #1999. Those with YY have a machine between #2000 and #2999. [source :
http://www.pong-story.com/arcade.htm ]
So if my game is the number 920 on the production line, the correct value for its SN would be :
ZZ-920Although my Pong doesn't have the initial metal/silver knobs, it has the first generation of coin slot (and not the Midway one that came on next generation models), and so I can suppose it was in the first 'production' run.
So can you print two models :
- the first one with the serial :
ZZ-920 - the second one witn no serial at all (...so I'll be able to print an other value myself if further investigations lead me to an other SN...)
Please cut them off for me
Thx.