From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 2 08:56:36 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 2 Jun 1997 08:56:12 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: gypsum.dsc.com, gypsum.dsc.com, sso@dsc.com, 199.181.238.203 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 08:56:09(PDT) on June 02, 1997 Message-ID: From: "Ozdemir, Steve" To: "'vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com'" Subject: More Laser x-y game stuff Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 08:51:55 -0700 X-Mailer: Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.993.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO G'day folks, Sorry for the late response, but I've been on vacation for the last week. I've delved into the topic of laser projection since I've always thought it'd be cool to play BZ on a drive-in theatre screen! After talking with someone who'd mated the Vectrex to a laser projection system, the cost of the most basic hardware ( > 1K) seemed to be the only obstacle. Maybe Gregg W could point us to this Vectrex enthusiast? Steven S Ozdemir sso@dsc.com ps - By the way, the actual hacking necessary to mate laser projection with vector games seemed pretty straight forward. >I know this is a little off topic, but apparently Rick Schieve once talked to >a >guy who worked at a planetarium which had a laser projection system, and the >guy was interested in setting up Star Trek and playing it inside the >planetarium. A 5 foot Klingon would look pretty cool! And hook up an audio >system, and you've got the best vector game platform you can find! :-) > >---------------------------------------------------------------------- >Mark Jenison E-mail address: jenison@cig.mot.com >Cellular Infrastructure Group Motorola--Arlington Heights, IL >---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 2 10:36:42 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 2 Jun 1997 10:36:27 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: suprahwy.supra.com, suprahwy.supra.com, clay@supra.com, 205.229.114.11 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 10:36:23(PDT) on June 02, 1997 X-Sender: clay@pop.van.diamondmm.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 10:38:35 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Multigame update! Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Hi all! After some helpful discussions with Dave and Al on a problem I was having I now have the first cut of the Multigame daughtercard running on my G-80 system at home. It plays Zektor and Space Fury. Hitting the NMI (test) switch drops into a menu system. ;-) Anyway, it's coming along nicely. I learned some interesting things along the way: The PROM on the CPU board controls a 74ls245 bus tranciever. (No problem...) However, even though the EPROM board has its own tri-state control, the CPU PROM does the *same* thing. Cost me a few days on *that* one. The other trick is the PROM itself. It decodes A15,A14,A13,A12,A11,A10 but with A13 and A12 OR'd (I think, I don't recall now) together. This makes for a "strange" memory-map of block access. (I include the mapping at the end of this text.) What happens is that some chunks of memory can be resolved in 2K pieces, other sections result in 6K chunks. What this basically means is that I can't allow accesses to the Universal Sound Board RAM (0xd000) and the Vector RAM (0xe000) (on the backplane bus) and allow access to peripherals and Menu-system (0xf000) on the CPU board with the memory decoder as-implemented on the CPU board. No big deal, since my board has it's own memory decoding system, but until I found out that the "helpful" little PROM was fighting with me it was a real bugger to get working. :-) Special thanks to Dave for insisting the problem was in the PROM, which was right... I'll put up a screen shot of the menu system titlepage this afternoon (hopefully)... -Clay G-80 Address PROM decoder address= 0000-03FF prom location= 0000 address= 0400-07FF prom location= 0001 address= 0800-0BFF prom location= 0002 address= 0C00-0FFF prom location= 0003 address= 1000-13FF prom location= 0010 address= 1400-17FF prom location= 0011 address= 1800-1BFF prom location= 0012 address= 1C00-1FFF prom location= 0013 address= 2000-23FF prom location= 0010 address= 2400-27FF prom location= 0011 address= 2800-2BFF prom location= 0012 address= 2C00-2FFF prom location= 0013 address= 3000-33FF prom location= 0010 address= 3400-37FF prom location= 0011 address= 3800-3BFF prom location= 0012 address= 3C00-3FFF prom location= 0013 address= 4000-43FF prom location= 0004 address= 4400-47FF prom location= 0005 address= 4800-4BFF prom location= 0006 address= 4C00-4FFF prom location= 0007 address= 5000-53FF prom location= 0014 address= 5400-57FF prom location= 0015 address= 5800-5BFF prom location= 0016 address= 5C00-5FFF prom location= 0017 address= 6000-63FF prom location= 0014 address= 6400-67FF prom location= 0015 address= 6800-6BFF prom location= 0016 address= 6C00-6FFF prom location= 0017 address= 7000-73FF prom location= 0014 address= 7400-77FF prom location= 0015 address= 7800-7BFF prom location= 0016 address= 7C00-7FFF prom location= 0017 address= 8000-83FF prom location= 0008 address= 8400-87FF prom location= 0009 address= 8800-8BFF prom location= 000a address= 8C00-8FFF prom location= 000b address= 9000-93FF prom location= 0018 address= 9400-97FF prom location= 0019 address= 9800-9BFF prom location= 001a address= 9C00-9FFF prom location= 001b address= A000-A3FF prom location= 0018 address= A400-A7FF prom location= 0019 address= A800-ABFF prom location= 001a address= AC00-AFFF prom location= 001b address= B000-B3FF prom location= 0018 address= B400-B7FF prom location= 0019 address= B800-BBFF prom location= 001a address= BC00-BFFF prom location= 001b address= C000-C3FF prom location= 000c address= C400-C7FF prom location= 000d address= C800-CBFF prom location= 000e address= CC00-CFFF prom location= 000f address= D000-D3FF prom location= 001c address= D400-D7FF prom location= 001d address= D800-DBFF prom location= 001e address= DC00-DFFF prom location= 001f address= E000-E3FF prom location= 001c address= E400-E7FF prom location= 001d address= E800-EBFF prom location= 001e address= EC00-EFFF prom location= 001f address= F000-F3FF prom location= 001c address= F400-F7FF prom location= 001d address= F800-FBFF prom location= 001e address= FC00-FFFF prom location= 001f Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 2 11:08:26 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 2 Jun 1997 11:08:25 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 11:08:22 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Multigame update! Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO cool! I was thinking of hacking the images to move the service switch up to one of the buttons on the control panel to make it easier to coin-up. Originally, I thought of just hard-wiring the coin count to 2, but if I did that, you'd never see the critter in the attract mode of Space Fury... From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 2 11:09:24 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 2 Jun 1997 11:09:18 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: motgate.mot.com, motgate.mot.com, jenison@cig.mot.com, 129.188.136.100 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 11:09:14(PDT) on June 02, 1997 Message-Id: <199706021815.OAA23068@po_box.cig.mot.com> Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 13:04:57 -0500 From: Mark Jenison In-Reply-To: Clay Cowgill "Multigame update!" (Jun 2, 10:38am) References: <199706021744.NAA20277@po_box.cig.mot.com> X-face: "@9[FFAftX<9}2=gaPlIyRv_K%h[>.@"8t}B2So!iv.\#M9NplA9bDudBQ|]E`WL9Kd,Tn2v.0OGcE<$yg{&}(m:mB\GO9L+yE}6=d17BM X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.2.1 10apr95) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Multigame update! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO On Jun 2, 10:38am, Clay Cowgill wrote: > Subject: Multigame update! > Hi all! > > After some helpful discussions with Dave and Al on a problem I was having I > now have the first cut of the Multigame daughtercard running on my G-80 > system at home. It plays Zektor and Space Fury. Hitting the NMI (test) > switch drops into a menu system. ;-) > > Anyway, it's coming along nicely. I learned some interesting things along > the way: [techy rambling deleted ;-)] Sounds great! Am I right in saying that the menu system doesn't really buy you any convenience at this point because you still have to swap the sound boards? (Hmm, I haven't tried running Eliminator or Tac/Scan with a Speechboard...I wonder if it's possible using the menu system to go between StarTrek<->Tac/Scan and Eliminator<->Zektor at least at this point). The more I think about it, the more I'm interested in the menu system. For a normal converta-cabinet, it's not such a pain to swap boards and control panels, but for a 4-player Eliminator, swapping in another cage is a pain in the $*@! However, I'd also like to see how the controls are handled; we're in a similar situation as with the Bally MCR stuff where control pinout change from game to game. Also, for the menu system, is there anyway you can make it the reset switch instead of the NMI? Hitting the reset switch is much easier and something that even MY friends could figure out :-) > I'll put up a screen shot of the menu system titlepage this afternoon > (hopefully)... On your homepage I'm assuming? BTW, anyone know of a source for those ORATOR chips found on the speech boards? Also, how many people would be interested in Clay getting a run of the Single Player rotary interface (used for Star Trek, Tac/Scan, Zektor) boards made up? They are extremely simple boards, but are hard to find. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Jenison E-mail address: jenison@cig.mot.com Cellular Infrastructure Group Motorola--Arlington Heights, IL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 2 11:22:53 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 2 Jun 1997 11:22:52 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: vnet.ibm.com, VNET.IBM.COM, linvjw@VNET.IBM.COM, 204.146.168.194 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 11:22:48(PDT) on June 02, 1997 From: Message-Id: <9706021817.AA30160@savage.raleigh.ibm.com> Subject: Re: Multigame update! To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 14:17:34 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <199706021815.OAA23068@po_box.cig.mot.com> from "Mark Jenison" at Jun 2, 97 01:04:57 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 683 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > Also, how many people would be interested in Clay getting a run of the Single > Player rotary interface (used for Star Trek, Tac/Scan, Zektor) boards made up? > They are extremely simple boards, but are hard to find. I'd probably be interested in that. Is there a schematic of that in the Star Trek manual? I glanced through, but didn't find it. (page numbers, please... :-) ) John +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | John W. Linville To Be, Rather Than To Seem. | | linvjw@vnet.ibm.com http://www4.ncsu.edu/eos/users/j/jwlinvi/www | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 2 11:23:20 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 2 Jun 1997 11:23:19 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: dragon.ti.com, dragon.ti.com, mschulz@ticipa.Works.ti.com, 192.94.94.61 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 11:23:15(PDT) on June 02, 1997 Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 13:18:53 -0500 Message-Id: <199706021818.NAA06968@moe.works.ti.com> From: Michael Schulz To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com In-Reply-To: <199706021815.OAA23068@po_box.cig.mot.com> (message from Mark Jenison on Mon, 2 Jun 1997 13:04:57 -0500) Subject: Re: Rotary Interface Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO >Also, how many people would be interested in Clay getting a run of the Single >Player rotary interface (used for Star Trek, Tac/Scan, Zektor) boards made up? > They are extremely simple boards, but are hard to find. > I'd definitely buy a few! -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Schulz | Texas Instruments, SpecWorks Software Design Engineer | (972) 927-5847, mschulz@ti.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------- The opinions and views expressed are my own, and do ------------- ----------- not necessarily reflect those of Texas Instruments Inc. ----------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 2 11:31:58 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 2 Jun 1997 11:31:57 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 11:31:54 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Multigame update! Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO page 119 in the schematics section. it has a 74ls244 for input buffering of the buttons and a ls244/ls393 combo for the spinner. which port is input is based off of a bit in another register. the actual spinner just has a photointerrupter on it From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 2 11:34:43 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 2 Jun 1997 11:34:42 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 11:34:39 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Rotary Interface Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO if you were going to do the adapter board, you might want to put it on the multi-game board, and include the 4 player eliminator stuff too.. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 2 11:52:43 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 2 Jun 1997 11:52:32 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: X-BlackMail: mailgate.nortel.ca, bcarsde4.localhost, woodcock@nortel.ca, 192.58.194.74 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 11:52:23(PDT) on June 02, 1997 Date: 02 Jun 1997 14:36 EDT To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: "Gregg Woodcock" Subject: re:More Laser x-y game stuff Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO >After talking with someone who'd mated the Vectrex to a laser projection >system, the cost of the most basic hardware ( > 1K) seemed to be the >only obstacle. Maybe Gregg W could point us to this Vectrex enthusiast? Sorry; I know it comes up ALL THE TIME but I have never seen anybody say they'd done it (always "a guy I know"). -- THANX...Gregg day 214.684.7380 night UNLIST/PUBL TEXAS NOT CANADA! woodcock@nortel.com or woodcock@dfwmm.net *CLASSIC VIDEOGAME COLLECTOR BUY/SELL/TRADE NON-COMPUTER (ARCADE/HOME)* "If you quote me on this I'll have to deny it; I won't remember because I have such a bad memory. Not only that, but my memory is *terrible*." From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 2 11:56:05 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 2 Jun 1997 11:56:04 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: suprahwy.supra.com, suprahwy.supra.com, clay@supra.com, 205.229.114.11 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 11:56:01(PDT) on June 02, 1997 X-Sender: clay@pop.van.diamondmm.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 11:58:11 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Multigame update! Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO >Also, how many people would be interested in Clay getting a run of the Single >Player rotary interface (used for Star Trek, Tac/Scan, Zektor) boards made up? > They are extremely simple boards, but are hard to find. Oh, hey, *that* was the other thing I was going to mention... ;-) (Actually, I'll go into my "controller" discussion now...) I'm going to make a rotary interface for myself, so if anyone else wants one, speak up and I'll do another run of PCBs when I produce the multi-game cards. The current plan is that I have a little PIC controller that watches and routes signals for the player controls to the game PCB. I'm not *real* sure where this lives yet in the system. I think it might make sense to replace some of the stuff on the CPU board, but I haven't really checked it out. The "controller controller" does a few things: 1) When P1 start and P2 start are pressed simultaneously and held in for >1sec NMI is asserted which calls the menu program. (neat, huh? :-) 2) Remaps P1 and P2 to work for all games. 3) Remaps Impulse/Fire on StarTrek to match thrust/fire on the rest (yeah, it's nit-picky but would bug me to no end if I didn't do it. ;-) 4) Provides quadrature outputs from SF/Elim rotate buttons. (So the rotate buttons on Space Fury and Eliminator can be used instead of the spinner knob.) I think that's it... -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 2 12:06:00 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 2 Jun 1997 12:05:58 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: gypsum.dsc.com, gypsum.dsc.com, sso@dsc.com, 199.181.238.203 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 12:05:55(PDT) on June 02, 1997 Message-ID: From: "Ozdemir, Steve" To: "'vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com'" Subject: RE: More Laser x-y game stuff Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 12:01:39 -0700 X-Mailer: Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.993.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO G'day folks, Well, I'm sure I was dealing with the actual guy who mated the Vectrex to a laser projection system several years ago. Maybe Mark Woodward would know since one of Mark's multi carts motivated him to do this? (As I remember scores were a big problem, so maybe something was hacked to remove scoring on the Vectrex? But now I'm speculating.) As I remember, this guy was located in the south but not into arcade games. He kept a pretty low profile for obvious reasons. Steven S Ozdemir sso@dsc.com ps - I can start searching my archives if someone really wants to pursue this laser thing. I'm sure I kept shreds of information around. >---------- >From: Gregg Woodcock[SMTP:woodcock@nortel.ca] >Sent: Monday, June 02, 1997 1:36 PM >To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >Subject: re:More Laser x-y game stuff > >>After talking with someone who'd mated the Vectrex to a laser projection >>system, the cost of the most basic hardware ( > 1K) seemed to be the >>only obstacle. Maybe Gregg W could point us to this Vectrex enthusiast? > >Sorry; I know it comes up ALL THE TIME but I have never seen anybody >say they'd done it (always "a guy I know"). >-- >THANX...Gregg day 214.684.7380 night UNLIST/PUBL TEXAS NOT CANADA! > woodcock@nortel.com or woodcock@dfwmm.net >*CLASSIC VIDEOGAME COLLECTOR BUY/SELL/TRADE NON-COMPUTER (ARCADE/HOME)* >"If you quote me on this I'll have to deny it; I won't remember because >I have such a bad memory. Not only that, but my memory is *terrible*." > From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 2 12:10:20 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 2 Jun 1997 12:10:19 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: ftpbox.mot.com, ftpbox.mot.com, jenison@cig.mot.com, 129.188.136.101 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 12:10:14(PDT) on June 02, 1997 Message-Id: <199706021916.PAA29201@po_box.cig.mot.com> Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 14:05:46 -0500 From: Mark Jenison In-Reply-To: Clay Cowgill "Re: Multigame update!" (Jun 2, 11:58am) References: <199706021902.PAA27947@po_box.cig.mot.com> X-face: "@9[FFAftX<9}2=gaPlIyRv_K%h[>.@"8t}B2So!iv.\#M9NplA9bDudBQ|]E`WL9Kd,Tn2v.0OGcE<$yg{&}(m:mB\GO9L+yE}6=d17BM X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.2.1 10apr95) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Multigame update! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO On Jun 2, 11:58am, Clay Cowgill wrote: > Subject: Re: Multigame update! > > >Also, how many people would be interested in Clay getting a run of the Single > >Player rotary interface (used for Star Trek, Tac/Scan, Zektor) boards made up? > > They are extremely simple boards, but are hard to find. > > Oh, hey, *that* was the other thing I was going to mention... ;-) > > (Actually, I'll go into my "controller" discussion now...) > > I'm going to make a rotary interface for myself, so if anyone else wants > one, speak up and I'll do another run of PCBs when I produce the multi-game > cards. > > The current plan is that I have a little PIC controller that watches and > routes signals for the player controls to the game PCB. I'm not *real* > sure where this lives yet in the system. I think it might make sense to > replace some of the stuff on the CPU board, but I haven't really checked it > out. > > The "controller controller" does a few things: > > 1) When P1 start and P2 start are pressed simultaneously and held in for >1sec > NMI is asserted which calls the menu program. (neat, huh? :-) Holding P1 start and P2 start are commonly used to skip quickly through the games test mode, so I don't think this is a good idea (coming from a guy whose had to go through test mode +1000 times and couldn't live without this feature...). I vote for reset (or can't this be done?) > 2) Remaps P1 and P2 to work for all games. > 3) Remaps Impulse/Fire on StarTrek to match thrust/fire on the rest (yeah, > it's nit-picky but would bug me to no end if I didn't do it. ;-) Totally agree; it's a pain to switch these wires when I play Star Trek on my enhanced Tac/Scan control panel. > 4) Provides quadrature outputs from SF/Elim rotate buttons. (So the rotate > buttons on Space Fury and Eliminator can be used instead of the spinner > knob.) Optional right? (So you can use an encoder wheel if you have one) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Jenison E-mail address: jenison@cig.mot.com Cellular Infrastructure Group Motorola--Arlington Heights, IL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 2 12:17:21 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 2 Jun 1997 12:17:20 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: motgate.mot.com, motgate.mot.com, jenison@cig.mot.com, 129.188.136.100 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 12:17:17(PDT) on June 02, 1997 Message-Id: <199706021923.PAA29776@po_box.cig.mot.com> Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 14:12:54 -0500 From: Mark Jenison In-Reply-To: Mark Jenison "Re: Multigame update!" (Jun 2, 2:05pm) References: <199706021902.PAA27947@po_box.cig.mot.com> <199706021917.PAA29229@po_box.cig.mot.com> X-face: "@9[FFAftX<9}2=gaPlIyRv_K%h[>.@"8t}B2So!iv.\#M9NplA9bDudBQ|]E`WL9Kd,Tn2v.0OGcE<$yg{&}(m:mB\GO9L+yE}6=d17BM X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.2.1 10apr95) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Multigame update! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO On Jun 2, 2:05pm, Mark Jenison wrote: > Subject: Re: Multigame update! > On Jun 2, 11:58am, Clay Cowgill wrote: > > Subject: Re: Multigame update! > > > > The "controller controller" does a few things: > > > > 1) When P1 start and P2 start are pressed simultaneously and held in for > >1sec > > NMI is asserted which calls the menu program. (neat, huh? :-) > > Holding P1 start and P2 start are commonly used to skip quickly through the > games test mode, so I don't think this is a good idea (coming from a guy whose > had to go through test mode +1000 times and couldn't live without this > feature...). I vote for reset (or can't this be done?) Oops...another catch. In 4-player Eliminator test mode, to skip quickly through it you use the RESET switch (since there are no P1 or P2 start buttons), so maybe that wouldn't be such a great idea either. Maybe an independant switch that you'll just have to mount somewhere if you want to use the menu system? (I suppose I can solder wires directly to the test switch if I want to do that; the test switch triggers the NMI anyway). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Jenison E-mail address: jenison@cig.mot.com Cellular Infrastructure Group Motorola--Arlington Heights, IL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 2 12:25:36 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 2 Jun 1997 12:25:33 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 12:25:30 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: multi game switching Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO CPU reset would be the least invasive to most of the game ROMs and it does assure you that you'd get back to the menu code (actually I'm not sure how much you had to patch in the NMI routines to be able to get back once the game was running). From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 2 13:50:22 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 2 Jun 1997 13:50:19 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: suprahwy.supra.com, suprahwy.supra.com, clay@supra.com, 205.229.114.11 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 13:50:16(PDT) on June 02, 1997 X-Sender: clay@pop.van.diamondmm.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 13:52:21 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Multigame update! Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO >> 1) When P1 start and P2 start are pressed simultaneously and held in for >>1sec >> NMI is asserted which calls the menu program. (neat, huh? :-) > >Holding P1 start and P2 start are commonly used to skip quickly through the >games test mode, so I don't think this is a good idea (coming from a guy whose >had to go through test mode +1000 times and couldn't live without this >feature...). I vote for reset (or can't this be done?) Ahhh, hmmmm. I don't really care *what* switches they are, just as long as all the games had them and it was unlikely that the combination would occur during game play (that was the idea behind the "press and hold for more than a second" thing. I can do P1 start plus "fire" just as easily. That shouldn't clobber anything... Using reset instead... I'll have to think about that one. The handy thing about the NMI was that it's a nice little hook already built in for me. All I do is replace the vector for NMI in each game to point to the menu code. The menu code is mapped in at locations 0xF000-0xF7FF which are normally unused. The menu system sets a bank select/parameter register pair that switches the low ROM area (0x0000-0xBFFF) to the appropriate game, tells the Controller Controller what's going on, tells the screen rotate logic whether or not to kick in, and then just jumps to 0000 to restart. >> 3) Remaps Impulse/Fire on StarTrek to match thrust/fire on the rest (yeah, >> it's nit-picky but would bug me to no end if I didn't do it. ;-) > >Totally agree; it's a pain to switch these wires when I play Star Trek on my >enhanced Tac/Scan control panel. Good. It wasn't just for me then. ;-) >> 4) Provides quadrature outputs from SF/Elim rotate buttons. (So the rotate >> buttons on Space Fury and Eliminator can be used instead of the spinner >> knob.) > >Optional right? (So you can use an encoder wheel if you have one) Right. This was for Space Fury/Eliminator people that want to try Zektor/ST/TS but don't want to switch control panels and/or don't have a spinner knob around. -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 2 14:03:11 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 2 Jun 1997 14:02:59 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: gypsum.dsc.com, gypsum.dsc.com, sso@dsc.com, 199.181.238.203 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 14:02:55(PDT) on June 02, 1997 Message-ID: From: "Ozdemir, Steve" To: "'vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com'" Subject: RE: Multigame update! Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 13:58:45 -0700 X-Mailer: Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.993.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO G'day folks, >From my days at William's, many games have an "octopus" move (pushing a large number of buttons and all joysticks at once) enabled only during attract move to show credit screens, special messages to friends, etc. (Boy, do game designers love to show off these "secret" things...almost like someone showing off the latest MK6 move they found.) Of course, the game designers have the source code, so making something only available during attract mode is quite easy. My point is, can we solve the problem of routing to the menu in software instead? Perhaps, add some code to rewrite the vector for NMI only during attract mode (and then write it back to the proper value when the game starts)?? Of course, this approach means that you've created a new version of the software. But you are doing this already to add the menu, eh? Steven S Ozdemir sso@dsc.com >---------- >From: Clay Cowgill[SMTP:clay@supra.com] >Sent: Monday, June 02, 1997 4:52 PM >To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >Subject: Re: Multigame update! > >>> 1) When P1 start and P2 start are pressed simultaneously and held in for >>>1sec >>> NMI is asserted which calls the menu program. (neat, huh? :-) >> >>Holding P1 start and P2 start are commonly used to skip quickly through the >>games test mode, so I don't think this is a good idea (coming from a guy >>whose >>had to go through test mode +1000 times and couldn't live without this >>feature...). I vote for reset (or can't this be done?) > >Ahhh, hmmmm. I don't really care *what* switches they are, just as long as >all the games had them and it was unlikely that the combination would occur >during game play (that was the idea behind the "press and hold for more >than a second" thing. I can do P1 start plus "fire" just as easily. That >shouldn't clobber anything... > >Using reset instead... I'll have to think about that one. The handy thing >about the NMI was that it's a nice little hook already built in for me. >All I do is replace the vector for NMI in each game to point to the menu >code. The menu code is mapped in at locations 0xF000-0xF7FF which are >normally unused. The menu system sets a bank select/parameter register >pair that switches the low ROM area (0x0000-0xBFFF) to the appropriate >game, tells the Controller Controller what's going on, tells the screen >rotate logic whether or not to kick in, and then just jumps to 0000 to >restart. > >>> 3) Remaps Impulse/Fire on StarTrek to match thrust/fire on the rest >>>(yeah, >>> it's nit-picky but would bug me to no end if I didn't do it. ;-) >> >>Totally agree; it's a pain to switch these wires when I play Star Trek on my >>enhanced Tac/Scan control panel. > >Good. It wasn't just for me then. ;-) > >>> 4) Provides quadrature outputs from SF/Elim rotate buttons. (So the >>>rotate >>> buttons on Space Fury and Eliminator can be used instead of the >>>spinner >>> knob.) >> >>Optional right? (So you can use an encoder wheel if you have one) > >Right. This was for Space Fury/Eliminator people that want to try >Zektor/ST/TS but don't want to switch control panels and/or don't have a >spinner knob around. > >-Clay > >Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager >_______________________________________________________________________ >/\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com >\/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ > > > From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 2 19:53:00 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 2 Jun 1997 19:52:51 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: out1.ibm.net, out1.ibm.net, johnbutler@ibm.net, 165.87.194.252 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 19:52:48(PDT) on June 02, 1997 Message-Id: <199706030247.CAA17040@out1.ibm.net> From: "John Butler" To: Subject: Re: Rotary Interface Date: Mon, 2 Jun 1997 19:53:43 -0700 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Priority: 3 X-Mailer: Microsoft Internet Mail 4.70.1160 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO I would also take several of these. By the way, since I am of no use technically, I would love to volunteer to put this project into HTML and publish it on the web when I get my homepage up. I have been an associate Webmaster for a year at Hamilton Hallmark Electronics, so I should be able to do this including the conversion of any graphics. I have a scanner also so if anyone needs something scanned let me know. John Butler Mesa, AZ Collector of video arcade games ---------- > From: Michael Schulz > To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com > Subject: Re: Rotary Interface > Date: Monday, June 02, 1997 11:18 AM > > > >Also, how many people would be interested in Clay getting a run of the Single > >Player rotary interface (used for Star Trek, Tac/Scan, Zektor) boards made up? > > They are extremely simple boards, but are hard to find. > > > > I'd definitely buy a few! > > -- > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- > Michael Schulz | Texas Instruments, SpecWorks > Software Design Engineer | (972) 927-5847, mschulz@ti.com > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- > ------------- The opinions and views expressed are my own, and do ------------- > ----------- not necessarily reflect those of Texas Instruments Inc. ----------- > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 3 07:03:33 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 3 Jun 1997 07:03:31 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: motgate.mot.com, motgate.mot.com, jenison@cig.mot.com, 129.188.136.100 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 07:03:27(PDT) on June 03, 1997 Message-Id: <199706031409.KAA27280@po_box.cig.mot.com> Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 08:59:09 -0500 From: Mark Jenison In-Reply-To: "Re: Multigame update!" (Jun 3, 9:54am) References: <199706031406.KAA26957@po_box.cig.mot.com> X-face: "@9[FFAftX<9}2=gaPlIyRv_K%h[>.@"8t}B2So!iv.\#M9NplA9bDudBQ|]E`WL9Kd,Tn2v.0OGcE<$yg{&}(m:mB\GO9L+yE}6=d17BM X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.2.1 10apr95) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Multigame update! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO On Jun 3, 9:54am, wrote: > Subject: Re: Multigame update! > > page 119 in the schematics section. > > Hmmm...are you looking in the manual for the upright? The photocopy I > have is of the cockpit manual. Anyone know where the rotary interface > schematic is in there? There are many different copies of the Star Trek manual; conversion kit, Converta-game upright, dedicated upright and Cockpit. If you have the schematics for Star Trek for ANY manual, it's the schematic labeled "Single Player Control Interface" or something like that. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Jenison E-mail address: jenison@cig.mot.com Cellular Infrastructure Group Motorola--Arlington Heights, IL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 3 07:04:10 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 3 Jun 1997 07:04:09 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: mhro1.mayo.edu, mhro1.mayo.edu, ray@mayo.edu, 129.176.100.75 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 07:04:05(PDT) on June 03, 1997 Message-Id: <199706031352.IAA02755@fermat.mayo.edu> Content-Type: text/plain Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 4.1mach v148) In-Reply-To: X-Nextstep-Mailer: Mail 4.1mach (Enhance 2.0b5) From: Ray Ghanbari Date: Tue, 3 Jun 97 08:54:23 -0500 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Multigame update! References: Organization: Mayo Foundation Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO You wrote: > >> 4) Provides quadrature outputs from SF/Elim rotate buttons. (So the rotate > >> buttons on Space Fury and Eliminator can be used instead of the spinner > >> knob.) > > > >Optional right? (So you can use an encoder wheel if you have one) > > Right. This was for Space Fury/Eliminator people that want to try > Zektor/ST/TS but don't want to switch control panels and/or don't have a > spinner knob around. Couple other items that would be helpful: The option of using a Tempest style encoder wheel and getting the right "feel" (pulses/revolution). These are not only easier to find than the Sega ones (you can sub trakballs, worst case) but it would make things easier for a universal vector setup. A buffer on the coin input that automatically generates the right timing on the normally open/normally closed lines (fits in well with the next item) Standardization on the equivalent of a JAMMA pinout for vector games, with the appropriate mapping on the multigame board. You would presumably use the same pinout for your new vector system Clay. Ray From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 3 07:13:34 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 3 Jun 1997 07:13:25 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: vnet.ibm.com, VNET.IBM.COM, linvjw@VNET.IBM.COM, 204.146.168.194 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 07:13:20(PDT) on June 03, 1997 From: Message-Id: <9706031408.AA16828@savage.raleigh.ibm.com> Subject: Re: Multigame update! To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 10:08:00 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <199706031409.KAA27280@po_box.cig.mot.com> from "Mark Jenison" at Jun 3, 97 08:59:09 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 949 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > On Jun 3, 9:54am, wrote: > > Subject: Re: Multigame update! > > > page 119 in the schematics section. > > > > Hmmm...are you looking in the manual for the upright? The photocopy I > > have is of the cockpit manual. Anyone know where the rotary interface > > schematic is in there? > > There are many different copies of the Star Trek manual; conversion kit, > Converta-game upright, dedicated upright and Cockpit. > > If you have the schematics for Star Trek for ANY manual, it's the schematic > labeled "Single Player Control Interface" or something like that. Well, then I'm apparently missing a page. Thanks anyway. John +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | John W. Linville To Be, Rather Than To Seem. | | linvjw@vnet.ibm.com http://www4.ncsu.edu/eos/users/j/jwlinvi/www | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 3 07:23:54 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 3 Jun 1997 07:23:53 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: kim.teleport.com, kim.teleport.com, luna@teleport.com, 192.108.254.26 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 07:23:50(PDT) on June 03, 1997 Message-Id: <3.0.32.19970704071614.006a5a74@mail.teleport.com> X-Sender: luna@mail.teleport.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Fri, 04 Jul 1997 07:16:15 -0700 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: "Chris.Hanks" Subject: Star Trek cockpit Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Anybody have Star Trek cockpit manuals (or copies) that I could purchase? Thanks, Chris. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 3 07:24:16 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 3 Jun 1997 07:24:15 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: motgate.mot.com, motgate.mot.com, jenison@cig.mot.com, 129.188.136.100 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 07:24:12(PDT) on June 03, 1997 Message-Id: <199706031430.KAA29503@po_box.cig.mot.com> Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 09:19:49 -0500 From: Mark Jenison In-Reply-To: Ray Ghanbari "Re: Multigame update!" (Jun 3, 8:54am) References: <199706031411.KAA27387@po_box.cig.mot.com> X-face: "@9[FFAftX<9}2=gaPlIyRv_K%h[>.@"8t}B2So!iv.\#M9NplA9bDudBQ|]E`WL9Kd,Tn2v.0OGcE<$yg{&}(m:mB\GO9L+yE}6=d17BM X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.2.1 10apr95) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Multigame update! Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO On Jun 3, 8:54am, Ray Ghanbari wrote: > Subject: Re: Multigame update! > You wrote: > > >> 4) Provides quadrature outputs from SF/Elim rotate buttons. (So the rotate > > >> buttons on Space Fury and Eliminator can be used instead of the spinner > > >> knob.) > > > > > >Optional right? (So you can use an encoder wheel if you have one) > > > > Right. This was for Space Fury/Eliminator people that want to try > > Zektor/ST/TS but don't want to switch control panels and/or don't have a > > spinner knob around. > > Couple other items that would be helpful: > > The option of using a Tempest style encoder wheel and getting the right "feel" > (pulses/revolution). These are not only easier to find than the Sega ones > (you can sub trakballs, worst case) but it would make things easier for a > universal vector setup. > > A buffer on the coin input that automatically generates the right timing on > the normally open/normally closed lines (fits in well with the next item) > > Standardization on the equivalent of a JAMMA pinout for vector games, with the > appropriate mapping on the multigame board. You would presumably use the same > pinout for your new vector system Clay. Oh yes! The XYJAMMA set up! I proposed this standard about a year ago: -> XY JAMMA Standard Connector <- Name Of Game: N/A Solder Side | Parts Side ________________________________|___________________________________ GND | A | 1 | GND ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- 36VAC | B | 2 | 36VAC ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- +5 | C | 3 | +5 ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- +22 | D | 4 | +22 ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- -5 | E | 5 | -5 ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- +12 | F | 6 | +12 (used for 10.3VDC) ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- - KEY - | H | 7 | - KEY - ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- Coin Counter # 2 | J | 8 | Coin Counter # 1 ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- -22 | K | 9 | -22 ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- Speaker (-) | L | 10| Speaker (+) ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- X OUT | M | 11| Y OUT ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- Video Green | N | 12| Video Red ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- Video GND | P | 13| Video Blue ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- Service Switch | R | 14| Test Switch ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- Game Select | S | 15| ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- Coin Switch # 2 | T | 16| Coin Switch # 1 ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- 2P Start | U | 17| 1P Start ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- | V | 18| ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- Dir H | W | 19| Clk H ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- 2P Rot Left | X | 20| 1P Rot Left ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- 2P Rot Right | Y | 21| 1P Rot Right ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- 2P Thrust | Z | 22| 1P Thrust ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- 2P Fire | a | 23| 1P Fire ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- 2P Action 1 | b | 24| 1P Action 1 ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- | c | 25| ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- Pot V | d | 26| Pot H ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- GND | e | 27| GND ----------------------------|---|---|------------------------------- GND | f | 28| GND -------------------------------------------------------------------- This contains most of the controls and voltages for most any vector game. At the minimum, it can play these games: Star Wars Empire Strike Back Tail Gunner Lunar Lander Red Baron Gravitar Asteroids Asteroids Deluxe Space Fury Eliminator Space Duel RipOff Star Castle Armor Attack Major Havok Tempest Tac/Scan Star Trek (You need a extra control panel harness for Space Wars, Sundance, Quantum and Battlezone, but who can find these boardsets anyway? ;-)) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Jenison E-mail address: jenison@cig.mot.com Cellular Infrastructure Group Motorola--Arlington Heights, IL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 3 07:53:10 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 3 Jun 1997 07:53:09 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 07:53:06 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Multigame update! Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO I'll see if I can scan it in today. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 3 07:54:39 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 3 Jun 1997 07:54:38 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 07:54:35 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Star Trek cockpit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Miggs was just selling a set in RGVAC If I can get over to a scanner today, I'll scan them in. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 3 10:08:08 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 3 Jun 1997 10:08:02 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: mailhost.worldnet.att.net, mtigwc03.worldnet.att.net, RW54741@worldnet.att.net, 204.127.131.34 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 10:07:58(PDT) on June 03, 1997 Message-ID: <33944ED6.1B22@worldnet.att.net> Date: Tue, 03 Jun 1997 12:05:26 -0500 From: Robert B Wood X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.02E (Win95; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Wintron flybacks References: <199706031406.KAA26957@po_box.cig.mot.com> <199706031409.KAA27280@po_box.cig.mot.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO I called Wintron yesterday to get a price on Amplifone flyback replacements and was told I had to have a Wintron part number before they could help me. Can anyone tell me how I might obtain this? BOB From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 3 11:22:26 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 3 Jun 1997 11:22:18 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: root@diac.com, november.diac.com, jeffh@diac.com, 207.17.190.2 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 11:22:14(PDT) on June 03, 1997 X-Sender: jeffh@mail.diac.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 12:17:20 -0500 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: jeffh@diac.com (Jeff Hendrix) Subject: Re: Wintron flybacks Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO the Wintron part number is 926862802 >I called Wintron yesterday to get a price on Amplifone >flyback replacements and was told I had to have a Wintron >part number before they could help me. Can anyone tell me >how I might obtain this? > >BOB jeffh@diac.com Buy/Sell/Trade classic video arcade games. www.diac.com/~jeffh/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 3 15:40:49 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 3 Jun 1997 15:40:33 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 15:40:31 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: rotary interface schematic up Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO http://www.spies.com/arcade/simulation/schematics/segarotenc.JPG and http://www.spies.com/arcade/simulation/schematics/rotintf.JPG I'll try to get the 4 player Eliminator interface scanned in a little later today. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 3 16:28:38 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 3 Jun 1997 16:28:33 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: suprahwy.supra.com, suprahwy.supra.com, clay@supra.com, 205.229.114.11 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 16:28:29(PDT) on June 03, 1997 X-Sender: clay@pop.van.diamondmm.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 16:30:28 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Multigame feature-- input? Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO I keep having this stupid (?) idea that I think I know how to pull off, but I don't know if it's worth spending any time on... (Need to avoid "creeping-featuritus" ;-) I can stick a little extra SRAM on the daughtercard and have a "save game" feature that can save a game in progress. (So basically when you call the menu-system, it stashes the CPU status and contents of the display and CPU memory. You can then turn the machine off and a battery-backup will save your game. The next time you turn the machine on you can call the menu-system and "resume" your saved game. At least it works in theory. :-) I dunno if any of the games are really long enough to make it worth while though. Probably just delay things anyway. Still, though, kinda interesting to think about... -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 3 16:49:23 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 3 Jun 1997 16:49:17 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: post-ofc05.srv.cis.pitt.edu, post-ofc05.srv.cis.pitt.edu, ethst3+@pitt.edu, 136.142.185.10 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 16:49:09(PDT) on June 03, 1997 Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 19:39:29 -0400 (EDT) From: Ed Henciak X-Sender: ethst3@unixs4.cis.pitt.edu To: Clay Cowgill cc: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Multigame feature-- input? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Heya Clay, That SRAM idea is rather slick. It'd be neat to fight in sector 99.2 on Star Trek without having to sit in the machine for hours on end!!! I hope you do concider it as long as it doesn't take hours away from design time. On another note, are you simply going to swap XY inputs for Tac Scan. I'd love to see you pull off an adjustable type screen using that encoder. That was a great idea. If you could somehow smash Tac/Scan's screen to fit completely in a horizontal frame, that would make my day (not like I'm that important...but you know what I mean). I know all of this was discussed before, but please concider that. I guess you could just use the encoder to increment an up/down counter, run that value through an ADC. and then use that voltage as a reference to resize the screen (I'm just an engineering undergrad...I'm sure you have something fancier/better in mind). Anyway, thanks a million for all the work...my check's in the mail if you produce them!!!!! Take it easy!! Ed From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 3 16:52:22 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 3 Jun 1997 16:52:21 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: motgate.mot.com, motgate.mot.com, jenison@cig.mot.com, 129.188.136.100 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 16:52:17(PDT) on June 03, 1997 Message-Id: <199706032358.TAA23868@po_box.cig.mot.com> Date: Tue, 3 Jun 1997 18:47:46 -0500 From: Mark Jenison In-Reply-To: Clay Cowgill "Multigame feature-- input?" (Jun 3, 4:30pm) References: <199706032335.TAA22573@po_box.cig.mot.com> X-face: "@9[FFAftX<9}2=gaPlIyRv_K%h[>.@"8t}B2So!iv.\#M9NplA9bDudBQ|]E`WL9Kd,Tn2v.0OGcE<$yg{&}(m:mB\GO9L+yE}6=d17BM X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.2.1 10apr95) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Multigame feature-- input? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO On Jun 3, 4:30pm, Clay Cowgill wrote: > Subject: Multigame feature-- input? > I keep having this stupid (?) idea that I think I know how to pull off, but > I don't know if it's worth spending any time on... (Need to avoid > "creeping-featuritus" ;-) > > I can stick a little extra SRAM on the daughtercard and have a "save game" > feature that can save a game in progress. (So basically when you call the > menu-system, it stashes the CPU status and contents of the display and CPU > memory. You can then turn the machine off and a battery-backup will save > your game. The next time you turn the machine on you can call the > menu-system and "resume" your saved game. At least it works in theory. :-) > I dunno if any of the games are really long enough to make it worth while > though. Probably just delay things anyway. Still, though, kinda > interesting to think about... I think the games are too short to say "I can't finish this games; I have to go to bed", so this feature doesn't sound so useful....however, a simple pause button would be nice between rounds of 4-player Eliminator so the players can get another beer (I love the built in drink holders these come with ;-)). However, if you haven't noticed, the game already has this pause feature built in; it's called "holding down the coin switch". ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Jenison E-mail address: jenison@cig.mot.com Cellular Infrastructure Group Motorola--Arlington Heights, IL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 4 07:40:16 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 4 Jun 1997 07:40:08 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: vnet.ibm.com, VNET.IBM.COM, linvjw@VNET.IBM.COM, 204.146.168.194 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 07:40:04(PDT) on June 04, 1997 From: Message-Id: <9706041435.AA26750@savage.raleigh.ibm.com> Subject: Re: rotary interface schematic up To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 10:35:23 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: from "Al Kossow" at Jun 3, 97 03:40:31 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 606 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > http://www.spies.com/arcade/simulation/schematics/segarotenc.JPG and > http://www.spies.com/arcade/simulation/schematics/rotintf.JPG > > I'll try to get the 4 player Eliminator interface scanned in a little > later today. Thanks, Al! Looks great! I'm looking forward to the Eliminator 4-player stuff! John +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | John W. Linville To Be, Rather Than To Seem. | | linvjw@vnet.ibm.com http://www4.ncsu.edu/eos/users/j/jwlinvi/www | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 4 17:24:56 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 4 Jun 1997 17:24:27 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 17:24:23 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: 'bug' in G80 vector generator Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO I just fixed a corner case in my simulation which revealed an interesting bug in the G80 hardware. I wasn't testing for 'last symbol' until after the first symbol was finished. Guess what, they don't either! It appears that the first symbol is ALWAYS drawn from the symbol list (sort of makes sense thinking about the way the state machine works in the hardware) and it turns out that Space Fury isn't real good about keeping the valid bit set on the first symbol, some screens have it set and some don't. ..just thought you'd all like to know (and i'll add it to the FAQ). I'm about halfway through rewriting the blitting code in the simulator to be much smarter about redraws by keeping track of 8 * 8 blocks of pixels on the offscreen bitmap and only blitting the blocks that have changed. I'm also adding an antialiased vector drawing routine which should get rid of that nasty jitter you see as things scroll up and down (like the instructions in Space Fury). From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 4 19:59:05 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 4 Jun 1997 19:59:03 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: emout17.mx.aol.com, emout17.mail.aol.com, Dangerwil@aol.com, 198.81.11.43 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 19:58:59(PDT) on June 04, 1997 Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 22:54:38 -0400 (EDT) From: Dangerwil@aol.com Message-ID: <970604225259_-329402660@emout17.mail.aol.com> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: SW WG Missing vectors Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO All, I have been tracking this nutty problem for a couple of days now. I have a Star Wars that is displaying misplaced vectors. The monitor is a WG 6100 that has an older tube with a lot of Gravitar burn in. The display shows up looking much like a WG K4900 with a lot of horizontal curl. The top vectors, score and shield bar all smear down the screen. I also see a waviness to the screen, much like a bad power supply will exhibit on a raster monitor. I have substituted every part of the monitor with a known good one, except for the yoke and tube, even the output transistors . I plugged the game into another monitor and the screen looked fine. I guess my tube is toast, but I have never seen this particular fail. Could this be a yoke problem?? Any input you have would be a help. Thanks, Bill From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 4 20:15:20 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 4 Jun 1997 20:15:18 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: root@links.magenta.com, magenta.com, jess@links.magenta.com, 198.82.155.146 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 20:15:13(PDT) on June 04, 1997 Message-ID: <33962EB6.4DF5@links.magenta.com> Date: Wed, 04 Jun 1997 21:12:54 -0600 From: Jess Askey X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: SW WG Missing vectors References: <970604225259_-329402660@emout17.mail.aol.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Dangerwil@aol.com wrote: > > All, > > I have been tracking this nutty problem for a couple of days now. I have > a Star Wars that is displaying misplaced vectors. > > The monitor is a WG 6100 that has an older tube with a lot of Gravitar burn > in. The display shows up looking much like a WG K4900 with a lot of > horizontal curl. > > The top vectors, score and shield bar all smear down the screen. I also see a > waviness to the screen, much like a bad power supply will exhibit on a raster > monitor. > > I have substituted every part of the monitor with a known good one, except > for the yoke and tube, even the output transistors . I plugged the game > into another monitor and the screen looked fine. > > I guess my tube is toast, but I have never seen this particular fail. Could > this be a yoke problem?? > > Any input you have would be a help. > > Thanks, > > Bill Ohhh, you got me!!?? That is definitely a strange problem. If the vectors are actually smearing like running paint, then I would suspect the tube. I have never seen an XY tube go bad though, but then again I haven't worked on TONS of vector games, just a lot. I really can't even see a yoke going bad. If it did then it would have to be some sort of short. That would just decrease the inductance and lower the resistance + running the outputs hotter, maybe misplacing vectors too. But assuming that the yoke is bad, that would mean that you probably only have fault in one of the windings. Having both go bad at the same time wouldn't seem likely since they are in seperate circuits. That would mean that your smearing or displacement should only be happening on one axis. Look very closely to see if both are affected or only one. That is the best way I track down problems with the old XY's. Good Luck! -- Unofficial Atari Game Page:http://magenta.com/havoc Lots of other General Arcade Game info at http://arcadegames.miningco.com From: "Gregg Woodcock" Subject: Re: SW WG Missing vectors Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO In message "Re: SW WG Missing vectors", you write: >Ohhh, you got me!!?? That is definitely a strange problem. If the >vectors are actually smearing like running paint, then I would suspect >the tube. I have never seen an XY tube go bad though, but then again I >haven't worked on TONS of vector games, just a lot. > I really can't even see a yoke going bad. If it did then it would have >to be some sort of short. That would just decrease the inductance and >lower the resistance + running the outputs hotter, maybe misplacing >vectors too. But assuming that the yoke is bad, that would mean that you >probably only have fault in one of the windings. Having both go bad at Surely it is not the yoke but I suppose it could be the tube but I really doubt it since the monitor works fine running other games. Obvously the problem is in the AVG board of the Star Wasr set! >the same time wouldn't seem likely since they are in seperate circuits. >That would mean that your smearing or displacement should only be >happening on one axis. Look very closely to see if both are affected or >only one. That is the best way I track down problems with the old XY's. The displacement is due to too slow a slew rate for the W-G compared to the Amplifone. Decrease the X-SIZ and Y-SIZ a bit and that problem should improve. As far as shakey video... TECH TIP from the ATARI FIELD SERVICE DEPARTMENT STAR WARS Vector-Generator PCB Shaky Video Problem: Some games may have shaky video after a 15-minute warm-up. The video will start to shake in the high-score screen. The words PRINCESS LEIA'S REBEL FORCE will start to flutter and then worsen to an up-and-down movement of about 1/8 inch. In its worst state, the scores will also move back and forth. Solution: Change the 10K Ohm resistor R83 on the Vector-Generator PCB to a 20K Ohm resistor. -- THANX...Gregg day 214.684.7380 night UNLIST/PUBL TEXAS NOT CANADA! woodcock@nortel.com or woodcock@dfwmm.net *CLASSIC VIDEOGAME COLLECTOR BUY/SELL/TRADE NON-COMPUTER (ARCADE/HOME)* "If you quote me on this I'll have to deny it; I won't remember because I have such a bad memory. Not only that, but my memory is *terrible*." From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 5 15:25:05 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 5 Jun 1997 15:24:59 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 17:22:42 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9706052222.AA07689@maileng3> To: vectorlist@spies.com Subject: Hey all Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO I just found out about the vectorlist while browsing through wiretap looking for pinouts.... In any case, I browsed through the archives and saw that some people were curious about the status of my Cinematronics Multigame Sound Board. I had been talking with Steve Ozdemir about this a couple of months back. Anyways, I haven't been able to devote much time to it in the past month, because I got involved in my first bulk buy from an operator (I got a few vector games from it!!!) In any case, that's all done now. Here are some details, for those of you who I have spoken to about this in the past, and for those that are interested. I was hoping to use "my" chip (i.e. at work -- the chip that I am supposed to be working on right now, as I write this email) as the heart of this board. I can't disclose the details about "my" chip since it hasn't been released yet, but I can direct those who are interested to existing Crystal products that it will "probably" resemble. Go to the Crystal web page (www.crystal.com) and look under products. Go first to "Digital Audio/Video" and look at the CS4922 (A DSP, basically.) Then, look under "Consumer Audio Codecs" (which is under "Consumer/Profesional Audio") and look at the CS4226 (A surround sound CODEC.) "My" chip is an enhanced version of those two. Since I am going to begin working on my Ph.D. this fall (while still working full-time) I'm going to haul ass and get this multigame sound board done before then. Since "my" chip hasn't been released yet, I will use a CS4922 and a CS4226, initially. Later, it will be replaced with "my" chip. The overall strategy is to use a DSP to generate everything it can, and then convert that stuff to analog. Maybe I'll do some continuous-time filtering at the end to make it sound more "analog." (Though, if you look at the CS4226 datasheet, it has a dynamic range around 96 dB. I don't think the quantization noise will be anywhere near audible if I build the filters right.) There is some stuff that I will have to generate analog, so I will do that too. I just bought a Rip Off cabinet (I already had a Star Castle) so I will first build a stand alone Rip Off/Star Castle sound board. This way I don't have to waste time doing a multi-game Motherboard (although it's already been done by Sean Riddle, and probably others.) Anyways, I just wanted to let everybody know what was up with this project, since I had interested a lot of people with it. I've just been busy over the past month or two, but that's let up now. Let me know if you have any question about the project or want to get involved in some way. I still need some manuals, but I would actually like to build this up so that I don't get overwhelmed trying to build an entire multigame sound board from the beginning. Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 5 15:30:04 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 5 Jun 1997 15:30:03 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 15:29:59 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO ..interesting, I've been thinking of doing pretty much the same thing for the Sega vector games. Any chance of getting samples / development tools :-) From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 5 20:47:32 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 5 Jun 1997 20:46:59 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 23:42:33 -0400 (EDT) From: Dangerwil@aol.com Message-ID: <970605234132_-860773572@emout13.mail.aol.com> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: SW WG Missing vectors Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO In a message dated 97-06-05 15:41:11 EDT, you write: > Surely it is not the yoke but I suppose it could be the tube but I > really doubt it since the monitor works fine running other games. > Obvously the problem is in the AVG board of the Star Wasr set! > The monitor displays the same symptoms for ANY x-y game, and the game plays fine on two other monitors. I will take an Ohms reading of the yoke, but I think the problem is the tube. The problem almost seems like a high resistance short between the guns and grid. The red gun is also very fuzyy but not weak. I am going to chesck that resistor though! Thanks, Bill From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Sun Jun 8 13:35:51 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sun, 8 Jun 1997 13:35:31 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Sun, 8 Jun 1997 13:35:28 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: Universal Sound Board comm protocol Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO The universal sound board has a 4k RAM for program code which is downloaded from the main processor. The CPU on the sound card is reset by toggling the msb on port 3f. The board is ready for the next sound command when a read of port 3f returns 80 (the ls bit is masked off). here are the commands sent to the board during self test in tac/scan the coin inserted sound appears to be 0x2c there appear to be continuous sounds that you have to turn off with a second command, and one-shot sounds. there is a four command sequence that is sent out before the first sound was sent. each byte sent to the USB waits for 0x80 to be returned on port 3f initial byte sequence for tac/scan 0c 04 37 38 40 (ship roar start) 10 (ship roar stop) 18 (player ship laser) 20 (player ship explosion) 28 (player ship docking) 48 (tunnel light high) 50 (stinger thrust start) 52 (stinger thrust stop) 51 (stinger laser) 52 (stinger laser stop) 54 (stinger explosion) 62 (enemy bullet) 6e (enemy ship explosion) all 4k of the sound RAM are loaded in TAC/SCAN, starting from location 0xA000 in EPROM From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: 4player eliminator schematics Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO I scanned in the adapter and wiring harness schematics along with some other things tonight, and put them up on www.spies.com in the same place that the other scans are. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 9 09:59:14 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 9 Jun 1997 09:59:08 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 09:59:05 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: bad rom images Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO looks like the tacscan image on tant was bad. can anyone verify the eliminator 2 and 4 player sets there for mismatches? (i've taken care of star trek) i'll be updating tacscan and star trek there today. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 10 09:47:27 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 10 Jun 1997 09:47:18 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 11:45:01 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9706101645.AA23804@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > > ..interesting, I've been thinking of doing pretty much the same thing > for the Sega vector games. Any chance of getting samples / development > tools :-) > I've actually been trying to find out how to do that over the past few days, but I haven't gotten too far. It seems that we use a "different" type of distribution here. I'm sure that I can get you samples. I'm not so sure about the development tools. But let me look into it. I've been putting a bunch of hours into this project over the past week or so, and I'm hoping to have an initial MATLAB model of my version (of just the Star Castle Sound board for now) soon. Anyone who has access to MATLAB should be able to hear my emulated versions of the sounds.... I was looking through the archives of this list and I saw that there was some discussion a while back about the 3 pin analog noise generators. Did you guys ever emulate these digitally? If so, you'd save me a bit of work. I need to find out how that puppy works (i.e. its noise spectrum.) I think you guys were talking about using an LFSR, generated by a PIC to do that. Did that work? Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 10 09:56:23 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 10 Jun 1997 09:56:18 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 09:56:15 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: Cinematronics Masked ROM part numbers Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO I have a Cine (actually vectorbeam..) board with two masked ROMs and I was wondering if anyone has a list of the part number -> game mapping. I'm assuming it's a Space War (it has two ROMs) but I keep hoping to find a Scramble :-) From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 10 10:01:41 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 10 Jun 1997 10:01:35 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: From: "Ozdemir, Steve" To: "'vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com'" Subject: RE: Cinematronics Masked ROM part numbers Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 09:57:25 -0700 X-Mailer: Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.993.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO G'day folks, My Cinematronics history document had some part numbers that I pulled from various motherboards with two masked ROMs on them. I didn't change or add to this information, so this data should be there regardless of which version of the document you have. There should be a copy of my history document on wiretap. If not, Bill Paul was going to put a copy of it on his WWW page for Cinematronics (which has a MUCH better history doc than mine given that he's in the San Diego area and has much better contacts than I did back when I wrote up my history doc). Steven S Ozdemir sso@dsc.com ps - I'd guess you have a Speed Freak, but it could be a Warrior. Could you describe the wiring mods. >---------- >From: aek@goonsquad.spies.com[SMTP:aek@goonsquad.spies.com] >Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 1997 11:56 AM >To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >Subject: Cinematronics Masked ROM part numbers > > >I have a Cine (actually vectorbeam..) board with two masked ROMs and >I was wondering if anyone has a list of the part number -> game mapping. > >I'm assuming it's a Space War (it has two ROMs) but I keep hoping to >find a Scramble :-) > From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 10 10:12:56 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 10 Jun 1997 10:12:54 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 10:12:52 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: RE: Cinematronics Masked ROM part numbers Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO ps - I'd guess you have a Speed Freak, but it could be a Warrior. Could you describe the wiring mods. I forgot to bring in the actual numbers with me to work today (I sent mail to Zonn with them, but never heard anything back) The ROMs sit in the 1st and third slots, with one leg of each lifted and run over to the adjacent empty slots. used used Thinking about it, I think I remember the Speed Freak ROMs being set up this way on MrBill's board. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 10 10:49:49 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 10 Jun 1997 10:49:47 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@pop.van.diamondmm.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 10:51:47 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > I was looking through the archives of this list and I saw that >there was some discussion a while back about the 3 pin analog noise >generators. Did you guys ever emulate these digitally? If so, you'd save >me a bit of work. I need to find out how that puppy works (i.e. its noise >spectrum.) > > I think you guys were talking about using an LFSR, generated by a >PIC to do that. Did that work? I never got around to trying any of it. I dunno if Zonn did or not? I decided to ignore the sound boards for now in favor of trying to crank out the main multi-game daughtercard in short order. (It's going well by the way, except that OrCAD Layout Plus doesn't want to output the via pads on the PCB... Grrrr...) -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 10 11:23:23 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 10 Jun 1997 11:23:14 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: From: "Ozdemir, Steve" To: "'vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com'" Subject: RE: Cinematronics Masked ROM part numbers Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 11:18:48 -0700 X-Mailer: Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.993.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO G'day folks, Based on your description of a single pin pulled out of the socket, I'd guess Warrior based on my experience. However, I haven't had as much exposure to Speed Freak as I'd like. Get the part number off of the mother board.....if it has a pac-man like symbol on it (after the 1081?), then you have a later revision of the Vectorbeam motherboard and I can guarantee it's a Warrior. Steven S Ozdemir sso@dsc.com ps - I think you should see the JMI interrupt wiring mod added across the top of the board for Warrior. pps - All Cinematronics (Star Hawk, Space Wars) and Vectorbeam (Warrior, Speed Freak and Space Wars) games have their two masked ROMS configured like you describe. As I rememberf Tail Gunner has four masked ROMs? >---------- >From: aek@goonsquad.spies.com[SMTP:aek@goonsquad.spies.com] >Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 1997 12:12 PM >To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >Subject: RE: Cinematronics Masked ROM part numbers > >ps - I'd guess you have a Speed Freak, but it could be a Warrior. Could >you describe the wiring mods. > >I forgot to bring in the actual numbers with me to work today (I sent mail >to Zonn with them, but never heard anything back) > >The ROMs sit in the 1st and third slots, with one leg of each lifted and >run over to the adjacent empty slots. > >used used > >Thinking about it, I think I remember the Speed Freak ROMs being set up >this way on MrBill's board. > From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 10 11:29:27 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 10 Jun 1997 11:29:21 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Tue, 10 Jun 97 11:28 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970610112442.2317cc22@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: RE: Cinematronics Masked ROM part numbers Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Hi guys! I've been on vacation for the last 10 days roaming in and around the canyon lands in Utah. Great country! So sorry I didn't get back with you Al! I've seen a couple of different boards use the "solder wire to the other socket" approach. There mostly on the older games (pre- Star Castle), and seem to have been done that way simply because the board contained no sockets in the place where the mask parts should have been placed. The memory mapping of the C-CPU is a little strange. The 2nd and 4th sockets from left are the low addresses when using normal EPROM / PROM devices. The memory map then continues to the 1st and 3rd sockets. When Vectorbeam re-merged with Cinematronics, Cinematronics got a "shitload" of old Vectorbeam boards -- according to a technician that worked there at the time. I'm guessing that the Vectorbeam boards where all Space War or Speedfreak boards and were wave soldered with only the 1st and 3rd sockets intact. When you have a PROM masked for you, you can choose to have the select lines inverted from the normal EPROM usage, and this is what vectorbeam did. Therefore since the only difference between the 1st and 3rd sockets and the 2nd and 4th sockets are the inverted select lines, Vectorbeam masked parts plug into the 1st and 3rd socket even though they are addressed lower in memory. Most of the Cinematronics masked parts seemed to have been masked using a normal EPROM select line, and plugged into sockets 2 and 4. So Cinematronics dilema was that they "inherited" a bunch of Vectorbeam boards with sockets only in the 1st and 3rd position, yet their mask parts were designed for the 2nd and 4th position. The choice is to solderwick all the plated through holes to allow the addition of a socket (a pain), or simply to use the supplied sockets, bending up the selection pin on their masked parts and solder a jumper to the proper pin on the adjacent socket (much easier). The Sundance mask ROMs were designed to plug into the 1st and 3rd sockets and were 4k parts that were setup to be plugged into a standard 2k socket CPU card which you can do by rearranging a couple of Address/Selection lines and inverting their logic levels -- something you can do with mask parts. That's why the Sundance PROMs required a special convertor to read them. The boards I've seen to date that used masked parts are: Space War Tailgunner II Sundance Starhawk Boards I've heard of using them, but haven't on the ones I've seen: Tailgunner Space Wars Warrior I don't have the numbers for any of these here at work, and won't be able to get them until this weekend. So none of this answer the question of whether your board is a Vectorbeam scramble. If the board says "Vectorbeam" and the socketed parts are in the 1st and 3rd locations chances are *real* good it's a Space War though there's a slim chance it's a Speedfreak. If the parts are soldered in you can be 99.9% sure it's a Space war. Have you plugged it into a Star Castle or something (do you have a Star Castle or something to plug it into?) Since they plug into the 1st and 3rd sockets with jumpers to the 2nd and 4th they should look like normal parts (if they're 2k parts), you could try reading them and running them with CINEMU. If there 4k parts they're sometimes a little harder to read, though you should be able to read 2k of them and compare them to what's on the net. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 10 11:38:42 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 10 Jun 1997 11:38:37 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 13:36:17 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9706101836.AA24536@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > > I was looking through the archives of this list and I saw that > >there was some discussion a while back about the 3 pin analog noise > >generators. Did you guys ever emulate these digitally? If so, you'd save > >me a bit of work. I need to find out how that puppy works (i.e. its noise > >spectrum.) > > > > I think you guys were talking about using an LFSR, generated by a > >PIC to do that. Did that work? > > I never got around to trying any of it. I dunno if Zonn did or not? I > decided to ignore the sound boards for now in favor of trying to crank out > the main multi-game daughtercard in short order. (It's going well by the > way, except that OrCAD Layout Plus doesn't want to output the via pads on > the PCB... Grrrr...) Have any of you been able to find a datasheet for one? The part number is an S2688. Cinematronics used AMI parts. I found a link that took me to a company called AMS (Austria MicroSystems or something like that,) but they didn't have any design resources (i.e. datasheets.) I guess if worse comes to worse, I can just sample it and take an FFT. I wonder if it's actually "white" noise. I think these use leaky zener junctions to generate the noise. I suppose this would be a whole lot more white than an LFSR. When I come up with something, I'll let you guys know, since it looks like eventually, others will need this sort of thing... Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 10 11:40:29 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 10 Jun 1997 11:40:25 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Tue, 10 Jun 97 11:39 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970610113547.0d97ae42@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 11:45 AM 6/10/97 -0500, you wrote: >> >> ..interesting, I've been thinking of doing pretty much the same thing >> for the Sega vector games. Any chance of getting samples / development >> tools :-) >> > > I've actually been trying to find out how to do that over the past few days, but I haven't gotten too far. It seems that we use a "different" type of distribution here. > > I'm sure that I can get you samples. I'm not so sure about the development tools. But let me look into it. > > I've been putting a bunch of hours into this project over the past week or so, and I'm hoping to have an initial MATLAB model of my version (of just the Star Castle Sound board for now) soon. Anyone who has access to MATLAB should be able to hear my emulated versions of the sounds.... > > I was looking through the archives of this list and I saw that there was some discussion a while back about the 3 pin analog noise generators. Did you guys ever emulate these digitally? If so, you'd save me a bit of work. I need to find out how that puppy works (i.e. its noise spectrum.) > > I think you guys were talking about using an LFSR, generated by a PIC to do that. Did that work? I haven't done it with a PIC (but have with a 6800, 6809, Z-80 and a 8088), the technique works fine. It's a very simple "shift, rearrange some bits, XOR" algorithm. Works just like the schematic on one of those Cinematronics games (I can't remember which games used discreet components to implement the shift register / noise generator. I thought Star Castle did.) It's drawback is the noise generated doesn't have a lot of low end component. It works great for gunshots, but lacks real low end rumble on ship explosions. So for the games that used the noisy semiconductor approach (Space War, Sundance, Tailgunner(?), I think I'm missing one) the explosions won't sound nearly as cool. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 10 12:02:40 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 10 Jun 1997 12:02:31 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 14:00:13 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9706101900.AA24738@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > At 11:45 AM 6/10/97 -0500, you wrote: > > > > I think you guys were talking about using an LFSR, generated by a PIC to > do that. Did that work? > > I haven't done it with a PIC (but have with a 6800, 6809, Z-80 and a 8088), > the technique works fine. It's a very simple "shift, rearrange some bits, > XOR" algorithm. Works just like the schematic on one of those Cinematronics > games (I can't remember which games used discreet components to implement > the shift register / noise generator. I thought Star Castle did.) Star Castle doesn't. It uses a 3-pin noise generator to generate the "NOISE" signal. It sounds like you used a basic LFSR. The output of that LFSR is colored noise (as you found out.) You can shape that noise by doing some other stuff. By putting a Low-Pass filter on it's output (and taking a simple average) you can make that noise have a Normal distribution. Your LPF determines the mean and variance of that distribution. This LPF actually isn't trivial (if you want a good normal distribution) it needs to be somewhere around 10th and 20th order (I'm not sure what your guys' backgrounds are, but if you're familiar with the Central Limit Theorem from Probability, it says that the sum of N independent random distributions is always Normally distributed as N gets large. What's large? About 20 -- Implying that you need a 20th order filter, give or take....) > It's drawback is the noise generated doesn't have a lot of low end > component. It works great for gunshots, but lacks real low end rumble on > ship explosions. > > So for the games that used the noisy semiconductor approach (Space War, > Sundance, Tailgunner(?), I think I'm missing one) the explosions won't sound > nearly as cool. > > -Zonn > Anyways, let me knmow if any of you guys have any info on that noise generator... Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 10 12:36:50 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 10 Jun 1997 12:36:49 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: <199706101932.PAA08847@firewall.etn.com> From: "Fish, David" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: RE: cine sound board Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 15:33:16 -0400 X-Priority: 3 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.0.1457.3) Content-Type: text/plain Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Zonn wrote: >So for the games that used the noisy semiconductor approach (Space War, >Sundance, Tailgunner(?), I think I'm missing one) the explosions won't sound >nearly as cool. Rip Off is the one your forgetting. Dave From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 10 13:41:49 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 10 Jun 1997 13:41:46 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Subject: Re: Cinematronics Masked ROM part numbers To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 14:05:25 -0600 (MDT) From: "Kurt Mahan" In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19970610112442.2317cc22@pop3.concentric.net> from "Zonn" at Jun 10, 97 11:28:00 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Message-ID: <339db3860.12d0@bolt.usg.provo.novell.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 188 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > > Hi guys! > > I've been on vacation for the last 10 days roaming in and around the canyon > lands in Utah. Great country! And you didn't come north to Salt Lake and say "Hi"? Kurt From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 10 14:08:48 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 10 Jun 1997 14:08:43 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Tue, 10 Jun 97 14:07 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970610140404.0eb7936c@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: Cinematronics Masked ROM part numbers Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 02:05 PM 6/10/97 -0600, you wrote: >> >> Hi guys! >> >> I've been on vacation for the last 10 days roaming in and around the canyon >> lands in Utah. Great country! > >And you didn't come north to Salt Lake and say "Hi"? Dang! Downright unfriendly of me huh? I'll just have to say it from here (So. Cal.) "HI!" I was as close as 300 miles to Salt Lake at one time, much of the time was spent on dirt roads. Since I drove from the Northern San Diego Area to Utah on I15 I passed through Nevada (Las Vegas), Southern Arizona, as well as Utah. So "HI" to all others I blew by on my way to look at big towering blocks of dirt! :^) -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 10 21:19:10 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 10 Jun 1997 21:19:08 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: <339E26A4.3104@links.magenta.com> Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 22:16:36 -0600 From: Jess Askey X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Al Kossow wrote: > > I read the mystery proms in tonight. it's possible that > they are actually 4k, but I was only able to read data > from the first 2k so i've included it here. It doesn't > appear to match any ROM that I have, so I thought maybe > someone else could look at it. It has a '79 Cine copyright Did I miss the original posting about where you found these ROM's? Could you please tell the story again. Thanks. Me so slow. :-) Jess From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jun 10 21:29:47 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 10 Jun 1997 21:29:41 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Tue, 10 Jun 1997 21:29:38 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Did I miss the original posting about where you found these ROM's? Could you please tell the story again. Thanks. Me so slow. :-) Jess they were on a Vectorbeam board that I picked up. There are two EPROMs on the board, with one leg jumpered over to the adjacent unused ROM sockets. From what Zonn said, they would have been used after the Cine / Vectorbeam remerger by Cine. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 11 08:51:42 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 11 Jun 1997 08:51:19 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: <199706111558.LAA07968@po_box.cig.mot.com> Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 10:46:44 -0500 From: Mark Jenison In-Reply-To: Ed Henciak "Re: G80 speech board" (May 5, 6:11pm) References: <199705052236.SAA03863@po_box.cig.mot.com> X-face: "@9[FFAftX<9}2=gaPlIyRv_K%h[>.@"8t}B2So!iv.\#M9NplA9bDudBQ|]E`WL9Kd,Tn2v.0OGcE<$yg{&}(m:mB\GO9L+yE}6=d17BM X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.2.1 10apr95) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: G80 speech board Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO On May 5, 6:11pm, Ed Henciak wrote: > Subject: Re: G80 speech board > Hello, > > I was just going over Clay's message about speech boards. I have 2 Star > Trek sets...each, I believe, different in the socket where the 'Orator, is > located... > > On board labeled 800-3308 A, there is a chip in the 'Orator' socket > with the number 783-4043-002. The logo on the chip looks like this... > > ----------- > | | > | | > | ---- | > | | | > | | | > ----------- > > next to this 'GI...and it is that rectangular, unlike the orator's "curvy" > GI... is the number 8048 CCA and TAIWAN. I found a few of these on some of my Speech boards. It seems to be the less common of the two. > On my other board, which has a handwritten 800-3308 REV D, the chip > clearly says SPO250 ORATOR. > > and the logo is clearly a GI with the numbers 8136 CCA TAIWAN > > I'd love to let you guys know if there is any difference in sounds, etc., I haven't found any sound differences whatsoever. Maybe Al should put a search out for the other chip, also. > but I am having one hell of a time getting my monitor to work, and there > is much static in the audio (my boards are working though). If I can wire > up some mock coin mechanisms, I'll let you know how sounds compare. My > monitor currently is displayin a bright dot in the center with some nice, > small, blue squigglies!! Anyway, if it would help to donate the > board/chip to a Sega Multigame cause, let me know...just return it when > finished!!! Oh, the number of EEPROMS are the same on Star Trek's > speech...3. And one more thing I just noticed...on the board I have > without the ORATOR, there is a national semiconductor 8039 (exact numbers > are 014C INS8039N-6 /P8039-6)...on the board with the ORATOR there is > an Intel P8035HL L2468201. Hope this helps!!! Thanks I don't know if the 8035 or 8039 matters. I've been using the 8035s exclusively to repair these boards. The 8039 has been found on boards with the ORATOR, so I don't think there is a difference (I think we may have already covered this...) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Jenison E-mail address: jenison@cig.mot.com Cellular Infrastructure Group Motorola--Arlington Heights, IL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 11 09:45:42 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 11 Jun 1997 09:45:32 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Wed, 11 Jun 97 09:44 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970611094051.2bc76c68@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: i'm a spaz Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 09:42 PM 6/10/97 -0700, you wrote: > >I actually READ Steve's Cine FAQ, and It's obvious that the board >is for a Warrior. It does appear that -02 that I sent out is bad >-01 matches warrior.p7. > >Somehow I didn't think there was a mystery Cine game still missing... Too bad, I was hoping for "Oops!" -- extremely unlikely that this games was ever masked into a part, but then again I occasionally buy a lotto ticket and the chances of winning that are lower, I'm sure. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 11 09:48:36 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 11 Jun 1997 09:48:30 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Wed, 11 Jun 97 09:47 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970611094351.2bc77ab6@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: RE: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 03:33 PM 6/10/97 -0400, you wrote: >Zonn wrote: >>So for the games that used the noisy semiconductor approach (Space War, >>Sundance, Tailgunner(?), I think I'm missing one) the explosions won't >sound >>nearly as cool. > >Rip Off is the one your forgetting. I just looked at the RipOff schematic last night and it uses the 8 pin noise generator: S2688. I don't have a schematic or sound board for Warrior, maybe it uses a noisy semiconductor... -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 11 10:01:09 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 11 Jun 1997 10:00:57 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Subject: Re: i'm a spaz To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 11:53:43 -0600 (MDT) From: "Kurt Mahan" In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19970611094051.2bc76c68@pop3.concentric.net> from "Zonn" at Jun 11, 97 09:44:00 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Message-ID: <339ee6270.3d56@bolt.usg.provo.novell.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 728 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > >I actually READ Steve's Cine FAQ, and It's obvious that the board > >is for a Warrior. It does appear that -02 that I sent out is bad > >-01 matches warrior.p7. > > > >Somehow I didn't think there was a mystery Cine game still missing... > > Too bad, I was hoping for "Oops!" -- extremely unlikely that this games was > ever masked into a part, but then again I occasionally buy a lotto ticket > and the chances of winning that are lower, I'm sure. Did anybody every track down QB3 from Rock-Ola? Kurt /* * This version of Kurt Mahan is currently being evaluated. Words he speaks * are those of him only and not those of Novell or anybody else. * * Novell Java Development * * Kurt Mahan * kmahan@novell.com */ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 11 10:16:30 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 11 Jun 1997 10:16:28 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Subject: Re: cine sound board To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 12:09:21 -0600 (MDT) From: "Kurt Mahan" In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19970611094351.2bc77ab6@pop3.concentric.net> from "Zonn" at Jun 11, 97 09:47:00 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Message-ID: <339ee9d20.3dd8@bolt.usg.provo.novell.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 889 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > At 03:33 PM 6/10/97 -0400, you wrote: > >Zonn wrote: > >>So for the games that used the noisy semiconductor approach (Space War, > >>Sundance, Tailgunner(?), I think I'm missing one) the explosions won't > >sound > >>nearly as cool. > > > >Rip Off is the one your forgetting. > > I just looked at the RipOff schematic last night and it uses the 8 pin noise > generator: S2688. > > I don't have a schematic or sound board for Warrior, maybe it uses a noisy > semiconductor... I've got the schematics for Warrior. I'll dupe sets (no charge) for people on this mailing list that want them. Send me some email with your snail mail address (kmahan@novell.com). Kurt /* * This version of Kurt Mahan is currently being evaluated. Words he speaks * are those of him only and not those of Novell or anybody else. * * Novell Java Development * * Kurt Mahan * kmahan@novell.com */ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 11 10:38:33 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 11 Jun 1997 10:38:32 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Wed, 11 Jun 97 10:37 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970611103351.0e1733c2@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 02:00 PM 6/10/97 -0500, you wrote: > It sounds like you used a basic LFSR. The output of that LFSR is colored noise (as you found out.) You can shape that noise by doing some other stuff. By putting a Low-Pass filter on it's output (and taking a simple average) you can make that noise have a Normal distribution. Your LPF determines the mean and variance of that distribution. This LPF actually isn't trivial (if you want a good normal distribution) it needs to be somewhere around 10th and 20th order (I'm not sure what your guys' backgrounds are, but if you're familiar with the Central Limit Theorem from Probability, it says that the sum of N independent random distributions is always Normally distributed as N gets large. What's large? About 20 -- Implying that you need a 20th order filter, give or take....) Since the goal is not to generate Normally Distributed random numbers, but to recreate the sounds used in Cinematronics games, I don't think you going to need a 20th order filter. Cinematronics certainly didn't use one in Solar Quest, and that game definitely used the Shift register approach in generating it's noise source. > Anyways, let me knmow if any of you guys have any info on that noise generator... I've seen the S2688 noise generator replaced with a MM5586 (I think that's right) which was a National Semiconductor chip. At one time (many years ago) I had the data sheet for one of these two parts (I can't remember which, maybe none of the above), and I remember it being a 17 bit shift register with feedback. I believe there was also a noisy semiconductor noise generator available at the same time, and I don't remember which parts are which. (Maybe the "Semiconductor" part needed +/- voltages?) Solar Quest generates its noise with discreet components using the shift register technique. In hardware you implement a shift register, then through a few XOR gates you tap into some of the registers outputs to create a value that is shifted back into the shift registers input bit. In software the technique is to shift the register to the left, shifting in a zero on the right. If value shifted out is a zero, you're done. If the value shifted out is a one, then XOR the register with a mask. This technique was used a lot to generate random numbers on small CPUs where a multiply would take too much time. A proper mask needs to be found that allows 2^n-1 values before repeating itself. The easiest way to find this is to load the register with the value '1', then run the generator and count how many values are generated before '1' appears again. Just keep trying masks until one allows the full 2^n-1 values to be generated. In hardware or software the value of '0' will lock up the random number generator and must be avoided. Solar Quest has hardware to check for this and restart the generator if a zero is detected. Any of the pins (or register bits) can be tapped as the noise source, usually it's the value being shifted out that's used. There are also simple techniques for using the random number generator to generate "Brown" noise, along with the more standard "White" and "Pink" noises. "Brown" noise is has a much higher low frequency content and makes for cool Thunder and Explosion effects. After passing the semiconductor noise generators through a few stages of low pass filtering, the outputs of the explosions, used by Cinematronics, more resemble "Brown" noise than any of the other two types. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 11 11:00:52 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 11 Jun 1997 11:00:45 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: 10 Jun 1997 13:58 EDT To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: "Gregg Woodcock" Subject: RE: Cinematronics Masked ROM part numbers Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO In message "RE: Cinematronics Masked ROM part numbers", you write: >ps - I'd guess you have a Speed Freak, but it could be a Warrior. Could >you describe the wiring mods. > >I forgot to bring in the actual numbers with me to work today (I sent mail >to Zonn with them, but never heard anything back) > >The ROMs sit in the 1st and third slots, with one leg of each lifted and >run over to the adjacent empty slots. > >used used > >Thinking about it, I think I remember the Speed Freak ROMs being set up >this way on MrBill's board. Those are probably Tailgunner II ROMs. Some game boards use 2 PROMs instead of the normal 4 PROM setup. These 4K masked PROMs were mistakenly manufatured with the 2K blocks reversed (either that or they put the ROM sockets in the wrong pair of spots)!!! To fix this, they lifted the 2K address leg of each PROM so that it didn't go in the socket and jumpered it to the ROM spot to the left which uses an inverted signal for that line. This jumper easily comes loose so the best solution is to pull the PROMs, read them in, swap the 2K blocks and burn them into a new EPROM and do away with the address hack altogether. -- THANX...Gregg day 214.684.7380 night UNLIST/PUBL TEXAS NOT CANADA! woodcock@nortel.com or woodcock@dfwmm.net *CLASSIC VIDEOGAME COLLECTOR BUY/SELL/TRADE NON-COMPUTER (ARCADE/HOME)* "If you quote me on this I'll have to deny it; I won't remember because I have such a bad memory. Not only that, but my memory is *terrible*." From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 11 11:11:02 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 11 Jun 1997 11:10:57 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 13:08:40 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9706111808.AA29678@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > At 02:00 PM 6/10/97 -0500, you wrote: > > Since the goal is not to generate Normally Distributed random numbers, but > to recreate the sounds used in Cinematronics games, I don't think you going > to need a 20th order filter. Cinematronics certainly didn't use one in > Solar Quest, and that game definitely used the Shift register approach in > generating it's noise source. Ahhh, but it is. Your point was that the noise from your LFSR didn't have enough of a low-frequency component. If you want your noise to have more of a low frequency content, you want the mean of your normally distributed sum to be low. There is probably going to be SOME low frequency component from your LFSR generated noise. Add some gain to the passband of your filter, and you boost the low frequency component. Does that make sense? (BTW: 20th order filters, if they are, indeed, necessary aren't THAT bad to do digitally. An analog 20th order filter, though, must be HELL. Typically, the ones on the Cineamtronics Sound boards aren't any higher than 3rd order.) I really don't care that the noise is normally generated, but Normal distributions are the easiest to control in terms of their means and variances. I DO care about the mean value of that noise if I want it to have a certain content. > > Anyways, let me know if any of you guys have any info on that noise > generator... > > I've seen the S2688 noise generator replaced with a MM5586 (I think that's > right) which was a National Semiconductor chip. At one time (many years > ago) I had the data sheet for one of these two parts (I can't remember > which, maybe none of the above), and I remember it being a 17 bit shift > register with feedback. I believe there was also a noisy semiconductor > noise generator available at the same time, and I don't remember which parts > are which. (Maybe the "Semiconductor" part needed +/- voltages?) > > Solar Quest generates its noise with discreet components using the shift > register technique. In hardware you implement a shift register, then > through a few XOR gates you tap into some of the registers outputs to create > a value that is shifted back into the shift registers input bit. Right, in Signal Processing, this is called an LFSR (Linear Feedback Shift Register.) They're used in a lot of the stuff I work with so I'm pretty familiar with their signal processing usage. I think we're talking about the same thing here. I'm sure that there are techniques to get "Brown" noise out of an LFSR, one of which might be what I described above. Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 11 13:00:49 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 11 Jun 1997 13:00:39 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: From: "Ozdemir, Steve" To: "'vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com'" Subject: RE: i'm a spaz Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 12:56:10 -0700 X-Mailer: Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.993.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO G'day, Chris Hanks(?), luna@teleport, was the person who suspected QB3 existed. I think he found a flyer or something. Also, Rocket Racer is another Rockola game on the Cinematronics platform that may exist. Steven S Ozdemir sso@dsc.com ps - If anyone ever makes a multigame for Cinematronics, a few slots should be left empty in the menu for these mystery games. >---------- >From: Kurt Mahan[SMTP:kmahan@novell.com] >Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 1997 12:53 PM >To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >Subject: Re: i'm a spaz > >> >I actually READ Steve's Cine FAQ, and It's obvious that the board >> >is for a Warrior. It does appear that -02 that I sent out is bad >> >-01 matches warrior.p7. >> > >> >Somehow I didn't think there was a mystery Cine game still missing... >> >> Too bad, I was hoping for "Oops!" -- extremely unlikely that this games was >> ever masked into a part, but then again I occasionally buy a lotto ticket >> and the chances of winning that are lower, I'm sure. > >Did anybody every track down QB3 from Rock-Ola? > >Kurt > >/* > * This version of Kurt Mahan is currently being evaluated. Words he speaks > * are those of him only and not those of Novell or anybody else. > * > * Novell Java Development > * > * Kurt Mahan > * kmahan@novell.com > */ > > From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 11 13:03:05 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 11 Jun 1997 13:03:00 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 13:02:57 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: cine multigame Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO SteveO said: ps - If anyone ever makes a multigame for Cinematronics, a few slots should be left empty in the menu for these mystery games. ..and a slot or two for new games (assuming anyone is crazy enough to try to write a new Cine game!) From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 11 13:08:45 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 11 Jun 1997 13:08:44 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: From: "Fish, David" To: "vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com" Subject: QB3 ??? Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 16:05:34 -0400 X-Mailer: Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.995.52 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO >Steve O wrote: >>Chris Hanks(?), luna@teleport, was the person who suspected QB3 existed. >> I think he found a flyer or something. Also, Rocket Racer is another >>Rockola game on the Cinematronics platform that may exist. Aside from the name, QB3, what else is known about this game? I've heard people mention the name but nothing more. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 11 13:33:37 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 11 Jun 1997 13:33:36 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Wed, 11 Jun 97 13:32 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970611132854.0e171fe8@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 01:08 PM 6/11/97 -0500, you wrote: >> At 02:00 PM 6/10/97 -0500, you wrote: >> >> Since the goal is not to generate Normally Distributed random numbers, but >> to recreate the sounds used in Cinematronics games, I don't think you going >> to need a 20th order filter. Cinematronics certainly didn't use one in >> Solar Quest, and that game definitely used the Shift register approach in >> generating it's noise source. > > Ahhh, but it is. Your point was that the noise from your LFSR didn't have enough of a low-frequency component. If you want your noise to have more of a low frequency content, you want the mean of your normally distributed sum to be low. There is probably going to be SOME low frequency component from your LFSR generated noise. Add some gain to the passband of your filter, and you boost the low frequency component. Does that make sense? (BTW: 20th order filters, if they are, indeed, necessary aren't THAT bad to do digitally. An analog 20th order filter, though, must be HELL. Typically, the ones on the Cineamtronics Sound boards aren't any higher than 3rd order.) > > I really don't care that the noise is normally generated, but Normal distributions are the easiest to control in terms of their means and variances. I DO care about the mean value of that noise if I want it to have a certain content. Actually my point was: Since the Cinematronics games that use a shift registers approach (Solar Quest for sure) used only a LFSR and a 3rd order filter, you should be able to recreate that sound with a LFSR and a 3rd order filter. The complaint about the LSFR not having enough Low end applies to all LSFRs, not just any implementation I've come up with (just listen to the scratchy sounds of the Pokey explosions. The "Thrust" sound used to fly through a Tempest tube to the next level sounds more like a credit card on a zipper than any kind of engine rumble -- which might be by design, but the author had little choice, being stuck with a Pokey. > >> > Anyways, let me know if any of you guys have any info on that noise >> generator... >> >> I've seen the S2688 noise generator replaced with a MM5586 (I think that's >> right) which was a National Semiconductor chip. At one time (many years >> ago) I had the data sheet for one of these two parts (I can't remember >> which, maybe none of the above), and I remember it being a 17 bit shift >> register with feedback. I believe there was also a noisy semiconductor >> noise generator available at the same time, and I don't remember which parts >> are which. (Maybe the "Semiconductor" part needed +/- voltages?) >> >> Solar Quest generates its noise with discreet components using the shift >> register technique. In hardware you implement a shift register, then >> through a few XOR gates you tap into some of the registers outputs to create >> a value that is shifted back into the shift registers input bit. > > Right, in Signal Processing, this is called an LFSR (Linear Feedback Shift Register.) They're used in a lot of the stuff I work with so I'm pretty familiar with their signal processing usage. > > I think we're talking about the same thing here. I'm sure that there are techniques to get "Brown" noise out of an LFSR, one of which might be what I described above. A 20th order lowpass filter will probably work fine. The CPU's I've used in the past would come to a screaching halt if any type of floating point were used (or even too many fixed point operations). Instead of using the values of the random number generator as is (which more closely mirrors that of "white" noise) and then trying to digitally filter them, I've used a few bits of the random numbers generated as deltas to the previous "noise" value. Ex: If you took only the lower four bits the random number and treated it as a 4 bit signed number, the most your new noise value would be changed from the previous one is by +/-7 (assuming you treat -8 as a zero, which you must do). You end up with a low level high frequency noise riding on a larger low frequency component. You have to play with clock rates, and which bits (and how many) you use, you also have to give it at little bit of history so that it wants to continue heading in the direction it was previously heading, otherwise you can end up with nothing but a +/- 7 bit white noise source. But given a little experimentation you can get it sounding pretty nice. Something like this might actually be being done to some extent inside the S2688 noise generators -- we really do need a data sheet for this part. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 11 13:35:05 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 11 Jun 1997 13:35:00 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: From: "Ozdemir, Steve" To: "'vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com'" Subject: RE: QB3 ??? Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 13:30:54 -0700 X-Mailer: Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.993.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO G'day folks, Chris seems to be the source, so you'll have to ask him. Steven S Ozdemir sso@dsc.com >---------- >From: Fish, David[SMTP:dfish@bev.etn.com] >Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 1997 3:05 PM >To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >Subject: QB3 ??? > >>Steve O wrote: >>>Chris Hanks(?), luna@teleport, was the person who suspected QB3 existed. >>> I think he found a flyer or something. Also, Rocket Racer is another >>>Rockola game on the Cinematronics platform that may exist. > > Aside from the name, QB3, what else is known about this game? I've >heard people mention the name but nothing more. > > From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 11 14:05:46 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 11 Jun 1997 14:05:39 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 16:03:25 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9706112103.AA00821@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > Actually my point was: Since the Cinematronics games that use a shift > registers approach (Solar Quest for sure) used only a LFSR and a 3rd order > filter, you should be able to recreate that sound with a LFSR and a 3rd > order filter. OK, we WERE talking about different things here. You said that an LFSR, in comparison to a leaky semiconductor is a little short on the low-end noise. Leaky semiconductors don't lend themselves well to digital implementation (i.e. DSP code,) so I was suggesting a way to boost the low-end noise of an LFSR (which does lend itself pretty well to DSP code,) so that it might more closely resemble a leaky semiconductor for emulation purposes. Of course, noise produced by a [digital] LFSR that is sent through a specific [analog] filter can be almost exactly reproduced by sending "identical" noise produces by an identical LFSR through the equivalent digital filter. > The complaint about the LSFR not having enough Low end applies to all LSFRs, > not just any implementation I've come up with (just listen to the scratchy > sounds of the Pokey explosions. The "Thrust" sound used to fly through a > Tempest tube to the next level sounds more like a credit card on a zipper > than any kind of engine rumble -- which might be by design, but the author > had little choice, being stuck with a Pokey. > > > > >> > Anyways, let me know if any of you guys have any info on that noise > >> generator... > >> > A 20th order lowpass filter will probably work fine. The CPU's I've used in > the past would come to a screaching halt if any type of floating point were > used (or even too many fixed point operations). It can all be done in fixed point. Most DSPs have a 1 cycle MAC instruction, so worst case, a 20th order LPF takes 39 cycles (20 for all the poles, up to 19 for the zeroes.) This is why DSPs have a market. This is also, essentially, what MMX is, (a MAC instruction, although, of course, that's not all) essentially Intel's attempt to capture the market that has been dominated by little dedicated DSPs on sound cards, etc. Any pre-MMX processor (besides the PowerPC, which has a MAC instruction) will have difficulty (i.e. take longer) to do this stuff. Anyways, I don't want to turn this into a micro. discussion.... > Instead of using the values of the random number generator as is (which more > closely mirrors that of "white" noise) and then trying to digitally filter > them, I've used a few bits of the random numbers generated as deltas to the > previous "noise" value. Ex: If you took only the lower four bits the random > number and treated it as a 4 bit signed number, the most your new noise > value would be changed from the previous one is by +/-7 (assuming you treat > -8 as a zero, which you must do). You end up with a low level high > frequency noise riding on a larger low frequency component. You have to > play with clock rates, and which bits (and how many) you use, you also have > to give it at little bit of history so that it wants to continue heading in > the direction it was previously heading, otherwise you can end up with > nothing but a +/- 7 bit white noise source. But given a little > experimentation you can get it sounding pretty nice. > > Something like this might actually be being done to some extent inside the > S2688 noise generators -- we really do need a data sheet for this part. I agree with you. The 20th order filter was just an example. In fact, something as small as a 4th order filter might, for all intents and purposes, do the same thing (I had a Professor tell me one time that the average of 4 LFSR generated pseudo-random numbers was a normally-distributed pseudo-random number. He wasn't really in the field of signal-processing, though. I got the 20 from the stats. profs that I had.) There have been scores of papers written on LFSR generated pseudo-random numbers (Lots by people here at Crystal, actually) so I will check into those. It's definitely off the the University of Texas library for me tonight (In search of a S2688 datasheet.) I hope they don't have funky hours for the summer. I'll let y'all know if I find anything (UTexas has never let me down before! ) Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 11 14:19:53 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 11 Jun 1997 14:19:52 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Wed, 11 Jun 97 14:18 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970611141512.2d3fa640@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 04:03 PM 6/11/97 -0500, you wrote: > > I agree with you. The 20th order filter was just an example. In fact, something as small as a 4th order filter might, for all intents and purposes, do the same thing (I had a Professor tell me one time that the average of 4 LFSR generated pseudo-random numbers was a normally-distributed pseudo-random number. He wasn't really in the field of signal-processing, though. I got the 20 from the stats. profs that I had.) There have been scores of papers written on LFSR generated pseudo-random numbers (Lots by people here at Crystal, actually) so I will check into those. You work at Crystal? My friend just put together a little demo board of Crystal's new Midi synthesizer in a chip. Very cool! Crystal does some neet stuff! > > It's definitely off the the University of Texas library for me tonight (In search of a S2688 datasheet.) I hope they don't have funky hours for the summer. I'll let y'all know if I find anything (UTexas has never let me down before! ) Good luck! I wish I could remember the number of the National Semiconductor replacement part that Cinematronics also used, it might be easier to find. I think it was MM5586. But I'm probably wrong. If you come up empty handed tonight, I'll go home and look at the Star Castle board that uses it and let you know. Maybe someone else has access to a Cinematronics sound card that uses the National S. part in place of the S2688 and can let you know before tonight. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 11 14:20:28 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 11 Jun 1997 14:20:27 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 16:12:58 -0500 Message-Id: <199706112112.QAA19096@moe.works.ti.com> From: Michael Schulz To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com In-Reply-To: (dfish@bev.etn.com) Subject: Re: QB3 ??? Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO >Aside from the name, QB3, what else is known about this game? I've >heard people mention the name but nothing more. > All I know about it is what Chris Hanks mentioned in his post back in January. I'd love to have the game, though! FWIW, I've attached a copy of the Chris Hanks original post regarding the game. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------- The opinions and views expressed are my own, and do ------------- ----------- not necessarily reflect those of Texas Instruments Inc. ----------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ****************************************************************************** Subject: Vector game called QB-3? From: luna@teleport.com (Chris.Hanks) Date: 1997/01/12 Message-Id: <5badep$fb3$1@nadine.teleport.com> Newsgroups: rec.games.video.arcade.collecting [More Headers] I was reading an old issue of "Electronic Fun with Computers and Games" from Feb. 1983. One of the articles is about the new arcade games shown at that year's AMOA show and this paragraph caught my attention: [quote from magazine] "Another star of the show was QB-3 from Rockola. Rockola, famous for its great pinball games, entered the video game field last year with Eyes. QB-3 shows they're here to stay. It's a vector game in which you are trapped in a space cube and must shoot points and stars of light. After clearing one side of the cube, you actually rotate it to get to the next wave. It is an incredible game that is just slightly reminiscent of Robotron". [end quote] Okay, I guess it's not totally accurate since Rockola is more known for jukes, not pins, but the game still sounds pretty cool! I'm assuming that QB-3 (if it even exists) would actually be a Cinematronics vector game LICENSED to Rockola, like Rocket Racer and Demon were. So, does anybody know if this game exists? Perhaps the name changed before it went into production? Chris. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 11 14:29:32 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 11 Jun 1997 14:29:31 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: <3.0.32.19970611142644.006a64ac@mail.teleport.com> X-Sender: luna@mail.teleport.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 14:26:46 -0700 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: "Chris.Hanks" Subject: Re: QB3 ??? Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > Aside from the name, QB3, what else is known about this game? I've >heard people mention the name but nothing more. I saw QB3 listed in an old video game magazine that had a report of one of the arcade shows. I asked around, and bumped into a former Rock-Ola employee on RGVAC who was familiar with QB3 (and many other rare, unproduced games, including CLONE!) Here is his description of the game: >Interesting you should ask. Yes, the game QB-3 was designed by >Rock-Ola and appeared at the '83 Spring trade show. I joined >Rock-Ola as a programmer in '82 and one of the early projects I >worked on was play testing QB-3. Game play took place on 6 sides of >a cube/box. Game play was similar to asteroids, i.e. rotate >left/right, thrust, and fire. The object was to kill enemies which >where located on each face/side of the cube. To move to a different >side of the cube the player moved their ship to one side of the cube >causing the cube to rotate to the adjoining face. Each face of the >cube had local enemies that could not move from face to face. So the >player basically would move to a face of the cube, blast a bunch of >enemies, and then quickly retreat to another face of the cube. This >continued until the entire Cube was cleared at which time you got >a new Cube filled with more difficult enemies, etc.. This game was a >lot of fun to play and I haven't played one since leaving Rock-Ola. > Chris. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 11 19:42:30 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 11 Jun 1997 19:42:26 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-BlackMail: mailrelay.tiac.net, mailrelay.tiac.net, fishd@tiac.net, 199.0.65.237 X-Authenticated-Timestamp: 19:42:23(PDT) on June 11, 1997 Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 22:39:43 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199706120239.WAA10136@mailrelay.tiac.net> X-Sender: fishd@pop.tiac.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 1.5.2 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: fishd Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 02:18 PM 6/11/97 PDT, you wrote: >At 04:03 PM 6/11/97 -0500, you wrote: >I think it was MM5586. But I'm probably wrong. If you come up empty handed >tonight, I'll go home and look at the Star Castle board that uses it and let >you know. Maybe someone else has access to a Cinematronics sound card that >uses the National S. part in place of the S2688 and can let you know before >tonight. I've got a SC board in my hands which uses a National MM5837. From the National 1977 Audio Handbook: The MM5837 Digital noise source is a MOS/MSI pseudo-random sequence generator, designed to produce a broadband white noise signal for audio applications. Unlike traditional semiconductor junction noise sources, The MM5837 provides very uniform noise quality and output amplitude. [yada, yada, yada] The output of the MM5837 is broadband white noise. FWIW David Fish | "We want...Information. INFORMATION Melrose, MA USA | You won't get it! fishd@tiac.com | By hook or by crook we will" dfish@bev.etn.com | _The Prisoner_ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 11 22:43:21 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 11 Jun 1997 22:43:17 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: zonn@concentric.net (Zonn Moore) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: cine sound board Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 04:37:44 GMT Message-ID: <33a07c5b.596155@smtp.concentric.net> References: <199706120239.WAA10136@mailrelay.tiac.net> In-Reply-To: <199706120239.WAA10136@mailrelay.tiac.net> X-Mailer: Forte Agent .99g/16.339 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO On Wed, 11 Jun 1997 22:39:43 -0400 (EDT), you wrote: ~ At 02:18 PM 6/11/97 PDT, you wrote: ~ >At 04:03 PM 6/11/97 -0500, you wrote: ~=20 ~ >I think it was MM5586. But I'm probably wrong. If you come up empty = handed ~ >tonight, I'll go home and look at the Star Castle board that uses it = and let ~ >you know. Maybe someone else has access to a Cinematronics sound card= that ~ >uses the National S. part in place of the S2688 and can let you know = before ~ >tonight. ~=20 ~ I've got a SC board in my hands which uses a National MM5837. From the ~ National 1977 Audio Handbook: The MM5837 Digital noise source is a = MOS/MSI ~ pseudo-random sequence generator, designed to produce a broadband white ~ noise signal for audio applications. Unlike traditional semiconductor ~ junction noise sources, The MM5837 provides very uniform noise quality ~ and output amplitude. [yada, yada, yada] The output of the MM5837 is ~ broadband white noise. Yup! That's the part! Thanks David. So do you have the full specs on the part? This is the one I played with= in the past, the fact that it uses a "pseudo-random" generator is indicative of = a LFSR, since a noisy semiconductor is a truly random source. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 07:19:34 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 07:19:30 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 09:17:17 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9706121417.AA03519@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > Yup! That's the part! Thanks David. > > So do you have the full specs on the part? This is the one I played with= > in the > past, the fact that it uses a "pseudo-random" generator is indicative of = > a LFSR, > since a noisy semiconductor is a truly random source. > > -Zonn > The S2688/MM5837 ARE LFSR-based pseudo-random noise generators. I went to the UTexas library last night, and wasn't able to find a datasheet, but I DID find a functional block diagram in a reference called D.A.T.A. (forgot what it stood for) Anyways, the LFSR is 17 registers long, and the 14th and 17th bits are fed back to the "Exclusive Or Circuitry" block. All the bits of the LFSR are NORed together (zero detect.) The output of this NOR gate is also fed into the "Exclusive Or Circuitry" block. This is an MOS part, and takes 3 voltages (2 supply -- Vdd and Vss, and one control voltage, Vgg) The part has an internal ocsillator and clock driver to generate the clock for the LFSR. The 17th bit of the LFSR is send through a push-pull output buffer, and that is the noise output, so it looks like there is no integrator on the output. Vgg controls two "Test Gates" which are probably nothing more than MOS switches. There are two test pins (TESTA and TESTB) on the chip. It looks like when Vgg is high, TESTA is input to the "Exclusive Or Circuitry" block and TESTB is input to the "Internal Oscillator" block (Probably if you want to supply your own clock.) Anways, it looks like I have what I need to emulate this thing. If anyone can provide more detailed specs, especially about how that internal oscillator works (i.e. is it just one frequency, or does it vary in frequency) I'd appreciate it. Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 07:33:09 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 07:33:08 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 09:30:52 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9706121430.AA03600@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > You work at Crystal? My friend just put together a little demo board of > Crystal's new Midi synthesizer in a chip. Very cool! Crystal does some > neet stuff! Yeah, I work at Crystal. I guess you missed my post last week about my plans for the Cine MultiGame Sound board. I'll paraphrase, since it was kind of long winded... I'm going to do it with a ADC -> DSP -> DAC based design. I work for Crystal, for the Digital (Professional) Audio Group (That Midi Chip probably came out of one of our Multimedia Audio groups, so I had nothing to do with it :( ) The chip that I am working on now (You'll see me slip lots of times and call it "my chip," even though there are two other designers working on it) would be perfectly suited for this task. Unfortunately, I don't want to risk getting fired by spilling all the details about it (since it's not released yet,) but look on Crystal's web page (www.crystal.com) and look at the CS4226 (A professional audio CODEC) and the CS4922 (A DSP) "My" part will be a successor to both of those at the same time. J From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 08:50:35 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 08:50:24 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 12 Jun 97 08:49 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970612084537.1bff62c4@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 09:17 AM 6/12/97 -0500, you wrote: >> Yup! That's the part! Thanks David. >> >> So do you have the full specs on the part? This is the one I played with= >> in the >> past, the fact that it uses a "pseudo-random" generator is indicative of = >> a LFSR, >> since a noisy semiconductor is a truly random source. >> >> -Zonn >> > > The S2688/MM5837 ARE LFSR-based pseudo-random noise generators. > > I went to the UTexas library last night, and wasn't able to find a datasheet, but I DID find a functional block diagram in a reference called D.A.T.A. (forgot what it stood for) > > Anyways, the LFSR is 17 registers long, and the 14th and 17th bits are fed back to the "Exclusive Or Circuitry" block. All the bits of the LFSR are NORed together (zero detect.) The output of this NOR gate is also fed into the "Exclusive Or Circuitry" block. > > This is an MOS part, and takes 3 voltages (2 supply -- Vdd and Vss, and one control voltage, Vgg) > > The part has an internal ocsillator and clock driver to generate the clock for the LFSR. The 17th bit of the LFSR is send through a push-pull output buffer, and that is the noise output, so it looks like there is no integrator on the output. > > Vgg controls two "Test Gates" which are probably nothing more than MOS switches. There are two test pins (TESTA and TESTB) on the chip. It looks like when Vgg is high, TESTA is input to the "Exclusive Or Circuitry" block and TESTB is input to the "Internal Oscillator" block (Probably if you want to supply your own clock.) > > Anways, it looks like I have what I need to emulate this thing. If anyone can provide more detailed specs, especially about how that internal oscillator works (i.e. is it just one frequency, or does it vary in frequency) I'd appreciate it. I'll bet if you put a scope on the unfiltered output you would easily see residue of the clock. I'll also bet it's fixed, but fluxuates a bit with temperature. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 09:32:46 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 09:32:36 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 09:32:33 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: SP0250 data format Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO I didn't get any replies on rec.games.video.arcade.collecting, so I thought I'd check here. What is the input format for the data going into the Orator (LPC10?) From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 09:48:33 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 09:48:23 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 12 Jun 97 09:47 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970612094341.0e6fcb24@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: SP0250 data format Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 09:32 AM 6/12/97 -0700, you wrote: > >I didn't get any replies on rec.games.video.arcade.collecting, so >I thought I'd check here. What is the input format for the data >going into the Orator (LPC10?) Having never written any code for LPC decoding I speak from a strong history of inexperience. That said I have read through the TI data books available in the early '80s that talked of how to record data for their LPC chips (the Speak & Spell chip of the time). You basically went to a recording studio, recorded the statements you wanted spoken, quite a few times, then sent the tape to TI for processing. My understanding of LPC is that the algorithms for extracting the filter information from the spoken phrase are a bit complex, and would need to be written specifically for the LPC part in question. Your probably going to need some fairly detailed working knowledge of the Orator, as well as some strong background in the signal processing of LPC. I think your best bet to record new sounds for the Orator is to find an GI insider who worked with the LPC group back in the '80s. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 09:48:39 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 09:48:37 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@pop.van.diamondmm.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 09:50:47 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: SP0250 data format Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO >I didn't get any replies on rec.games.video.arcade.collecting, so >I thought I'd check here. What is the input format for the data >going into the Orator (LPC10?) I kinda thought it was LPC, but Larry Brantingham (the guy that designed all of TI's speech chips-- the TMS5100, 5220CNL, as well as the current stuff) seemed to think it was a formant synth. If it's just an LPC-10 varient and you could figure out what the filter order is you could possibly convert the data to the TMS5220CNL. Much easier to find. :-) -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 09:56:53 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 09:56:44 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 12 Jun 97 09:55 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970612095202.2d571760@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: SP0250 data format Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 09:50 AM 6/12/97 -0800, you wrote: >>I didn't get any replies on rec.games.video.arcade.collecting, so >>I thought I'd check here. What is the input format for the data >>going into the Orator (LPC10?) > >I kinda thought it was LPC, but Larry Brantingham (the guy that designed >all of TI's speech chips-- the TMS5100, 5220CNL, as well as the current >stuff) seemed to think it was a formant synth. If it's just an LPC-10 >varient and you could figure out what the filter order is you could >possibly convert the data to the TMS5220CNL. Much easier to find. :-) The SP0256 was GI's formant synth version of the chip. They simply took the SP0250 added an internal ROM of LPC recorded formant phrases for 56(?) different parts of speech. Then instead of accessing full phrases, you accessed formants and strung them together to create phrases. The SP0256 was the chip Radio Shack sold for a while back in the '80s. Maybe this is what Larry was referring to. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 10:39:11 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 10:39:10 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@pop.van.diamondmm.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 10:41:03 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: SP0250 data format Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO >At 09:50 AM 6/12/97 -0800, you wrote: >The SP0256 was GI's formant synth version of the chip. They simply took the >SP0250 added an internal ROM of LPC recorded formant phrases for 56(?) >different parts of speech. Then instead of accessing full phrases, you >accessed formants and strung them together to create phrases. Seems like we've gone over this before... Anyway, this is the message from Larry to me. (My quotes are double ">>", Larry's are ">")... >>I have a kind-of trivia question for you. Since you've been doing voice >>compression for quite a while I wonder if you ever ran across or knew >>anything about the General Instruments SPO-250 "Orator" chip. The >>SPO-256AL2 was their little phoneme synth that was used in quite a few >>gizmo's of the early 80's (maybe the Intellivision Voice module I think), >>but the Orator was used in some Sega Arcade games (like Star Trek) and >>sounded *very* nice for the era. I assumed that it was some form of LPC >>since the voices didn't really sound digitized like an ADPCM or something. >>Very faint "robotic" overtones sometimes on vowels... Any thoughts? >> > I definitely remember the name and number, and I'm pretty sure that I've >seen a spec sheet for it. The memories are faint (and not just about speech >stuff!), but I think this was a formant synthesizer. The SP0256 was >essentially the same part preprogrammed with a phoneme/allophone set. At >the time, formant synthesizers were the clear favorites for doing >text-to-speech. Conventional wisdom was that "they" would have the kinks >worked out of TTS in short order and then there would be no need for voice >coders- at least for playback-only systems. Co-incidentally, that was about >the time one of my partners here started on his 8-year TTS research project >at CNET in France. In spite of being one of the world's best systems at the >time, neither it nor the others have ever really been good enough for the >big time-- Michel refuses to touch the stuff now! > Back to the 0250; the problem for formant synthesizers in that period was >(the lack of) automatic formant tracking. As it happens, the most popular >filter control parameters these days are line spectrum pairs (of >frequencies- LSPs) which come pretty close to tracking what a shadetree >like myself would consider to be formants, though this time around, no one >pretends that there's a one-to-one relationship. Sorry-- got carried away >there..... That went over my head pretty fast, but maybe it's useful to others... ;-) -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 10:40:36 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 10:40:35 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 13:32:15 -0400 (EDT) From: Ed Henciak X-Sender: ethst3@unixs2.cis.pitt.edu To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Vector monitors for computers? In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19970523160945.39471576@pop3.concentric.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Hello there, I was just wondering if any companies had made vector monitors for computers (like VAXes and stuff in the 80s). If so, what companies should I look for. A local computer recycling center is selling off a ton of stuff for virtually nothing and who knows? I know some of the stuff is from CMU's engineering labs and I think I had heard that some older CAD machines used big, color vector monitors. Thanks!!! Ed From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 11:12:13 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 11:12:11 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 12 Jun 97 11:11 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970612110724.19a7a85c@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: SP0250 data format Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 10:41 AM 6/12/97 -0800, you wrote: >>At 09:50 AM 6/12/97 -0800, you wrote: >>The SP0256 was GI's formant synth version of the chip. They simply took the >>SP0250 added an internal ROM of LPC recorded formant phrases for 56(?) >>different parts of speech. Then instead of accessing full phrases, you >>accessed formants and strung them together to create phrases. > >Seems like we've gone over this before... Anyway, this is the message from >Larry to me. (My quotes are double ">>", Larry's are ">")... > >>>I have a kind-of trivia question for you. Since you've been doing voice >>>compression for quite a while I wonder if you ever ran across or knew >>>anything about the General Instruments SPO-250 "Orator" chip. The >>>SPO-256AL2 was their little phoneme synth that was used in quite a few >>>gizmo's of the early 80's (maybe the Intellivision Voice module I think), >>>but the Orator was used in some Sega Arcade games (like Star Trek) and >>>sounded *very* nice for the era. I assumed that it was some form of LPC >>>since the voices didn't really sound digitized like an ADPCM or something. >>>Very faint "robotic" overtones sometimes on vowels... Any thoughts? >>> >> I definitely remember the name and number, and I'm pretty sure that I've >>seen a spec sheet for it. The memories are faint (and not just about speech >>stuff!), but I think this was a formant synthesizer. The SP0256 was >>essentially the same part preprogrammed with a phoneme/allophone set. At >>the time, formant synthesizers were the clear favorites for doing >>text-to-speech. Conventional wisdom was that "they" would have the kinks >>worked out of TTS in short order and then there would be no need for voice >>coders- at least for playback-only systems. Co-incidentally, that was about >>the time one of my partners here started on his 8-year TTS research project >>at CNET in France. In spite of being one of the world's best systems at the >>time, neither it nor the others have ever really been good enough for the >>big time-- Michel refuses to touch the stuff now! >> Back to the 0250; the problem for formant synthesizers in that period was >>(the lack of) automatic formant tracking. As it happens, the most popular >>filter control parameters these days are line spectrum pairs (of >>frequencies- LSPs) which come pretty close to tracking what a shadetree >>like myself would consider to be formants, though this time around, no one >>pretends that there's a one-to-one relationship. Sorry-- got carried away >>there..... Whoaaaa! Lost me there also! I just talked to a guy here at work that knew a little about these things. The way he described it is: Formant synthesis uses pitch control and filters to try and re-create the vocal cords and vocal track, whereas LPC was more of a compression technique that is designed around the many rundancies found in speech. Given that it appears the Orator was definitely a "formant synthesizer". I on the otherhand was confusing "formant" with "phoneme" which according to Larry's letter (and my co-worker) are quite different. If anything this seems to make recording new sounds for the Orator even a more difficult task, since I believe finding algorithms for LPC would be easier than knowing the makeup of the filters, and oscillators used in the GI chip, and the mappings used to access them. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 11:28:19 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 11:28:15 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 11:28:12 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Vector monitors for computers? Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Megatech, Evans and Sutherland, Vector General, DEC (VT11, VS11) The DEC mono displays were a nightmare, BTW. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 11:31:34 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 11:31:33 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 11:31:30 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: SP0250 data format Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO ..turns out a friend of mine is working with a bunch of guys that came out of GI, so I'm heading over there to have lunch with him and to see if any of them remember anything about the part, or who did it inside GI. I just digested a big bunch of stuff from an alta-vista search on LPC-10 and vocoders, and all the fun stuff that goes along with it (like Federal Information Standard 1015 :-) From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 12:36:05 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 12:36:03 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: Wade Tsai Message-Id: <9706121930.AA25494@noh71zl> Subject: Star Trek speech problem To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Thu, 12 Jun 97 14:30:21 CDT Mailer: Elm [revision: 70.85] Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Hi all, I've been working on a speech board problem on my Star Trek for, *ahem*, quite a few weeks now and I can't seem to isolate the cause of the problem. (I'll get that other speech board back to you RSN Mark!). The problem is that I get sound but not the speech. The speech board is good (it's a Jenison board after all :-) and the only modification I've made to the machine is to wire in a 135W switcher (is this enough for the G80 hardware?). Would a bad CPU/ROM board cause this problem? The game works great otherwise but it's just not the same without Spock's voice :-( Any help would be much appreciated! -- Wade. +---------------------------------------------+ | ep60wtu@shellus.com | | Shell Oil Company, 3-D CAD, New Orleans, LA | +---------------------------------------------+ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 12:50:14 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 12:50:12 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: Message-Id: <9706121945.AA27088@savage.raleigh.ibm.com> Subject: 82s137 source? To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 15:45:28 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19970610112442.2317cc22@pop3.concentric.net> from "Zonn" at Jun 10, 97 11:28:00 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 379 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Anyone know of a reasonable source for the 82s137 PROMs used in the SW/ESB mathboxes? +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | John W. Linville To Be, Rather Than To Seem. | | linvjw@vnet.ibm.com http://www4.ncsu.edu/eos/users/j/jwlinvi/www | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 12:55:14 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 12:55:12 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 14:52:52 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9706121952.AA05566@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: 82s137 source? Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > Anyone know of a reasonable source for the 82s137 PROMs used in the > SW/ESB mathboxes? > I got mine from JDR in Feb. for like $1.30 a piece (or something like that.) Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 13:10:09 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 13:10:04 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 16:02:32 -0400 (EDT) From: Ed Henciak X-Sender: ethst3@unixs1.cis.pitt.edu To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Star Trek speech problem In-Reply-To: <9706121930.AA25494@noh71zl> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Heya Wade, Check the TL 082 Op Amps out on the board. Chances are one/more are bad. Just swap out yours with known good ones....they are cheap to buy. There are many compatible parts as well. Ed From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 13:15:15 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 13:15:09 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: Message-Id: <9706122010.AA20288@savage.raleigh.ibm.com> Subject: Re: 82s137 source? To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 16:10:10 -0400 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <9706121952.AA05566@maileng3> from "Joseph J. Welser" at Jun 12, 97 02:52:52 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 479 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > > Anyone know of a reasonable source for the 82s137 PROMs used in the > > SW/ESB mathboxes? > > I got mine from JDR in Feb. for like $1.30 a piece (or something like that.) Thanks! +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | John W. Linville To Be, Rather Than To Seem. | | linvjw@vnet.ibm.com http://www4.ncsu.edu/eos/users/j/jwlinvi/www | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 13:18:57 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 13:18:56 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: <199706122026.QAA04189@po_box.cig.mot.com> Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 15:14:28 -0500 From: Mark Jenison In-Reply-To: Ed Henciak "Re: Star Trek speech problem" (Jun 12, 4:02pm) References: <199706122017.QAA03412@po_box.cig.mot.com> X-face: "@9[FFAftX<9}2=gaPlIyRv_K%h[>.@"8t}B2So!iv.\#M9NplA9bDudBQ|]E`WL9Kd,Tn2v.0OGcE<$yg{&}(m:mB\GO9L+yE}6=d17BM X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.2.1 10apr95) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Star Trek speech problem Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO On Jun 12, 4:02pm, Ed Henciak wrote: > Subject: Re: Star Trek speech problem > Heya Wade, > > Check the TL 082 Op Amps out on the board. Chances are one/more are > bad. Just swap out yours with known good ones....they are cheap to buy. > There are many compatible parts as well. > > Ed I pulled the Speech board out of my own personal board set which has been working for over a year now. The first one I sent him was also known tested good, so I suspect some other problem must be involved. -12VDC still good? If all else fails, you can send me the boardset and I'll verify that it works in a known good set up. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Jenison E-mail address: jenison@cig.mot.com Cellular Infrastructure Group Motorola--Arlington Heights, IL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 13:41:56 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 13:41:50 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@pop.van.diamondmm.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 13:43:39 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: 82s137 source? Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO >> Anyone know of a reasonable source for the 82s137 PROMs used in the >> SW/ESB mathboxes? >> > > I got mine from JDR in Feb. for like $1.30 a piece (or something >like that.) That would be a really good price. Buying in the "tube" quantity from JDR I get 'em for about $1.90 each. $2.09 each when <15 or something... -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 13:49:11 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 13:49:07 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 13:49:04 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: SP0250 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO well.. just got off the phone with the guy who designed the part it's a pretty weird part, he doesn't have the data for it any more. he said it was a custom that they did for Milton Bradley that is LPC-12 with 6 2nd order stages, and that the data format going in is pretty weird. he suggested trying document control at microchip to try to find the original spec for the part... From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 14:36:56 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 14:36:48 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@pop.van.diamondmm.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 14:38:45 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: SP0250 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO >well.. just got off the phone with the guy who designed the part > >it's a pretty weird part, he doesn't have the data for it any >more. he said it was a custom that they did for Milton Bradley >that is LPC-12 with 6 2nd order stages, and that the data format >going in is pretty weird. he suggested trying document control >at microchip to try to find the original spec for the part... Hey, that's a start. That's the most new info I've heard in a long time. I think I just missed it here, but Microchip is off doing their "Summer Seminar" series across the US. Last year in addition to the usual reps there were some of the designers and factory guys... Someone might want to catch the seminar ($40 and there's pretty good food and free software and databooks and usually some little gizmo like a clock or calculator, etc.) and try to latch onto the factory guy and see if he can get a name or do some digging... Actually, isn't their plant down in San Jose? Maybe you should ask him about the SP0256 to see if the two were related at all? (just for trivia's sake. ;-) -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 14:51:51 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 14:51:45 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 12 Jun 97 14:50 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970612144703.19a7cb7c@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: SP0250 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 01:49 PM 6/12/97 -0700, you wrote: > >well.. just got off the phone with the guy who designed the part > >it's a pretty weird part, he doesn't have the data for it any >more. he said it was a custom that they did for Milton Bradley >that is LPC-12 with 6 2nd order stages, and that the data format >going in is pretty weird. he suggested trying document control >at microchip to try to find the original spec for the part... Damn! And Clay and his friend Larry just had me convinced it was a "Formant Synthesis". Like I'd know the difference! The data sheet did say it used 12 filter coeffecients, which sounded like LPC. I believe there was a little information on how the data was fed to the SP0250, which lines to place the data on, and which one to strobe kinda thing. But there was no information on what the data being sent to the SP0250 represented. I'm supposed to have dinner, on Mon. with the friend who managed to dig up the old GI data book that had this tidbit of information in it, I'll ask him to bring it then to see if there really is anything useful in the one page description given. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 14:54:38 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 14:54:37 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 14:54:34 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: SP0250 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO It was as Zonn said, the 256 is a formant synth based on the 250... I'm pretty sure Microchip is in Chandler, AZ. Their number is 602 963-7373. I put in a call to tech support there, but just got a voicemail system. I'll try again in a little while. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 15:05:20 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 15:05:19 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@pop.van.diamondmm.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 15:07:09 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: SP0250 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO >Damn! And Clay and his friend Larry just had me convinced it was a "Formant >Synthesis". Like I'd know the difference! Hey now, I was just relaying what Larry said... I said I thought it was an LPC part... ;-) >The data sheet did say it used 12 filter coeffecients, which sounded like LPC. > >I believe there was a little information on how the data was fed to the >SP0250, which lines to place the data on, and which one to strobe kinda >thing. But there was no information on what the data being sent to the >SP0250 represented. Right. This sounds like the 1981 GI Databook page. It's kinda detail-free. I'll try to bring it tomorrow and scan and post it... -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 15:15:49 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 15:15:48 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@pop.van.diamondmm.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 15:17:42 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: SP0250 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO >It was as Zonn said, the 256 is a formant synth based on the 250... I think the 256 is a Phoneme/Allophone synth. This was the one Radio Shack sold? I have an old 1987 "cross reference" from RS that has a bunch of SPO256 data in it, I'll bring that to work too... ;-) -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 15:19:19 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 15:19:18 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 15:19:15 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: something fun to try with the Star Trek Speech Board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Star Trek didn't use sequential speech codes, like the other two games. It's been a while, doesn't it say "Welcome to the Enterprise, Captain" ? Anyway, it outputs phase codes a, 8 1, 1c, and 2. I wonder what the other codes do? :-) From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 15:24:30 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 15:24:29 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 12 Jun 97 15:23 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970612151944.2d57efb4@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: SP0250 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 03:07 PM 6/12/97 -0800, you wrote: >>Damn! And Clay and his friend Larry just had me convinced it was a "Formant >>Synthesis". Like I'd know the difference! > >Hey now, I was just relaying what Larry said... I said I thought it was an >LPC part... ;-) Your right, you did! I wasn't blaming anyone for anything, I was just making a point that now I'm more confused by the different types of voice synthesis than I've ever been. (Before I just didn't know, now I'm confused) >From Larry's letter, and what my co-worker was saying about what he'd worked with in the past (he's also far from an expert, but worked with some in the past), it sounded like whatever "Formant Synth" is supposed to be. I had always thought of "Formant Synthesis" as a form of Phoneme synthesis, but there's obviously differences between the two or Larry wouldn't have used them as two distinct things in one paragraph. I do know what CVSD is, having written a few different implementations of it. Not that that makes a damn bit of difference here. Might help in recording new voices for Sinistar though... > >>The data sheet did say it used 12 filter coeffecients, which sounded like LPC. >> >>I believe there was a little information on how the data was fed to the >>SP0250, which lines to place the data on, and which one to strobe kinda >>thing. But there was no information on what the data being sent to the >>SP0250 represented. > >Right. This sounds like the 1981 GI Databook page. It's kinda >detail-free. I'll try to bring it tomorrow and scan and post it... That's the book! -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 15:33:12 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 15:33:11 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 12 Jun 97 15:32 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970612152827.2cef7d72@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: SP0250 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 03:17 PM 6/12/97 -0800, you wrote: >>It was as Zonn said, the 256 is a formant synth based on the 250... > >I think the 256 is a Phoneme/Allophone synth. This was the one Radio Shack >sold? I have an old 1987 "cross reference" from RS that has a bunch of >SPO256 data in it, I'll bring that to work too... ;-) It's the very same one. I think I still have one wired up on a perf board stashed somewhere in my garage. I got it to say "Gorvian Romotz Addack! Addack!" which is pretty similar to, but not identical to the way "Gorf" sounded. Gorf used the Silicon Systems phoneme chip (I think) which was a nicer sounding chip. I also wrote a Text to Speech conversion routine for the thing, which would have all the information on programming the chip (the SP0256, not the SP0250). But alas it was written in 6800 assembly for a 6800 based computer and it's doubtful I could ever read those disks again. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 15:36:14 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 15:36:08 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 15:36:05 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: little SP0256 blurb Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO here is a short blurb about the 256 from http://www.makingit.com/bluesky/tech/voice_tech.html#synthtag SPEECH SYNTHESIZER The speech synthesizer is the General Instruments SP-0256 Orator. The SP-0256 incorporates four basic functions: A software programmable digital filter that can be made to model a VOCAL TRACT. A 16K ROM which stores both speech data (Resident ROM or RESROM) and instructions (the PROGRAM). A MICROCONTROLLER which controls the data flow from the ROM to the digital filter, the assembly of the "word strings" necessary for linking speech elements together, and the amplitude and pitch information to excite the digital filter. A PULSE WIDTH MODULATOR that creates a digital output which is converted to an analog signal when filtered by an external low pass filter. The SP-0256 can also accept serial speech data from an external source. For the 3330, the RESROM contains a variety of words and phrases that may be useful in video games. The PROGRAM consists of 17 different parameters used by the VOCAL TRACT model to imitate human speech patterns. ..this was for the Intellivison. Thinking about it, I think the chip designer confused "Milton Bradley" with "Mattel" when I just talked to him... From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 12 16:35:49 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 12 Jun 1997 16:35:46 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Thu, 12 Jun 1997 16:35:43 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: SP0256 data sheet Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO tandy actually has the data sheet on line http://support.tandy.com/support_supplies/17518.html From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jun 13 14:19:27 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 13 Jun 1997 14:19:17 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@pop.van.diamondmm.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 14:21:06 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Data I/O model 29? Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Hi everyone. This is kinda off topic, but I'm trying to decide if this is a worthwhile piece of equipment or not... I can get a Data I/O model 29 (I *think* that's the number) for cheap, and a bunch of the gang/PLD/whatever plug-in modules for a little more. Is there any reason I should want it? :-) Thanks in advance, no need to clog the vectorlist so reply to "clay@supra.com" if you have anything to tell me about it... (Like what's a "decent" price and if it does anything more than the PB-10 that might be useful. 2708's for the vector timing board? :-) -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jun 13 15:02:53 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 13 Jun 1997 15:02:51 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: From: "Ozdemir, Steve" To: "'vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com'" Subject: RE: Data I/O model 29? Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 14:58:33 -0700 X-Mailer: Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.993.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO G'day folks, I recently picked up a 29B from work for the best price....free. Haven't had much reason to use it because my collection is in storage. But the way that I've seen people rave about it on RGVAC over the years encouraged me to grab it. Clay, if you don't go for it, I'd be interested in the modules. Steven S Ozdemir sso@dsc.com ps - I'm assuming that the modules would work for my 29B, but I may be wrong. >---------- >From: Clay Cowgill[SMTP:clay@supra.com] >Sent: Friday, June 13, 1997 5:21 PM >To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >Subject: Data I/O model 29? > >Hi everyone. > >This is kinda off topic, but I'm trying to decide if this is a worthwhile >piece of equipment or not... > >I can get a Data I/O model 29 (I *think* that's the number) for cheap, and >a bunch of the gang/PLD/whatever plug-in modules for a little more. Is >there any reason I should want it? :-) > >Thanks in advance, no need to clog the vectorlist so reply to >"clay@supra.com" if you have anything to tell me about it... (Like what's >a "decent" price and if it does anything more than the PB-10 that might be >useful. 2708's for the vector timing board? :-) > >-Clay > >Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager >_______________________________________________________________________ >/\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com >\/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ > > > From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jun 13 16:13:25 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 13 Jun 1997 16:13:18 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: From: "Ozdemir, Steve" To: "'vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com'" Subject: RE: Data I/O model 29? Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 16:08:58 -0700 X-Mailer: Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.993.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO G'day, I have the UniPak2 and the 303A-009 module, but I don't have the LogicPak that the all the 303A modules mount onto. Some idiot in manufacturing broke it and they threw it out before I could fix it! I found documenation for 303A-001 through 303A-007 and 303-011A. Which module were you referring to as "useful", David? The documentation said that 303-011A handled bipolar and CMOS... Steven S Ozdemir sso@dsc.com ps - I have ALOT of documentation on this programmer if anyone needs it. Schematics, timing diagrams, interface information, etc. >---------- >From: fishd[SMTP:fishd@tiac.net] >Sent: Friday, June 13, 1997 5:43 PM >To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >Subject: Re: Data I/O model 29? > >At 02:21 PM 6/13/97 -0800, you wrote: > >>I can get a Data I/O model 29 (I *think* that's the number) for cheap, and >>a bunch of the gang/PLD/whatever plug-in modules for a little more. Is >>there any reason I should want it? :-) >> > >Absolutely. I use my 29B to program the Bipolar PROMs that are used in the >Atari mathbox (Tempest, SW, etc.). That in itself justifies it. If you can, >get it with the UniPak 2B module, it programs everything you'd need. The >LogiPak module (PALs) is not as useful and must be the highest revision to >be useful. If the Rev's too old the yeild may suffer. > >>(Like what's >>a "decent" price and if it does anything more than the PB-10 that might be >>useful. 2708's for the vector timing board? :-) > >I'd pay ~$100 for the set (if it works), but like Steve, I got mine from >work for free when they were throwing it out. > >David Fish | "We want...Information. INFORMATION >Melrose, MA USA | You won't get it! > fishd@tiac.com | By hook or by crook we will" > dfish@bev.etn.com | _The Prisoner_ > > From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jun 13 19:06:16 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 13 Jun 1997 19:06:12 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: <33A1FC00.15AB@links.magenta.com> Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 20:03:44 -0600 From: Jess Askey X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: SPO250 info from Gottlieb References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Hi all, I have been working on a Three Stooges board for Bill Kurtz and saw that it had an SPO250 on it as well. I started to dig through all my documentation on Mystar stuff and found an old "On Target" (Mylstar's tech newsletter). It has a very short blurb on the sound board assy and mentions that the board has L.P.C. speech generation. I thought that the conclusion from all these past posts was that the SPO250 was not LPC??? I really didn't pay that much attention to all the previous posts but I thought there was a different conclusion. Newly confused, jess -- Unofficial Atari Game Page:http://magenta.com/havoc Lots of other General Arcade Game info at http://arcadegames.miningco.com From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jun 13 19:11:50 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 13 Jun 1997 19:11:45 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 19:11:42 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: SPO250 info from Gottlieb Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO jess said: I thought that the conclusion from all these past posts was that the SPO250 was not LPC??? I really didn't pay that much attention to all the previous posts but I thought there was a different conclusion. I talked to the designer of the part yesterday, and it IS an LPC decoder The data sheet for the (related) 0256 part is up on radio shack's web page and they show a LPC decoder inside of it. The tech support people at Microchip never called back (big suprise..) so i'll try to get through next week. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jun 13 19:16:59 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 13 Jun 1997 19:16:57 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: <33A1FE83.573E@links.magenta.com> Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 20:14:27 -0600 From: Jess Askey X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: SPO250 info from Gottlieb References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Al Kossow wrote: > > jess said: > I thought that the conclusion from all these past posts was that the > SPO250 was not LPC??? I really didn't pay that much attention to all the > previous posts but I thought there was a different conclusion. > > I talked to the designer of the part yesterday, and it IS an LPC decoder > The data sheet for the (related) 0256 part is up on radio shack's web > page and they show a LPC decoder inside of it. The tech support people > at Microchip never called back (big suprise..) so i'll try to get through > next week. can you post that URL again for RS? I take it that you looked around GI's site too, Im looking right now. I suppose the 256 just has a different front end on it ehh? Jess -- Unofficial Atari Game Page:http://magenta.com/havoc Lots of other General Arcade Game info at http://arcadegames.miningco.com From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jun 13 19:22:27 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 13 Jun 1997 19:22:26 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 19:22:23 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: SPO250 info from Gottlieb Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO http://support.tandy.com/support_supplies/17518.html but it mostly consists of the allophone dictionary for the internal ROM. they mention it could hook to an external serial ROM, but of course they don't tell you what the data format is. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jun 13 20:08:28 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 13 Jun 1997 20:08:23 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: <33A20A92.7730@links.magenta.com> Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 21:05:54 -0600 From: Jess Askey X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: SPO250 info from Gottlieb References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Al Kossow wrote: > > http://support.tandy.com/support_supplies/17518.html > > but it mostly consists of the allophone dictionary for > the internal ROM. they mention it could hook to an external > serial ROM, but of course they don't tell you what the > data format is. Well I just dissassembled the sound ROM's for the Gottlieb SPO250. I will look at the code tonight and find the speech data and then tomorrow put it into a Star Wars ROM and see what it sounds like through a TMS5220, most likely nothing but hey... there is a chance I suppose that they have similar formats!!?? -- Unofficial Atari Game Page:http://magenta.com/havoc Lots of other General Arcade Game info at http://arcadegames.miningco.com From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Sat Jun 14 12:28:01 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sat, 14 Jun 1997 12:27:59 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 12:27:57 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Vector monitors for computers? Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO There weren't too many people that made color XY displays I know all the DEC ones were monochrome From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Sat Jun 14 16:46:02 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sat, 14 Jun 1997 16:45:52 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Sat, 14 Jun 1997 14:26:08 -0500 Subject: Re: today's flea market find Message-ID: <19970614.143944.9718.0.gonzothegreat@juno.com> References: X-Mailer: Juno 1.38 X-Juno-Line-Breaks: 1-7,9-10,12-14 From: gonzothegreat@juno.com Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO On Sat, 14 Jun 1997 12:30:11 -0700 (PDT) aek@staff.juno.com (Al Kossow) writes: > >an HP 1311 black & while 13" electrostatic X/Y display for $20. > >shouldn't have any problems with the sega games with an electrostatic >deflection display :-) Nice find Al. I found one of these in a dumpster back in 1990 but they had trashed the display tube :( Hmmm...it would be *really* nice to find a large color display like this. Never replace a deflection transistor again :) Virtu-Al From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 16 17:45:40 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 16 Jun 1997 17:45:33 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Mon, 16 Jun 1997 17:45:30 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: a little SP0250 data Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO here is something that I just got from a request on comp.speech about the part. someone had a 4 page preliminary data sheet on it. There is just one page. The rest is electrical stuff. There are 15 parameters each of 1 byte, which are input to pins 3 2 28 27 26 25 24 23 (3 is Most Significant Bit). The bytes are labelled (in order) C21, C11, Amplitude, C22, C12, Pitch, C23, C13, Repeat, C24, C14, C25, C15, C26, C16. The C's are the twelve (reflection?) coefficients, where the MSB is the sign, 1 = pos. The amplitude in direct data mode has the 3 MSBs as exponent. The pitch does not have a sign bit. Repeat has MSB set to 0, MSB-1 set to V(u), remaining bits the repeat value. It does not say what V(u) is (there is a bar over the u). It may be the voiced/unvoiced flag. Finally there is a description of a byte which may be an alternative to the amplitude. The MSB is sign 1 = neg, the rest is amplitude. A note says "exponent from normal mode remains until changed". From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 18 12:35:07 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 18 Jun 1997 12:35:02 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: From: "Ozdemir, Steve" To: "'vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com'" Subject: RE: Data I/O model 29? Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 12:31:00 -0700 X-Mailer: Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.993.5 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO G'day Clay, Thanks for checking out the details! I'm too inexperienced with using this hardware to know if I can use 29A parts? Based on the complexity of the design, I'd guess not. Maybe David Fish could tell us, but otherwise I'll have to pass... Steven S Ozdemir sso@dsc.com ps - For $100, sure seems like it would be a nice stand alone EPROM burner. I've found that I need one occasionally when I'm far away from home, say in a warehouse! And the gang pack module might be convenient at home, eh? >---------- >From: Clay Cowgill[SMTP:clay@supra.com] >Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 1997 3:04 PM >To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >Subject: RE: Data I/O model 29? > >Hey Steve, > >That Data I/O turned out to be a model 29A. In don't know what the >difference is... > >There were four separate modules. I wrote down the only numbers I could >find: > >715-1033-4 "Programming Pack" takes a 24pin .6" wide chip >950-0077-006 "Gang Pack" takes 8 28 pin DIPs >715-1035-2 "Programming Pack" takes a 16pin dip > >Are any of these anything you'd want? I talked them down to about $15 per >module. (They were at $25-20.) I didn't buy any of it yet (the 29A is >$60), but if you'd like any of it, let me know and I'll pick 'em up for >you. > >There was a manual for the Gang Pack and it had a receipt for the >"universal 2B" module, but I didn't see anything named that on the cart... > >-Clay > >Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager >_______________________________________________________________________ >/\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com >\/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ > > > From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 18 14:40:27 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 18 Jun 1997 14:40:25 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@pop.van.diamondmm.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 14:42:40 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: RE: Data I/O model 29? Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO >Hey Steve, > >That Data I/O turned out to be a model 29A. In don't know what the >difference is... I'm such a dumb-ass. I was *trying* to send this to SteveO, not vectorlist, but since he didn't want the modules... If any of the rest of you want a DataIO Model 29A programmer or any of the programmer modules I listed, let me know and I'll snag it for you. It'll be kinda heavy to ship, but probably not more than $15 or so. The base unit was $60, and the four modules are another $60. It comes with an 8-unit gang programmer attached, so maybe don't need the other gang modules-- in which case the total would be $90 plus maybe $10-15 for shipping. I'm not 100% sure of the condition, although it was removed from use "operational". I can probably fire it up in the store to at least see if it turns on. Anyway, I don't want it, but I'll be happy to grab it if any of the rest of you do. I don't know much about it though, so I'll be kinda useless to answer questions on it. :-) -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 18 14:47:06 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 18 Jun 1997 14:47:05 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Posted-Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 23:42:36 +0200 (MET DST) Message-Id: <3.0.32.19970618164309.0091eec0@bl-mail1.corpeast.baynetworks.com> X-Sender: mmatelsk@bl-mail1.corpeast.baynetworks.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 16:43:11 -0500 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Mit_Matelske@BayNetworks.COM (Mit Matelske) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO OK - a serious dumbass question - but... Would the Data I/O 29A that Clay is offering be a good ERPOM burner? If yes, I am in desparate need of one. Of course, how can I get images from my pc to it? Many thanks, Mit Matelske From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 18 15:09:09 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 18 Jun 1997 15:09:03 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: <33A85BE5.7FE4@links.magenta.com> Date: Wed, 18 Jun 1997 16:06:29 -0600 From: Jess Askey X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: a little SP0250 data References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Hi all! Well I knew that my dump of the Three Stooges speech data probably wouldn't work in a TMS5220 (and it didn't) but what the hell, I tried anyway. As I was doing it I realized that even the TMS5220 doesn't use straight LPC-10. TI has some special bits (repeat, unvoiced) in their coding. Now, since Al found this small amount of data about the SPO250 I will dig out my 5220 stuff again and do some comparing. They seem really similar. The SPO250 seems to be using actual floating point values x 32,??? for each reflection coefficient where the 5220 uses a ROM lookup table to narrow each parameter down to the "most useful" coefficient values. So maybe the SPO250 is not to far from true LPC10 except for the coding of the repeat and voiced/unvoiced flags??? Also, since the repeat flag is mostly used to keep the data stream as small as possible, it is not necessarily manditory to use it in testing for compatibility. Clay... You know the 5220 from talking to Larry, any thoughts?? I will write Michel to see what he thinks it all. later! jess Al Kossow wrote: > > here is something that I just got from a request on comp.speech about > the part. someone had a 4 page preliminary data sheet on it. > > There is just one page. The rest is electrical stuff. > > There are 15 parameters each of 1 byte, which are input to pins 3 2 28 > 27 26 25 24 23 (3 is Most Significant Bit). The bytes are labelled (in > order) C21, C11, Amplitude, C22, C12, Pitch, C23, C13, Repeat, C24, C14, > C25, C15, C26, C16. > > The C's are the twelve (reflection?) coefficients, where the MSB is the > sign, 1 = pos. > The amplitude in direct data mode has the 3 MSBs as exponent. > The pitch does not have a sign bit. > Repeat has MSB set to 0, MSB-1 set to V(u), remaining bits the repeat > value. It does not say what V(u) is (there is a bar over the u). It may > be the voiced/unvoiced flag. > > Finally there is a description of a byte which may be an alternative to > the amplitude. The MSB is sign 1 = neg, the rest is amplitude. A note > says "exponent from normal mode remains until changed". -- Unofficial Atari Game Page:http://magenta.com/havoc Lots of other General Arcade Game info at http://arcadegames.miningco.com From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 18 21:31:06 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 18 Jun 1997 21:31:03 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: 18 Jun 1997 15:14 EDT To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: "Gregg Woodcock" Subject: RE: Data I/O model 29? Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO In message "RE: Data I/O model 29?", you write: >Hey Steve, > >That Data I/O turned out to be a model 29A. In don't know what the >difference is... > >There were four separate modules. I wrote down the only numbers I could find: > >715-1033-4 "Programming Pack" takes a 24pin .6" wide chip >950-0077-006 "Gang Pack" takes 8 28 pin DIPs >715-1035-2 "Programming Pack" takes a 16pin dip > >Are any of these anything you'd want? I talked them down to about $15 per >module. (They were at $25-20.) I didn't buy any of it yet (the 29A is >$60), but if you'd like any of it, let me know and I'll pick 'em up for >you. > >There was a manual for the Gang Pack and it had a receipt for the >"universal 2B" module, but I didn't see anything named that on the cart... Clay; for $95, I'll buy the whole thing (then I can stop using the burner at work). -- THANX...Gregg day 214.684.7380 night UNLIST/PUBL TEXAS NOT CANADA! woodcock@nortel.com or woodcock@dfwmm.net *CLASSIC VIDEOGAME COLLECTOR BUY/SELL/TRADE NON-COMPUTER (ARCADE/HOME)* "If you quote me on this I'll have to deny it; I won't remember because I have such a bad memory. Not only that, but my memory is *terrible*." From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 19 09:34:22 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 19 Jun 1997 09:34:20 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@pop.van.diamondmm.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 19 Jun 1997 09:36:18 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: a little SP0250 data Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > Clay... You know the 5220 from talking to Larry, any thoughts?? I will >write Michel to see what he thinks it all. > later! > jess I pretty much thought the same thing when I saw Al's note... "Hey, those are almost exactly the same as the TI parameters!" I'm trying my best to not think about it though since I'm going to just work on the G-80 Multicard daughtercard for now. (eh, good of time as any for an update there...) My memory-selector chip isn't working right. :-( I'm not amused. Either: 1) I did something wrong in the design (possible, but it's actually pretty simple so I think it's right) or 2) There's yet another weird-ass thing going on that I'll finally spot and then feel really stupid about not seeing before (more likely). It *does* work as-is, but is wasting a lot of EPROM space. (I suppose I can bite the bullet and just waste some eprom space, but that kinda grates against my "frugal engineer" ways, so I'll mess with it a while longer...) -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 19 13:59:31 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 19 Jun 1997 13:59:28 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: <199706192055.PAA04776@Mailbox.mcs.com> From: "TomW" To: Subject: Obsolete Parts Source.. Maybe... Date: Thu, 19 Jun 1997 15:47:47 -0500 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Priority: 3 X-Mailer: Microsoft Internet Mail 4.70.1155 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Gang, I don't know if you guys are interested or not but, since a while ago you were looking for some obsolete parts I thought I pass this on. Rochester Electronics purchases obsolete parts/dies etc from the manuf. and then they remanufacture the parts (If the demand is there). You may contact them at 508-462-9332 or sales@rocelec.com. They were refereed to me by TI for the TMS9900 series of Microcontrollers that I was looking for, no luck though.... TomW To: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: BOUNCE vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com: Admin request of type /\buns\w*b/i at line 6 Status: RO >From tir.com!palazzol Thu Jun 19 17:12:37 1997 Return-Path: Received: from tir.com(really [205.138.41.6]) by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with smtp id for ; Thu, 19 Jun 1997 17:12:37 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Received: from liv42.tir.com (liv42.tir.com [205.218.84.227]) by tir.com (8.7.5/8.7) with SMTP id UAA13587 for ; Thu, 19 Jun 1997 20:08:18 -0400 (EDT) Received: by liv42.tir.com with Microsoft Mail id <01BC7CEC.DAE07340@liv42.tir.com>; Thu, 19 Jun 1997 20:10:38 -0400 Message-ID: <01BC7CEC.DAE07340@liv42.tir.com> From: Frank Palazzolo To: "'vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com'" Subject: Star Wars Repair Date: Thu, 19 Jun 1997 20:10:09 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hello, I'm currently repairing two Star Wars upright boardsets. I've got a copy of the operator's manual and the schematics. The display is a bit unstable and the Tie fighters never come out. My question is - in self test mode, it fails with "Matrix Errors" and spits out what looks like binary and hex data: NNNF FNFN 0000 NNNF FNNF 0000 NNNF FNNN 0000 C 196A D E4D4 Any clue what these represent? The N/F stuff looks like binary (The dip switches are displayed using the same N/F notation) but what are they - addresses? The C and D numbers look like checksums - I'll have to check them against the mathbox roms. Also, I haven't printed every page of the operator's manual, so I'll double-check the answer isn't in there already... :) Any help appreciated, Thanks! Frank Palazzolo palazzol@tir.com From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Sat Jun 21 19:22:51 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sat, 21 Jun 1997 19:22:33 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: <01BC7E91.54F2FEA0@liv27.tir.com> From: Frank Palazzolo To: "'vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com'" Subject: Star Wars Repair Story (long) Date: Sat, 21 Jun 1997 22:16:38 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Well - I fixed it!, sort of... I'm posting this in case anyone else has a similar problem. Description: The Star Wars game I had would have no stars and the Tie fighters would never come out. After a while, the graphics would become more and more screwed up. The self test indicated "Matrix errors". And dumped out a bunch of hex. Procedure: I figured out one of the Mathbox ROMS was bad (#113), by comparing them to the images on tant.com. I got the correct image and programmed a battery-backed 8kx8 SRAM with the data. Then I rigged a temporary board which mapped the bottom 4 bits of the first 1K of memory into the socket on the main board and voila - It's all better now! (BTW, I struggled for a few days until I realized my bench was wired up with wire that was too skinny! So, I built a nice thick wire harness for +12 and +5) Now I simply need a more permanent solution, as they don't make those signetics PROMS anymore. Maybe this is a common need? Observations: I have seen three boards with this failure. Would a small board which plugs into the mathbox ROM sockets and replaces them with 2764's be useful to anyone else? It seems like this could extend the life of these boards considerably, because the Signetics 82S137's run mighty hot and seem to die young, and you can't get them anymore. Comments welcome! Thanks, Frank Palazzolo palazzol@tir.com From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Sun Jun 22 12:40:45 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sun, 22 Jun 1997 12:40:37 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@pop.van.diamondmm.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 22 Jun 1997 12:42:54 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Star Wars Repair Story (long) Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO >I figured out one of the Mathbox ROMS was bad (#113), by comparing them to >the images on tant.com. I got the correct image and programmed a >battery-backed >8kx8 SRAM with the data. Then I rigged a temporary board which mapped the >bottom 4 bits of the first 1K of memory into the socket on the main board >and voila >- It's all better now! (!) Wow. Now *that's* a fix. :-) >Now I simply need a more permanent solution, as they don't make those >signetics PROMS anymore. Maybe this is a common need? I like your EPROM board idea from a "hacker" perspective, but the 82S137's are readily available from JDR Microdevices and Jameco Electronics still for about $2 each. Until those supplies dry up, I think a daughtercard with an EPROM will probably be more expensive than just replacing the PROMs for now. (Frank does bring up a good point though-- there are lots of (big) EPROMS out now that match or exceed most of the old bipolar PROM speed characteristics for just a few dollars. They'll probably get to be more important later on when the PROMs start to fail and replacements are not available.) -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Sun Jun 22 16:33:01 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sun, 22 Jun 1997 16:32:50 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Sun, 22 Jun 1997 16:32:46 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: RE: Star Wars Repair Story (long) Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO David Shoemaker said: Another view on this is that PROMS require more expensive equipment to burn. Where EPROM's are easy to burn with rather cheap gear. I have a ..Pick up a used Data I/O 29B and a UniPak. I see them frequently for < $100 and they will program all the bipolar devices. I know where there's one right now for around $80, if you'd like I can pick it up for you. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Sun Jun 22 22:51:34 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sun, 22 Jun 1997 22:51:24 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: 22 Jun 1997 23:38 EDT To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: "Gregg Woodcock" Subject: re:Star Wars Repair Story (long) Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO In message "Star Wars Repair Story (long)", you write: >The Star Wars game I had would have no stars and the Tie fighters would never >come out. After a while, the graphics would become more and more >screwed up. >The self test indicated "Matrix errors". And dumped out a bunch of hex. > >I figured out one of the Mathbox ROMS was bad (#113), by comparing them to >the images on tant.com. I got the correct image and programmed a battery-backed >8kx8 SRAM with the data. Then I rigged a temporary board which mapped the >bottom 4 bits of the first 1K of memory into the socket on the main board and voila >- It's all better now! Believe it or not this is VERY VERY old news. These PROMs have been failing for YEARS. I personally have fixed dozens of them and have posted this solution to the net many times. >(BTW, I struggled for a few days until I realized my bench was wired up with >wire that was too skinny! So, I built a nice thick wire harness for +12 and +5) DOH! >Now I simply need a more permanent solution, as they don't make those >signetics PROMS anymore. Maybe this is a common need? Actually, they are not at all hard to find and, I recently discovered and posted to the newsgroup that around half of these PROM failures are merely 1->0 bit rot and they can be reprogrammed for a nother decade or so of use. >I have seen three boards with this failure. Would a small board which plugs into the >mathbox ROM sockets and replaces them with 2764's be useful to anyone else? >It seems like this could extend the life of these boards considerably, because the >Signetics 82S137's run mighty hot and seem to die young, and you can't get them >anymore. WOuld be nice but I don't think it is worth it. -- THANX...Gregg day 214.684.7380 night UNLIST/PUBL TEXAS NOT CANADA! woodcock@nortel.com or woodcock@dfwmm.net *CLASSIC VIDEOGAME COLLECTOR BUY/SELL/TRADE NON-COMPUTER (ARCADE/HOME)* "If you quote me on this I'll have to deny it; I won't remember because I have such a bad memory. Not only that, but my memory is *terrible*." From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Sun Jun 22 22:51:37 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sun, 22 Jun 1997 22:51:20 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: 22 Jun 1997 23:38 EDT To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: "Gregg Woodcock" Subject: re:Star Wars Repair Story (long) Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO In message "Star Wars Repair Story (long)", you write: >The Star Wars game I had would have no stars and the Tie fighters would never >come out. After a while, the graphics would become more and more >screwed up. >The self test indicated "Matrix errors". And dumped out a bunch of hex. > >I figured out one of the Mathbox ROMS was bad (#113), by comparing them to >the images on tant.com. I got the correct image and programmed a battery-backed >8kx8 SRAM with the data. Then I rigged a temporary board which mapped the >bottom 4 bits of the first 1K of memory into the socket on the main board and voila >- It's all better now! Believe it or not this is VERY VERY old news. These PROMs have been failing for YEARS. I personally have fixed dozens of them and have posted this solution to the net many times. >(BTW, I struggled for a few days until I realized my bench was wired up with >wire that was too skinny! So, I built a nice thick wire harness for +12 and +5) DOH! >Now I simply need a more permanent solution, as they don't make those >signetics PROMS anymore. Maybe this is a common need? Actually, they are not at all hard to find and, I recently discovered and posted to the newsgroup that around half of these PROM failures are merely 1->0 bit rot and they can be reprogrammed for a nother decade or so of use. >I have seen three boards with this failure. Would a small board which plugs into the >mathbox ROM sockets and replaces them with 2764's be useful to anyone else? >It seems like this could extend the life of these boards considerably, because the >Signetics 82S137's run mighty hot and seem to die young, and you can't get them >anymore. WOuld be nice but I don't think it is worth it. -- THANX...Gregg day 214.684.7380 night UNLIST/PUBL TEXAS NOT CANADA! woodcock@nortel.com or woodcock@dfwmm.net *CLASSIC VIDEOGAME COLLECTOR BUY/SELL/TRADE NON-COMPUTER (ARCADE/HOME)* "If you quote me on this I'll have to deny it; I won't remember because I have such a bad memory. Not only that, but my memory is *terrible*." From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 23 04:55:50 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 23 Jun 1997 04:55:42 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: <01BC7FAA.90308CC0@liv29.tir.com> From: Frank Palazzolo To: "'vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com'" Subject: Re; Star Wars Repair Story Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 07:53:27 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Thanks to everyone who responded! I going to grab some PROMS from JDR before they're gone... -Frank Palazzolo palazzol@tir.com From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 23 10:16:53 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 23 Jun 1997 10:16:45 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: <33AEBBE2.7DCC@willowtree.com> Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 12:09:38 -0600 From: Todd Miller X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Star Wars Repair / Data IO References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-MIME-Autoconverted: from 8bit to quoted-printable by hippocrates.willowtree.com id MAA12445 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Al Kossow wrote: >=20 > David Shoemaker said: >=20 > Another view on this is that PROMS require more expensive equipment to > burn. Where EPROM's are easy to burn with rather cheap gear. I have a >=20 > ..Pick up a used Data I/O 29B and a UniPak. I see them frequently for <= $100 > and they will program all the bipolar devices. I know where there's one= right > now for around $80, if you'd like I can pick it up for you. I might be interested in this if nobody else is. I=92ve been thinking of buying a PB-10. I have a Tempest & StarWars and will be adding a=20 Space Fury & BZ to my collection some time. I also have several Tempest & SW pcb sets that are missing all the roms that I=92d like to get going to sell or keep for spares. What would be a good programmer=20 that would take care of ALL the p/roms on these machines ? I am concerned about this =91bit-rot=92 & would like to keep my games alive as long as possible. I=92ve never used a programmer before so I have no experience but I do have a basic understanding of how they work. Todd From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 23 10:22:45 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 23 Jun 1997 10:22:44 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 23 Jun 97 10:22 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970623101757.2397a7c0@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO >I've got the schematics for Warrior. I'll dupe sets (no charge) for people >on this mailing list that want them. Send me some email with your snail >mail address (kmahan@novell.com). > >Kurt Thanks Kurt for a very nice copy of the Warrior manual! (He didn't even charge for postage, there must be a catch somewhere? ;^) -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 23 10:29:19 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 23 Jun 1997 10:29:10 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 12:27:01 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9706231727.AA04654@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Star Wars Repair / Data IO Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > I might be interested in this if nobody else is. I=92ve been thinking of > buying a PB-10. I have a Tempest & StarWars and will be adding a=20 > Space Fury & BZ to my collection some time. I also have several > Tempest & SW pcb sets that are missing all the roms that I=92d like to > get going to sell or keep for spares. What would be a good programmer=20 > that would take care of ALL the p/roms on these machines ? I am > concerned about this =91bit-rot=92 & would like to keep my games alive > as long as possible. I=92ve never used a programmer before so I have > no experience but I do have a basic understanding of how they work. > > > Todd > I bought a "reconditioned" Modular Circuit Technology EMUPA Universal Programmer from General Device Instruments for like $375, give or take. You can buy a new one from JDR for around $500. It does almost all EPROMS (not 2708s,) EEPROMS, BiPolar PROMS (including 82S137s, and pretty much all the 82S series, I think....I've personally done 82S129s, and whatever the other 82S BPROM that's used in Cinematronics games is....the 256 x 4 one...I forget the number) PALs, GALs, PEELs, etc. PLUS, it has a TTL (74xx) and CMOS (40xx and 45xx) tester built in to the software, as well as a SRAM (6116, etc) and DRAM tester (Doesn't do 4116s, but it does 4164s, and other DRAMs used on video games. I highly recommend it, and I recommend General Device Instruments (www.generaldevice.com). I had some problems (my fault) when I first got it, and their customer service (I dealt with Ron) was very good. Although it's not as good as the $100 for used programmers that some guys are selling here, it's a pretty good deal, and supplies aren't really that limited. Just my two cents... Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 23 10:41:50 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 23 Jun 1997 10:41:49 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 12:39:40 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9706231739.AA04734@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > Thanks Kurt for a very nice copy of the Warrior manual! > > (He didn't even charge for postage, there must be a catch somewhere? ;^) > > -Zonn > I'll add my kudos to Kurt, as well.....Thanks a bunch, and let me know if you ever need anything that I've got! While we're on the Cine. Sound board topic, the "Wideband Noise Generator" used in Warrior looks to be the same one used in Sundance, so add that to the list of Cine. Sound boards that use the noisy semiconductors. What do we have so far? Space Wars, Sundance, Warrior and possibly TailGunner. What about the other Vectorbeam stuff? Anyone have Star Hawk and/or Spead Freak manuals around? Which of the diodes is the actual "Noisy Semiconductor?" I haven't looked at this too closely yet (I'm putting the finishing touches on the Star Castle sounds) but the "Wideband Noise Generator" is an Op-Amp and a couple of diodes. Like I said, I'm putting the finishing touches on the Star Castle sounds. I talked to one of our seasoned DSP programmers here, and he told me that he thought that I'd have plenty of MIPS for what I needed to do (A noise generator, a couple of VCOs and a couple of Low-Pass filters,) so it looks like I found the hardware that I needed! Stay Tuned for more updates... Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 23 10:50:29 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 23 Jun 1997 10:50:28 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 23 Jun 97 10:50 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970623104542.0ea7e030@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 12:39 PM 6/23/97 -0500, you wrote: >> Thanks Kurt for a very nice copy of the Warrior manual! >> >> (He didn't even charge for postage, there must be a catch somewhere? ;^) >> >> -Zonn >> > > I'll add my kudos to Kurt, as well.....Thanks a bunch, and let me know if you ever need anything that I've got! > > While we're on the Cine. Sound board topic, the "Wideband Noise Generator" used in Warrior looks to be the same one used in Sundance, so add that to the list of Cine. Sound boards that use the noisy semiconductors. What do we have so far? Space Wars, Sundance, Warrior and possibly TailGunner. What about the other Vectorbeam stuff? Anyone have Star Hawk and/or Spead Freak manuals around? I have both, and I'll verify what I can from the manual (such as they are) but I'm pretty sure they both use the semi-conductor approach. > > Which of the diodes is the actual "Noisy Semiconductor?" I haven't looked at this too closely yet (I'm putting the finishing touches on the Star Castle sounds) but the "Wideband Noise Generator" is an Op-Amp and a couple of diodes. It's the zener diode (5.1v I think). They take that into the input of the op-amp amplifiers/filters. The back to back diodes just clip peaks to a usable level. > > Like I said, I'm putting the finishing touches on the Star Castle sounds. I talked to one of our seasoned DSP programmers here, and he told me that he thought that I'd have plenty of MIPS for what I needed to do (A noise generator, a couple of VCOs and a couple of Low-Pass filters,) so it looks like I found the hardware that I needed! Very cool! > > Stay Tuned for more updates... > >Joe > > > > From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 23 13:09:29 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 23 Jun 1997 13:09:18 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: 23 Jun 1997 13:55 EDT To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: "Gregg Woodcock" Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO In message "Re: cine sound board", you write: > While we're on the Cine. Sound board topic, the "Wideband Noise > Generator" used in Warrior looks to be the same one used in Sundance, so > add that to the list of Cine. Sound boards that use the noisy > semiconductors. What do we have so far? Space Wars, Sundance, Warrior > and possibly TailGunner. What about the other Vectorbeam stuff? Anyone > have Star Hawk and/or Spead Freak manuals around? I have a TG boardset at home and Cosmic Chasm and Space Wars manuals... -- THANX...Gregg day 214.684.7380 night UNLIST/PUBL TEXAS NOT CANADA! woodcock@nortel.com or woodcock@dfwmm.net *CLASSIC VIDEOGAME COLLECTOR BUY/SELL/TRADE NON-COMPUTER (ARCADE/HOME)* "If you quote me on this I'll have to deny it; I won't remember because I have such a bad memory. Not only that, but my memory is *terrible*." From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 23 13:32:04 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 23 Jun 1997 13:31:59 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 23 Jun 97 13:32 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970623132712.2f67d31e@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 01:55 PM 6/23/97 EDT, you wrote: >In message "Re: cine sound board", you write: > >> While we're on the Cine. Sound board topic, the "Wideband Noise >> Generator" used in Warrior looks to be the same one used in Sundance, so >> add that to the list of Cine. Sound boards that use the noisy >> semiconductors. What do we have so far? Space Wars, Sundance, Warrior >> and possibly TailGunner. What about the other Vectorbeam stuff? Anyone >> have Star Hawk and/or Spead Freak manuals around? > >I have a TG boardset at home and Cosmic Chasm and Space Wars manuals... Does your Space Wars manual have a copy of the sound card schematic? My don't. I'd be interested in a copy of yours, if it does. Does anybody have the schematic for Space Wars sound card? -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 23 14:25:19 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 23 Jun 1997 14:25:09 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 23 Jun 97 14:25 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970623142023.2f678470@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 03:49 PM 6/23/97 -0500, you wrote: >> At 01:55 PM 6/23/97 EDT, you wrote: >> >In message "Re: cine sound board", you write: >> > >> >> While we're on the Cine. Sound board topic, the "Wideband Noise >> >> Generator" used in Warrior looks to be the same one used in Sundance, so >> >> add that to the list of Cine. Sound boards that use the noisy >> >> semiconductors. What do we have so far? Space Wars, Sundance, Warrior >> >> and possibly TailGunner. What about the other Vectorbeam stuff? Anyone >> >> have Star Hawk and/or Spead Freak manuals around? >> > >> >I have a TG boardset at home and Cosmic Chasm and Space Wars manuals... >> >> Does your Space Wars manual have a copy of the sound card schematic? My >> don't. I'd be interested in a copy of yours, if it does. >> >> Does anybody have the schematic for Space Wars sound card? > > Of course, I can use a copy of those Space Wars sound board schematics too! > > I helped a guy move his Space Wars a couple of months ago, and I saw the sound board and it's really sparse. If I couldn't get a hold of a schematic I was just going to try to reverse-engineer the schematics from the sound board. According to a guy that used to work at Cinematronics, they did something slightly different in Space Wars, they bought a bunch of surplus "leaky" transistors and used the "leakiness" to generate the white noise. The problems they had were: (And a quick history of Cinematronics noise generators as told by an ex-employee.) Repeatability -- every machine has a different sound, though these generators had the best explosion sounds! Not working -- Sometimes the transistors didn't "leak" properly, there's a bias adjustment on the card to allow adjusting the current. Supply -- Where do you get a constant supply of defective transistors? This is why they went to the zener diode circuitry. You can always find zener diodes that breakdown. There designed to breakdown at their voltage rating. The zener diode circuit requires a few op-amps, and they also didn't always sound the same. That's why they went with the digital approach. The pseudo random square waves always sounded the same, needed little glue logic, took less board space. They became hard to get. That's why their later game "Solar Quest" had the pseudo noise generator as discreet logic. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 23 14:36:27 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 23 Jun 1997 14:36:26 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Subject: Re: cine sound board To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 16:40:50 -0600 (MDT) From: "Kurt Mahan" In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19970623142023.2f678470@pop3.concentric.net> from "Zonn" at Jun 23, 97 02:25:00 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Message-ID: <33aefb720.7b3@bolt.usg.provo.novell.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 695 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > According to a guy that used to work at Cinematronics, they did something > slightly different in Space Wars, they bought a bunch of surplus "leaky" > transistors and used the "leakiness" to generate the white noise. I was talking with a cinematronics employee who told me that they had tried to replicate the space wars explosion and couldn't even though they had the exact same circuit. Finally someone looked at a space wars sound board and discovered that one transistor was put in backwards intentionally to get that fine "quality". Not sure if this is legend and since I don't have a space wars sound board to check, well, I'll leave it up to someone more motivated than I.. :) Kurt From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 23 14:42:25 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 23 Jun 1997 14:42:24 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 23 Jun 97 14:42 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970623143733.2f67de7e@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 04:40 PM 6/23/97 -0600, you wrote: >> According to a guy that used to work at Cinematronics, they did something >> slightly different in Space Wars, they bought a bunch of surplus "leaky" >> transistors and used the "leakiness" to generate the white noise. > >I was talking with a cinematronics employee who told me that they had tried >to replicate the space wars explosion and couldn't even though they had >the exact same circuit. Finally someone looked at a space wars sound >board and discovered that one transistor was put in backwards intentionally >to get that fine "quality". Not sure if this is legend and since I don't >have a space wars sound board to check, well, I'll leave it up to someone >more motivated than I.. :) Cool, I might actually have to trace it out (when I have some free time, hopefully before the start of the new milenium.) The guy I talked to didn't start work until after Space Wars, in fact it was after the Cinematronics/Vectorbeam re-merger, so his description of the past could also be Cinematronics legend. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 23 16:03:53 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 23 Jun 1997 16:03:50 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: 23 Jun 1997 16:50 EDT To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Cc: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: "Gregg Woodcock" Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO In message "Re: cine sound board", 'vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com' writes: >At 01:55 PM 6/23/97 EDT, you wrote: >>In message "Re: cine sound board", you write: >> >>> While we're on the Cine. Sound board topic, the "Wideband Noise >>> Generator" used in Warrior looks to be the same one used in Sundance, so >>> add that to the list of Cine. Sound boards that use the noisy >>> semiconductors. What do we have so far? Space Wars, Sundance, Warrior >>> and possibly TailGunner. What about the other Vectorbeam stuff? Anyone >>> have Star Hawk and/or Spead Freak manuals around? >> >>I have a TG boardset at home and Cosmic Chasm and Space Wars manuals... > >Does your Space Wars manual have a copy of the sound card schematic? My >don't. I'd be interested in a copy of yours, if it does. All I can remember off the top of my head is that it does include a hard copy hex dump of all the ROMs!!! >Does anybody have the schematic for Space Wars sound card? I will check; I think mine is the Vectorbeam version so there is a good chance... -- THANX...Gregg day 214.684.7380 night UNLIST/PUBL TEXAS NOT CANADA! woodcock@nortel.com or woodcock@dfwmm.net *CLASSIC VIDEOGAME COLLECTOR BUY/SELL/TRADE NON-COMPUTER (ARCADE/HOME)* "If you quote me on this I'll have to deny it; I won't remember because I have such a bad memory. Not only that, but my memory is *terrible*." From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 23 16:10:58 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 23 Jun 1997 16:10:58 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 23 Jun 97 16:11 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970623160611.2397b9c4@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: cine sound board Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 04:50 PM 6/23/97 EDT, you wrote: >In message "Re: cine sound board", >'vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com' writes: > >>At 01:55 PM 6/23/97 EDT, you wrote: >>>In message "Re: cine sound board", you write: >>> >>>> While we're on the Cine. Sound board topic, the "Wideband Noise >>>> Generator" used in Warrior looks to be the same one used in Sundance, so >>>> add that to the list of Cine. Sound boards that use the noisy >>>> semiconductors. What do we have so far? Space Wars, Sundance, Warrior >>>> and possibly TailGunner. What about the other Vectorbeam stuff? Anyone >>>> have Star Hawk and/or Spead Freak manuals around? >>> >>>I have a TG boardset at home and Cosmic Chasm and Space Wars manuals... >> >>Does your Space Wars manual have a copy of the sound card schematic? My >>don't. I'd be interested in a copy of yours, if it does. > >All I can remember off the top of my head is that it does include a >hard copy hex dump of all the ROMs!!! > >>Does anybody have the schematic for Space Wars sound card? > >I will check; I think mine is the Vectorbeam version so there is a >good chance... Probably not then since mine is also the Vectorbeam version, it also contains a hard copy of the ROMs as a hex dump, and it doesn't include the schematic -- I was hoping the Cinematronics version did. :^( -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 25 12:02:10 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 25 Jun 1997 12:01:04 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@pop.van.diamondmm.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 12:03:06 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Speech board idea... Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Hey everyone, So. I was thinking... (That should be enough to send everyone running for cover... ;-) This Star Trek/Space Fury/Etc. Speech board has been bothering me since those SPO-250 speech chips seem impossible to find. Have any of you tried playing with the ISD (Information Storage Devices) Single Chip Voice record/playback chips? The ISD2500 series offers 8KHz sampling with 60 seconds of voice storage. "Messages" are addessable under MCU control. Price in singles is about $14, which drops to $12 in 10's. They store sound as roughly 8-bit samples in an EEPROM array, so sound quality *should* be pretty good-- and they include antialiasing and smoothing filters. The downside is that they need to be "loaded" with the samples from an analog source. (Not a HUGE deal really.) My idea: Take one of these little 60 second devils and make a series of .WAV files that are played by a PC from the "original" sample boards. (Processing on the PC might even help improve the sound quality-- digital gain and equilization and whatnot.) Then, "load" the ISD chip with the samples from a little Visual Basic program driving the .WAV files and a couple lines on the Parallel port to control the "play/record" lines on the ISD chip. (This would be for "automated" production, you could just as easily do it by hand to experiment with.) Then, just have a little processor that takes the "phrase" input from the G-80 system and selects the appropriate sample in the ISD and hits "play". The processor (I suppose a PIC 16C54 would work. Had to get my PIC plug in. :-) could also take 2-3 "game select" lines to use for "bank select" which samples to play. (so 00 is Star Trek, 01 is Space Fury, etc...) I suppose if someone is doing an all-in-one DSP sound card that the samples aren't a problem, but this looked kinda cool from the "easy to put together" standpoint. (Probably 2 chips?) Comments? -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 25 12:11:12 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 25 Jun 1997 12:10:51 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: <199706251918.PAA22704@po_box.cig.mot.com> Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 14:06:10 -0500 From: Mark Jenison In-Reply-To: Clay Cowgill "Speech board idea..." (Jun 25, 12:03pm) References: <199706251911.PAA21755@po_box.cig.mot.com> X-face: "@9[FFAftX<9}2=gaPlIyRv_K%h[>.@"8t}B2So!iv.\#M9NplA9bDudBQ|]E`WL9Kd,Tn2v.0OGcE<$yg{&}(m:mB\GO9L+yE}6=d17BM X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.2.1 10apr95) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Speech board idea... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO On Jun 25, 12:03pm, Clay Cowgill wrote: > Subject: Speech board idea... > Hey everyone, > > So. I was thinking... (That should be enough to send everyone running for > cover... ;-) Oh Lord, here we go again... :-) > This Star Trek/Space Fury/Etc. Speech board has been bothering me since > those SPO-250 speech chips seem impossible to find. Have any of you tried > playing with the ISD (Information Storage Devices) Single Chip Voice > record/playback chips? No, but if I write a FAQ on one, will you do it? ;-) > I suppose if someone is doing an all-in-one DSP sound card that the samples > aren't a problem, but this looked kinda cool from the "easy to put > together" standpoint. (Probably 2 chips?) > > Comments? What about that product someone mentioned WAY back that happened to CONTAIN an SPO-250 Orator chip? Maybe if you contact the company you can find out where they got them...someone check the archives and I'll give them a call...(I'll use some bluff about how I can get them some Motorola chips for them cheap ;-)) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Jenison E-mail address: jenison@cig.mot.com Cellular Infrastructure Group Motorola--Arlington Heights, IL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From bev.etn.com!dfish Wed Jun 25 13:23:30 1997 Return-Path: Received: from firewall.etn.com(really [151.110.127.15]) by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with esmtp id for ; Wed, 25 Jun 1997 13:23:29 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Received: from sentry.bev.etn.com ([151.110.165.80]) by firewall.etn.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id QAA15764 for ; Wed, 25 Jun 1997 16:19:09 -0400 (EDT) Received: by sentry.bev.etn.com with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.995.52) id <01BC8183.DACA6F50@sentry.bev.etn.com>; Wed, 25 Jun 1997 16:21:37 -0400 Message-ID: From: "Fish, David" To: "aek@spies.com" Subject: RE: 2 player elim Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 16:19:16 -0400 Return-Receipt-To: X-Mailer: Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.995.52 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Status: RO >>have you had a chance to try the modified set on a real board? I was >>just wondering if the Eliminator ever appears? In the simulation, it >>doesn't. It does in the 4 player version, though. I was just thinking , if anyone would know the answer to this it would be Mark J. > From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 25 13:30:45 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 25 Jun 1997 13:30:35 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 15:28:26 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9706252028.AA17270@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Speech board idea... Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > This Star Trek/Space Fury/Etc. Speech board has been bothering me since > those SPO-250 speech chips seem impossible to find. Have any of you tried > playing with the ISD (Information Storage Devices) Single Chip Voice > record/playback chips? Are these the same ones that they sell at Radio Shack? > The ISD2500 series offers 8KHz sampling with 60 seconds of voice storage. > "Messages" are addessable under MCU control. Price in singles is about > $14, which drops to $12 in 10's. > > They store sound as roughly 8-bit samples in an EEPROM array, so sound > quality *should* be pretty good-- and they include antialiasing and > smoothing filters. The downside is that they need to be "loaded" with the > samples from an analog source. (Not a HUGE deal really.) > > My idea: > One thing I notice about your scheme is that it is redundant. If the PC samples are good enough, why don't you just Hex dump them (The digital sequences) to an EPROM. Run these puppies through a DAC and a continuous-time lowpass filter, and you've got your speech! Use one of Crystal's DACs and your analog signal out will sound as good as your digital data (Had to get my Crystal plug in :) ) Of course, you need a controller for this whole thing, but I'll bet your PIC will work just fine for that. You just need to clock the data out of the EPROM when you get some sort of enable signal. Which enable signal you get determines the address of the EPROM. You know your sampling frequency when you make the digital dumps from your PC. Probably the reason why you didn't think of this in the first place was cost....you assumed that DACs cost more than those Voice Record/Playback ICs, but I'm not sure that that's true. Look into it....Other than than that, your idea sounds pretty cool. Maybe people will actually start buying those Radio Shack chips now (Those seem like the only Radio Shack "special" items that have been around for years!) Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 25 13:36:21 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 25 Jun 1997 13:36:20 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Wed, 25 Jun 97 13:36 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970625133135.2d275f66@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: Speech board idea... Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Ok let me have a try at this thinking thing... (yikes!) I've always thought a nice idea for the universal sound card, if you have the cabinet space, is to just go to the swap meet, find yourself a cheapo 386/486 PC-clone, and a sound card -- a downloadable wavetable card would be the best since it would allow the use of the slower x86 processors, and have much nicer sound than the Sounblaster knockoffs. There. All the hardware you need, already designed, tested, readily available. Now write the software that allows sounds to be controlled through the serial/parallel ports. You have to write the software regardless of what hardware you use, the PC has the advantage of being it's own developement kit, and if you check out the MAME repository you'll find documentation on sound cards, source for emulation of sound on many different games, etc. And there you go. One universal sound card. Ok you might have to have some sort of interface card, depending on the game. The Cinematronics games should be able to interface directly to the parallel port, there's only six outputs going to the game card from the Cinematronics CPU card -- though the PC software would have to be fast enough to act like a shift register in some cases. For a diskless system you can buy EPROM boards that allow you to have your PC boot into an EPROM program on power up (No harddisk, no floppies, no video, no keyboard). I've written drivers to do this that I would donate to the cause if anybody were really interested. (I wrote the driver that SEA-LEVEL EPROM cards currently recommend, from Annabooks/Annasoft) -Zonn At 12:03 PM 6/25/97 -0800, you wrote: >Hey everyone, > >So. I was thinking... (That should be enough to send everyone running for >cover... ;-) > >This Star Trek/Space Fury/Etc. Speech board has been bothering me since >those SPO-250 speech chips seem impossible to find. Have any of you tried >playing with the ISD (Information Storage Devices) Single Chip Voice >record/playback chips? > >The ISD2500 series offers 8KHz sampling with 60 seconds of voice storage. >"Messages" are addessable under MCU control. Price in singles is about >$14, which drops to $12 in 10's. > >They store sound as roughly 8-bit samples in an EEPROM array, so sound >quality *should* be pretty good-- and they include antialiasing and >smoothing filters. The downside is that they need to be "loaded" with the >samples from an analog source. (Not a HUGE deal really.) > >My idea: > >Take one of these little 60 second devils and make a series of .WAV files >that are played by a PC from the "original" sample boards. (Processing on >the PC might even help improve the sound quality-- digital gain and >equilization and whatnot.) Then, "load" the ISD chip with the samples from >a little Visual Basic program driving the .WAV files and a couple lines on >the Parallel port to control the "play/record" lines on the ISD chip. >(This would be for "automated" production, you could just as easily do it >by hand to experiment with.) > >Then, just have a little processor that takes the "phrase" input from the >G-80 system and selects the appropriate sample in the ISD and hits "play". >The processor (I suppose a PIC 16C54 would work. Had to get my PIC plug >in. :-) could also take 2-3 "game select" lines to use for "bank select" >which samples to play. (so 00 is Star Trek, 01 is Space Fury, etc...) > >I suppose if someone is doing an all-in-one DSP sound card that the samples >aren't a problem, but this looked kinda cool from the "easy to put >together" standpoint. (Probably 2 chips?) > >Comments? > >-Clay > >Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager >_______________________________________________________________________ >/\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com >\/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ > > > > From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 25 14:00:20 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 25 Jun 1997 14:00:18 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 14:00:15 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: Sega G80 HW FAQ 1.11 released Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO A new version of the HW FAQ is up on www.spies.com. This version has the register descriptions for the 4 player I/O expander and has a few other Eliminator related corrections. Once I get the Universal Sound Board documented, the FAQ should be just about finished.. To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Speech board idea... Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO >> This Star Trek/Space Fury/Etc. Speech board has been bothering me since >> those SPO-250 speech chips seem impossible to find. Have any of you tried >> playing with the ISD (Information Storage Devices) Single Chip Voice >> record/playback chips? > > Are these the same ones that they sell at Radio Shack? I think so. I don't know the "duration" of the radio shack ones. Apparently there's a few different sampling speeds that you can by. I saw a little chip-on-board one at RS the other day-- I think that's the little brother of the 2500 series. > One thing I notice about your scheme is that it is redundant. If >the PC samples are good enough, why don't you just Hex dump them (The >digital sequences) to an EPROM. Run these puppies through a DAC and a >continuous-time lowpass filter, and you've got your speech! Use one of >Crystal's DACs and your analog signal out will sound as good as your >digital data (Had to get my Crystal plug in :) ) Well, the only problem was cost/complexity. A PIC and an ISD chip is simple and relatively cheap. The way I was thinking of doing "sample playback" was to take some kind of MCU, somekind of DAC, and a bunch of EPROM. I don't know how much actual "time" is required for sampling, but I figured maybe 20 seconds per game? So... 20 seconds * 8Khz sampling = ~160Kbytes multiply by number of games with speech... Gets pretty big.) Thing is, a cheap 8-bit MCU probably only has 16 bit addressing, so you bank select to get at more samples, and you use a 27C040 for storage, glue a DAC on, probably a register to get the speech commands from the G-80 backplane... It starts getting big/expensive. > Of course, you need a controller for this whole thing, but I'll >bet your PIC will work just fine for that. You just need to clock the >data out of the EPROM when you get some sort of enable signal. Which >enable signal you get determines the address of the EPROM. You know your >sampling frequency when you make the digital dumps from your PC. The gotcha is the available I/O's. You can have a little MCU and parallel load a bunch of binary counters to run the address lines to the EPROM, and then just use an R-2R ladder for the D/A, but those counters are a pain to wire up, and you'll probably use something like 74x193's, so it'll take 4 or 5 for a 27c040... > Probably the reason why you didn't think of this in the first >place was cost....you assumed that DACs cost more than those Voice >Record/Playback ICs, but I'm not sure that that's true. I'm willing to spend more (like the ISD chips) for a simple implementation (PIC + ISD chip). I'm just not keen on wiring up a full address bus, databus, etc. if I can avoid it. ;-) > Look into it....Other than than that, your idea sounds pretty >cool. Maybe people will actually start buying those Radio Shack chips now >(Those seem like the only Radio Shack "special" items that have been >around for years!) Well, let's look at some criteria: 1) we're only dealing with voice-band signals 2) we need a fairly large amount of storage-- "seconds"-wise 3) low parts count is a plus, as is small PCB space to lay it down 4) fewer wires to hook up is good 5) output filtering is good 6) "bulk" programmability is good The ISD fit most of these pretty nicely-- built in filters, "compressed" storage, good duration... Of course having to "load" it from an analog device is a pain. Normally I'd just say go with an EPROM and raw 8-bit samples with an R-2R output ladder and a filter on the output. The main problem (in my mind) is the amount of sampling time. Anyone actually *know* how long all the samples in Star Trek take when played back to back? (Al? ;-) (And before anyone laughs at my R-2R network for D/A... This is voice band audio, and the human ear isn't going to hear much distortion from mis-matched resistors. Remember the "source" material is pretty weird sounding in the first place... *laugh* An R-2R network is only about $0.10-$0.25. Rolling Thunder uses an MCU driving a pair of R-2R networks directly off I/O ports for it's stereo sampled audio...) Another approach could be something like an OKI 6295 with an external ROM. It uses ADPCM for compression, but retains the "play sound #xxx" functionality. Yet another approach would be an Oki 6585 which is just basically a ADPCM decoder. Pair that up with a MCU and a (smaller at least) external ROM for the samples. Both of these chips are used pretty frequently in video games, BTW. (well, look at pretty much every JAMMA game from 1988-1995) Ok, back to work now. :-) -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 25 15:38:42 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 25 Jun 1997 15:38:41 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 15:38:37 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Speech board idea... Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO .. I still think it would be easier just to duplicate the existing board and bank switch based on game type. You have to come up with ONE SP0250 to do this, which you can canabalize from a speech board you already have.. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 25 16:10:58 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 25 Jun 1997 16:10:57 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Wed, 25 Jun 97 16:11 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970625160612.2ccf8308@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: Speech board idea... Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 03:38 PM 6/25/97 -0700, you wrote: >.. I still think it would be easier just to duplicate the existing >board and bank switch based on game type. You have to come up with >ONE SP0250 to do this, which you can canabalize from a speech board >you already have.. If you already have a speech board, why duplicated it? (Unless you're trying for the multi-purpose sound/speech/ROM card thingy) Just add bank switching to it. Install larger EPROMs and bank switch using the extra lines, much like the ESB/SW banking. That and this suggestion is just way to practical. Come on Al, don't you have something non-productive you can do with your time? ;^) -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 25 16:53:36 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 25 Jun 1997 16:53:29 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 16:53:27 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Speech board idea... Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO I've been reverse-engineering a Xerox Star I/O board this week :-) Now THAT's non-productive! I keep thinking that you could cram all the games into a G80 cage if you could squish the speech board on top of the CPU, leaving the other slots for the 3 sound cards. Any chance you might update the Cine CPU ref with the info on the bank switching and multi-level display? From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 25 17:16:58 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 25 Jun 1997 17:16:56 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Wed, 25 Jun 97 17:17 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970625171211.2d279378@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: Speech board idea... Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 04:53 PM 6/25/97 -0700, you wrote: >I've been reverse-engineering a Xerox Star I/O board this week :-) >Now THAT's non-productive! > >I keep thinking that you could cram all the games into a G80 cage >if you could squish the speech board on top of the CPU, leaving the >other slots for the 3 sound cards. > >Any chance you might update the Cine CPU ref with the info on the >bank switching and multi-level display? I'm not sure what you mean by bank switching. I'm sure the specs talk about how bank switching is done between the 4k banks, from a software point of view. As far as the multi-level goes, sure, that and color information. The weird part is I thought I had already updated it, yet when I went out to the web page, that info wasn't there. I'll look for a local copy, or just add the information that's missing. But it won't happen until after the party this weekend, I still have 3 Cinematronics monitors to fix, not to mention the fact that every time I turn on my Star Hawk the power supply fuse *explodes* and my house lights go out -- I've been putting that one off, I'm assuming that will be an easy one to trace. I'm currently working two jobs (I contract and sometimes these things overlap). After the 4th of July weekend I should be able to get back to my hobbies. One of the things at the top of the list is to write an Assembler for the Cinematronics CPU. It would make writing test code much easier. Not to mention a menu system for multi-game systems, hacks for current games, and maybe even a new game if someone were so inclined? -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 25 17:59:39 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 25 Jun 1997 17:59:33 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@pop.van.diamondmm.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 18:01:52 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Speech board idea... Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO >If you already have a speech board, why duplicated it? (Unless you're trying >for the multi-purpose sound/speech/ROM card thingy) Just add bank switching >to it. Install larger EPROMs and bank switch using the extra lines, much >like the ESB/SW banking. Three main reasons for me: 1) single-source obsolete parts make me nervous. (SPO-250) 2) tough to record your own sounds for the speech board without having an SPO-250 development system 3) Would be nice to have one (more) free slot on the backplane if we never get a DSP based "all in one" sound card done so you can have all sound cards installed at once. (and switch the analog outputs of each with a mux) -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jun 25 18:14:39 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 25 Jun 1997 18:14:37 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Wed, 25 Jun 97 18:15 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970625180952.2ccf260e@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: Speech board idea... Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 06:01 PM 6/25/97 -0800, you wrote: >>If you already have a speech board, why duplicated it? (Unless you're trying >>for the multi-purpose sound/speech/ROM card thingy) Just add bank switching >>to it. Install larger EPROMs and bank switch using the extra lines, much >>like the ESB/SW banking. > >Three main reasons for me: > >1) single-source obsolete parts make me nervous. (SPO-250) I agree, but you'd better start re-designing the monitor since it has a *few* single source obsolete parts that make *me* nervous! They're definitely more likely to die. >2) tough to record your own sounds for the speech board without having an >SPO-250 development system >3) Would be nice to have one (more) free slot on the backplane if we never >get a DSP based "all in one" sound card done so you can have all sound >cards installed at once. (and switch the analog outputs of each with a >mux) All good reasons, but I think Al's original point was ease of design, which is directly related to completion time. You can start this evening wiring up some banked EPROMs on an existing speech board and have it done by the time you go to bed (there's something to be said for that) ...and not to be too cynical, but I'll wait for the "all in one" DSP card's availability before I worry about freeing up a slot. ;^) ;^) -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 26 07:57:24 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 07:57:14 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 09:55:07 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9706261455.AA20365@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Speech board idea... Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > After the 4th of July weekend I should be able to get back to my hobbies. > One of the things at the top of the list is to write an Assembler for the > Cinematronics CPU. It would make writing test code much easier. Not to > mention a menu system for multi-game systems, hacks for current games, and > maybe even a new game if someone were so inclined? > > -Zonn > Yes! That assembler is much needed! While I was actually working on diagnostic ROMS (I've kinda scrapped/put that one on the back burner) I knew I needed an assembler. I was just going to hack something together in PERL.... If you are going to work on diagnostic/test code, I have a pretty much complete Verilog model of the CCPU if that will help. I will finish it up if needed (the only part that is incomplete is the "PROM" page of the schematics, which contains many labels that are damn near impossible to read on my copies of the schematics.) I also have the necessary "supporting" PERL scripts (i.e. to convert a BIN/HEX file of the ROMs/PROMs to Verilog memory format, etc.) I made the Verilog model because I was going to come up with my test vectors/ROMs and then run the whole CPU, with its test vectors through Verifault and see what kind of fault coverage I could get. Maybe that was just academic, but it kinda seemed like a cool idea. Once that is finished, I can run it through Synopsys and map to FPGAs, so we can have CCPUs on a chip! Heck, forget about multi-game sound boards, I can make entire game boards with only about a half dozen chips! (Yes, I know that the CCPU on an FPGA is by no means an original idea....) Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 26 08:14:10 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 08:14:05 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: <199706261509.KAA23469@fermat.mayo.edu> Content-Type: text/plain Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 4.1mach v148) In-Reply-To: <9706261455.AA20365@maileng3> X-Nextstep-Mailer: Mail 4.1mach (Enhance 2.0b5) From: Ray Ghanbari Date: Thu, 26 Jun 97 10:09:35 -0500 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Speech board idea... References: <9706261455.AA20365@maileng3> Organization: Mayo Foundation Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO You wrote: > Once that is finished, I can run it through Synopsys and map to FPGAs, so we > can have CCPUs on a chip! Heck, forget about multi-game sound boards, I can > make entire game boards with only about a half dozen chips! (Yes, I know that > the CCPU on an FPGA is by no means an original idea....) For goodness sake, stick a couple DACs and amps on the vector output while you're at it! I'd love to save cabinet space by being able to play cnma games in my Asteroids cabinet (or even Star Wars, for that matter) From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 26 08:35:56 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 08:35:55 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 10:33:48 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9706261533.AA20704@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Speech board idea... Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > You wrote: > > Once that is finished, I can run it through Synopsys and map to FPGAs, so we > > can have CCPUs on a chip! Heck, forget about multi-game sound boards, I can > > make entire game boards with only about a half dozen chips! (Yes, I know that > > the CCPU on an FPGA is by no means an original idea....) > > For goodness sake, stick a couple DACs and amps on the vector output while > you're at it! I'd love to save cabinet space by being able to play cnma games > in my Asteroids cabinet (or even Star Wars, for that matter) > What I would really like to get my hands on are the schematics to the Boxing Bugs "B/W -> Color" card. I know Bill Paul was selling repros of the Boxing Bugs manual, but he said that that manual didn't have the schematics of that card in it. Then you could play Cinematronics stuff on a WG "Quadrascan" XY monitor. Hey Clay, weren't you working on Cinematronics -> G05 boards (at one tim, at least?) Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 26 08:53:24 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 08:53:20 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@pop.van.diamondmm.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 08:55:22 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Speech board idea... Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO >>1) single-source obsolete parts make me nervous. (SPO-250) > >I agree, but you'd better start re-designing the monitor since it has a >*few* single source obsolete parts that make *me* nervous! They're >definitely more likely to die. Oh yeah, that's why I'm working with the WG color monitor! :-) >>2) tough to record your own sounds for the speech board without having an >>SPO-250 development system >>3) Would be nice to have one (more) free slot on the backplane if we never >>get a DSP based "all in one" sound card done so you can have all sound >>cards installed at once. (and switch the analog outputs of each with a >>mux) > >All good reasons, but I think Al's original point was ease of design, which >is directly related to completion time. Good point. >You can start this evening wiring up some banked EPROMs on an existing >speech board and have it done by the time you go to bed (there's something >to be said for that) ...and not to be too cynical, but I'll wait for the >"all in one" DSP card's availability before I worry about freeing up a slot. >;^) ;^) Yeah, but that's why I was thinking of freeing up the slot by moving the speech stuff to the daughtercard sometime-- that gives enough slots for the CPU, Vector boards (2), Universal Snd bd, Eliminator Snd, Space Fury Snd... Without waiting for the DSP sound board. :-) Hmmmm. Maybe we should make a G-80 card that just hooks up to a PC-104 bus and a little 486 clone on the card with a soundblaster like Zonn said... ;-) -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 26 09:43:33 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 09:43:23 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@pop.van.diamondmm.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 09:45:37 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Speech board idea... Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > Hey Clay, weren't you working on Cinematronics -> G05 boards (at >one tim, at least?) Yep. I basically decided that the Cinematronics board was just insane. :-) It's HUGE, it has a ridiculous parts count, and can generally be done much easier, IMHO. On the other hand, the actual deflection section is pretty simple-- it's the color output stuff that I think is just lame. (opamps and tons of discretes for each color... Just a mess.) I didn't want to use the DAC-80's, so I think I was re-designing based on a MAX502 or something like that. (I like Maxim since they're nice about free sample parts. :-) Yet another project needing attention... I found a source for some caps for the integrators, and even bought a bunch and some of the LF13xxx chips too. The MC1495's are only available for cheap as SOIC's now, so I didn't do anything there yet. (Oh, as an aside, if anyone needs MC1495's-- when I made the adapter boards for the AM6012's SOIC->DIP conversion, I did a bunch for the MC1495's too. So if we want to order a bunch of the surface mount MC1495's from Newark I have the boards to convert them to DIP for use on old vector games...) -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 26 10:33:58 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 10:33:48 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 26 Jun 97 10:34 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970626102902.2f3f7eaa@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: Speech board idea... Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 09:55 AM 6/26/97 -0500, you wrote: >> After the 4th of July weekend I should be able to get back to my hobbies. >> One of the things at the top of the list is to write an Assembler for the >> Cinematronics CPU. It would make writing test code much easier. Not to >> mention a menu system for multi-game systems, hacks for current games, and >> maybe even a new game if someone were so inclined? >> >> -Zonn >> > > Yes! That assembler is much needed! >From past projects I have all the parsing routines needed for parsing any complexity expression, the basic assembler is a straight forward state machine, I just need to workout macro logic, since this being a RISC CPU, macros would be *very* useful. > > While I was actually working on diagnostic ROMS (I've kinda scrapped/put that one on the back burner) I knew I needed an assembler. I was just going to hack something together in PERL.... > > If you are going to work on diagnostic/test code, I have a pretty much complete Verilog model of the CCPU if that will help. I will finish it up if needed (the only part that is incomplete is the "PROM" page of the schematics, which contains many labels that are damn near impossible to read on my copies of the schematics.) The RipOff schematic seems to be the cleanest, my copy is water damaged, but the schematics are pretty readable. Let me know and I'll copy a few pages and send them off to ya. >I also have the necessary "supporting" PERL scripts (i.e. to convert a BIN/HEX file of the ROMs/PROMs to Verilog memory format, etc.) I made the Verilog model because I was going to come up with my test vectors/ROMs and then run the whole CPU, with its test vectors through Verifault and see what kind of fault coverage I could get. Maybe that was just academic, but it kinda seemed like a cool idea. I've thought of test ROMs for the CPU card and it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot you can do. How do you write software the tests *part* of a CPU? The PC BIOS, on power up, tests the flags of the CPU for proper operation. I always thought this was lame since after it detects a bad flag it jumps off into some code that uses the flag to display an error message. If the flags don't work what the chance of even getting to the test code? This test make as much sense as my favorite PC BIOS error message: "Keyboard not found, press any key to continue." If your verilog model can show that a limited number of usable instructions could possible be run in different failure modes, then writing the software to test these failures would be worthwhile. Ex: I believe you could write a RAM test and flash an output indicating which RAM chip has failed using non-RAM instructions. For the most part the things I've seen die on the CPU card are: The firmware PROMS, and I/O lines -- mostly the outputs include the latches that drive the DACs. I doubt if you could write software the tests for faultly firmware PROMs, but I/O should be pretty easy with a loop back adapter, or an LED board to display the outputs. Other useful tests are Monitor tests patterns for each of the different types of monitors, include WG's if you're lucky enough to have a Cine->WG board. And tests for sounding each of the different sounds on all the different sound boards, using a menu and the control panel of the game who's soundboard is being tested. These would help in monitor and sound board repair. > > Once that is finished, I can run it through Synopsys and map to FPGAs, so we can have CCPUs on a chip! Heck, forget about multi-game sound boards, I can make entire game boards with only about a half dozen chips! (Yes, I know that the CCPU on an FPGA is by no means an original idea....) Very cool, and like Ray said in his response, with a couple of DACs and some glue you could play the games on Asteroid monitors. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 26 10:55:17 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 10:55:16 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 10:55:13 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: Cine CPU gate complexity Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO I was wondering if you've tried to compile the model, and if so, how many gates / what type of FPGA does it map into? From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 26 11:31:17 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 11:31:16 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 13:29:08 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9706261829.AA21738@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Cine CPU gate complexity Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > I was wondering if you've tried to compile the model, and if so, how > many gates / what type of FPGA does it map into? > I'll map this in the next few days. I'll do it without the "PROM" module for now (I think Cinematronics calls it the System Sequencer module in that 19 component block diagram.) I'll have to look for a "real" FPGA compiler utility, as the only HDL compiler I use regularly is Synopsys, which maps an HDL file to a VLSI Standard Cell Library. I will be able to get a gate count, though (Our Std. Cell library does include some pretty complex gates, but if I'm not mistaken, each CLB of a Xilinx part can compute any combinational function of 5 or so variables, right?) I'm sure we have an HDL -> Xilinx or Altera FPGA compiler around here. Another problem might be I/Os. I think Steve O. told me that he had tried to do an FPGA based design, but there were too many I/Os for it to fit on 1 FPGA. Chances are it'll take 2 or 3 "big" ones (It's been about 2 years since I touched an FPGA, so I don't know what the "big" ones are nowadays.) Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 26 11:51:25 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 11:51:07 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 13:48:58 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9706261848.AA21900@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Speech board idea... Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > The RipOff schematic seems to be the cleanest, my copy is water damaged, but > the schematics are pretty readable. Let me know and I'll copy a few pages > and send them off to ya. That would be nice. I just need the page that has most of the PROMs on it. It also has a whole bunch of random logic gates too. I'm sure you know which page I'm talking about.... > I've thought of test ROMs for the CPU card and it doesn't seem like there's > a whole lot you can do. How do you write software the tests *part* of a CPU? You get more coverage if you define more controlability and observability points. You need to isolate those sections from each other. If you want to get decent coverage on that board, you need a diagnostic BOARD. If you pull all the socketed chips (LS181s, ROMS, and DIP shunts) you can get a reasonable amount of controllability/observability. I haven't looked into this in detail, and probably won't for some time, as I have basically abandoned this for my sound board project. That was the jist of what I was going to do, though. If you want to take it over, feel free to bounce stuff off of me, but I just don't have enough time to do both of these projects at once. While you can't test individual components, you can isolate some important sections. Then you have fewer ICs to test by hand, making your repairs much easier. > If your verilog model can show that a limited number of usable instructions > could possible be run in different failure modes, then writing the software > to test these failures would be worthwhile. Ex: I believe you could write a > RAM test and flash an output indicating which RAM chip has failed using > non-RAM instructions. I was going to use it to make creating vectors at those controllability points easier. I was hoping to be able to use some of the ATPG stuff here to do it for me. You don't really have to use valid instructions, just put a certain pattern at a controllability point, and check to see if you get what you expect. You might need to clock the circuit a few times too... > For the most part the things I've seen die on the CPU card are: The firmware > PROMS, and I/O lines -- mostly the outputs include the latches that drive > the DACs. > > I doubt if you could write software the tests for faultly firmware PROMs, > but I/O should be pretty easy with a loop back adapter, or an LED board to > display the outputs. Maybe, maybe not. If NONE of your tests pass, that might be an indication of faulty PROMS. Testing sytems is not an easy thing. You need to sit down and look at what kind of controllability and observability you have available to you. I never got around to doing this in real detail. I still think a set of instructions can be found that can have a reasonable amount of fault coverage of that processor (maybe 50%) that's just my gut feeling, and I could be totally wrong. > Other useful tests are Monitor tests patterns for each of the different > types of monitors, include WG's if you're lucky enough to have a Cine->WG board. > > And tests for sounding each of the different sounds on all the different > sound boards, using a menu and the control panel of the game who's > soundboard is being tested. This should be pretty easy, right? There are separate enable lines for each sound that goes to the sound board. If you have a working CPU board, a simple stream of intructions can test each sound in turn. Anyways, back to work.... Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 26 12:06:22 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 12:06:11 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@pop.van.diamondmm.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 12:08:29 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Cine CPU gate complexity Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > Another problem might be I/Os. I think Steve O. told me that he >had tried to do an FPGA based design, but there were too many I/Os for it >to fit on 1 FPGA. Chances are it'll take 2 or 3 "big" ones (It's been >about 2 years since I touched an FPGA, so I don't know what the "big" ones >are nowadays.) That was the problem I had with moving the Atari Vector Generator to FPGA. I wanted to be in the $16 range (singles) and didn't have enough I/O's on much of anything. Supposedly Xilinx has some new stuff coming out that's much cheaper than before and with better I/O capacity. They're coming by to see us in the next couple days, so I'll grab the databooks and whatnot. Phillips have been trying pretty hard to get our attention on FPGA stuff recently too-- they have a lot of Lucent look-alike stuff... -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 26 13:57:10 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 13:57:00 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 26 Jun 97 13:57 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970626135214.2f1725c4@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: Speech board idea... Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 01:48 PM 6/26/97 -0500, you wrote: >> The RipOff schematic seems to be the cleanest, my copy is water damaged, but >> the schematics are pretty readable. Let me know and I'll copy a few pages >> and send them off to ya. > > That would be nice. I just need the page that has most of the PROMs on it. It also has a whole bunch of random logic gates too. I'm sure you know which page I'm talking about.... Yup. While reverse engineering the thing, that was *THE* page always open, I just about have it permenantly memorized at this point... Send me a personal E-mail with your address and I'll send you a copy. > >> I've thought of test ROMs for the CPU card and it doesn't seem like there's >> a whole lot you can do. How do you write software the tests *part* of a CPU? > > You get more coverage if you define more controlability and observability points. You need to isolate those sections from each other. > > If you want to get decent coverage on that board, you need a diagnostic BOARD. If you pull all the socketed chips (LS181s, ROMS, and DIP shunts) you can get a reasonable amount of controllability/observability. I haven't looked into this in detail, and probably won't for some time, as I have basically abandoned this for my sound board project. That was the jist of what I was going to do, though. If you want to take it over, feel free to bounce stuff off of me, but I just don't have enough time to do both of these projects at once. NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! [Hands held up in the form of a cross] I have plenty to do, and for the amount of work I'd put into, I'd be able to fix all the non-working CPU cards I have and still have time for a nice vacation. > > While you can't test individual components, you can isolate some important sections. Then you have fewer ICs to test by hand, making your repairs much easier. > >> If your verilog model can show that a limited number of usable instructions >> could possible be run in different failure modes, then writing the software >> to test these failures would be worthwhile. Ex: I believe you could write a >> RAM test and flash an output indicating which RAM chip has failed using >> non-RAM instructions. > > I was going to use it to make creating vectors at those controllability points easier. I was hoping to be able to use some of the ATPG stuff here to do it for me. You don't really have to use valid instructions, just put a certain pattern at a controllability point, and check to see if you get what you expect. You might need to clock the circuit a few times too... Now your talking the Cinematronics Excersizor. Steve O. has one of these, you'd be better off getting his working since all the expected signals are already accounted for and marked on the CPU schematics. > >> For the most part the things I've seen die on the CPU card are: The firmware >> PROMS, and I/O lines -- mostly the outputs include the latches that drive >> the DACs. >> >> I doubt if you could write software the tests for faultly firmware PROMs, >> but I/O should be pretty easy with a loop back adapter, or an LED board to >> display the outputs. > > Maybe, maybe not. If NONE of your tests pass, that might be an indication of faulty PROMS. Testing sytems is not an easy thing. You need to sit down and look at what kind of controllability and observability you have available to you. I never got around to doing this in real detail. I still think a set of instructions can be found that can have a reasonable amount of fault coverage of that processor (maybe 50%) that's just my gut feeling, and I could be totally wrong. If nothing works you obviously can't use software to test anything. If you light up all the outputs by placing LED's on them and one doesn't work, you've obviously found a bad output. Software testing get grey between those two points. I spent 2 1/2 years as a hardware test engineer (as a software engineer writing hardware test code) and know it can be pretty tricky at times. And just to be disagreable (since I have no intentions of verifying this ;^) I think the %50 is a bit too high. There are too many parts on the board that if they were to die, all software execution would come to a halt. I've fixed a few of these boards, and the parts I've had to replace (outside of I/O), would have kept even the first instruction from executing properly. For those that might be interested I've found the best way to start in on a non-working CPU card who's reset LED will not go out, is to start at the LED and trace back all the signals that would hold, or strobe, the processor into the reset state. Usually you'll find a stuck pin, or in the case of the PROMs they seem to get into this weird state where there outputs are not high or low, just toggling around somewhere in between, looking more like a staircase than a digital signal. >> Other useful tests are Monitor tests patterns for each of the different >> types of monitors, include WG's if you're lucky enough to have a Cine->WG board. >> >> And tests for sounding each of the different sounds on all the different >> sound boards, using a menu and the control panel of the game who's >> soundboard is being tested. > > This should be pretty easy, right? There are separate enable lines for each sound that goes to the sound board. Pretty much, many cards need more than 6 channels of I/O data, so latches and shift registers are used to extended the I/O. >If you have a working CPU board, a simple stream of intructions can test each sound in turn. Yeah I mention those test because they are very doable, just need a nice assembler. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 26 20:34:34 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 20:34:32 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: <33B3343B.76C3@links.magenta.com> Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 21:32:11 -0600 From: Jess Askey X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: rec.games.video.arcade.collecting CC: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Stumped by my WG 6101 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Hi All, I have a WG 6101 (Tempest) monitor in an old Omega Race cabinet that I use for my Atari multi-vector setup. Basically I have completely re-wired it with all Atari stuff at this point. Anyway, the problem that I have had for about 6 months now is that I have "noise" in my vectors. It is in both the X and Y axis and seems to be high frequency since I can see the noise repeat in a nice long horizontal line about every inch or two. Here is what I have done. -Replaced my Switching power supply with the old REG/AUD II setup -Main +5V filter cap is good -Replaced all caps in monitor with above or equal values. -Isolated power supply harness from XY and RGB harness -Checked all grounds for loops and/or breaks -Stretched game PCB 5 feet away from monitor to see if the monitor was sending RFI onto the game PCB -looking at the X and Y outputs there is noise on them leaving the game PCB, but if I disconnect the monitor the noise disappears. -my HV unit sometimes howls at an audible "annoying tone", this is intermittent though and does not effect the noise in the pic at all. Disconnecting the HV unit definitely takes care of the "tone". -rechecked all solder connection and cap polarities on the HV unit, all caps are above or equal in capacitance. Okay, that is what I have done so far. Im really getting distressed after all this time. I really cannot figure out what it could be. I don't have a spare 6101 around to try out to see what happens either. I have swapped game PCB's too with no help at all, same problems. I added 1000uf caps to the +/-15V supplies to see if that would take care of the noise but no such luck. The main filter caps on the deflection board are from an old electrohome B/W with the values of 6800uf (they are still at 6800 uf, but I only have a capacitance meter) instead of the regular 4700uf. I figure that it has to be in the monitor somewhere since when I disconnect the main plug the noisy XY lines disappear but I really cannot fathom how something like the 15KHz is getting into the power supply with all the caps being okay. Ohh... leaving the monitor plugged in but disconnecting the HV unit leaves the XY signals clean and "noiseless", only when the HV unit is connected do the X/Y signals get noisy coming out of the game PCB. The problem "does" get worse with time (after 10 minutes or so) which also seems like a cap problem. Could a bad HV transformer be causing this?? Maybe those 6800uf caps?? HEELLLPPPPP!! jess -- Unofficial Atari Game Page:http://magenta.com/havoc Lots of other General Arcade Game info at http://arcadegames.miningco.com From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jun 26 21:44:05 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 26 Jun 1997 21:44:04 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: 27 Jun 1997 00:34 EDT To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: "Gregg Woodcock" Subject: re:Stumped by my WG 6101 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO In message "Stumped by my WG 6101", you write: > Anyway, the problem that I have had for about 6 months now is that I >have "noise" in my vectors. It is in both the X and Y axis and seems to >be high frequency since I can see the noise repeat in a nice long >horizontal line about every inch or two. Here is what I have done. Has the monitor ever worked properly? The reason I ask is that this game is very succeptible to wiring conditions. The R, G, and B signals MUST be twisted pair from the game board to the monitor and the length of this connection MUST be less than 4 feet or else noise is going to be a problem. I assume you built your own harness. One more thing; try disconnecting the AC fan and/or the flourscent light fixture. I have seen flourscent tube/starters go bad that sparked continuously and each spark induced distortion to the lines on the screen. -- THANX...Gregg day 214.684.7380 night UNLIST/PUBL TEXAS NOT CANADA! woodcock@nortel.com or woodcock@dfwmm.net *CLASSIC VIDEOGAME COLLECTOR BUY/SELL/TRADE NON-COMPUTER (ARCADE/HOME)* "If you quote me on this I'll have to deny it; I won't remember because I have such a bad memory. Not only that, but my memory is *terrible*." From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jun 27 08:46:14 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 27 Jun 1997 08:46:03 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: <33B3DFB3.1946@links.magenta.com> Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 09:43:47 -0600 From: Jess Askey X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Stumped by my WG 6101 References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Thanks to everyone who gave me suggestions so far (Greg, Ruben, Paul Catignani, Bill, and John Lee). Im going to go make an aluminum shield today for the HV unit and see what that does. From Gregg's suggestion I am going to go look for some twisted pairs to wire up the XY and RGB lines. Now I have a general ground question. The chassis is already connected to the logic ground by all the ground wires screwed to the chassis. Is it really necessary to ground the chassis to the "earth" ground from the 120 line? I have actually seen this procedure CAUSE noise in raster monitors. to keep you reply off the vectorlist you can mail me here! Thanks for all the suggestion, I will let you all know what it turns out to be! jess -- Unofficial Atari Game Page:http://magenta.com/havoc From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jun 27 10:58:38 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 27 Jun 1997 10:58:31 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Fri, 27 Jun 97 10:59 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970627105345.3e6f31e6@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: Stumped by my WG 6101 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 09:32 PM 6/26/97 -0600, you wrote: >Hi All, > I have a WG 6101 (Tempest) monitor in an old Omega Race cabinet that I >use for my Atari multi-vector setup. Basically I have completely >re-wired it with all Atari stuff at this point. > Anyway, the problem that I have had for about 6 months now is that I >have "noise" in my vectors. It is in both the X and Y axis and seems to >be high frequency since I can see the noise repeat in a nice long >horizontal line about every inch or two. I've seen this noise on many WG color vectors so I spent a weekend at Bill's and together we finally tracked down where it was coming from. If you look a the regulator built into the HV on the WG monitors you'll see that it's a very high gain error amp. This regulator will turn on when it's output falls below it's threshold, and when it turns on, it can turn on pretty hard. It can place a pretty good spike on the power supply. Atari's attempt at limiting this spike are the 2.2ohm (3.9ohm on later models) resistors on the HV regulator. If your's are 2.2ohm you might try increasing them to the 3.9ohm, you might have to increase the wattage of the resistors since 3.9 ohm resistor are dropping more voltage they're going to get hotter. The biggest reason the spikes are there is because the low voltage regulator used by Atari is the biggest piece of crap ever designed by a game company. It's a joke, destined to fail. Every revision of the schematic had something patched in here & there to try and keep it from failing. Things like Zener diodes use to protect transistor from over voltage during On/Off transition -- except they forget to put current limiting resistor on the zener to protect them. Well forgot? They actually had them there in one revision, but if you place the resistor in series with the zeners, the zeners can no longer shunt the over voltage surges, etc. The design is not really a regulator, but a capacitance multiplier. Together the circuit looks to the input of the deflection circuits as a filtered supply with a much higher capacitance than the 4700uf supplied. When it works. I've done two things with the WG's I own, not simple I'm afraid. Fix #1: The easiest, and the one I personally prefer, is to remove all low voltage circuitry. The X/Y amps have current feedback built into them and don't need regulated voltages. This is what they did on the Amplifone monitors, there is no low voltage regulators on these monitors. This will also speed up the slew rate of the monitor bringing up to the slightly faster speed of the Amplifone. Unfortunately just doing that will burn up your HV since it will now be supplied with +/- 33 volts instead of the +/- 25 it was design for. The small transistors used in the HV can't dissipated this extra power, I watched them melt like an ice-cream cone the first time I tried this. Also unfortunately you can't simply place a couple of +/- 24 volt regulators on the input of the HV. This works great for the HV, but the 78xx/79xx regulators were not design to care about the regulation of there inputs, just the outputs. These regulators will jerk the input line harder than the HV alone, and your noise problem will just get worse. BTW: Amplifone solved this problem by changing the way it regulated the high voltage. The Amplifone HV regulator consists of a specially designed tuned circuit (including the HV transformer) and it places a fairly constant load on the power supply, so there are no "pulses" needing filtering. I, at this point, found bought some surplus 56vct transformers (28 volts on each winding) and using a bridge diode, a 7824 and a 7924 (put them in the now unused sockets where the low voltage regulator caps went), a couple of filter caps (1000uf) and built a +/- 24 volt supply just for the HV cage. This gives you a monitor that runs cooler, has a faster slew, *much* more reliable, nice clean vectors. It also is no longer a drop in replacement for the original since it now needs an AC line for the HV. Fix #2: Beef up the low voltage "capacitance multiplier" to be a real regulator. By removing the low voltage section of the WG and replacing it with a couple of regulators you can run the WG as a drop in replacement. Unfortunately they don't make 5amp three pin voltage regulators (that I can find), but you can use standard "tab" regulators and use the existing low voltage pass transistor to beef up the current handling. By placing the external pass transistor in parallel with the three pin voltage regulator you can have it take the brunt of the regulation current. It's a very simple design only needing a resistor, the regulator, and some bypass capacitors to be added to the existing pass transistors. Ascii art being what it is I'm not *even* going to try and draw the schematic. If anyone is interested I'll figure out someway to get in on the net. The circuit is right out of the Motorola Voltage regulator handbook and/or databook. Bill P. made up a small PC board and etched it in his garage. It makes the upgrade fairly painless (much easier than the original ESB/Star Wars conversion kit -- No Clay this is not a dig! Just a comparison! :^). I'm not sure whether he wanted to go into mass production of these things, it's probably not worth the time and effort considering the quantity sold. It not that hard to wire up on a onesies and twosies scale. This gives you a *rock solid* display since the regulators are much faster than the spikes presented by the HV cage. Everything runs cooler (we used adjustable regulators and regulated at +/- 27 volts, though the monitor worked perfect at +/- 24 volts using fixed voltage regulators -- though the slew rate might suffer slightly and might be noticed on something like Major Havoc, designed for the Amplifone.) Neither one of these are easy fixes, but it shows you the problems I went through to get rid of those HV cage noise lines once and for all! I have seen WG working (properly, without noise) with unmodified Low Voltage sections. Though most of the time the WG I've seen in operation do not have their regulation sections working properly. Cracked diodes, bad trasistors, if the thing fails properly the monitor runs, but the regulator isn't, so you end up with noise on the Vectors. Yours might be running in this state. One problem is, I believe, the replacement transistor used to replace the obsoleted ones used in the regulator section have higher gains than the original. Since there is no feedback in the regulator circuit, this higher gain keeps the transistors from running in the linear range the original designed intended (they most likely saturate). Some re-spec'ing of some resistor values probably needs to be done. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jun 27 11:10:59 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 27 Jun 1997 11:10:58 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: From: "Shuman, David" To: "'vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com'" Subject: RE: Stumped by my WG 6101 Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 14:01:25 -0400 X-Mailer: Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.995.52 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO [most of Zonn's hack #1 deleted] >> This gives you a monitor that runs cooler, has a faster slew, >> *much* more reliable, nice clean vectors. My ears pricked up at the suggestion that this fix not only improves reliability but INCREASES THE SLEW RATE of the W-G color XY. Makes me wonder if this modification would cure the "stray vector" problem that crops up with the Sega-to-Atari XY adapter I designed. Sure would be nice.... -- David S. Shuman Bricker & Eckler, L.L.P. * 100 S. Third St. * Columbus, Ohio 43215 > From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jun 27 11:29:04 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 27 Jun 1997 11:28:52 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Fri, 27 Jun 97 11:29 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970627112406.30a741de@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: RE: Stumped by my WG 6101 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 02:01 PM 6/27/97 -0400, you wrote: >[most of Zonn's hack #1 deleted] > >>> This gives you a monitor that runs cooler, has a faster slew, >>> *much* more reliable, nice clean vectors. > >My ears pricked up at the suggestion that this fix not only improves >reliability but INCREASES THE SLEW RATE of the W-G color XY. Makes me >wonder if this modification would cure the "stray vector" problem that >crops up with the Sega-to-Atari XY adapter I designed. Sure would be >nice.... No, sorry this doesn't increase the slew that much! Sega uses +/- 50 volts as their power supply. You could do the same on the WG, but you'd have to replace all the capacitors with higher rated ones, and you'd probably burn out the pass transistors (unless you place a massive fan on them like Sega does!). You can deal with the pass trasistor problem by placing two transistors in parallel. I haven't looked into the circuit enough to know whether the WG amplifier would have enough voltage gain, though I believe it would. Since the HV (and neck board) would be running on their own supply, you wouldn't have to worry about them. Sega also uses the same yoke as the WG, almost. If you count the windings (and I did) you'll see that Sega has 18 winds per coil as opposed to WG's 23. (I think these numbers are right, it's been awhile). With the higher voltages/current and the reduce impedances of the yoke, it's a wonder the Sega monitor works at all. An occasional fire seems to have been built into the design. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jun 27 12:12:34 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 27 Jun 1997 12:12:12 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: <33B41001.4A7C@links.magenta.com> Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 13:09:53 -0600 From: Jess Askey X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Stumped by my WG 6101 References: <2.2.16.19970627105345.3e6f31e6@pop3.concentric.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Zonn wrote: lots of great and complicated fixes for the 6101.... What about just putting really big filter caps on the HV side of the 2.2 Ohm resistors, something like 2200uf instead of the 100uf ones that are there?? Wouldn't that at least help quite a bit? or how about this... use the low voltage regulator circuit for the HV only and put the deflection transistors right onto the +/-33V and beef up the filter caps some more everywhere. I like my caps to fuction like batteries, can you tell? jess Unofficial Atari Game Page:http://magenta.com/havoc From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jun 27 12:23:16 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 27 Jun 1997 12:23:15 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: <33B41296.41E2@links.magenta.com> Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 13:20:54 -0600 From: Jess Askey X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Stumped by my WG 6101 another what if. References: <2.2.16.19970627105345.3e6f31e6@pop3.concentric.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO Okay, one more.. using T-03 cased +/- 24V regulators with a 4.1V Zener Diode to lift the ground reference giving you a total of +/-28.1V. Now you would have a nice regulated supply without that pesky capacitance muliplying version. Then you could put the deflection transistors onto to the +/-33V rails just for *@!#* and :-). While you are in there you might as well beef up those filter caps ;-) maybe 10,000uf!! jess -- Unofficial Atari Game Page:http://magenta.com/havoc From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jun 27 12:34:30 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 27 Jun 1997 12:34:29 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 14:32:22 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9706271932.AA27460@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Cinematronics Testing (Was: Re: Speech board idea...) Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! [Hands held up in the form of a cross] I have plenty to > do, and for the amount of work I'd put into, I'd be able to fix all the > non-working CPU cards I have and still have time for a nice vacation. This is the main reason why I made this a low priority -- I fixed all my CPU boards! > Now your talking the Cinematronics Excersizor. Steve O. has one of these, > you'd be better off getting his working since all the expected signals are > already accounted for and marked on the CPU schematics. Not quite......I've talked to Steve about the exercisor. From what I remember about our discussion(s), the exercisor needs to be used with a signature analyzer, and what it does is basically keep pumping nops through the CCPU. You look at the signatures (after time) of a certain point with the signature analyzer, and you eventually find the signature(s) that are bad. IMHO, you can do the same thing almost as well with 1 nop and a logic probe. > If nothing works you obviously can't use software to test anything. If you > light up all the outputs by placing LED's on them and one doesn't work, > you've obviously found a bad output. Software testing get grey between > those two points. I spent 2 1/2 years as a hardware test engineer (as a > software engineer writing hardware test code) and know it can be pretty > tricky at times. If nothing works you have to replace every TTL chip anyways, so what's the point in testing...Any test program methodology is based upon the assumption that you use what's working to test what isn't. Since you don't know what's working and what isn't, you have to go through and assume, each time, that something different is working. After you've accumulated the results of all your tests, you will see a pattern, depending what is working and what isn't. There are all kinds of algorithms to come up with test code nowadays, and that's why I wrote the verilog model. I was going to run it (with the controllability and observability points that I defined) through an ATPG (Automatic Test Pattern Generator) and create ROM code based upon the vectors that get returned. The ATPG will also tell you what sort of fault coverage that you get based upon those vectors. This is the only time-effective way to test VLSI circuits (which I design for a living) but there is no reason why it should only work on VLSI stuff. ATPG should work on any [known] arbitrary network of combinational and sequential logic whose controllability and observability points are defined. The CCPU board meets all those criteria, and the controllability and observability points are actually pretty good (some were created by Cinematronics themselves, for the very purpose of testing the CCPU board with their exercisor.) > And just to be disagreable (since I have no intentions of verifying this ;^) > I think the %50 is a bit too high. There are too many parts on the board > that if they were to die, all software execution would come to a halt. I've > fixed a few of these boards, and the parts I've had to replace (outside of > I/O), would have kept even the first instruction from executing properly. You can't reliably test any complete system (using its defined inputs and outputs) with any reasonable amount of fault coverage -- You need to break it up by defining several [internal] controllability and observability points. Thus, you can put some vectors on the "real" inputs of the system, and observe them at some intermediate point before the output, where you've "broken the loop." Then, on the other side of the break, you put a new set of vectors in and observe them and some other observability point, etc. If all but one of those sets of vectors pass, you've narrowed down the cause of the problem (i.e. you don't have to bother testing ANYTHING in those other areas.) Am I making sense? If you're still feeling disagreeble, I LOVE talking about this stuff. I'm going back to school at the end of August to get a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, most likely specializing in, guess what, VLSI test methodology (The Prof. that I'm most likely studying under has done a lot of work with Built-In-Self-Test, etc...) In modern-day VLSI design, any sort of coverage less than 90 or even 95% is entirely unacceptable, so there are all sorts of sophisticated tools around for coming up with these vectors. The only thing different about the testing work that I do, and the CCPU board is that I have the luxury to set my controllability and observability points wherever I want to (i.e. the best possible places.) Since Cinematronics DID define controllability and observability points (those DIP shunts) I'm assuming that they were as well thought out......I could easily be wrong. I'm getting excited about this project again. Anybody got a broken board to sell? ;) Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jun 27 12:50:52 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 27 Jun 1997 12:50:50 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19970627134626.00610d98@btc.adaptec.com> X-Sender: andersk@btc.adaptec.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.1 (32) Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 13:46:26 -0600 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Anders Knudsen Subject: Re: Stumped by my WG 6101 In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19970627105345.3e6f31e6@pop3.concentric.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > >Fix #2: >Beef up the low voltage "capacitance multiplier" to be a real regulator. > Hmmm. Interesting to see that someone else has also done the "replace the lv" trick. Last year I built a replacement for the lvpc of the WG. I used an lm317t and lm337t adjustable + and - regulators. Put pots on the pcb so I could adjust the output. I don't remember the range I designed in, but something like 22 to 30 vdc. Put protection diodes on the regulators so they wouldn't blow. Added small tant filter caps to increase the ripple rejection. And of course you gotta put lights to make it look cool, so I put leds for each side, + and -. I build around 8 of them, and made them tiny (around 2x3 inches). The pcb fits right over where the old lv components are (just tore them all out) and solders right on the the deflection pcb, like a piggy back. I had the pcbs prototyped on a t-tech pcb cnc machine...pretty cool prototyper! I drew the schematics and did the pcb layout using Protel for windoze. I have had them running, and needless to say, not a problem with the lv side of things. Like Zonn said, I too am not sure if mass repro'ing these is worth it or not. I think I would rather redesign the whole damn deflection pcb and get the robustness I need that way. I would be nice to turn that monitor on, and never have to worry about fixing it again! -Anders. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jun 27 14:00:22 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 27 Jun 1997 14:00:16 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Fri, 27 Jun 97 14:00 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970627135529.0ed7e20c@pop3.concentric.net> X-Sender: zonn@pop3.concentric.net X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 2.2 (16) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Zonn Subject: Re: Cinematronics Testing (Was: Re: Speech board idea...) Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO At 02:32 PM 6/27/97 -0500, you wrote: >> NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! [Hands held up in the form of a cross] I have plenty to >> do, and for the amount of work I'd put into, I'd be able to fix all the >> non-working CPU cards I have and still have time for a nice vacation. > > This is the main reason why I made this a low priority -- I fixed all my CPU boards! > >> Now your talking the Cinematronics Excersizor. Steve O. has one of these, >> you'd be better off getting his working since all the expected signals are >> already accounted for and marked on the CPU schematics. > > Not quite......I've talked to Steve about the exercisor. From what I remember about our discussion(s), the exercisor needs to be used with a signature analyzer, and what it does is basically keep pumping nops through the CCPU. You look at the signatures (after time) of a certain point with the signature analyzer, and you eventually find the signature(s) that are bad. IMHO, you can do the same thing almost as well with 1 nop and a logic probe. > >> If nothing works you obviously can't use software to test anything. If you >> light up all the outputs by placing LED's on them and one doesn't work, >> you've obviously found a bad output. Software testing get grey between >> those two points. I spent 2 1/2 years as a hardware test engineer (as a >> software engineer writing hardware test code) and know it can be pretty >> tricky at times. > > If nothing works you have to replace every TTL chip anyways, so what's the point in testing... Very funny! :^) I obviously (at least I thought it was obvious) meant that if your software test routine was unable to run well enough to indicate what problems it might have found, assuming it could run well enough to even find the problems, then from a observer point of view nothing appears to be working. -- It just seemed like that sentence was rather long, so I shorten it to a more encryptive one. >Any test program methodology is based upon the assumption that you use what's working to test what isn't. Since you don't know what's working and what isn't, you have to go through and assume, each time, that something different is working. After you've accumulated the results of all your tests, you will see a pattern, depending what is working and what isn't. It all, of course, assumes the test program can even run one instruction. One cpu card had a bad clock, hard to test with software, etc. > > There are all kinds of algorithms to come up with test code nowadays, and that's why I wrote the verilog model. I was going to run it (with the controllability and observability points that I defined) through an ATPG (Automatic Test Pattern Generator) and create ROM code based upon the vectors that get returned. The ATPG will also tell you what sort of fault coverage that you get based upon those vectors. This is the only time-effective way to test VLSI circuits (which I design for a living) but there is no reason why it should only work on VLSI stuff. ATPG should work on any [known] arbitrary network of combinational and sequential logic whose controllability and observability points are defined. The CCPU board meets all those criteria, and the controllability and observability points are actually pretty good (some were created by Cinematronics themselves, for the very purpose of testing the CCPU board with their exercisor.) I think this is an excellent idea! The analogy between this and VLSI is a very good one, if you can just image this circuit much smaller, you would have a C-CPU on a chip. The C-CPU is much like taking a simplified version of, oh a PIC processor, and blowing it up to a board level design. > >> And just to be disagreable (since I have no intentions of verifying this ;^) >> I think the %50 is a bit too high. There are too many parts on the board >> that if they were to die, all software execution would come to a halt. I've >> fixed a few of these boards, and the parts I've had to replace (outside of >> I/O), would have kept even the first instruction from executing properly. > > You can't reliably test any complete system (using its defined inputs and outputs) with any reasonable amount of fault coverage -- You need to break it up by defining several [internal] controllability and observability points. Thus, you can put some vectors on the "real" inputs of the system, and observe them at some intermediate point before the output, where you've "broken the loop." Then, on the other side of the break, you put a new set of vectors in and observe them and some other observability point, etc. If all but one of those sets of vectors pass, you've narrowed down the cause of the problem (i.e. you don't have to bother testing ANYTHING in those other areas.) Am I making sense? Perfectly. > > If you're still feeling disagreeble, I LOVE talking about this stuff. The only thing I disagreed on was the 50 percent instruction count on what I've found to be typical failures on the board. A single PROM failure will always take out more than 50% of the instructions, they interact so closely when decoding an instruction my guess would be closer to 90%, depending on the PROM. I can think of two of the PROMs, that if they were to fail, would take out 100% of the instruction set. But I think we talk of different things when we use these percentages... >I'm going back to school at the end of August to get a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, most likely specializing in, guess what, VLSI test methodology (The Prof. that I'm most likely studying under has done a lot of work with Built-In-Self-Test, etc...) In modern-day VLSI design, any sort of coverage less than 90 or even 95% is entirely unacceptable, so there are all sorts of sophisticated tools around for coming up with these vectors. The only thing different about the testing work that I do, and the CCPU board is that I have the luxury to set my controllability and observability points wherever I want to (i.e. the best possible places.) Since Cinematronics DID define controllability and observability points (those DIP shunts) I'm assuming that they were as well thought out......I could easily be wrong. I think the only misunderstanding has been what we considered test programs. My definition was to: Write some software that by toggling an output line could indicate which RAM chip has failed to pass it's test. Then extended this methodology to beyond RAM, using a more limited instruction set, until there was simply no way for the software to run well enough to indicate errors. I believe this sort of software would be very limited in finding hardware problems on the CPU card. This is based on the problems I've found in the past. With the exception of I/O, I have yet to fix a CPU card that I could have written software that would have found the problem. Where this differs from what you describe is you're probing of "vectors" to allow you to observe failure modes that software alone could not detect. I'm assuming to "observe" these points you will need more that a logic probe with an LED that lights up, and to place data on the "real" inputs, your going to need more than a 4.7k resistor pulled to plus 5v. Since I think we were also thinking of different things when we spoke of percentage of coverage, I think using your definition I'll bet you can get pretty damn close to 100% coverage by choosing your vectors properly. > > I'm getting excited about this project again. Anybody got a broken board to sell? ;) Not to sell! -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Sun Jun 29 08:04:13 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sun, 29 Jun 1997 08:03:50 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Sun, 29 Jun 1997 10:59:27 -0400 (EDT) From: Dangerwil@aol.com Message-ID: <970629105926_-925291553@emout13.mail.aol.com> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Stumped by my WG 6101 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO My GO8 has been working fine for 8 years now! No modifications, all I did was solder the stand up boards directly to the chassis. (Fire extingusher ready and fingers crossed) Bill From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Sun Jun 29 21:08:10 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sun, 29 Jun 1997 21:07:56 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Sun, 29 Jun 1997 22:05:23 -0600 (MDT) From: Anders Knudsen X-Sender: andersk@wolf To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Stumped by my WG 6101 In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19970627181143.0f67a08e@pop3.concentric.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO On Fri, 27 Jun 1997, Zonn wrote: > Anyways it looks like you did a nicer job on the PC (no lights on ours!). Yea. LEDs are cool. Plus they give you a "warm fuzzy" to let you know that "something" is working! > Our kit was nice in that you simply cut all the parts out of the old LV > section, you then plugged our board into where the Pass transistors plugged Yea. On mine, you just cut out all the LV parts except the primary filter caps (C100, C101) and "bridge" rectifier diodes (D100-D103). Then the PCB just solders in to the holes at the collectors of Q100 and Q101 (which are gone!), and the output of the regulated voltage gets wired to the holes on the PCB that go to the bases of Q102 and Q103. Works, and looks real nice. Still want to "re-do" the whoe P314 PCB though! > > I completely agree on the redesign. The nicest redesign would be to replace > the yoke drivers with power Mos-FETs, since the thing that kills those pass > transistor most often are voltage spikes, and you can get Mos-FETs that'll > pass 10-15 amps with breakdown voltages of 500volts! The second nicest > would be to simply double up the bi-polars using emitter resistors to > prevent thermal runaway. Another thought I had was to perhaps use IGBTs. They give the best of both transistor worlds! Speed of a BJT and power handling of a FET !!! -Anders. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jun 30 07:38:39 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 30 Jun 1997 07:38:36 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 30 Jun 1997 09:36:29 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9706301436.AA04372@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Cinematronics Testing (Was: Re: Speech board idea...) Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Status: RO > I think this is an excellent idea! The analogy between this and VLSI is a > very good one, if you can just image this circuit much smaller, you would > have a C-CPU on a chip. The C-CPU is much like taking a simplified version > of, oh a PIC processor, and blowing it up to a board level design. Sure, this is a microprocessor, plain and simple. If anything it is easier to define controllability and observability points on the CCPU, because if I ever want more fault coverage, I can "break a loop" by just desoldering a chip. In a VLSI microprocessor, once the chip gets fabricated and I realize I need more controllability/observability points, I'm screwed. Taking this point to its ultimate conclusion -- I can DEFINITELY get 100% fault coverage on the CCPU board if I desolder and pull enough chips. However, I'm hoping that I can get significantly close to that without having to desolder anything. > The only thing I disagreed on was the 50 percent instruction count on what > I've found to be typical failures on the board. A single PROM failure will > always take out more than 50% of the instructions, they interact so closely > when decoding an instruction my guess would be closer to 90%, depending on > the PROM. I can think of two of the PROMs, that if they were to fail, would > take out 100% of the instruction set. But I think we talk of different > things when we use these percentages... I think we're looking at things totally reversed. If a single chip can do so much damage to the system, it will be easily spotted through my strategy. Some problems occur if several single chips can each clobber the CCPU in the same way. I don't think this is the case (most of the PROM outputs go through their own combinational decodes. Things get tricky when outputs of different PROMS, etc get ANDed together, etc. Then, my sort of scheme would be able to tell that (if it observed a bad output of that AND gate) either PROM1 or PROM2 or the AND gate is bad, but it may or may not be able to narrow things down (You're probably sick of hearing me say this, but it all depends on the controllability and observability points...i.e. EXACTLY where they are defined.) BUT, I'm sure anybody who has fixed Cinematronics boards before would very much appreciate something that will return, through 5 or 10 minutes of work (mostly setting up the diagnostics) a half-dozen, or probably f! ewer chips that are contributing t o the problem, rather than having to go through and check for stuck lines, etc on all the chips (now you can just go through and check for stuck lines on the chips that are returned by the diagnostics.) > I think the only misunderstanding has been what we considered test programs. > My definition was to: Write some software that by toggling an output line > could indicate which RAM chip has failed to pass it's test. Then extended > this methodology to beyond RAM, using a more limited instruction set, until > there was simply no way for the software to run well enough to indicate > errors. I believe this sort of software would be very limited in finding > hardware problems on the CPU card. This is based on the problems I've found > in the past. With the exception of I/O, I have yet to fix a CPU card that I > could have written software that would have found the problem. > > Where this differs from what you describe is you're probing of "vectors" to > allow you to observe failure modes that software alone could not detect. > I'm assuming to "observe" these points you will need more that a logic probe > with an LED that lights up, and to place data on the "real" inputs, your > going to need more than a 4.7k resistor pulled to plus 5v. > OK, we WERE totally confused by what we considered "fault" coverage, and my intentions in general... I consider a fault to be anything that will cause a digital circuit to fail, most common of these are stuck faults (a line is "Stuck at 0" or "Stuck at 1") or shorts (harder to find than stuck faults, if, say 2 inputs are shorted together and move together) It may or may not be necessary to have additional hardware, depending upon what it would cost to make a "diagnostic board." One of my visions was to just buy a big board (roughly the size of a CPU board) and put headers in the exact places where all the points I wanted to control/observe are (i.e. the ROMs, the ALUs, and those DIP shunts....basically all the socketed chips on the board.) Then, there would be some sort of a controller (maybe a PIC, maybe something even simpler) that would inject the proper vector streams (which would be stored in a ROM) into the controllability points, and observe the results at the observability points. The proper vector results would also be stored in a ROM, and would just be compared with the observed results. If any differ, then you know that that section failed. The vector(s) which failed may or may not help pinpoint the problem in that section, so I'd figure out some way to return that info too. Then, I would have a diagnostic ch! art for people to look at which wo uld say that, if test program 1, vectors 7, 14, and 111 failed, to check/replace chip xx. This is sort of like a dedicated Cinematronics test fixture. The degenerate case of all this is just using 1 vector, which I alluded to when I spoke of nops and logic probes. If you just put one combination on the inputs/controllability points, you'd get a predicatble combination on the output. You can just probe this with a logic probe, and compare. Your fault coverage from this kind of strategy would probably be depressingly low, though... > Since I think we were also thinking of different things when we spoke of > percentage of coverage, I think using your definition I'll bet you can get > pretty damn close to 100% coverage by choosing your vectors properly. Yeah, it all depends on your vectors and the points that you choose (or have available) to "break the loop." The more and more components there are in your little partitions, the more and more faults that can occur, and the harder it is to pinpoint exactly what is causing things to go bad. Although, by basically using common sense, you can choose the proper vectors, ATPG is the way to go. ATPG programs will come up with an optimAL set of vectors (Getting the best possible fault coverage, with the shortest possible vector LENGTH....vector width is fixed at the number of inputs, and coming up with this set of vectors in a reasonable amount of time -- Test Pattern Generation, like almost all other VLSI CAD algorithms is an NP complete problem, so the are all kinds of heuristics so that it doesn't take years to do this....on some of our chips it DOES take as long as a month, but this is for chips with millions of transistors) Anyways, as excited as I am about this, it's still going to remain on the back burner indefinitely.....I want to get those multi-game sound cards done first! I'll let you guys know if/when I start working on it again. Joe