From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jul 2 12:01:05 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 2 Jul 1997 12:00:15 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Subject: SW -> ESB To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Wed, 2 Jul 1997 14:11:54 -0600 (MDT) From: "Kurt Mahan" In-Reply-To: from "Clay Cowgill" at Jun 26, 97 09:45:37 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Message-ID: <33bab60a0.3fdb@bolt.usg.provo.novell.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 344 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Hi! I never heard back from you about how much a SW->ESB conversion kit would cost.. Do you have any left? Thanks! 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 Jul 2 12:15:55 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 2 Jul 1997 12:15:49 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Subject: Re: SW -> ESB To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Wed, 2 Jul 1997 14:28:18 -0600 (MDT) From: "Kurt Mahan" In-Reply-To: <33bab60a0.3fdb@bolt.usg.provo.novell.com> from "Kurt Mahan" at Jul 2, 97 02:11:54 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Message-ID: <33bab9e20.4077@bolt.usg.provo.novell.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 286 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Ok -- I'm an idiot. The directory that I changed to for Clay's mail just happened to have vectorlist as a replyto. I'll blame jetlag (just back from England :) Kurt > Hi! > > I never heard back from you about how much a SW->ESB conversion kit would > cost.. Do you have any left? From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jul 2 12:17:03 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 2 Jul 1997 12:17:03 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Posted-Date: Wed, 2 Jul 1997 12:12:35 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <3.0.32.19970702141306.00936e40@bl-mail1.corpeast.baynetworks.com> X-Sender: mmatelsk@bl-mail1.corpeast.baynetworks.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Wed, 02 Jul 1997 14:13:08 -0500 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Mit_Matelske@BayNetworks.COM (Mit Matelske) Subject: Amplifone blues... 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 I hate to pollute the list with simple problems ... but... A couple of days ago, I was trying a new bs in my Star Wars cockpit, and all of the sudden this loud static noise came from the tube. I quickly turned the game off then preceded to clean out my pants. Seriously, I unpluged the neck plug, and turned the HV all the way down, then, - turned it on - loud fritghtening noise - turned it off. It was on for maybe a second, but still there was a burning smell. The next day I hooked everything up to an extra 19" tube and it worked fine. What happened? How can I savalage my 25" tube? Please help Thanks in advance... Mit Matelske From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jul 2 13:23:53 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 2 Jul 1997 13:23:02 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: 02 Jul 1997 15:17 EDT To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: "Gregg Woodcock" Subject: re:SW -> ESB Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com In message "SW -> ESB", you write: >Hi! > >I never heard back from you about how much a SW->ESB conversion kit would >cost.. Do you have any left? Same as everybody else; $30 for just the expansion board + $5 for the PAL chip (pre-programmed) + $7 per EPROM (pre-programmed; I believe it takes 9 EPROMs). You will still have to assemble the kit yourself (solder and wires). -- 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 Jul 2 14:35:36 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 2 Jul 1997 14:35:29 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@supra.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 2 Jul 1997 14:36:56 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: SW -> ESB Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >Ok -- I'm an idiot. The directory that I changed to for Clay's mail just >happened to have vectorlist as a replyto. I'll blame jetlag (just back > from England :) :-) My "2.0" versions are $99 + $7 shipping. It includes the pre-assembled ESB daughtercard, all EPROMs and PROMs, and the manual. I'm not doing bare boards or separate parts anymore 'cause there were too many problems with people mixing and matching before, and it's a nightmare to keep track of who gets what. (For me anyway. :-) You can see all the details at: www.wwwpro.com/clay/ESB.html -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 Jul 7 11:25:25 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 11:24:37 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 97 11:24 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970707111941.10efef3e@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: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com So a friend of mine has been playing with some of the newer "Synthesizer-in-a-chip" line of IC's from crystal. A week ago he was on their home page, or maybe it was email from a sales guy, but they've recently announced a new chip that is very similar in power to an AWE32 type of sound board. The spec I saw included a full table look up that is stored in an "external" ROM or DRAM. It does full attack/decay on each sound, includes special effects (reverb etc) and a built in mixer. I think it said it could play 32 simultaneous sounds out of a library of over a hundred (depends on storage). The wave table storage can be a 1meg (bytes) of compressed ROM. I think they were asking $15 quantity 1, kind of prices. (Please correct me if anyone has the time to visit the site, or maybe Joe knows off the top of his head.) So it seems to me with four or five chips you should be able to create a universal sound/speech board for just about any game. You'd need: - All in one, wavetable synthesizer chip. - Wave table ROM programmed with game sounds/voices. - PIC processor to do the interface stuff -- and some glue depending on game. - Serial DAC (available from Crystal). - Op amp filter/driver. Optional: Audio power amp for the games that have this on the audio board. Everything you need is there and there doesn't appear to be anything "to work out". At this point it just looks like engineering (hook up the parts on a board that can be plugged into the game, write the software, sample the sounds, etc). It's not going to get much easier. Any thoughts? (Especially you Joe, is this the IC you're using to derive the one you been talking about, for your Cinematronics sound card?) -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jul 7 11:57:39 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 11:57:29 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 1997 13:55:17 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707071855.AA27475@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com > So a friend of mine has been playing with some of the newer > "Synthesizer-in-a-chip" line of IC's from crystal. > > A week ago he was on their home page, or maybe it was email from a sales > guy, but they've recently announced a new chip that is very similar in power > to an AWE32 type of sound board. > > The spec I saw included a full table look up that is stored in an "external" > ROM or DRAM. It does full attack/decay on each sound, includes special > effects (reverb etc) and a built in mixer. I think it said it could play 32 > simultaneous sounds out of a library of over a hundred (depends on storage). > The wave table storage can be a 1meg (bytes) of compressed ROM. I think > they were asking $15 quantity 1, kind of prices. (Please correct me if > anyone has the time to visit the site, or maybe Joe knows off the top of his > head.) This sounds like the CS9236, "Single-Chip Wavetable Music Synthesizer." I was never directly (or actually even closely) involved with that product, but I had our "Product Selection Guide" in front of me.... > So it seems to me with four or five chips you should be able to create a > universal sound/speech board for just about any game. > > You'd need: > - All in one, wavetable synthesizer chip. > - Wave table ROM programmed with game sounds/voices. > - PIC processor to do the interface stuff -- and some glue depending on game. > - Serial DAC (available from Crystal). > - Op amp filter/driver. > > Optional: > Audio power amp for the games that have this on the audio board. This would work for anything which uses periodic waves (most sounds.) The Cinematronics stuff is a pain, most specifically the Background noise in Star Castle, etc. It has a different motherboard interface, which basically sets the frequency of the background noise, rather than just being a "Loud Explosion Enable," etc like all the other sounds are. This remains to be seen, though, and by just increasing the rate that you step through the wave table, as a function of those motherboard inputs to the soundboard, I might be able to even get the background sound this way. This would probably involve using a PLL as the off-chip oscillator. > Everything you need is there and there doesn't appear to be anything "to > work out". At this point it just looks like engineering (hook up the parts > on a board that can be plugged into the game, write the software, sample the > sounds, etc). It's not going to get much easier. > > Any thoughts? (Especially you Joe, is this the IC you're using to derive the > one you been talking about, for your Cinematronics sound card?) I agree totally. I was talking about my project to a co-worker, and he suggested exactly the same thing. However, I'm pretty sure that, at least for the Cinematronics stuff it needs to be a bit more complicated (for that $&^*(&(^&% background noise) For a "traditional" sound board I think that is the way to go. The way I am doing the Cinematronics multi-game soundboard is by using a DSP to generate the sounds and then send everything through a DAC. There are I/O pins on the DSP that I will just hook the inputs up to. If I run out of I/O pins (which I think I will) I will just generate ALL of the sounds simultaneously with the DSP. The part that I am planning on using will have some DACs onboard, and I can just use the motherboard inputs to mute the channels that I don't want. Something like that..... Since it is a DSP, I can use I/Os to control the frequency of background noise, etc. The part that I plan on using is the chip that I am working on, which hasn't been released yet. Take a look at the CS4922 and CS4226 datasheets (available from www.crystal.com) and imagine the best-case combination of the two, and that's basically what "my" chip is. Hopefully it will be "officially" announced soon. Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jul 7 13:05:53 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 13:05:12 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 97 13:05 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970707130017.2da7e3fc@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: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com At 01:55 PM 7/7/97 -0500, you wrote: > This would work for anything which uses periodic waves (most sounds.) >The Cinematronics stuff is a pain, most specifically the Background noise in >Star Castle, etc. It has a different motherboard interface, which basically >sets the frequency of the background noise, rather than just being a "Loud >Explosion Enable," etc like all the other sounds are. > > This remains to be seen, though, and by just increasing the rate that > you step through the wave table, as a function of those motherboard inputs to > the soundboard, I might be able to even get the background sound this way. >This would probably involve using a PLL as the off-chip oscillator. I don't have a schematic in front of me, but I thought Star Castle used one of those "4 pin" shift registers. I don't remember them having an adjustable clock speed. I thought it was done internal to the chip. There is an adjustable frequency, on Star Castle, it changes the frequency of the background drone. I think it's done with a simple resistor DAC going into a VCO, though I know some games used a digital divider (Boxing Bugs). Either way you *could* just sample the 16 (or so) different frequencies. The beauty of a synthesizer chip, is that it can play a sample at different "note" values, not to mention the MIDI "Pitch Bend". I believe you could get by with one sample of either noise or oscillator. Through note changes and pitch bends you should have nearly unlimited control of the "frequencies". All the PLL stuff is built into the synthesizer, along with all the wavetable control. There's nothing left for the PIC but "Play this sound, at this note, with this pitch bend, with this ADSR envolope". Very cool, very simple. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jul 7 13:38:30 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 13:38:22 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 1997 15:36:13 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707072036.AA28106@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com > I don't have a schematic in front of me, but I thought Star Castle used one > of those "4 pin" shift registers. I don't remember them having an adjustable > clock speed. I thought it was done internal to the chip. Yeah, but those noise generators aren't used for the background sound at all. > There is an adjustable frequency, on Star Castle, it changes the frequency > of the background drone. I think it's done with a simple resistor DAC going > into a VCO, though I know some games used a digital divider (Boxing Bugs). > Either way you *could* just sample the 16 (or so) different frequencies. It's a 3 bit DAC, so you'd actually only need to sample the resulting 8 different VCO outputs, but there is a continuous-time LPF on the output of the DAC, to let the VCO ramp up and down smoothly. If you just sort of "switch samples" you won't get that smooth transition between the two..... > The beauty of a synthesizer chip, is that it can play a sample at different > "note" values, not to mention the MIDI "Pitch Bend". I believe you could > get by with one sample of either noise or oscillator. Through note changes > and pitch bends you should have nearly unlimited control of the > "frequencies". All the PLL stuff is built into the synthesizer, along with > all the wavetable control. There's nothing left for the PIC but "Play this > sound, at this note, with this pitch bend, with this ADSR envolope". Very > cool, very simple. I agree for all the other sounds (i.e. the noise generated ones.) The envelope control on the chip is VERY cool (which is another pain, that I am currently dealing with, is the envelope control, which, on the original boards is generated by the exponential ramp of the bias current to the Current-Controlled Amplifiers.) The PLL would still have to be external, because if you are going to use a wavetable for the background sound, and just vary the rate you step through it, you, again, want to ramp smoothly between the two frequencies. You can do this by changing the feedback divider of the PLL, and, the PLL will re-acquire its lock based upon the kind of LPF that you give it. This still seems a bit tricky to me. Although the CS9236 may have its own onboard PLL, I'm sure it's used just for its own internal clock generation. There's no output clock from the 9236 (usually called CLKOUT on all of our chips.) I just re-read this post, and it seems kinda negative. Actually, that's not my intent. You're right, for most of these sounds, it's pretty easy to use that chip. I'll bet what it is, is actually a lobotomized DSP, or rather, a dedicated DSP, so we both have basically the same idea. Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jul 7 14:09:31 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 14:09:21 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 97 14:09 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970707140425.2d073606@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: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com At 03:36 PM 7/7/97 -0500, you wrote: >> I don't have a schematic in front of me, but I thought Star Castle used one >> of those "4 pin" shift registers. I don't remember them having an adjustable >> clock speed. I thought it was done internal to the chip. > > Yeah, but those noise generators aren't used for the background sound at all. Huh? I'm not sure what this sentence means. (Really I'm not being facitous! :) I was originally refering to your need to change the "frequency" of the background noise, and like I said I don't have the schematic here, but I know they either used the all_in_one noise generator chip, or they did it themselves using shift_regs/xor_gates. They then piped the output into a low pass filter section, then controlled the attack/decay with one of those current control amplifiers. I wasn't sure where the adjustable clock, going into the noise generator, was. >> There is an adjustable frequency, on Star Castle, it changes the frequency >> of the background drone. I think it's done with a simple resistor DAC going >> into a VCO, though I know some games used a digital divider (Boxing Bugs). >> Either way you *could* just sample the 16 (or so) different frequencies. > > It's a 3 bit DAC, so you'd actually only need to sample the resulting 8 different VCO outputs, but there is a continuous-time LPF on the output of the DAC, to let the VCO ramp up and down smoothly. If you just sort of "switch samples" you won't get that smooth transition between the two..... Easily done with pitch bend... > >> The beauty of a synthesizer chip, is that it can play a sample at different >> "note" values, not to mention the MIDI "Pitch Bend". I believe you could >> get by with one sample of either noise or oscillator. Through note changes >> and pitch bends you should have nearly unlimited control of the >> "frequencies". All the PLL stuff is built into the synthesizer, along with >> all the wavetable control. There's nothing left for the PIC but "Play this >> sound, at this note, with this pitch bend, with this ADSR envolope". Very >> cool, very simple. > > I agree for all the other sounds (i.e. the noise generated ones.) The envelope control on the chip is VERY cool (which is another pain, that I am currently dealing with, is the envelope control, which, on the original boards is generated by the exponential ramp of the bias current to the Current-Controlled Amplifiers.) > > The PLL would still have to be external, because if you are going to use a wavetable for the background sound, and just vary the rate you step through it, you, again, want to ramp smoothly between the two frequencies. You can do this by changing the feedback divider of the PLL, and, the PLL will re-acquire its lock based upon the kind of LPF that you give it. This still seems a bit tricky to me. No need, you're missing the beauty of the synthesizer chip. It has pitch bend. I can't remember what the midi specs is, but the resolutions is real high. Something link 4096 or 2048 steps between half notes! Whether it's done with a PLL (most likely) or whether they just tweak an analog clock inside the IC, I don't care, the point is you have control of the frequency of the played waveform with very high resolution. If you find someone with a midi synthesizer, hooked up to a midi keyboard, and press a note and play with the pitch bend control you'll see what I mean. You can't here any stepping of frequency between one note and the next, even though it's being fully digitally controlled. As far as stepping through the wavetable ourself, I don't think that would be possible. The table needs to be accessed by the synth chip in a truely random way, in order to play back the 32 simultaneous sounds. And it's kept in a "proprietary compressed" format. You might have access to that info, I obviously don't, and don't need it. I would use the synth chip it's self to save the samples. I'm not concerned with how it saves them. I'll just take what ever data it saves in RAM, and ROM it. > > Although the CS9236 may have its own onboard PLL, I'm sure it's used just for its own internal clock generation. There's no output clock from the 9236 (usually called CLKOUT on all of our chips.) > > I just re-read this post, and it seems kinda negative. Actually, that's not my intent. You're right, for most of these sounds, it's pretty easy to use that chip. I'll bet what it is, is actually a lobotomized DSP, or rather, a dedicated DSP, so we both have basically the same idea. All that *and* wavetable synthesis. Looks like a very nice chip, they told my friend that they would be available near the end of the month (or maybe they already are -- I'm having dinner with him tonight, I'll find out), but we're definitely going to grab some. The external ROM looked very standard in it's interface. Just a basic parallel data and address busses. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jul 7 14:38:08 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 14:38:07 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 1997 16:34:18 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707072134.AA28441@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com > Huh? I'm not sure what this sentence means. (Really I'm not being facitous! :) > > I was originally refering to your need to change the "frequency" of the > background noise, and like I said I don't have the schematic here, but I > know they either used the all_in_one noise generator chip, or they did it > themselves using shift_regs/xor_gates. They then piped the output into a > low pass filter section, then controlled the attack/decay with one of those > current control amplifiers. I wasn't sure where the adjustable clock, going > into the noise generator, was. Yeah, but it's not done that way for the background sound/drone. That's a whole different circuit which is a DAC -> LPF -> Level Shifter/Limiter -> VCO I think we both know what the other is talking about now, but we got mixed up somewhere along the way.... There is no adjustable clock for the noise generator -- it's generated internally, in fact... > Easily done with pitch bend... Ahhhhh, I'm obviously a bit out of my league here. I've never touched anything MIDI at all. I'm not even sure what pitch bend is.... > No need, you're missing the beauty of the synthesizer chip. It has pitch > bend. I can't remember what the midi specs is, but the resolutions is real > high. Something link 4096 or 2048 steps between half notes! Whether it's > done with a PLL (most likely) or whether they just tweak an analog clock > inside the IC, I don't care, the point is you have control of the frequency > of the played waveform with very high resolution. > > If you find someone with a midi synthesizer, hooked up to a midi keyboard, > and press a note and play with the pitch bend control you'll see what I > mean. You can't here any stepping of frequency between one note and the > next, even though it's being fully digitally controlled. > > As far as stepping through the wavetable ourself, I don't think that would > be possible. The table needs to be accessed by the synth chip in a truely > random way, in order to play back the 32 simultaneous sounds. And it's kept > in a "proprietary compressed" format. You might have access to that info, I > obviously don't, and don't need it. I would use the synth chip it's self to > save the samples. I'm not concerned with how it saves them. I'll just take > what ever data it saves in RAM, and ROM it. .....not stepping through it, just controlling how fast the chip steps through it (i.e. the clock frequency.) My idea of a wavetable was that it was just that -- a lookup table for values of the sound/wave vs time. You can represent a sine wave of one frequency with a certain wave table. You can represent a sine wave of twice the frequency with the SAME wave table, but stepping through it twice as fast....This sort of implies that the signal be periodic, because if you want the signal to last any significant length, you just keep repeatedly looping through the table. > All that *and* wavetable synthesis. Looks like a very nice chip, they told > my friend that they would be available near the end of the month (or maybe > they already are -- I'm having dinner with him tonight, I'll find out), but > we're definitely going to grab some. Hmmmmm, maybe I'm misunderstanding what wavetable synthesis is (i.e. it's not just a lookup table, which could be implemented on a DSP with RAM/ROM) looks like I need to do a bit of "homework." > The external ROM looked very standard in it's interface. Just a basic > parallel data and address busses. It looks like this is a new chip. The one that I'm looking at has a built-in ROM. Ignore the part number I gave you, then.... Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jul 7 15:02:41 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 15:02:40 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 97 15:02 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970707145745.0edfccce@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: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com At 04:34 PM 7/7/97 -0500, you wrote: > >> Easily done with pitch bend... > > Ahhhhh, I'm obviously a bit out of my league here. I've never touched anything MIDI at all. I'm not even sure what pitch bend is.... It a control that's sent along with the note value to tell the synthesizer how much to flatten / sharpen the note. The increment is quite small allowing one to slide from one note to the next, there's no perception of "steps" during the slide, sounding much like a slide guitar. > >> No need, you're missing the beauty of the synthesizer chip. It has pitch >> bend. I can't remember what the midi specs is, but the resolutions is real >> high. Something link 4096 or 2048 steps between half notes! Whether it's >> done with a PLL (most likely) or whether they just tweak an analog clock >> inside the IC, I don't care, the point is you have control of the frequency >> of the played waveform with very high resolution. >> >> If you find someone with a midi synthesizer, hooked up to a midi keyboard, >> and press a note and play with the pitch bend control you'll see what I >> mean. You can't here any stepping of frequency between one note and the >> next, even though it's being fully digitally controlled. >> >> As far as stepping through the wavetable ourself, I don't think that would >> be possible. The table needs to be accessed by the synth chip in a truely >> random way, in order to play back the 32 simultaneous sounds. And it's kept >> in a "proprietary compressed" format. You might have access to that info, I >> obviously don't, and don't need it. I would use the synth chip it's self to >> save the samples. I'm not concerned with how it saves them. I'll just take >> what ever data it saves in RAM, and ROM it. > > .....not stepping through it, just controlling how fast the chip steps through it (i.e. the clock frequency.) My idea of a wavetable was that it was just that -- a lookup table for values of the sound/wave vs time. You can represent a sine wave of one frequency with a certain wave table. You can represent a sine wave of twice the frequency with the SAME wave table, but stepping through it twice as fast....This sort of implies that the signal be periodic, because if you want the signal to last any significant length, you just keep repeatedly looping through the table. I'm sure that's what goes on inside the synthesizer, the cool thing is I can just tell it what frequency I want a sample played at, it calculates all the step frequencies needed to play the sample at what I've asked for -- all the way down to what ever micro steps are needed to play in between samples (it probably even does a nice interpolation between the samples when needed). > >> All that *and* wavetable synthesis. Looks like a very nice chip, they told >> my friend that they would be available near the end of the month (or maybe >> they already are -- I'm having dinner with him tonight, I'll find out), but >> we're definitely going to grab some. > > Hmmmmm, maybe I'm misunderstanding what wavetable synthesis is (i.e. it's not just a lookup table, which could be implemented on a DSP with RAM/ROM) looks like I need to do a bit of "homework." No, I'm sure they've implemented it just as you say. It just that the DSP can access the table in such a way as to allow 32 different sounds to be simultaneously played back (32 separate mux'ed pointers!). It also allows micro stepping of the samples (most likely with interpolation) to allow for very slight changes in pitch. I'm sure it has the ability to play a single "once through of a sample" or loop, since this is what the currently available synth chip, with the builtin ROM, allows. (Ex: Drum samples are played once, while violins are played as long as a key is pressed.) After which the DSP does all the mixing, with the availability of reverb and chorusing, and then does all enveloping! Makes everything almost too easy! >> The external ROM looked very standard in it's interface. Just a basic >> parallel data and address busses. > > It looks like this is a new chip. The one that I'm looking at has a built-in ROM. Ignore the part number I gave you, then.... The one with the built in ROM is the one my friend has already laid out a PC board for, it was while asking questions on that one that he found out about the release of the new one. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jul 7 15:23:19 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 15:23:12 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@supra.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 7 Jul 1997 15:25:13 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >No need, you're missing the beauty of the synthesizer chip. It has pitch >bend. I can't remember what the midi specs is, but the resolutions is real >high. Something link 4096 or 2048 steps between half notes! Whether it's >done with a PLL (most likely) or whether they just tweak an analog clock >inside the IC, I don't care, the point is you have control of the frequency >of the played waveform with very high resolution. It's been a while since I did MIDI stuff, but I think the pitchbend is a 8 bit value. Seems like it's divided across 60 cents (30 sharp and 30 flat?), so it's about 1/4 cent per unit. Some devices might support system exclusive for more resolution. Was it cents or semi-tones? 60 cents per semitone? Hell, I've gone and confused myself. Maybe this will jog someone else's memory. ;-) >If you find someone with a midi synthesizer, hooked up to a midi keyboard, >and press a note and play with the pitch bend control you'll see what I >mean. You can't here any stepping of frequency between one note and the >next, even though it's being fully digitally controlled. True, assuming the pitch bend wheel is workig right. (Dirty pots and all.) I think 8 bits would give you a pretty smooth bend. Most synths let you specify the bend range as well-- from full scale "bend" equal to 1 note to full scale bend going an octave or two. I don't know if this is accomplished by shifting an 8 bit value or truncating a larger one. Off topic, but worth mentioning--- For what it's worth, I'm only a batchellor for another 70 minutes... (Yes, Tara and I are finally getting married. It was one of these spur of the moment decisions that only took a couple years to reach... ;-) -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 Jul 7 15:30:41 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 15:30:40 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 1997 17:28:35 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707072228.AA28788@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com > The one with the built in ROM is the one my friend has already laid out a PC > board for, it was while asking questions on that one that he found out about > the release of the new one. > This DOES sound like the perfect chip for this kind of thing (Now that I understand what pitch bend is...) It actually changes my project plan drastically, since you've convinced me that this is the way to go. Gotta love those Crystal chips! There still is little bit of a practicality "problem" now, in that I need original sound boards to make the samples. Or, more likely, people need to volunteer to sample the sounds of the game that they have. This gives me a nice opportunity to take a break from this project for a week or so and fix a few games. Also, I just got those schematic pages that you sent me in the mail, Zonn, and I'll use those to finish up my Verilog model (You were right, those are MUCH clearer than the ones that I have....) Meanwhile, I'll try to dig up some sort of preliminary release datasheet for that part here, so that I can have a better idea of what it's all about... Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jul 7 15:32:01 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 15:31:52 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: <199707072225.RAA12207@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: Mon, 7 Jul 97 17:25:41 -0500 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip References: Organization: Mayo Foundation Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com You wrote: > Off topic, but worth mentioning--- For what it's worth, I'm only a > batchellor for another 70 minutes... (Yes, Tara and I are finally getting > married. It was one of these spur of the moment decisions that only took a > couple years to reach... ;-) Long enough to squeeze a couple games of Zector in ;-) Congrats Clay! Must be quite a person to marry you even after knowing about your hobby (I had the good sense to get married before I started collecting games ;-) Ray From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jul 7 15:32:51 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 15:32:42 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 97 15:32 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970707152745.37af64f4@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: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com At 03:25 PM 7/7/97 -0800, you wrote: > >>No need, you're missing the beauty of the synthesizer chip. It has pitch >>bend. I can't remember what the midi specs is, but the resolutions is real >>high. Something link 4096 or 2048 steps between half notes! Whether it's >>done with a PLL (most likely) or whether they just tweak an analog clock >>inside the IC, I don't care, the point is you have control of the frequency >>of the played waveform with very high resolution. > >It's been a while since I did MIDI stuff, but I think the pitchbend is a 8 >bit value. Seems like it's divided across 60 cents (30 sharp and 30 >flat?), so it's about 1/4 cent per unit. Some devices might support system >exclusive for more resolution. Was it cents or semi-tones? 60 cents per >semitone? Hell, I've gone and confused myself. Maybe this will jog >someone else's memory. ;-) I'm pretty sure it's more. There is no 8 bit values in Midi since the high bit determines Command or Note data. So it's either 7 bits, or it's an extended (two byte) value. I think it's the latter. I'll find out tonight, my friend Dave's the expert. > > >Off topic, but worth mentioning--- For what it's worth, I'm only a >batchellor for another 70 minutes... (Yes, Tara and I are finally getting >married. It was one of these spur of the moment decisions that only took a >couple years to reach... ;-) Alright!! Congradulations!!!! So seventy minutes before you say "I do" you're logged on reading the VectorList email? Just a little nervous maybe?? ;^) Going anywhere for a honeymoon? -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jul 7 15:38:20 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 15:38:19 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: <3.0.1.32.19970707163345.00583430@btc.adaptec.com> X-Sender: andersk@btc.adaptec.com X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.1 (32) Date: Mon, 07 Jul 1997 16:33:45 -0600 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Anders Knudsen Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip In-Reply-To: <199707072225.RAA12207@fermat.mayo.edu> References: 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 At 05:25 PM 7/7/97 -0500, you wrote: >You wrote: >> Off topic, but worth mentioning--- For what it's worth, I'm only a >> batchellor for another 70 minutes... (Yes, Tara and I are finally getting >> married. It was one of these spur of the moment decisions that only took a >> couple years to reach... ;-) 70 minutes?? What are you off to Vegas tonight? Contratulations anyhow! >Congrats Clay! Must be quite a person to marry you even after knowing about >your hobby (I had the good sense to get married before I started collecting >games ;-) > >Ray Yea. I just got my wife interested in the *hobby* by getting her a vid that she liked, so we have a Centipede in the house. -anders. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jul 7 16:27:02 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 16:26:56 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 97 16:26 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970707162200.2e676c16@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: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com At 05:28 PM 7/7/97 -0500, you wrote: >> The one with the built in ROM is the one my friend has already laid out a PC >> board for, it was while asking questions on that one that he found out about >> the release of the new one. >> > > This DOES sound like the perfect chip for this kind of thing (Now that I >understand what pitch bend is...) It actually changes my project plan >drastically, since you've convinced me that this is the way to go. Gotta love >those Crystal chips! They sure impress the hell out of me! And better yet they are so open with the documentation. It's like they *want* you to use their chips! Very strange. Ever try to get information on programming the SoundBlaster DSP (not the mixer but their "proprietary" CSP chip)? I hope Crystal kicks their ass with the new synth-on-a-chip! > There still is little bit of a practicality "problem" now, in that I >need original sound boards to make the samples. Or, more likely, people need >to volunteer to sample the sounds of the game that they have. I have the following (each in their original cabinets :^) Armor Attack Boxing Bugs Rip Off Solar Quest Space War Speed Freak Star Castle Star Hawk Sundance (on the way, or so I'm constantly assured by Gaymond ;^) Tail Gunner War of the Worlds I'd be more than happy to sample these sounds -- I've been wanting to write test code to play each sound individually anyhow, this'll give me a reason to do it. :^) I think many of the sounds will actually sound better if they are created under software by simulating the hardware circuits. Especially easy would be the square wave stuff. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 8 09:16:30 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 8 Jul 1997 09:16:26 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@supra.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 09:18:40 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >At 03:25 PM 7/7/97 -0800, you wrote: >I'm pretty sure it's more. There is no 8 bit values in Midi since the high >bit determines Command or Note data. So it's either 7 bits, or it's an >extended (two byte) value. I think it's the latter. I'll find out tonight, >my friend Dave's the expert. What was the answer here? I got home a little late last night (Geez, get married and everyone wants to hang around in the restaurant for hours... I've got stuff to work on... ;-), so I didn't look for my "Programmers Guide to MIDI" book. I suppose I could look in my old drum-machine source code... > >> >>Off topic, but worth mentioning--- For what it's worth, I'm only a >>batchellor for another 70 minutes... (Yes, Tara and I are finally getting >>married. It was one of these spur of the moment decisions that only took a >>couple years to reach... ;-) > >Alright!! Congradulations!!!! > >So seventy minutes before you say "I do" you're logged on reading the >VectorList email? > >Just a little nervous maybe?? ;^) Just worried what a gold ring will do inside a running monitor... ;-) >Going anywhere for a honeymoon? Probably a nice Inn on the Oregon coast. We're going to wait until it's a little farther into "summer" up here. Try for some good weather. -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 Jul 8 09:34:11 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 8 Jul 1997 09:34:10 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 97 09:34 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970708092913.22573dc0@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: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com At 09:18 AM 7/8/97 -0800, you wrote: >>At 03:25 PM 7/7/97 -0800, you wrote: > >>I'm pretty sure it's more. There is no 8 bit values in Midi since the high >>bit determines Command or Note data. So it's either 7 bits, or it's an >>extended (two byte) value. I think it's the latter. I'll find out tonight, >>my friend Dave's the expert. > >What was the answer here? I got home a little late last night (Geez, get >married and everyone wants to hang around in the restaurant for hours... >I've got stuff to work on... ;-) Bit of a hopeless romantic eh? ;^) (I'm afraid to ask *what* stuff!) >, so I didn't look for my "Programmers >Guide to MIDI" book. I suppose I could look in my old drum-machine source >code... We looked it up last night. The range of the pitch bend is a whopping +/- 8092. It's effect can be set from 0 to 24 semitones. So if the range is set to 1 semitone, then you have 8092 steps between a single semitone. 1/8092 of a semitone, I'm sure, is all the resolution a sound card will need. >> >>> >>>Off topic, but worth mentioning--- For what it's worth, I'm only a >>>batchellor for another 70 minutes... (Yes, Tara and I are finally getting >>>married. It was one of these spur of the moment decisions that only took a >>>couple years to reach... ;-) >> >>Alright!! Congradulations!!!! >> >>So seventy minutes before you say "I do" you're logged on reading the >>VectorList email? >> >>Just a little nervous maybe?? ;^) > >Just worried what a gold ring will do inside a running monitor... ;-) Yeah, be careful working on cars! My dad did that for a living and had friends with their ring permenantly tattoed to their ring finger. There's a lot of current in those, 100 cranking amp, batteries! > >>Going anywhere for a honeymoon? > >Probably a nice Inn on the Oregon coast. We're going to wait until it's a >little farther into "summer" up here. Try for some good weather. Sounds perfect. Check out Crater Lake on the way up, it's gorgeous. They claim it's some of the clearest water in the world. Once again congradulations!!! -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 8 10:17:00 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 8 Jul 1997 10:16:58 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 97 10:16 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970708101201.3e6fb7d6@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: Crystal's old chip...well maybe Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com My friend did some more looking into the Crystal synth chip with external RAM, and was told by a distributer that, that chip had been discontinued and replaced with their new all-in-one-chip the CS9236. Which is too bad since the CS9236 has no capability of recording samples, or playing back from external ROM. The chip I was originally referring to was the CS9233, the only thing we've ever found on it is at: www.cirrus.com/prodtech/ov.crystal/cs9233.html It could be the distributor doesn't know what he's talking about, but then again the newer chip does have a higher part number, is easier to use, and is a 1 chip solution as opposed to three. Damn. So the search continued and we found a similar, if not better for this project, IC being made by ENSONIQ. In the 80's they were "the" sampling synthesizer company. I remember there first keyboard blowing away the Roland of the time, and also undercutting it by half in price. Their "OTTO" chip is described at: www.ensoniq.com/html/otto.htm They sell a sound card that uses this chip for $75 (including shipping). The card contains an on board 68EC000 with an operating system that can be "upgraded" (EEPROM?). If programming information could be had for the OTTO, then this $75 card contains everything needed for the universal sound card. 1 meg of sampling RAM using compression. All the DSP for volume enveloping. 32 independent voices with complete control over looping, etc. And it only took them 80,000 transistors to do it (according to the blurb). Anyone up for the "agonies" of programming a 68000? ;^) Even if no information can be found for the OTTO, if the card itself could be run "stand alone", then this is still the universal sound card. I believe this sound card runs a version of the standard Ensoniq operating system. Ensoniq has always made downloading of new sounds available through the MIDI exclusive commands (they documented their format while Roland was calling there's proprietary. Guess who sold more synthesizers? Hee! hee! -- come on manufacturers, get a clue.) So sounds could be downloaded to the card through the MIDI interface, then played the same way, using the MIDI interface. All using a very well defined standard! Of course this is true for most any sampling synthesizer nowadays. So maybe the universal sound card is nothing but a PIC processor that converts the game logic request to the proper MIDI notes to be used on any sampling synthesizer? With the price of used 486 motherboards going for less than $50 at swap meets, that's $125 for a full sampling universal sound card (well less the very minimal RAM and floppy/harddisk/romdrive, needed to bring it up -- yeah, were will I *ever* find an old floppy disk, or hard drive for that matter.). Those baby AT boards would not take up much room inside the game cabinet, being smaller than many of the sound cards in there now. As long as a sound card / synthesizer supports the MIDI interface, the only thing that would need changing (on the PIC side of things), to support multiple synthesizers, would be the format of the .WAV files during download. It's been a few years (ok quite a few) since I've looked into it, but at one time there was talk of even standardizing these! -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 8 10:41:29 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 8 Jul 1997 10:41:28 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 97 10:41 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970708103629.2257bf7e@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: Crystal's old chip...well maybe Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Yeah, I'm bored, I'm replying to my own messages... At 10:16 AM 7/8/97 PDT, I wrote: >If programming information could be had for the OTTO, then this $75 card >contains everything needed for the universal sound card. 1 meg of sampling >RAM using compression. All the DSP for volume enveloping. 32 independent >voices with complete control over looping, etc. And it only took them >80,000 transistors to do it (according to the blurb). Anyone up for the >"agonies" of programming a 68000? ;^) > >Even if no information can be found for the OTTO, if the card itself could >be run "stand alone", then this is still the universal sound card. I >believe this sound card runs a version of the standard Ensoniq operating >system. Ensoniq has always made downloading of new sounds available through >the MIDI exclusive commands (they documented their format while Roland was >calling there's proprietary. Guess who sold more synthesizers? Hee! hee! >-- come on manufacturers, get a clue.) After looking again at Ensoniq web page it looks like, late last night, I misread the specs. This card has only ROM table capabilities, no RAM. The only way to use this card would be through reprogramming of the on board 68000 "operating system" Or at least reprogramming the ROM to use our own "voices", if the format could be determined, that would be the way to go. I still like the game to MIDI interface using a very simple PIC design. We just need to find a sound card (Gravis Ultra sound maybe?) or low end synthesizer (maybe Ensoniqs has something?) that can accept samples through the MIDI interface. Or even back to the cheap-o mother board and Gravis Ultra sound idea, using a standard serial interface. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 8 11:08:29 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 8 Jul 1997 11:08:28 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@supra.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 11:10:40 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Crystal's old chip...well maybe Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >After looking again at Ensoniq web page it looks like, late last night, I >misread the specs. This card has only ROM table capabilities, no RAM. The >only way to use this card would be through reprogramming of the on board >68000 "operating system" Or at least reprogramming the ROM to use our own >"voices", if the format could be determined, that would be the way to go. FWIW, there are Ensoniq sound chips on the Information Technologies arcade game boards. (Time Killers, some sports games, etc.) They used about 1Mbyte of external EPROM for storing samples. At anyrate, I kept the sample EPROMs from a few of these to pick apart. Want a copy of the ROMs? It's probably either raw samples or maybe some form of ADPCM. (The musician types tend to frown on anything that's lossy compression, so the sample formats are usually something simple that can "decompress" in realtime with no loss or big buffers needed...) >I still like the game to MIDI interface using a very simple PIC design. We >just need to find a sound card (Gravis Ultra sound maybe?) or low end >synthesizer (maybe Ensoniqs has something?) that can accept samples through >the MIDI interface. Or even back to the cheap-o mother board and Gravis >Ultra sound idea, using a standard serial interface. Ensoniq had a few "low-end" samplers a while back, but they still go for pretty reasonable amounts of money (few hundred at least). I have a Mirage DSK (Digital Sampling Keyboard, for you trivia fans)-- cool box. A whopping 64K of sample memory! The whole thing was run off a 6809. The OS was loaded from floppy, so a couple companies did replacement OS's that turned the box into an additive synthesis keyboard instead of a sampler, etc. Pretty neat architecture. I don't know if they're still around, but there was a (nice) user's group magazine called "Transonic Hacker" that had all sorts of info on all the Ensoniq line. (They still make some super-nice gear now, although the last one I used was probably the EPS or maybe the SQ-1.) The old Mirage DSK formats were 8bit raw samples, with 8 bit envelope control and digital filters on the outputs. (Described by some data bytes at the beginning of the sample data.) I wrote a couple sample converter/editors back when on the Atari ST. (I could track-read and write the Mirage DSK disks in a single-sided ST drive to edit the raw data...) What was the name of Ensoniq's "pro-sumer" PC audio card? -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 Jul 8 11:15:46 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 8 Jul 1997 11:15:40 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: <199707081810.NAA14094@fermat.mayo.edu> Content-Type: text/plain Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 4.1mach v148) In-Reply-To: <2.2.16.19970708101201.3e6fb7d6@pop3.concentric.net> X-Nextstep-Mailer: Mail 4.1mach (Enhance 2.0b5) From: Ray Ghanbari Date: Tue, 8 Jul 97 13:10:59 -0500 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Crystal's old chip...well maybe References: <2.2.16.19970708101201.3e6fb7d6@pop3.concentric.net> Organization: Mayo Foundation Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com You wrote: > With the price of used 486 motherboards going for less than $50 at swap > meets, that's $125 for a full sampling universal sound card (well less the > very minimal RAM and floppy/harddisk/romdrive, needed to bring it up -- > yeah, were will I *ever* find an old floppy disk, or hard drive for that > matter.). Those baby AT boards would not take up much room inside the game > cabinet, being smaller than many of the sound cards in there now. Having a real computer in the cabinet is not necessarily a bad thing. I can think of several games that I just want to very occasionally play (ie, Jungle King) and could care less about "perserving" original hardware, and running them off an emulator takes up a lot less space than a PCB (one of the ways I justified the purchase of my Playstation ;-) (says Ray while he runs for cover from hoardes of screaming VAPS members ;-) Ray From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 8 14:36:51 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 8 Jul 1997 14:36:23 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 14:36:20 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: cheap PC's Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com With all this talk about PC's, I broke down and bought one (with my teeth clenched, since i'm a senior engr at Apple) Used 386/486's are incredibly cheap in the Bay Area! I just found a surplus place that had used mini-towers with everything but the floppy/hd for $25 ! Guess everybody must be dumping them to get P-whatevers... I haven't pulled it all apart yet, but it looked like it had either 1 or 4megs of memory in it. So, how do you do embedded systems with these things? I assume if you were going to use it for a sound board in a game you wouldn't boot DOS on it.. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 8 15:16:49 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 8 Jul 1997 15:16:46 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Subject: Re: cheap PC's To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 17:29:02 -0600 (MDT) From: "Kurt Mahan" In-Reply-To: from "Al Kossow" at Jul 8, 97 02:36:20 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Message-ID: <33c2cd3e0.6992@bolt.usg.provo.novell.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 747 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com [... x86 stuff ...] > So, how do you do embedded systems with these things? I > assume if you were going to use it for a sound board in > a game you wouldn't boot DOS on it.. A cool toolkit is the Flux OSKIT stuff from University of Utah.. www.cs.utah.edu/projects/flux/ The toolkit has all the pieces you need to get booted and into 32-bit protected mode (which for all us os weenies is the place to be.. :) If you add in Grub (the multiboot bootstrap loader) you've got everything you need.. www.urich.org/grub/ 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 Tue Jul 8 15:48:10 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 8 Jul 1997 15:48:02 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@supra.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 15:49:55 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: cheap PC's Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >With all this talk about PC's, I broke down and bought one >(with my teeth clenched, since i'm a senior engr at Apple) >Used 386/486's are incredibly cheap in the Bay Area! I just >found a surplus place that had used mini-towers with everything >but the floppy/hd for $25 ! Hey, that's a good deal for a 486. We get a lot of weird old 486 stuff from Intel showing up in the surplus places around here. There are some interesting 486 boards with processors for $10 that are EISA, but with non-PC power connectors... >So, how do you do embedded systems with these things? I >assume if you were going to use it for a sound board in >a game you wouldn't boot DOS on it.. If you have access to Circuit Cellar magazine, they've been going over using x86 based PC's as embeded systems for about the last year? It's a nice series of articles starting at ground zero and going up all the way through the system. That's for the serious home-brew/custom type person. There's also a pretty good selection of embeded kernals and OS type stuff that gets the basic platform ready for you. For the task at hand, booting DOS might not be too bad if you get sound card drivers (for a couple different types of boards) for "free". The memory segmentation crap can be side-stepped with an OK compiler and DOS extender. I'm sure there are others on this list that know more about this than I do, but that might get the ball rolling... An 8255 glues to the ISA bus really easy and makes for a nice little bidirectional I/O Port. (or just the Parallel port if you don't need a whole bunch of lines) -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 Jul 8 15:52:54 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 8 Jul 1997 15:52:53 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 97 15:52 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970708154755.2c5f7166@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: cheap PC's Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com At 02:36 PM 7/8/97 -0700, you wrote: > >With all this talk about PC's, I broke down and bought one >(with my teeth clenched, since i'm a senior engr at Apple) >Used 386/486's are incredibly cheap in the Bay Area! I just >found a surplus place that had used mini-towers with everything >but the floppy/hd for $25 ! > >Guess everybody must be dumping them to get P-whatevers... >I haven't pulled it all apart yet, but it looked like it >had either 1 or 4megs of memory in it. > >So, how do you do embedded systems with these things? I >assume if you were going to use it for a sound board in >a game you wouldn't boot DOS on it.. Al?? You bought a PC??? Wow. Must be one of those End of the Millennium things... So are you going to write 80x86 code?? *snicker* --- Most of my jobs have been embedding PC's in one thing or another. I have some really cool code for booting into a ROM/RAM card. You have the choice of making the ROM/RAM look like a floppy or hard disk. There's a huge difference in price when it comes to buying a ROM card for the PC backplane. All the cards consist of are a bunch of sockets, and 5 or so pieces of glue logic, so I don't know what the deal is. But I've seen cards with the same capabilities sell for as little as $75 with 512k of installed RAM/ROM to $399 with no installed memory -- geeze! Most of the cards come with there own drivers that make the ROM/RAM drive look like a floppy. If you buy a Sea Level card (one of the expensive ones) you'll be referred to AnnaSoft for the driver where you'd end up with a version of my code. Since development software for DOS is so easy to find (any compiler/assembler), every place I've worked that needed to boot into a embedded PC ended up just booting into DOS or a DOS clone. There are other operating systems that allow booting into ROM (the drivers I wrote would allow you to boot into any operating system they hook in at the BIOS level). Most of the other OS's take up a bit more ROM space, since the OS's are usually much nicer than DOS. For a Sound card, the drivers are already written for DOS, it's probably the way to go... --- If the sound board driver code could be kept small enough it could be stuck into the ROM socket of an old VGA (EGA) card. These BIOSes were usually around 64k. Using DOS 3.1 you can get the needed DOS files down to less than 30k, better yet there are DOS clones (General Software, DataLite) that can run DOS clone software in as little as 5k. That leaves around 50k for the sound card software. You'll have to use a sound card that doesn't require TSR's to run. This also requires the sounds to be emulated since there's very little room for wave files, though wave files could be downloaded into the sound card's memory on power up. Whatever, $75 is not bad for a fully function RAM/ROM card that would allow us to have access to .WAV files. Gravis supplies such nice documentation for their wavetable sound cards, that these would *have* to be the card of choice. They supply example code to drive these cards directly, and since you can download into them your own samples, they should be able to sound like any 80's game sound card. 16bit samples at up to 48khz sample rate should *easily* do justice to even the Sega Speech cards. All that would be needed for this approach to work would be the game-to-PC interface. Probably done with a PIC on the game side and a serial port on the PC side (or maybe the keyboard port, since all PC's have one of these). And of course a bunch of software to run the thing. I don't know, so far this sounds like the most available solution to the universal sound board problems. -Zonn (Hell, if I could get out as much code as I do e-mail, I'd be done with this project I'm working on here at work.) From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jul 11 23:04:11 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 11 Jul 1997 23:03:53 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@supra.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 16:34:51 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: AVG chip replacement Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Hi everyone. Thanks to an anonymous "little-birdie" that landed on my shoulder I found myself with enough information to create a TTL equivalent of the Atari "AVG" chip as used in Star Wars, Space Duel, Quantum, etc... (It's the "VRAM Addresser" chip that runs the stack and program counter and some other stuff...) The only gotcha is that there are a lot of chips in the design, and thus a lot of PCB real-estate, and thus a higher cost per board. :-( Anyway, I entered everything in OrCAD Capture and output netlists to OrCAD Layout Plus and after hand placing the components, I turned the autorouter loose and (long story short) I can now produce "daughtercard" replacements for about $25 a pop as a "bag of parts". (PCB, chips, headers, caps, and resistors) The question at hand is-- is it worth it for that? I'll need to do about 30 boards at once to make the $25 price point... So, how many of you on this list would be interested in a $25 replacement Atari AVG "chip"? If you are interested, how many would you commit to buying at $25 each if you have to assemble them? (Shipping not included) If I get a commitment for at least 30 I can/will do a run of boards. -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 Sat Jul 12 13:45:38 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sat, 12 Jul 1997 13:45:19 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: <33C7ED6A.7ABE@links.magenta.com> Date: Sat, 12 Jul 1997 14:47:38 -0600 From: Jess Askey Organization: Believe me, I have none!! X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: AVG chip replacement 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 Hi clay (and all), What about just buying the PCB's. Since the chips go bad infrequently it would be easier to just have the PCB laying around and then populate them as I would need them. Just a thought though. Im in for two of them (populated as per your kit). :-) thanks jess -- Jess M. Askey Unofficial Atari Game Page ESLB/The Audio Analyst http://links.magenta.com/havoc 509 S. 2nd Street Unit B Laramie WY 82070 Shop: (307)721-9001 From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Sat Jul 12 16:18:02 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sat, 12 Jul 1997 16:17:59 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Sat, 12 Jul 1997 18:06:51 -0500 Subject: Re: AVG chip replacement Message-ID: <19970712.181052.3478.5.gonzothegreat@juno.com> References: X-Mailer: Juno 1.38 X-Juno-Line-Breaks: 0-1,3-8,10-11,13-17,19-20,22-24,28-29,32-33,35-36,38-40 From: gonzothegreat@juno.com (Alan J McCormick) Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com On Thu, 10 Jul 1997 16:34:51 -0800 Clay Cowgill writes: >Thanks to an anonymous "little-birdie" that landed on my shoulder I found >myself with enough information to create a TTL equivalent of the Atari >"AVG" chip as used in Star Wars, Space Duel, Quantum, etc... (It's the >"VRAM Addresser" chip that runs the stack and program counter and some >other stuff...) All hail Clay! All hail Clay! The hacker supreme! (with some well deserved credit to the birdie as well) >The only gotcha is that there are a lot of chips in the design, and thus a >lot of PCB real-estate, and thus a higher cost per board. :-( Just how big is the daughterboard that would plug into the socket? >I can now produce "daughtercard" replacements for about $25 a pop as a "bag of parts". >The question at hand is-- is it worth it for that? I'll need to do about >30 boards at once to make the $25 price point... I'd be interested in one (possibly two) as one of my projects is to get a Space Duel going that some philistine attacked with a hammer. This attack destroyed the CPU, AVG, POKEYs, multiple RAMs and misc TTLs. I swore that I'd fix this board and see the bastard rot in hell. I would be more interested in the bare boards as I recently stripped a mess of 74LS TTL chips from some junk boards but I concede Clay deserves something for cooking up the solution. BTW How much would a PLD solution run for the same circuit? I remember you saying the PLD would be more than the TTL method but how much? That and he probably has a TTL supply that makes my junkbox look like the IC selection at Radio Shack. Virtu-Al From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Sun Jul 13 12:06:57 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sun, 13 Jul 1997 12:06:17 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@supra.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 13 Jul 1997 12:11:24 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: AVG chip replacement Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >All hail Clay! All hail Clay! The hacker supreme! (with some well >deserved credit to the birdie as well) The "birdie" gets *most* of the credit. I just did the grunt-work on it. :-) >>The only gotcha is that there are a lot of chips in the design, and thus >a >>lot of PCB real-estate, and thus a higher cost per board. :-( > >Just how big is the daughterboard that would plug into the socket? I'm still tinkering around with it, but it looks like around 3.5x3.5". It's not *huge*, but I need to look at all the vector games to see what the best arrangement/size is to fit on all the original boards. Basically it's just a PCB with a 40 pin DIP header that plugs in where the AVG chip goes. Picture the little "daughtercard" from a Pac-Man (the 285 board I think?) if you've seen one. About like that. >I would be more interested in the bare boards as I recently stripped a >mess of 74LS TTL chips from some junk boards but I concede Clay deserves >something for cooking up the solution. A couple of people have said that. Sounds good to me-- less work. :-) It'll shave a few bucks too. (Probably $4-$5) >BTW How much would a PLD solution run for the same circuit? I remember >you saying the PLD would be more than the TTL method but how much? I looked at the PLD thing and there are a few issues: 1) The circuit is mostly 4 bit counters. Like 5 of 'em. Takes a lot of PLD. (We're getting into the ~$10 chip price range for a single part and... 2) The other big chunk of the circuit is RAM. Not fun in PLD's. I don't know how much a 4-word 16-bit hardware stack would occupy... 3) There's quite a bit of I/O, so you're looking at fairly big PLD's just for the pin count. You could probably find a PLD that's kinda cheap and has enough logic to do the job, but they tend not to have enough pins... I tried splitting this up, (like PLD's for everything but the register files), but TTL is so cheap (<$.33 a chip) you can buy *all* the chips for the price of one 22V10 or something. The PLD design would have the advantage of board size, which saves $$$, but that's at the expense of "time to market". Most of the price of the boards is in setup charges and whatnot anyway right now, square inch-wise it isn't too bad. I'm inclined to do the TTL thing, let someone else whip it up in VHDL, or ABEL or something and then target it to a cheap PLD. It's definately possible to do cheaper/better, but I didn't want to distract myself long enough to try to pull it off. I want to finish the G-80 multi-game ASAP... >That and he probably has a TTL supply that makes my junkbox look like the >IC selection at Radio Shack. > >Virtu-Al 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 Jul 13 17:48:06 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sun, 13 Jul 1997 17:47:33 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 1997 00:53:32 GMT X-Sender: jeffh@mail.diac.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: jeffh@diac.com (Jeff Hendrix) Subject: Re: AVG chip replacement Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Clay, What's the status on my ESB/SW order (and the video card)? ps. I'm using one as partial trade on a major havoc. -jeff jeffh@diac.com Buy/Sell/Trade Classic Video Arcade Games www.diac.com/~jeffh/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Sun Jul 13 17:54:00 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sun, 13 Jul 1997 17:53:59 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 1997 01:00:01 GMT X-Sender: jeffh@mail.diac.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: jeffh@diac.com (Jeff Hendrix) Subject: sorry about that last email Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com I didn't check the address first, just did a reply. jeffh@diac.com Buy/Sell/Trade Classic Video Arcade Games www.diac.com/~jeffh/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Sat Jul 19 09:25:42 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sat, 19 Jul 1997 09:24:52 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Sat, 19 Jul 1997 09:24:49 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: Omega Race Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com I was digging into the hardware of Omega Race last night.. I'm amazed.. the vector generator appears to be a direct copy of the DVG used in Asteroids! The only difference I see is they have 4k of vector RAM instead of 2k. I should have a memory and I/O map together this weekend, and I'll try bringing it up on the Sega vector simulator using Eric Smith's DVG code.. ..maybe that's why Midway only ever built one vector game, they got in trouble with Atari? From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Sat Jul 19 09:50:12 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sat, 19 Jul 1997 09:50:10 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: <01BC9442.9A4E33E0@liv32.tir.com> From: Frank Palazzolo To: "'vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com'" Cc: "'emulator@fensende.com'" , "'kmcsdc@gte.net'" , "'csuyh@csv.warwick.ac.uk'" Subject: Star Wars / ESB Matrix Processor Date: Sat, 19 Jul 1997 12:52:10 -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 Myself and a few others are looking at emulating Star Wars. I am currently reverse engineering the matrix processor from the schematics, Has anybody done this before? I'm making progress but I'm just wondering if I'm re-inventing the wheel. It's definitely not the same as the mathbox in Battle Zone, etc., which has already been emulated. Thanks, Frank Palazzolo palazzol@tir.com From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Sat Jul 19 09:54:06 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sat, 19 Jul 1997 09:54:01 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Sat, 19 Jul 1997 09:53:58 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Star Wars / ESB Matrix Processor Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Neil Bradley has, you can try asking him if he'll give you the info From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jul 21 10:35:20 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 21 Jul 1997 10:34:38 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 10:34:35 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: saving some games Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Is there anyone closer to him than me that wants to try to save some of this stuff? From: "M. Nail" Newsgroups: rec.games.video.arcade.collecting Subject: FS: (OR) Games/Parts *CHEAP* Date: Sat, 19 Jul 1997 16:13:29 -0700 Organization: University of Washington Lines: 30 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: u Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII NNTP-Posting-User: mnail Xref: news.spies.com rec.games.video.arcade.collecting:71924 I've moved, so all of my games in the 'couve (next to Portland, OR) have got to go. if nobody wants them, I'm trashing them. I might have time to part them out first, I might not. the games: Cinematronics: Armor Attack (X2), Rip Off (w/Star Castle boardset), StarHawk Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom Starship I Super Pac Man (probably already sold) Omega Race (incomplete) Space Walk (empty cab) generic Jamma cab Battlezone (will not sell separately, if at all) I may have forgotten a few, and I may be able to add Xenophobe and Atari Football (2-player, incomplete) to the list. note that several of these games don't work. also not that I'm really willing to sell them cheap. rent a U-Haul and come get them. you can make an offer on parts, but I can't promise I'll have time to part them out before they get *DESTROYED* thanks for your time! From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jul 21 10:36:20 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 21 Jul 1997 10:36:19 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 10:36:15 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: saving some games Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com here's a bit more info that I just got > > The other possibility is flying up from SF and renting a truck up > there to pick all of them up. I'd hate to see the whole lot get > scrapped. If you could, give me a phone number to call you and > roughly what your schedule is. keep in mind these games aren't in perfect shape... the Ripoff only has art on one side, one of the Armor Attacks has about 1/4 of it's art, the StarHawk art is pretty scratched. The Ripoff has no front glass/marquee, the Starhawk has no marquee and is missing a set of target size buttons. One Armor Attack has no overlay but an extra monitor glass. They all have working boards, unteseted ps's and monitors (except 1 Armor Attack which is fully functional), harnesses, control panels, coin doors (+ 1 extra coin door), I've got a few Cinematronics stickers I'll toss in if I can find them.) The bottom line is that I don't want you to spend a bunch of time/money to get here and then be disappointed. I'm actually negotiating a deal with a guy here in seattle to take all of the cinematronics games and the omega race and bring my battlezone to me. if that doesn't work out you're next in line. i'll let you know either way. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jul 21 12:30:41 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 21 Jul 1997 12:30:36 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@supra.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 12:37:21 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: saving some games Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Just an FYI on Mike Nail's stuff in Portland. (I'm really close by him, as are Chris Hanks and Travis Hagen, but Travis and I are out of space for sure...) Mike only paid $25 for the lot, so he'll probably take anything over that for them. ;-) -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 Jul 22 08:05:55 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 22 Jul 1997 08:05:36 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: Paul Kahler Message-Id: <199707221508.LAA04605@saturn.acs.oakland.edu> Subject: CineSound Samples To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 11:08:42 -0500 (EDT) In-Reply-To: from "Clay Cowgill" at Jul 21, 97 12:37:21 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21] 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 Hey all, I'm new to this mailing list, but probably no new to most of the subscribers :-) Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone has attempted to sample any Cinematronics sounds. I'm interested in getting all of the sounds for a single game preferably Star Castle (with the exception of the background sound). While I'm here, is there anything people need to know about Cinematronics that I might be able to help with? -- ___ __ _ _ _ | \ / \ | | | || | phkahler@oakland.edu Engineer/Programmer | _/| || || |_| || |__ " What makes someone care so much? |_| |_||_| \___/ |____) for things another man can just ignore. " -S.H. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 22 08:15:22 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 22 Jul 1997 08:15:16 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 10:17:22 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707221517.AA26410@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: CineSound Samples Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com > Hey all, > > I'm new to this mailing list, but probably no new to most of the > subscribers :-) > > Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone has attempted to sample any Cinematronics > sounds. I'm interested in getting all of the sounds for a single game > preferably Star Castle (with the exception of the background sound). While I haven't sampled any of the sounds, per se, I can give you code which simulates the S2688 noise generator, and transfer functions (s-domain, I haven't gotten around to using MATLAB to bilinear transform them to z-domain) for most/all the filters. I haven't had time to test them out, so they're only as good as my circuit analysis skills..... I don't know if that would help you out any, but that's about the extent of my progress with my multi-game sound board. Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 22 11:03:15 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 22 Jul 1997 11:02:27 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: Paul Kahler Message-Id: <199707221805.OAA09005@saturn.acs.oakland.edu> Subject: Re: CineSound Samples To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 14:05:26 -0500 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <9707221517.AA26410@maileng3> from "Joseph J. Welser" at Jul 22, 97 10:17:22 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21] 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 > > Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone has attempted to sample any Cinematronics > > sounds. I'm interested in getting all of the sounds for a single game > > preferably Star Castle (with the exception of the background sound). > > While I haven't sampled any of the sounds, per se, I can give you code which simulates the S2688 noise generator, and transfer functions (s-domain, I haven't gotten around to using MATLAB to bilinear transform them to z-domain) for most/all the filters. > I haven't had time to test them out, so they're only as good as my circuit analysis skills..... > > I don't know if that would help you out any, but that's about the extent of my progress with my multi-game sound board. Using that information to program a DSP is probably a great way to make a universal sound board. However that won't help me much (unless I did the next step :-) If no one has samples, I'll hook up a sound board and see what I can get (but I don't have one for Star Castle). Thanks, -- ___ __ _ _ _ | \ / \ | | | || | phkahler@oakland.edu Engineer/Programmer | _/| || || |_| || |__ " What makes someone care so much? |_| |_||_| \___/ |____) for things another man can just ignore. " -S.H. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 22 11:25:51 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 22 Jul 1997 11:25:49 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: <01BC96A9.EDF495C0@pc84.prog.altair.com> From: Frank Palazzolo To: "'vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com'" Cc: "'phkahler@oakland.edu'" Subject: Re: CineSounds Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 14:17:03 -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 Hi Paul, You could use those models in Matlab to generate your own "samples". Matlab has the DSP and audio stuff built right in. You can play them, tweak them, and then convert them to whatever format you need at the end. Thanks, Frank Palazzolo palazzol@tir.com From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 22 12:19:15 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 22 Jul 1997 12:19:12 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 13:53:54 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707221853.AA27708@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: CineSound Samples Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com > Using that information to program a DSP is probably a great way to make a > universal sound board. However that won't help me much (unless I did the > next step :-) If no one has samples, I'll hook up a sound board and see > what I can get (but I don't have one for Star Castle). Yeah, that's my plan for the sound board (Using a Crystal DSP and DAC, of course :) ) Getting samples out of a Cinematronics sound board should be pretty easy -- All of the sounds in Star Castle have digital enables. Basically, the motherboard just sends a signal that says "Enable the loud explosion" and you get your loud explosion. There are 8 different frequencies of the background noise. There is a circuit in that section that makes the transition from one to another a smooth one. In a discussion about this a few weeks ago, we concluded that this could easily be done with software, using pitch bend. Just sample all 8 frequencies of background noise.... If you don't have a Star Castle sound board, I'm sure there's someone out there that does (I don't at the moment.) It's really not all taht rare, and the sound boards are usually working, even if the motherboards aren't... ------------------------------------------------------------------ Joseph J. Welser jwelser@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu Design Engineer jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com Crystal Semiconductor Corporation http://www.crystal.com P.O. Box 17847 Austin, TX 78760 ------------------------------------------------------------------ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 22 13:09:00 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 22 Jul 1997 13:08:54 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 13:08:51 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: Omega Race memory map / DVG circuit description Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com The memory map for Omega Race and the theory of operation of the Asteroids Deluxe DVG are up now on www.spies.com/simuation/gameHardware From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 22 14:31:17 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 22 Jul 1997 14:31:07 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: Paul Kahler Message-Id: <199707222134.RAA15269@saturn.acs.oakland.edu> Subject: Re: CineSound Samples To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 17:34:14 -0500 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <9707221853.AA27708@maileng3> from "Joseph J. Welser" at Jul 22, 97 01:53:54 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21] 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 > Yeah, that's my plan for the sound board (Using a Crystal DSP and DAC, of course :) ) > > Getting samples out of a Cinematronics sound board should be pretty easy -- All of the sounds in Star Castle have digital enables. Basically, the motherboard just sends a signal that says "Enable the loud explosion" and you get your loud explosion. I'm very much aware of how most of the sound boards work (I should have been here when you guys were discussing it :-) > There are 8 different frequencies of the background noise. There is a circuit in that section that makes the transition from one to another a smooth one. In a discussion about this a few weeks ago, we concluded that this could easily be done with softw> are, using pitch bend. Just sample all 8 frequencies of background noise.... Why use pitch bend? Can't you just simulate the decay of the RC circuit and spit out the appropriate frequency square wave? Am I confused? does it produce something other than a square wave? This is similar to what you'll need to do for the music circuits - generate a square wave of the correct frequency. > If you don't have a Star Castle sound board, I'm sure there's someone out there that does (I don't at the moment.) It's really not all taht rare, and the sound boards are usually working, even if the motherboards aren't... Cinematronics stuff is very hard to come by in Michigan. I don't have a working setup - just a pile of motherboards and 1 or 2 sound boards. So who's got a Star Castle sound board I could borrow for sampling? Thanks, -- ___ __ _ _ _ | \ / \ | | | || | phkahler@oakland.edu Engineer/Programmer | _/| || || |_| || |__ " What makes someone care so much? |_| |_||_| \___/ |____) for things another man can just ignore. " -S.H. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 22 14:37:43 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 22 Jul 1997 14:37:42 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 14:37:39 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: CineSound Samples Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >So who's got a Star Castle sound board I could borrow for sampling? I should have one, are there any others that you need? From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 22 14:53:22 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 22 Jul 1997 14:53:15 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 16:55:39 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707222155.AA28890@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: CineSound Samples Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com > Why use pitch bend? Can't you just simulate the decay of the RC circuit and > spit out the appropriate frequency square wave? Am I confused? does it > produce something other than a square wave? This is similar to what you'll > need to do for the music circuits - generate a square wave of the correct > frequency. I think you might be a bit confused.... Here's how it works in the original sound boards: The 3-bit "frequency select" (That's not what it's called, but that's what it does) input goes through a DAC and some other stuff to set up an analog control voltage for the VCO which generates the square wave output. It's the control voltage which moves gradually from one "operating point" to another. I take it you want these samples to add to your emulator or something along those lines, so it all depends upon how you want to implement your sounds. If you want to describe the 566 VCO in software, simulating the gradual change in control voltage will have some use to you, otherwise, I'm not sure it will (For the record, I'm writing DSP code to mimic a 566 -- It's actually NOT that hardat all) You can't just switch one frequency sample in and the other out if you want things to sound authentic, and Zonn made the claim that pitch bend will easily take care of that problem. I'm not familiar with MIDI stuff, so I'll leave it up to others to answer your questions about pitch bend. I just took Zonn's word for it that it would work. Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------ Joseph J. Welser jwelser@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu Design Engineer jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com Crystal Semiconductor Corporation http://www.crystal.com P.O. Box 17847 Austin, TX 78760 ------------------------------------------------------------------ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 22 16:31:09 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 22 Jul 1997 16:30:50 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 97 16:36 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970722163006.38af3d7c@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: CineSound Samples Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com At 04:55 PM 7/22/97 -0500, you wrote: >> Why use pitch bend? Can't you just simulate the decay of the RC circuit and >> spit out the appropriate frequency square wave? Am I confused? does it >> produce something other than a square wave? This is similar to what you'll >> need to do for the music circuits - generate a square wave of the correct >> frequency. > > I think you might be a bit confused.... > > Here's how it works in the original sound boards: > > The 3-bit "frequency select" (That's not what it's called, but that's what it does) input goes through a DAC and some other stuff to set up an analog control voltage for the VCO which generates the square wave output. > > It's the control voltage which moves gradually from one "operating point" to another. > > I take it you want these samples to add to your emulator or something along those lines, so it all depends upon how you want to implement your sounds. If you want to describe the 566 VCO in software, simulating the gradual change in control voltage will have some use to you, otherwise, I'm not sure it will (For the record, I'm writing DSP code to mimic a 566 -- It's actually NOT that hardat all) You can't just switch one frequency sample in and the other out if you want things to sound authentic, and Zonn made the claim that pitch bend will easily take care of that problem. > > I'm not familiar with MIDI stuff, so I'll leave it up to others to answer your questions about pitch bend. I just took Zonn's word for it that it would work. Hi Paul! Welcome to "The V-List"! To kind of clear things up, Joe is referring to an earlier discussion of what would be the best way to build a universal Cinematronics sound board. A zillion different ideas were tossed out, as you can imagine. The idea Joe is referring to is one I brought up where you design a very simple Cinematronics to Midi interface (using a PIC processor or the like). Then by sampling the different sounds into the synthesizer you could play back the sounds as needed by sending the proper MIDI notes. The pitch bend he's referring to is a MIDI command that is sent as an attribute to a note. You can adjust the pitch bend to be up to 8092 steps between notes giving all the resolution one would need to slide between the different pitches needed for Star Castle's background sounds. The synthesizer wouldn't have to be a real synthesizer, one of the new sound cards that allow sampling and playing of MIDI would work just fine. I believe Al (Kossow) was keeping a history of this list, you might be able to search it for the full discussion. (Go poking around www.spies.com) On the sound card note... I own most of the Cinematronics games, but I'd rather not go tearing apart the games to ship the sound cards. Star Castle should be an easy find, someone'll have a spare card (I'll bet if you build a cable that goes from the PC's parallel port to the sound card, you could write some very simple code to trigger each sound individually for sampling). I'm willing to sample the rarer sounds, but it'll be a little while before I can get to them...(I have to lose one of these jobs! ...Mama don't let you kids grow up to be a contract engineer... *twang* *twang*) -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jul 23 06:41:21 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 23 Jul 1997 06:41:07 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: Paul Kahler Message-Id: <199707231344.JAA26037@saturn.acs.oakland.edu> Subject: Re: CineSound Samples To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 09:44:16 -0500 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <9707222155.AA28890@maileng3> from "Joseph J. Welser" at Jul 22, 97 04:55:39 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21] 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 > I think you might be a bit confused.... > > Here's how it works in the original sound boards: > > The 3-bit "frequency select" (That's not what it's called, but that's what it does) input goes through a DAC and some other stuff to set up an analog control voltage for the VCO which generates the square wave output. > > It's the control voltage which moves gradually from one "operating point" to another. No, I'm not confused :-) That's exactly what I meant. Simulate the RC circuit and the VCO. Using pitch bend might introduce noise where simulating the VCO is easy since the output needs to be a relatively low frequency square wave. And yes, I'd like to add sound to the emulator :-) I find the Zonn idea of using MIDI very interesting, but I'll just be using the Windoze stuff. At this point I'm only interested in sampling the triggered sounds, but I will try to emulate the VCO stuff once the rest is working. Thanks, -- ___ __ _ _ _ | \ / \ | | | || | phkahler@oakland.edu Engineer/Programmer | _/| || || |_| || |__ " What makes someone care so much? |_| |_||_| \___/ |____) for things another man can just ignore. " -S.H. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jul 23 06:47:02 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 23 Jul 1997 06:47:01 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: Paul Kahler Message-Id: <199707231350.JAA26138@saturn.acs.oakland.edu> Subject: Re: CineSound Samples To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 09:50:10 -0500 (EDT) In-Reply-To: from "Al Kossow" at Jul 22, 97 02:37:39 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21] 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 > >So who's got a Star Castle sound board I could borrow for sampling? > > I should have one, are there any others that you need? Most of them :-) but I'm not really interested in doing all of them at this point, just one. Tail Gunner would be my next choice since it's so much fun with a mouse. I've got a RipOff board but I haven't tested it. I'd really like to get Star Castle & RipOff working as those are the most popular games. Thanks, -- ___ __ _ _ _ | \ / \ | | | || | phkahler@oakland.edu Engineer/Programmer | _/| || || |_| || |__ " What makes someone care so much? |_| |_||_| \___/ |____) for things another man can just ignore. " -S.H. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jul 23 08:18:17 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 23 Jul 1997 08:18:14 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 10:20:37 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707231520.AA01710@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: CineSound Samples Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com > No, I'm not confused :-) That's exactly what I meant. Simulate the RC circuit > and the VCO. Using pitch bend might introduce noise where simulating > the VCO is easy since the output needs to be a relatively low frequency > square wave. OK, but just so you know, it's not a simple RC circuit, there is a clamping diode in there too. I think it's called the "Level Shifter and Limiter" block by Cinematronics. You can get a copy of the 566 VCO datasheet from National Semiconductor's web site (www.national.com) I think I have mine here......Yeah, here it is -- the formula for fout is: fout = 2.4(V+ - V5) _____________ Ro Co V+ where 2k < Ro < 20k and V5 is the voltage between pin 5 (labeled modulation input) and pin 1 (GND) I have my notes around here somewhere, where I already plugged the numbers into that formula, so I'll post that later.....Just make sure you look at the schematics.... > And yes, I'd like to add sound to the emulator :-) I find the Zonn idea of > using MIDI very interesting, but I'll just be using the Windoze stuff. At > this point I'm only interested in sampling the triggered sounds, but I will > try to emulate the VCO stuff once the rest is working. That should be easy. You can emulate a S2688 EXACTLY, if you want. We talked about this one too a couple of months ago. (BTW, Zonn, I eventually DID find a full-blown datasheet for the S2688 -- About 2 weeks ago, a lab tech here was recycling old databooks, and I hit paydirt. Among the stuff there was a Gould Electronics (who bought AMI) databook) Oh wait a sec, I forgot that you're sampling the sounds....never mind..... Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------ Joseph J. Welser jwelser@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu Design Engineer jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com Crystal Semiconductor Corporation http://www.crystal.com P.O. Box 17847 Austin, TX 78760 ------------------------------------------------------------------ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jul 23 08:57:07 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 23 Jul 1997 08:57:05 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 08:57:02 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: CineSound Samples Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com I dug through my pile of boards, and I have sound boards for Solar Quest, Star Castle, and Space War. Send along a mailing adr, and i'll send them out on loan to you. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jul 23 09:37:18 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 23 Jul 1997 09:37:06 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 97 09:42 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970723093620.0e1732d4@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: CineSound Samples Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com At 10:20 AM 7/23/97 -0500, you wrote: > > That should be easy. You can emulate a S2688 EXACTLY, if you want. We talked about this one too a couple of months ago. (BTW, Zonn, I eventually DID find a full-blown datasheet for the S2688 -- About 2 weeks ago, a lab tech here was recycling old databooks, and I hit paydirt. Among the stuff there was a Gould Electronics (who bought AMI) databook) > > Oh wait a sec, I forgot that you're sampling the sounds....never mind..... No actually I just wanted to *store* the sounds as samples. I would like (where possible) to create the sounds through emulation. Since most of the sounds are square waves they're going to be a lot cleaner if I just create the .WAV files under software, then play them back as samples. There's only a few sounds that would probably be better to sample, like the missle shot sound of Solar Quest. It's a very strange clipping circuit that's probably not worth emulating in software. So yes, I'd be interested in a copy of the S2688 noise generator data sheet! -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jul 23 10:16:34 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 23 Jul 1997 10:16:24 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 12:18:39 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707231718.AA02610@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: CineSound Samples Cc: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com > No actually I just wanted to *store* the sounds as samples. I would like > (where possible) to create the sounds through emulation. Since most of the > sounds are square waves they're going to be a lot cleaner if I just create > the .WAV files under software, then play them back as samples. Actually, I was talking about Paul....but I can see how you got confused in my babble up there. > There's only a few sounds that would probably be better to sample, like the > missle shot sound of Solar Quest. It's a very strange clipping circuit > that's probably not worth emulating in software. > > So yes, I'd be interested in a copy of the S2688 noise generator data sheet! Send me your address in email, and I'll send one out to you. Anybody else who is interested in this is welcome to do the same (I forget if anybody else wanted one of those datasheets besides you and I.) For what it's worth, here's the verilog model which I'm using to simulate one (The only thing you need from the datasheet is the clock frequency for the internal oscillator, which I forget at the moment...In my model, I kept the clock external....I will change that eventually...I also didn't bother including the "test" pins on the S2688, because Cinematronics doesn't use them.) It would be trivial to come up with one on your own in whatever language you want, but I already did it. While I'm at it, I'll start posting transfer functions for all the filters to save people lots of work (The ones that filter the S2688 noise get particularly nasty to derive closed form transfer functions for): module s2688(noise, clk); output noise; input clk; reg [17:1] lfsr; integer clk_cnt; wire noise = lfsr[17]; wire zero_det = ~(| lfsr); wire fb = (lfsr[17] ^ lfsr[14] ^ zero_det); initial begin lfsr <= 17'b0; clk_cnt = 0; end always @(posedge clk) begin clk_cnt <= clk_cnt + 1; lfsr <= {lfsr[16:1], fb}; if (lfsr == 17'b0) $display("%d\n", clk_cnt); end endmodule s-domain transfer functions (on v- pins of CA3080s): For soft explosion: v- = .0127 + (3.989E-6 sec)s ----- ---------------------------------------------------------------- NOISE (4.376E-10 sec^3)s^3 + (2.478E-6 sec^2)s^2 + (3.670E-3 sec)s + 1 For loud explosion: v- = 5.4E-3 + (6.983E-7 sec)s ----- ---------------------------------------------------------------- NOISE (1.039E-11 sec^3)s^3 + (1.805E-7 sec^2)s^2 + (9.030E-4 sec)s + 1 For Fireball (This one was easy!): v- = (8.321E-4)60Hz + (6.657E-4)NOISE For Shield Hit (Another easy one -- They must have put them in this order because they knew I'd need a break from the first 2!): v- = (1.420E-3)60Hz + (1.735E-3)NOISE For Thrust Sound: v- = 1.917E-2 + (9.772E-5 sec)s ----- ---------------------------------------------------------------- NOISE (6.241E-8 sec^3)s^3 + (5.114E-5 sec^2)s^2 + (1.325E-2 sec)s + 1 None of these have been tested yet. I need to bilinear transform these to the z-domain first. Also, I purposely left out the background, laser, and star sounds, because they are not generated with filtered noise. They use some 555 timer circuits to create those sounds. I'll post those later... Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jul 23 10:48:08 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 23 Jul 1997 10:47:48 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 10:47:45 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: Omega Race runs in simulation Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com I've updated the hardware description on spies to match the actual behavior of the hardware using a simulation. I have enough of it working now that the game is playable. The absolute postion encoder is weird. I hadn't read Bryan Edewaard's optical encoder hack before I started on this, and after messing with trying to get the encoder to work in simulation, I was impressed by the work he must have put in to get it working! The encoder is a 64 position switch (or pot/AtoD conv) so unlike the quadrature inputs on Atari and Sega games, Omega Race's controller is an absolute angle. The mapping is bizzare, here is the encoding for an 8-way mapping of encoder 1 00 1C 40 \|/ 3C-+- FC /|\ 80 9C C0 For some reason, they scrambled the bit inputs only on the 1 player controller... I've spent more time figuring out the stupid encoder than coding the rest of the simulation! There also seems to be either a subtle difference in the DVG of the Midway board and the one simulated in Eric Smith's code. It appears that the final relative position in the counters may be off by one after a display subroutine call in Omega Race. The symptom is that a row of symbols (like a line of text) 'droop' towards the lower right. Anyway, most of the display list traversal code from Eric's Atari simulator worked without modification, so I guess Midway's design was pretty close to Atari's :-) From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jul 23 11:03:53 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 23 Jul 1997 11:03:48 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@supra.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 11:10:33 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Omega Race runs in simulation Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com > The encoder is a 64 position switch (or pot/AtoD conv) > so unlike the quadrature inputs on Atari and Sega games, > Omega Race's controller is an absolute angle. > > The mapping is bizzare, here is the encoding for an 8-way > mapping of encoder 1 > > 00 1C 40 > \|/ > 3C-+- FC > /|\ > 80 9C C0 Interesting... Where might I find a description of all 64 positions? (I've got a stack of Omega Race boards to work on, but no controller. Given the above information I'd just take a quadrature encoder and a PIC and have the quadrature inputs step through a hard-coded table of the 64 "positions"...) Thanks, -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 Jul 23 11:11:25 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 23 Jul 1997 11:11:24 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 11:11:21 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Omega Race runs in simulation Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Get a copy of "Omega Race Position Encoder" from the spies web page It is a very nice description of building an optical encoder with a little EPROM/latch state machine that does the quadrature decoding and bit scrambling. I should have the rest of the encoder figured out later today, so I'll have the full decoding table then. Turns out that an 8 way encoding works ok, and it's fast enough that you could probably play the game with it using 'rotate left, rotate right' buttons. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jul 23 13:58:20 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 23 Jul 1997 13:58:13 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: Paul Kahler Message-Id: <199707232101.RAA04374@saturn.acs.oakland.edu> Subject: Re: Omega Race runs in simulation To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 17:01:23 -0500 (EDT) In-Reply-To: from "Al Kossow" at Jul 23, 97 11:11:21 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21] 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 > Get a copy of "Omega Race Position Encoder" from the spies web page > It is a very nice description of building an optical encoder with > a little EPROM/latch state machine that does the quadrature decoding > and bit scrambling. > > I should have the rest of the encoder figured out later today, so > I'll have the full decoding table then. Is the bit pattern really grey-code? i.e. only one bit changes from one position to the next. This would make sense. If it is, you could use an up/down counter and 2 (I think 2) binary to grey-code converter chips. Of course those chips are probably harder to come by than burning a prom with a table - but there was a 74xxx part to do it. Just my 2 cents. BTW, I once had a chance to buy Omega Race for $80 but I passed -- ___ __ _ _ _ | \ / \ | | | || | phkahler@oakland.edu Engineer/Programmer | _/| || || |_| || |__ " What makes someone care so much? |_| |_||_| \___/ |____) for things another man can just ignore. " -S.H. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 24 09:05:51 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 09:05:25 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 09:05:21 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: omega race encoder state Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Here are all 64 states for the omega race encoder. * state 1 = 00 state 2 = 04 state 3 = 14 state 4 = 10 * state 1 = 18 state 2 = 1c state 3 = 5c state 4 = 58 * state 1 = 50 state 2 = 54 state 3 = 44 state 4 = 40 * state 1 = 48 state 2 = 4c state 3 = 6c state 4 = 68 * state 1 = 60 state 2 = 64 state 3 = 74 state 4 = 70 * state 1 = 78 state 2 = 7c state 3 = fc state 4 = f8 * state 1 = f0 state 2 = f4 state 3 = e4 state 4 = e0 * state 1 = e8 state 2 = ec state 3 = cc state 4 = c8 * state 1 = c0 state 2 = c4 state 3 = d4 state 4 = d0 * state 1 = d8 state 2 = dc state 3 = 9c state 4 = 98 * state 1 = 90 state 2 = 94 state 3 = 84 state 4 = 80 * state 1 = 88 state 2 = 8c state 3 = ac state 4 = a8 * state 1 = a0 state 2 = a4 state 3 = b4 state 4 = b0 * state 1 = b8 state 2 = bc state 3 = 3c state 4 = 38 * state 1 = 30 state 2 = 34 state 3 = 24 state 4 = 20 * state 1 = 28 state 2 = 2c state 3 = 0c state 4 = 08 this is from the EPROM in Bryan Edewaard's encoder description. the format for this is just right for a simulation (he stored the last state in the low two bits which are not used in the input port for spinner 1 in the game) shift it two bits to the right for the actual 6 bit encoder value this is the table for the quadrature pattern 00,10,11,01 which is clockwise rotation. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 24 09:17:11 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 09:16:51 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 09:16:48 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: Paul was right Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Omega Races uses a Grey Code encoding. Doing an alta vista search for "Grey Code" I found these wee converter programs too (after I decoded the EPROM, of course..) #include int main(int args, unsigned char *argc[]) { unsigned char num, gnum; int j, bit,numbits=8; unsigned int mask ; if (args!=2) { printf("Usage: g2bin GreyCodeNumber\n"); return(-1); } gnum=(unsigned char) strtoul(argc[1], (char **)NULL, 16); /* g2bin is for numbers with bits fewer than 8, it works for only for numbers with 8 or fewer bits because this transformation depends on the number of bits in the number */ if (gnum > 0xff) { printf("Number must be smaller than 8 bits\n"); return(-1); } /* Calculate the binary code equivalent of the gray number */ num = gnum ^ (gnum >> 0x01) ^ (gnum >> 0x02) ^ (gnum >> 0x03) ^ (gnum >> 0x04) ^ (gnum >> 0x05) ^ (gnum >> 0x06) ^ (gnum >> 0x07); printf("Decimal binary num is %lu\n", num); printf("Decimal grey equivalent is %lu\n", gnum); printf("Grey code number Binary Number\n"); printf(" "); bitDump(&gnum, &numbits); printf("\t \t"); bitDump(&num, &numbits); printf("\n"); return(0); } int bitDump(unsigned char *num, int *numbts){ int j; unsigned long int mask; int bit; mask = 0x80; for (j=0;j<*numbts;j++) { bit =(mask & *num) ? 1 : 0; printf("%d", bit); mask >>=1; } return(0); } #include int main(int args, unsigned char *argc[]) { unsigned char num, gnum; int j, bit,numbits=8; unsigned int mask ; if (args!=2) { printf("Usage: bin2g HexBinaryNumber\n"); return(-1); } if (args>2) { printf("Second argument ignored\n"); } num = (unsigned char ) strtoul(argc[1],(char **)NULL, 16); /* bin2g is for numbers with bits fewer than 8, it works for any number of bits, but the g2bin depends on the number of bits, currently, 8 */ if (num > 0xff) { printf("Number must be smaller than 8 bits\n"); return(-1); } /* Calculate the grey code equivalent */ gnum = num ^ (num >> 0x01); printf("Decimal binary num is %lu\n", num); printf("Decimal grey equivalent is %lu\n", gnum); printf("Grey code number Binary Number\n"); printf(" "); bitDump(&num, &numbits); printf("\t \t"); bitDump(&gnum, &numbits); printf("\n"); return(0); } /* bitDump function takes the number and the number of bits and prints the binary equivalent of the number */ int bitDump(unsigned char *num, int *numbts){ int j; unsigned long int mask; int bit; mask = 0x80; for (j=0;j<*numbts;j++) { bit =(mask & *num) ? 1 : 0; printf("%d", bit); mask >>=1; } return(0); } From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 24 09:55:44 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 09:55:34 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: Paul Kahler Message-Id: <199707241658.MAA09481@saturn.acs.oakland.edu> Subject: Re: Paul was right To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 12:58:46 -0500 (EDT) In-Reply-To: from "Al Kossow" at Jul 24, 97 09:16:48 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21] 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 > Omega Races uses a Grey Code encoding. To generate Grey Code by hand, do the following: 1) Start with all 0's 2) Toggle bit of least significance that results in a bit pattern you have not seen yet. 3) Repeat step 2 until all combinations are generated The advantage here is that only 1 bit changes from one "number" to the next. If they used Binary on the encoder, it's possible that when going from say 000111 to 001000 not all of the 4 bits would change at the same time. If you check the position just as that happens, you don't read 7 or 8, but something completely out of sequence. I don't recall if they covered this in any of my courses at OU. Just thought you might be interested in a little more info. -- ___ __ _ _ _ | \ / \ | | | || | phkahler@oakland.edu Engineer/Programmer | _/| || || |_| || |__ " What makes someone care so much? |_| |_||_| \___/ |____) for things another man can just ignore. " -S.H. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 24 11:19:03 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 11:18:45 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 12:48:23 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707241748.AA08020@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Paul was right Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com > To generate Grey Code by hand, do the following: > > 1) Start with all 0's > 2) Toggle bit of least significance that results in a bit pattern > you have not seen yet. > 3) Repeat step 2 until all combinations are generated > > The advantage here is that only 1 bit changes from one "number" to the > next. If they used Binary on the encoder, it's possible that when > going from say 000111 to 001000 not all of the 4 bits would change at > the same time. If you check the position just as that happens, you don't > read 7 or 8, but something completely out of sequence. I don't recall > if they covered this in any of my courses at OU. > > Just thought you might be interested in a little more info. This is getting slightly off-topic, but I'll add my $.02 about Grey code anyway. I am a VLSI design engineer, and Grey coding of state machines is used extensively. I do this stuff literally daily. Some things Paul forgot: For an arbitrary state machine, it may be, and often is, impossible to generate a grey coding. Email me if this confuses you, and I'll show you a simple example. The problem with the bits changing at different times only causes problems when the OUTPUTS of a MOORE-type state machine (i.e. outputs are generated from teh state variable only) are used asynchronously. By grey coding a MOORE-type state machine, you eliminate the possibility of glitches in the outputs. This doesn't matter if you are using those outputs synchronously. Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 24 11:34:22 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 11:34:21 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 97 11:39 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970724113325.3b87c636@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: Paul was right Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com At 12:48 PM 7/24/97 -0500, you wrote: >> To generate Grey Code by hand, do the following: >> >> 1) Start with all 0's >> 2) Toggle bit of least significance that results in a bit pattern >> you have not seen yet. >> 3) Repeat step 2 until all combinations are generated >> >> The advantage here is that only 1 bit changes from one "number" to the >> next. If they used Binary on the encoder, it's possible that when >> going from say 000111 to 001000 not all of the 4 bits would change at >> the same time. If you check the position just as that happens, you don't >> read 7 or 8, but something completely out of sequence. I don't recall >> if they covered this in any of my courses at OU. >> >> Just thought you might be interested in a little more info. > > This is getting slightly off-topic, but I'll add my $.02 about Grey code anyway. I am a VLSI design engineer, and Grey coding of state machines is used extensively. I do this stuff literally daily. > > Some things Paul forgot: For an arbitrary state machine, it may be, and often is, impossible to generate a grey coding. Email me if this confuses you, and I'll show you a simple example. > > The problem with the bits changing at different times only causes problems when the OUTPUTS of a MOORE-type state machine (i.e. outputs are generated from teh state variable only) are used asynchronously. By grey coding a MOORE-type state machine, you eliminate the possibility of glitches in the outputs. This doesn't matter if you are using those outputs synchronously. Which makes sense in the case of Omega Race since the reading of this port in software is an asynchronuous act, and the Grey code keeps the software from reading a transitional state of a normal binary code. Hey! I had add extra penny in my pocket and wanted to through in my $.01 worth! -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 24 11:55:00 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 11:54:59 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 11:54:55 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Paul was right Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com One last thought.. Couldn't you do a quadrature to Grey encoder in a 22V10, just by clocking the device with one of the quadrature inputs and sampling the other quadrature input, or would you need some filtering on the optical inputs as well to keep the clock input from jittering? I was looking at Bryan's Omega Race encoder again, and the way it works is he has an oscillator sampling the interrupter inputs, then applies those two bits as inputs to a prom/register state machine which saves the previous state and goes to one of four new states based on the input. If someone ever did a new rotary encoder board for the Sega games, you could probably scrunch the D flop,counter, buffer down to one 22v10 as well.. (and have an input for setting the number of pulses per revolution..) From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 24 12:31:49 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 12:31:26 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: <199707241929.OAA09718@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: Thu, 24 Jul 97 14:30:28 -0500 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Paul was right References: Organization: Mayo Foundation Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com You wrote: > If someone ever did a new rotary encoder board for the Sega games, > you could probably scrunch the D flop,counter, buffer down to one > 22v10 as well.. > > (and have an input for setting the number of pulses per revolution..) Or just do it with a PIC ;-) Seriously, this is a side project that has been way down on my list for a *long* time. Basically, take a standard Atari/Wico style encoder output wave form, and have a processor that does nifty things like: Output Omega Race encoded position data Rotate the outputs 45 degrees for Marble Madness and Reactor Deal with the Sega vector stuff Tune pulses per revolution for things like Tempest 2k on the Jaguar Spoof "mouse" output for the Playstation (most of the classic compelations support the mouse for trackball input) If you're really adventurous, get a DAC on the PCB to spoof analog positioning stuff (would really simplify building control panels for all the different steering assemblies out there) Anyway, there is a reason this is way low on the project list ;-) Ray From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 24 13:12:19 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 13:12:17 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 97 13:08 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970724130217.3b877aaa@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: Paul was right Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com At 11:54 AM 7/24/97 -0700, you wrote: >One last thought.. Couldn't you do a quadrature to Grey encoder in >a 22V10, just by clocking the device with one of the quadrature inputs >and sampling the other quadrature input, or would you need some >filtering on the optical inputs as well to keep the clock input from >jittering? > >I was looking at Bryan's Omega Race encoder again, and the way it >works is he has an oscillator sampling the interrupter inputs, then >applies those two bits as inputs to a prom/register state machine >which saves the previous state and goes to one of four new states >based on the input. Yeah the clock keeps everything sychronuous, without it you'd have a wild oscillator. > >If someone ever did a new rotary encoder board for the Sega games, >you could probably scrunch the D flop,counter, buffer down to one >22v10 as well.. > >(and have an input for setting the number of pulses per revolution..) Or a single PIC! (Just had to say that before Clay did! ;^) -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 24 13:16:11 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 13:16:06 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 97 13:09 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970724130329.3b87c324@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: Paul was right Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com At 02:30 PM 7/24/97 -0500, you wrote: >You wrote: >> If someone ever did a new rotary encoder board for the Sega games, >> you could probably scrunch the D flop,counter, buffer down to one >> 22v10 as well.. >> >> (and have an input for setting the number of pulses per revolution..) > >Or just do it with a PIC ;-) Damn! Ray beat me! ;^) -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 24 13:56:39 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 13:56:24 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: 24 Jul 1997 15:37 EDT To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: "Mark Shostak" Subject: Re: Paul was right Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com In message "Paul was right", you write: This is getting slightly off topic as well, but in VLSI design engineer school, did they happen to teach you about a little thing called a Carriage Return? Joe, hit once in a while, will you? :-) > > This is getting slightly off-topic, but I'll add my $.02 about Grey co> > > Some things Paul forgot: For an arbitrary state machine, it may be, a> > > The problem with the bits changing at different times only causes prob> > > Joe > > I just couldn't stand it anymore.... Cheers, Mark From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 24 14:04:13 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 14:04:12 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client mothost.mot.com, sender jenison@cig.mot.com ) Message-Id: <199707242119.RAA05291@po_box.cig.mot.com> Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 16:03:56 -0500 From: Mark Jenison In-Reply-To: Zonn "Re: Paul was right" (Jul 24, 1:09pm) References: <199707242032.QAA22802@po_box.cig.mot.com> X-face: "@9[FFAftX<9}2=gaPlIyRv_K%h[>.@"8t}B2So!iv.\#M9NplA9bDudBQ|]E`WL9Kd,Tn2v.0OGcE<$yg{&}(m:mB\GO9L+yE}6=d17BM X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.2.1 10apr95) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Sega XY ribbon cables 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 All, A quick break from the Omega Race encoder / Cinematronics sounds topics... I have about 70 XYpair waiting to be tested and/or repaired. Unfortunately, all of them were stripped for their ribbon cables (24pin, about 4 inches long). So I'd like to know if anyone could come up with a cheap source for parts to make these (I don't have a bunch of cool parts catalogs like SOME people :-)). On a related note, I'll be moving soon (again) and would not enjoy moving or storing these spare boards much longer, so if someone would like 70 xypair untested, or 70 speech boards (all missing the SPO-ORATOR chips), let me know if you'd be interested in a bulk buy (or maybe a trade; I would really like a Galaga board, or for someone to repair a Star Fire boardset for me!) Back to your regularly scheduled programming... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Jenison E-mail address: jenison@cig.mot.com Cellular Infrastructure Group Motorola--Arlington Heights, IL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 24 15:09:05 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 15:09:02 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@supra.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 15:15:30 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Paul was right Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >If someone ever did a new rotary encoder board for the Sega games, >you could probably scrunch the D flop,counter, buffer down to one >22v10 as well.. This is kinda what I was thinking, but a little different approach. I have a need/desire for a single PCB that accepts a quadrature-type input and spits out the following: Sega "g-80" type binary counter output Omega Race type grey-code TTL level quadrature outputs Clock and direction type outputs (like Arkanoid uses) (Maybe) Midway MCR type spinner outputs (haven't looked at this) The Sega "G-80" type is pretty simple-- I think it's easiest to just use the original circuit with 74ls393's. Omega Race strikes me as being a little Atmel 2051 microcontroller that just parallel outputs the grey-code from a lookup table using the quadrature inputs as an input to an internal counter for a pointer. TTL level quadrature outputs are really just the input signal passed through. Maybe buffer it to be safe. Clock and Direction are easily output by the 2051 by using the XOR trick on the quadrature inputs. The Midway stuff (like for Kick) I haven't looked at in a while. I seem to recall it was a counter-based system kinda like the G-80. I could be wrong though. Anyway, it's a pretty small board-- maybe half an dozen chips and a bunch of header connectors. I'll probably prototype one sometime, but I'm still busy playing catch-up on the ESB and G-80 Multigame 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 Jul 24 15:37:25 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 15:37:24 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 15:37:21 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: cine sound schematics Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Paul Wisneskey just scanned in the sound board schematics for me, so i've put them up on www.spies.com/arcade/simulation/schematics I have manuals for Solar Quest, Star Castle and Sundance, would anyone volunteer to do Space War, Star Hawk, and any others? Was every sound board unique? From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 24 15:53:07 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 15:53:03 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@supra.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 15:59:32 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Paul was right Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Yeah, I'm doing that "follow up to myself" thing again... ;-) >Omega Race strikes me as being a little Atmel 2051 microcontroller that >just parallel outputs the grey-code from a lookup table using the >quadrature inputs as an input to an internal counter for a pointer. Just had to point out to Zonn that I switched microcontrollers for this one. A PIC would probably be cheaper actually, but I like the 8051's ability to deal with lookup tables without jumping through hoops. (and the 2051 is just pretty cool, IMHO. Flash memory, small DIP package, 8051 code compatible, we have a bunch left over from a previous project.... ;-) -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 Jul 24 15:55:31 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 15:55:30 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 97 16:01 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970724155443.37ff6d1a@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 schematics Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com At 03:37 PM 7/24/97 -0700, you wrote: > >Paul Wisneskey just scanned in the sound board schematics for me, >so i've put them up on www.spies.com/arcade/simulation/schematics Very cool! I wanted to do this a long time ago, but my homepage is max'd for space. >I have manuals for Solar Quest, Star Castle and Sundance, would >anyone volunteer to do Space War, Star Hawk, and any others I have most the manuals, Space War didn't come with a schematic for the sound board (as far as I know). And speed freak might as well not have either. The Star Hawk sound card has a couple of PROMs, on board, that will have to be read in for anyone wanting to emulate the sound. I don't have Barrier or Demon. > >Was every sound board unique? Yup. WotW was a hacked version of the Star Castle sound board, making it unique also. I'm getting together with a friend on Mon. that has access to a flatbed scanner, I'm sure I could scan them in then... How about the CPU? The monitor(s)? How much storage does www.spies.com have? -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 24 15:57:16 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 15:57:14 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 15:57:11 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: cine sound schematics Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com around 1gb.. I can put up as much as you'd like to scan in From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 24 16:05:33 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 16:05:32 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 97 16:11 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970724160445.34d78292@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: Paul was right Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com At 03:59 PM 7/24/97 -0800, you wrote: >Yeah, I'm doing that "follow up to myself" thing again... ;-) > >>Omega Race strikes me as being a little Atmel 2051 microcontroller that >>just parallel outputs the grey-code from a lookup table using the >>quadrature inputs as an input to an internal counter for a pointer. > >Just had to point out to Zonn that I switched microcontrollers for this >one. A PIC would probably be cheaper actually, but I like the 8051's >ability to deal with lookup tables without jumping through hoops. (and the >2051 is just pretty cool, IMHO. Flash memory, small DIP package, 8051 code >compatible, we have a bunch left over from a previous project.... ;-) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ yeah, I understand!! Actually the 8051 is a nice instruction set. What about all that other glue? Why not do all your outputs in software? I'm sure you can run the 2051 fast enough to keep up with any player, not enough outputs? -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 24 16:30:29 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 16:30:25 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Subject: Barrier Schematics -- Free! To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 17:37:34 -0600 (MDT) From: "Kurt Mahan" X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Message-ID: <33d7e73f0.4642@bolt.usg.provo.novell.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 607 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Hi! Well since it seems that some people don't have Barrier schematics (and I do) I'm gonna put the same wonderful deal that I had for Warrior Schems.. Send me your snail mail address and I'll send you a set of Barrier Schems (which has the sound board). And if you missed out on getting Warrior Schems say that and I'll send you a set of those too. Such a deal, eh? 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 Technologies R&D Group * * Kurt Mahan * kmahan@novell.com */ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 24 16:31:49 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 16:31:48 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 16:31:44 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Barrier Schematics -- Free! Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Thanks for the Warrior again! Al Kossow 830 San Lucas Mt View, CA 94043 I'll take care of scanning those in now, too! From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 24 16:54:58 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 16:54:50 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: <01BC986B.C376D9C0@liv38.tir.com> From: Frank Palazzolo To: "'vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com'" Subject: Scanning Tech Docs for free... Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 19:56:29 -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 On a related note, I've also got a color flatbed scanner and a web site with "unlimited" storage. I will scan (and put on the web) any schematics or other tech docs I can get my hands on. Actually, that's why I bought the scanner and the unlimited site in the first place..! Thanks, Frank palazzol@tir.com From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 24 17:08:47 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 17:08:35 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@supra.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 17:15:09 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Paul was right Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >Actually the 8051 is a nice instruction set. What about all that other >glue? Why not do all your outputs in software? I'm sure you can run the >2051 fast enough to keep up with any player, not enough outputs? Hmmmm. Actually I hadn't thought about it a lot yet. In retrospect, I suppose there's enough I/O that I could use a bit or two for "mode select". I was thinking of just having everything work simultaneously, but I guess that isn't necessary. Close a jumper and it's a G-80 spinner, open and it's a Midway spinner... That'd be kinda cool. The 2051 is neat-- glue wise there isn't much needed. You need a clock source, just a cheap Oscillator or Crystal is OK, you could probably even get away with a little RC setup since speed variation isn't a big deal as long as it's fast enough all the time. Since the Flash (program) is onboard there's no need for an external latch to demux address and data like a "real" 8051. One thing I don't recall is how it deals with the data and program spaces-- maybe they're OR'd together on the Flash. Guess I should look that up before I get too excited about tables... ;-) It might be a one-chip project actually... Have to look at it some more. -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 Jul 24 17:45:39 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 17:45:30 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 97 17:49 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970724174440.22177d14@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: Paul was right Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com At 05:15 PM 7/24/97 -0800, you wrote: > >>Actually the 8051 is a nice instruction set. What about all that other >>glue? Why not do all your outputs in software? I'm sure you can run the >>2051 fast enough to keep up with any player, not enough outputs? > >Hmmmm. Actually I hadn't thought about it a lot yet. In retrospect, I >suppose there's enough I/O that I could use a bit or two for "mode select". >I was thinking of just having everything work simultaneously, but I guess >that isn't necessary. Close a jumper and it's a G-80 spinner, open and >it's a Midway spinner... That'd be kinda cool. Actually I was thinking the same thing! Read inputs Output G-80 spinner... Output Midway spinner... Output Dir & Clock... etc. loop I was asking if you had enough *outputs* to do this. Of course you could always: Read inputs Output to external latch G-80 spinner... Output to external latch Midway spinner... Output to external latch Dir & Clock... etc. loop >The 2051 is neat-- glue wise there isn't much needed. You need a clock >source, just a cheap Oscillator or Crystal is OK, you could probably even >get away with a little RC setup since speed variation isn't a big deal as >long as it's fast enough all the time. Since the Flash (program) is >onboard there's no need for an external latch to demux address and data >like a "real" 8051. One thing I don't recall is how it deals with the data >and program spaces-- maybe they're OR'd together on the Flash. Guess I >should look that up before I get too excited about tables... ;-) Even if you can't treat the flash as data, there is an instruction which allows you to do a lookup in code space, your tables will work just fine. The 17Cxx series of PIC processors also have an instruction for accessing code space as a table, too bad they're expensive and don't come in any "one chip does all" flavors. (Well at least they didn't four years ago...) -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 24 18:02:18 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 24 Jul 1997 18:02:05 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@supra.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 24 Jul 1997 18:08:54 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Something of interest... Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com We have a flatbed scanner here at work that has an automatic document feeder attached to it... At some point I'll try to figure out how it works so I can bulk-scan photocopied manuals or whatever without so much hassle. But that's not what I was writing about. What I was going to say was: I was digging through all the old Atari docs that Travis Hagen and I have and I found some stuff about the Atari vector generators. One's just a hand-written note, the other is a two-page inter-office memo. At any rate, they're kinda interesting reading so I scanned them in and put them on my webpage. http://www.wwwpro.com/clay/game_tech.html I think the http daemon died on wwwpro.com so it might not be "working" until later... Try it out when you get a chance, worst case it might not be working until tomorrow. I also updated the Mystery Photo with a new challenge. :-) -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 Jul 25 07:01:57 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 25 Jul 1997 07:01:41 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 09:03:46 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707251403.AA11416@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Barrier Schematics -- Free! Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com > Hi! > > Well since it seems that some people don't have Barrier schematics (and I > do) I'm gonna put the same wonderful deal that I had for Warrior Schems.. > > Send me your snail mail address and I'll send you a set of Barrier Schems > (which has the sound board). And if you missed out on getting Warrior > Schems say that and I'll send you a set of those too. Hey Kurt, I could use a copy of those Barrier schematics: Joseph J. Welser 2015 Cedar Bend Dr. #1222 Austin, TX 78758 Thanks a bunch! Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jul 25 07:15:03 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 25 Jul 1997 07:15:02 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: Paul Kahler Message-Id: <199707251418.KAA07996@saturn.acs.oakland.edu> Subject: Quadrature vs CLK/DIR To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 10:18:16 -0500 (EDT) In-Reply-To: from "Clay Cowgill" at Jul 24, 97 03:15:30 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21] 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 Hey, Can't you use the quadrature signals as clock and direction directly? If on signal is the clock then the other one will be a valid direction on the falling edge of the clock. If it goes the wrong way you switch the signals. If you need the rising edge, that works too. The only way I could see this not working is if something used it that was NOT edge triggered. BTW my Arkanoid spinner looks like it puts out Quadrature while the board is labeled CLK and direction. BTW, notice that the quadratue signals are actually a 2-bit Grey code :-) BTW2, I'm tierd of the subject "Re: Paul was right" :-) -- ___ __ _ _ _ | \ / \ | | | || | phkahler@oakland.edu Engineer/Programmer | _/| || || |_| || |__ " What makes someone care so much? |_| |_||_| \___/ |____) for things another man can just ignore. " -S.H. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jul 25 07:20:19 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 25 Jul 1997 07:20:18 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: Paul Kahler Message-Id: <199707251423.KAA08258@saturn.acs.oakland.edu> Subject: Cine Blueprints To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 10:23:34 -0500 (EDT) In-Reply-To: from "Al Kossow" at Jul 24, 97 03:37:21 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21] 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 Hello, I've got an original set of Cinematronics Blueprints that Frank is going to scan. It's just the processor schematics that are in every manual but they're 11x17 or some such and they're blue and fairly readable. We'll get them out there sometime soon. -- ___ __ _ _ _ | \ / \ | | | || | phkahler@oakland.edu Engineer/Programmer | _/| || || |_| || |__ " What makes someone care so much? |_| |_||_| \___/ |____) for things another man can just ignore. " -S.H. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jul 25 07:26:44 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 25 Jul 1997 07:26:43 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 09:27:32 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707251427.AA11544@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Paul was right Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com > In message "Paul was right", you write: > > This is getting slightly off topic as well, but in VLSI design engineer school, > did they happen to teach you about a little thing called a Carriage Return? > > Joe, hit once in a while, will you? :-) > > > > > This is getting slightly off-topic, but I'll add my $.02 about Grey co> > > > > Some things Paul forgot: For an arbitrary state machine, it may be, a> > > > > The problem with the bits changing at different times only causes prob> > > > > Joe > > > > > > I just couldn't stand it anymore.... > > Cheers, > Mark > Guys, I hate to clog people's mailboxes replying to this stuff, but does anybody but Mark have a problem reading my posts? Mark and I are going back and forth with this one in email, and I want to settle all doubts. Please reply to me in private email -- IMHO, Mark's original post about this to the list, instead of to my private email was waste of bandwidth enough. Joe BTW: While we're talking about wasting bandwidth, I just realized that I followed up to Kurt's post to the list -- doh! (Sorry 'bout that...) From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jul 25 07:32:05 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 25 Jul 1997 07:32:04 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: <199707251431.JAA05721@fermat.mayo.edu> Content-Type: text/plain Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 4.1mach v148) In-Reply-To: <199707251418.KAA07996@saturn.acs.oakland.edu> X-Nextstep-Mailer: Mail 4.1mach (Enhance 2.0b5) From: Ray Ghanbari Date: Fri, 25 Jul 97 09:32:00 -0500 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Quadrature vs CLK/DIR References: <199707251418.KAA07996@saturn.acs.oakland.edu> Organization: Mayo Foundation Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com You wrote: > Can't you use the quadrature signals as clock and direction directly? > If on signal is the clock then the other one will be a valid direction > on the falling edge of the clock. If it goes the wrong way you switch > the signals. If you need the rising edge, that works too. The only way > I could see this not working is if something used it that was NOT edge > triggered. BTW my Arkanoid spinner looks like it puts out Quadrature > while the board is labeled CLK and direction. I can verify that Arkanoid works just fine with a regular trackball for input (standard Atari/Wico quadrature signal) Clay, you neglected to add PSX Mouse to that list of compatibility modes (how else are you going to play Genji and Heike Clans without going to Japan to raid some operator warehouses? ;-) (I'll crawl back under my Tempest/Star Wars/Asteroids/Robotron/Defender/Football/Ms Pac/Star Castle/Sinistar cabinets before Mark banishes me from VAPS again for mentioning any console unit other than an Atari 2600 ;-) Ray NB as pennance for mentioning the PSX twice in one week, attached is my current list of arcade games that use some sort of quadrature/encoder input. It may help in designing the ultimate trakball interface Maxi-trackball -------------- Football {Atari '78, BnW, 2P} 2 4 Player Football 4 Missile Command {Atari '80} 1 Super Missile Attack {Atari '83ish} 1 Basketball {Atari '78, 2P, BnW} 2 Midi-trackball -------------- Quantum {Atari '83, Vector} 1 Millipede {Atari '84, 2P} 1* Rampart {Atari '91, 3P} 3* Crystal Castles {Atari '84, 3D} 1 Marble Madness {Atari '84, 2P} 2 (rotated) Boot Camp {Konami, 2P} 2 Cabal {Fabtek Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 25 Jul 1997 08:02:09 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 10:01:20 -0500 Message-Id: <199707251501.KAA00609@moe.works.ti.com> From: Michael Schulz To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Cc: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com In-Reply-To: <9707251427.AA11544@maileng3> (jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com) Subject: Carriage Returns & Netiquitte (Was: re: Paul was Right) Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >>did they happen to teach you about a little thing called a Carriage Return? >>Joe, hit once in a while, will you? :-) >> >I hate to clog people's mailboxes replying to this stuff, but does anybody >but Mark have a problem reading my posts? > >Mark and I are going back and forth with this one in email, and I want to >settle all doubts. > A quick look at 'A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community' by Chuq Von Rospach (frequently posted to news.announce.newusers) gives the proper Netiquette for linelength: # Limit Line Length and Avoid Control Characters. # # Try to keep your text in a generic format. Many (if not most) of # the people reading Usenet do so from 80 column terminals or from # workstations with 80 column terminal windows. Try to keep your # lines of text to less than 80 characters for optimal readability. # If people quote part of your article in a followup, short lines will # probably show up better, too. # # Also realize that there are many, many different forms of terminals # in use. If you enter special control characters in your message, it # may result in your message being unreadable on some terminal types; # a character sequence that causes reverse video on your screen may # result in a keyboard lock and graphics mode on someone else's # terminal. You should also try to avoid the use of tabs, too, since # they may also be interpreted differently on terminals other than # your own. # The 'Rules for posting to Usenet' by Mark Horton (also typically found in news.announce.newusers), has similar recommendations: # In preparing an article, be aware that other people's machines are # not the same as yours. The following is a list of things to keep # in mind: # * Keep your lines under 80 characters, and under 72 if possible (so that # the lines won't get longer than 80 when people include them when # responding to your postings). Most editors have a fill or format mode # that will do this for you automatically. Make sure that it # actually puts ("hard") newline characters into the file, rather # than just wrapping the displayed lines on your screen. # On a personal note, yes, I find it a major pain in the *** to read those bajillion character lines. Regards, Mike From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jul 25 08:09:51 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 25 Jul 1997 08:09:50 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client pobox.mot.com, sender jenison@cig.mot.com ) Message-Id: <199707251524.LAA19499@po_box.cig.mot.com> Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 10:08:59 -0500 From: Mark Jenison In-Reply-To: Ray Ghanbari "Re: Quadrature vs CLK/DIR" (Jul 25, 9:32am) References: <199707251418.KAA07996@saturn.acs.oakland.edu> <199707251447.KAA09674@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: Quadrature vs CLK/DIR 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 On Jul 25, 9:32am, Ray Ghanbari wrote: > Subject: Re: Quadrature vs CLK/DIR > You wrote: > > I can verify that Arkanoid works just fine with a regular trackball for input > (standard Atari/Wico quadrature signal) FYI, for those looking for a multigame controller, the TRON encoder wheel is a good choice, because you can pull the clk and dir out before it goes to the special circuitry that turns it into a counter. > Clay, you neglected to add PSX Mouse to that list of compatibility modes (how > else are you going to play Genji and Heike Clans without going to Japan to raid > some operator warehouses? ;-) > > (I'll crawl back under my Tempest/Star > Wars/Asteroids/Robotron/Defender/Football/Ms Pac/Star Castle/Sinistar cabinets > before Mark banishes me from VAPS again for mentioning any console unit other > than an Atari 2600 ;-) Banished! ;-) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Jenison E-mail address: jenison@cig.mot.com Cellular Infrastructure Group Motorola--Arlington Heights, IL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Jul 25 08:35:25 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 25 Jul 1997 08:35:24 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@supra.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 08:41:50 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Quadrature vs CLK/DIR Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >Hey, > > Can't you use the quadrature signals as clock and direction directly? Well, in my admittedly small test sample (a pirate Arkanoid board) my TRON spinner didn't work, but an Atari ST mouse did. This could quite easily be: 1) Operator Error. (Maybe had something hooked up wrong with the spinner) 2) Weird Arkanoid board. (Maybe it used some level triggered thing that messed it up.) Maybe I'll try again and see what happens. ;-) -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 Jul 25 09:08:35 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 25 Jul 1997 09:08:27 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@supra.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 09:15:02 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Paul was right Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >Actually I was thinking the same thing! > >Read inputs > Output G-80 spinner... > Output Midway spinner... > Output Dir & Clock... > etc. > loop Right... The 2051 has about as many outputs as a 16C54 PIC around 13 or 14 I think. Those get eaten up fairly quick with 8-bit databus type outputs, but since you don't need all the parallel functions (Midway, G-80, etc) at the same time you can just do one, or trigger some external latches if you want to... >Even if you can't treat the flash as data, there is an instruction which >allows you to do a lookup in code space, your tables will work just fine. Oh, that's cool. I always used DPTR to index into data memory so I never had to look for the alternative. ;-) >The 17Cxx series of PIC processors also have an instruction for accessing >code space as a table, too bad they're expensive and don't come in any "one >chip does all" flavors. (Well at least they didn't four years ago...) Still kinda spendy. I bet a 16C54 would do the job just fine. I just don't like those funky PIC lookup/jump tables. -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 Jul 25 14:00:41 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 25 Jul 1997 14:00:23 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Fri, 25 Jul 1997 14:00:20 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: cine sound schematics Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com I just finished putting the sound (and some of the control panel) schematics up for Ripoff,Solar Quest, Star Castle, Sundance, and Warrior. I've also converted the other schematics that were up on www.spies.com from 8 bit JPEGs to 1 bit compressed TIFF's, which reduced their size by about 50x. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Sun Jul 27 15:51:10 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sun, 27 Jul 1997 15:51:04 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Sun, 27 Jul 1997 15:51:01 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: scans have been (re)encoded Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Turns out the compression scheme that I used is an uncommon one. I've converted them to TIFF with LWZ compression, which should be more common. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Sun Jul 27 22:08:00 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sun, 27 Jul 1997 22:07:49 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Sun, 27 Jul 1997 22:07:47 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: CS4922 data sheet Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Either I was dense the last time I looked, or Crystal updated the data sheets section for the 4920 and 22 recently. There are fairly complete descriptions of the part on their web page now, and it looks pretty cool! They have an ISA evaluation board for the 4922 which mentions they have an assembler, simulator and debugger. The 4920A data sheet has a description of the DSP. The 4920A has 4k of pgm memory and 2k of data memory. The 4922 has 5k of pgm and 3k of data memory. Reading a bit farther in the 4920 data sheet.. "Software tools, sample source code, and DSP firmware for the CS4920 and CS4920A are provided on the Crystal Bulletin Board system. For access information, call (512) 445-7222 and ask for applications support for the CS4920/20A/21. The 4922 also has a serial input port and some parallel I/O bits. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jul 28 16:25:33 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 28 Jul 1997 16:25:10 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 19:25:29 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199707282325.TAA23683@mailrelay.tiac.net> X-Sender: fishd@pop.tiac.net (Unverified) 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: New Project Statement: Cinematronics Exercisor Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Earlier this afternoon Steve Ozdemir and I made an agreement which will hopefully result in the repair and duplication of Steve's Cinematronics Exercisor. I'm sending this e-mail out to the group for two reasons; first, to make any interested parties aware of the project and, second, to set up a means of traceability and accountability for any items which will be exchanged between Steve and myself. The project will kick-off when Steve receives this e-mail. OK, now that we've got that part out of the way... What it boils down to is this, Steve's going to lend me his Cinematronics Exercisor for a short time so that I can reverse-engineer it, repair/replace the missing connector, and figure out how it is suppose to be used. I'll send complete schematics to spies.com as soon as possible. I plan on cloning the board and getting the original back to Steve no later than September 30th 1997, this should be more than enough time to finish the project. I also agreed to provide status reports at all milestones such as board received, test bed up and running, schematics done, etc. A users manual will also be written which will describe how the board is to be used, assuming I get it to work. I gave Steve my word that I'd start this project as soon as I receive the board so that I can get the original back ASAP, now you guys are all witnesses. I know I'm not THE most qualified guy for the job but wish me luck anyways ;-) 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 Mon Jul 28 16:36:34 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 28 Jul 1997 16:36:33 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 16:36:29 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: re: New Project Statement: Cinematronics Exercisor Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Luck ..guess the 4 player elim eproms will be delayed a while From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jul 28 16:42:19 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 28 Jul 1997 16:42:18 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 28 Jul 97 16:46 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970728164123.129f3e66@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: New Project Statement: Cinematronics Exercisor Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com At 07:25 PM 7/28/97 -0400, you wrote: > Earlier this afternoon Steve Ozdemir and I made an agreement which will >hopefully result in the repair and duplication of Steve's Cinematronics >Exercisor. I'm sending this e-mail out to the group for two reasons; >first... An excellent project to undertake! Steve has hit me with this idea a few times, and given an excess of free time I'd have done it. I'm glad Steve finally found the right sucke... er.. uh.. dedicated engineer, to take this on! Good luck! Let me know if you have any questions on the Cinematronics hardware, up to this point I've been fixing 'em the hard way. A 'scope, a meter, and a soldering iron. It'll be interesting to see how much faster you can track down a problem with an exercisor. Someone sent me an unsolicited e-mail wanting me to bid on a Cinematronics exercisor, just recently, he said he found my name using a search engine and wanted me to bid on the thing. He said it was complete. He might be someone to contact, I'm sure he could just read off the pinouts over the phone. Shall I get you his e-mail? -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Jul 28 20:02:36 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 28 Jul 1997 20:02:33 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: <33C4D52F.7CB5@erols.com> Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 05:27:27 -0700 From: Kev X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.01KIT (Win16; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: New Project Statement: Cinematronics Exercisor References: <199707282325.TAA23683@mailrelay.tiac.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 fishd wrote: > be more than enough time to finish the project. I also agreed to provide > status reports at all milestones such as board received, test bed up and > running, schematics done, etc. A users manual will also be written which > will describe how the board is to be used, assuming I get it to work. > Sounds great! This exercisor is meant to be used in conjunction with a Signature Analyzer correct? How many people out there have one? If interest warrents I may post some info on use/theory on my web page. Kev www.erols.com/mowerman <- Video game page From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 29 08:22:42 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 08:22:12 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 10:24:31 -0500 From: jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707291524.AA25028@maileng3> To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Omega Race Monitor Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Guys, Which monitor does Omega Race use, the G0-5? How hard is it to get a flyback for said monitor? (I've never had to replace one) One is being sold for a good price, and supposedly in great condition other than the fact that the monitor needs a flyback. If it's a GO-5, I think I have a few sitting around anyways (Or I can pick some up from Paul Frazee this weekend) but I really don't like to junk these monitors... Thanks, Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 29 08:58:33 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 08:58:25 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: jeffh@mail.diac.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 09:57:54 -0600 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: jeffh@diac.com (Jeff Hendrix) Subject: Re: Omega Race Monitor Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Omega race uses a G05-802 monitor (the one found in MOST asteroids, AD, BZ), lunar lander and early asteroids used a G05-801 and they are NOT plug in compatible. The 801 has 2 plugs (power and signal) and the 802 has just one molex connector. -jeff >Guys, > > Which monitor does Omega Race use, the G0-5? How hard is it to get a >flyback for said monitor? (I've never had to replace one) > > One is being sold for a good price, and supposedly in great condition >other than the fact that the monitor needs a flyback. > > If it's a GO-5, I think I have a few sitting around anyways (Or I can >pick some up from Paul Frazee this weekend) but I really don't like to junk >these monitors... > >Thanks, > >Joe jeffh@diac.com Buy/Sell/Trade classic video arcade games. www.diac.com/~jeffh/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 29 09:04:40 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 09:04:39 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@supra.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 09:11:32 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Omega Race Monitor Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >Guys, > > Which monitor does Omega Race use, the G0-5? How hard is it to get a >flyback for said monitor? (I've never had to replace one) It's a G0-5 from what I've seen. I've never had to replace the flyback in one though, so I can't comment on the flyback... > One is being sold for a good price, and supposedly in great condition >other than the fact that the monitor needs a flyback. > If it's a GO-5, I think I have a few sitting around anyways (Or I can >pick some up from Paul Frazee this weekend) but I really don't like to junk >these monitors... If it's a good price, get the monitor and just pick up some parts to fix it from Paul. One other thing worth buying (IMHO) from Paul are some Ampliphone tubes with the XY yoke's still attached. He had a bunch when I was there a couple weeks ago-- I got one (all I had room for) for $10. Pair 'em up with a WG deflection board/neck/HV/chassis and you have a really nice monitor with very low "pincushion" type distortion for cheap. :-) Be sure to look at Paul's "stack" of Williams CPU boards. Even I was impressed. There must be 200 of 'em... -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 Jul 29 09:06:32 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 09:06:31 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 12:06:16 -0400 (EDT) From: "Christopher X. Candreva" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Omega Race Monitor In-Reply-To: <9707291524.AA25028@maileng3> 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 On Tue, 29 Jul 1997, Joseph J. Welser wrote: > Which monitor does Omega Race use, the G0-5? How hard is it to get a > flyback for said monitor? (I've never had to replace one) If it is the G0-5, let me know if/where you find a flyback -- I figure mine will go eventually. BUT -- another hard part to find is the doubler (the high-power diode between the flyback and the tube.) Part number on it is H1812 -- I had posted here a while ago looking for it, but got no responses. Well, by chance I found a local guy who had installed about 50 Electrohome G0-5's in a police 911 system in the early 80's -- used to bring up maps to find where the call came from. He got me in touch with the guy who fixes them. The HV diode can be replaced with an RCA SK7333. Hmm -- come to think of it, if you can't find one, I'll see if I can get you in touch with this guy, maybe he knows of where to get a flyback. -Chris ========================================================== Chris Candreva -- chris@westnet.com -- (914) 967-7816 WestNet Internet Services of Westchester http://www.westnet.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 29 09:21:46 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 09:21:45 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 09:21:41 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: G-05 pinouts Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com I was just comparing the 12 pin connector pinouts on the Omega Race schematics with the G-05 drawing on Jess' web page, and they don't appear to match: G-05 Omega Race 1 X in 1 Z in 2 X gnd 2 Y in 3 Y in 3 X gnd 4 Y gnd 4 Z gnd 5 Z in 5 Y gnd 6 Z gnd 6 X in 7 30 AC 7 30 AC 8 GND 8 30 CT 9 GND 9 6.3 AC 10 30 AC 10 30 AC 11 6.3 AC 11 GND 12 HTR GND 12 HTR 0V checking the actual pinouts might be a good idea before plugging it in. the AC inputs appear to be equivalent, and I don't know if i'd trust my set of Omega Race schematics (I found drawing errors in the vector generator section) From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 29 10:50:13 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 09:04:39 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@supra.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 09:11:32 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Omega Race Monitor Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com >Guys, > > Which monitor does Omega Race use, the G0-5? How hard is it to get a >flyback for said monitor? (I've never had to replace one) It's a G0-5 from what I've seen. I've never had to replace the flyback in one though, so I can't comment on the flyback... > One is being sold for a good price, and supposedly in great condition >other than the fact that the monitor needs a flyback. > If it's a GO-5, I think I have a few sitting around anyways (Or I can >pick some up from Paul Frazee this weekend) but I really don't like to junk >these monitors... If it's a good price, get the monitor and just pick up some parts to fix it from Paul. One other thing worth buying (IMHO) from Paul are some Ampliphone tubes with the XY yoke's still attached. He had a bunch when I was there a couple weeks ago-- I got one (all I had room for) for $10. Pair 'em up with a WG deflection board/neck/HV/chassis and you have a really nice monitor with very low "pincushion" type distortion for cheap. :-) Be sure to look at Paul's "stack" of Williams CPU boards. Even I was impressed. There must be 200 of 'em... -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 Jul 29 10:57:01 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 09:06:31 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 12:06:16 -0400 (EDT) From: "Christopher X. Candreva" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Omega Race Monitor In-Reply-To: <9707291524.AA25028@maileng3> 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 On Tue, 29 Jul 1997, Joseph J. Welser wrote: > Which monitor does Omega Race use, the G0-5? How hard is it to get a > flyback for said monitor? (I've never had to replace one) If it is the G0-5, let me know if/where you find a flyback -- I figure mine will go eventually. BUT -- another hard part to find is the doubler (the high-power diode between the flyback and the tube.) Part number on it is H1812 -- I had posted here a while ago looking for it, but got no responses. Well, by chance I found a local guy who had installed about 50 Electrohome G0-5's in a police 911 system in the early 80's -- used to bring up maps to find where the call came from. He got me in touch with the guy who fixes them. The HV diode can be replaced with an RCA SK7333. Hmm -- come to think of it, if you can't find one, I'll see if I can get you in touch with this guy, maybe he knows of where to get a flyback. -Chris ========================================================== Chris Candreva -- chris@westnet.com -- (914) 967-7816 WestNet Internet Services of Westchester http://www.westnet.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 29 12:05:34 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 12:05:23 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 12:05:20 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: forwarded msg Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com I'm not quite sure why, but this message bounced, so I'm forwarding it to the list by hand. --al From: gonzothegreat@juno.com (Alan J McCormick) On Tue, 29 Jul 1997 10:24:31 -0500 jwelser@crystal.cirrus.com (Joseph J. Welser) writes: > Which monitor does Omega Race use, the G0-5? How hard is it to get a >flyback for said monitor? (I've never had to replace one) GO5-802 as everyone else said. If you need schems, I can xerox mine. > One is being sold for a good price, and supposedly in great >condition other than the fact that the monitor needs a flyback. Is the flyback missing or is the monitor dead? I've never had problems with GO5 flybacks dying. Amplifones are another story... What I have had problems with is the stupid little HV diode. The endcaps get brittle and disintegrate. Schieve jury-rigs an endcap with silicone. I don't know if this would be of intrest to you but last year I picked up a bunch of 12" raster green phosphor monitors that used the same tube as GO5 cocktails. A friend used one in his cabaret Battlezone ("Look ma! No phosphor burn!") Anyways, that left me with the raster chassis. The HVT - technically not the "flyback" since vector monitors use a dedicated oscillator (555 or some other beast) to drive the HV section - looks very similar to the one in my OR cocktail. The HV diode looks close too. The # on the HVT is 30-00122-010 and 17-8243 The # on the diode is VARO H617-8 8218 If you want to experiment with this dude on your monitor, LMK. Virtu-Al From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 29 12:30:36 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 12:30:05 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Subject: Barrier Schematics Mailed To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 13:41:43 -0600 (MDT) From: "Kurt Mahan" X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Message-ID: <33de47770.3bfd@bolt.usg.provo.novell.com> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 731 Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Hi! Barrier schematics have been mailed (Tuesday) to the following: Jeff Hendrix Michael Schulz Joseph Welser Ray Ghanbari Bill Esquivel Chris Hanks Zonn Moore Al Kossow Rick Schieve If you're not on the list and wanted a set (or a set of warrior schems) you didn't mail me (or it didn't show up..).. Mail me again with your snail mail. Al got my originals to digitize whenever. Ray -- I still owe you those boards.. send me your phone number so I can make excuses via voice.. :) 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 Technologies R&D Group * * Kurt Mahan * kmahan@novell.com */ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 29 13:16:16 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 09:21:45 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 09:21:41 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: G-05 pinouts Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com I was just comparing the 12 pin connector pinouts on the Omega Race schematics with the G-05 drawing on Jess' web page, and they don't appear to match: G-05 Omega Race 1 X in 1 Z in 2 X gnd 2 Y in 3 Y in 3 X gnd 4 Y gnd 4 Z gnd 5 Z in 5 Y gnd 6 Z gnd 6 X in 7 30 AC 7 30 AC 8 GND 8 30 CT 9 GND 9 6.3 AC 10 30 AC 10 30 AC 11 6.3 AC 11 GND 12 HTR GND 12 HTR 0V checking the actual pinouts might be a good idea before plugging it in. the AC inputs appear to be equivalent, and I don't know if i'd trust my set of Omega Race schematics (I found drawing errors in the vector generator section) From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 29 15:10:02 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 15:09:56 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 15:09:52 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: (possible) replacement B&W HV assy Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com I've been looking for a while at a replacement for the Cine HV assembly. While I haven't found anything that would directly drop in, I think I may have found something today that might work. While at the junk yard, I was looking inside an IBM 3278 and noticed it has a separate HV assembly. Looks like it takes 44 volts in and produces 18Kv and the usual lower voltages. The main reason this one is interesting is there must be a mole of 3278's in the world... The worst part is getting filthy taking them out... I got 20 of the things for $1 ea (..and an hour of time pulling them) they have an epoxy brick flyback and a little circuit board on them with all the active stuff. I'll try messing with them in the next day or so.. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 29 15:37:48 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 15:37:41 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@supra.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 15:44:18 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: (possible) replacement B&W HV assy Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com [..Cool HV unit discovery in an old IBM 3278 terminal monitor deleted...] >I'll try messing with them in the next day or so.. Why do I always a little chuckle out of "I'll try messing with them in the next day or so" whenever it's used in conjunction with something electrical that's capable of generating very high voltages? ;-) Good luck, Al! Be careful. ;-) -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 Jul 29 16:45:22 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 16:45:12 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 97 16:49 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970729164419.29d70d1a@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: (possible) replacement B&W HV assy Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com At 03:44 PM 7/29/97 -0800, you wrote: >[..Cool HV unit discovery in an old IBM 3278 terminal monitor deleted...] > >>I'll try messing with them in the next day or so.. > >Why do I always a little chuckle out of "I'll try messing with them in the >next day or so" whenever it's used in conjunction with something electrical >that's capable of generating very high voltages? ;-) > >Good luck, Al! Be careful. ;-) Aww it probably won't kill ya! Check this out, I knew this *jock* in High School, he was in my electronics class, he used to discharge TV's with his body! I'm not kidding! He would hold onto the chassis with one hand, and with his other hand, take a piece of non-insulated copper grounding wire and stick it under the cap, right after the TV was turned off. Next door to us was the Automotive Shop, and for an encore he would demonstrate his "conductibilities" by stopping a car engine by grabing the ignition coil and ground! He did this a few times, but after a while wouldn't perform his "Stupid People Trick" anymore. He said he was bored with it, I think, since he WAS the jock type, that he just didn't want to admit it hurt like hell!! He probably made a million bucks selling Amway products and lives in Manhattan or something, there is no justice... -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 29 17:30:27 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 08:58:25 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: jeffh@mail.diac.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 09:57:54 -0600 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: jeffh@diac.com (Jeff Hendrix) Subject: Re: Omega Race Monitor Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Omega race uses a G05-802 monitor (the one found in MOST asteroids, AD, BZ), lunar lander and early asteroids used a G05-801 and they are NOT plug in compatible. The 801 has 2 plugs (power and signal) and the 802 has just one molex connector. -jeff >Guys, > > Which monitor does Omega Race use, the G0-5? How hard is it to get a >flyback for said monitor? (I've never had to replace one) > > One is being sold for a good price, and supposedly in great condition >other than the fact that the monitor needs a flyback. > > If it's a GO-5, I think I have a few sitting around anyways (Or I can >pick some up from Paul Frazee this weekend) but I really don't like to junk >these monitors... > >Thanks, > >Joe jeffh@diac.com Buy/Sell/Trade classic video arcade games. www.diac.com/~jeffh/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 29 18:02:08 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 18:01:52 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 20:59:42 -0400 (EDT) From: Ed Henciak X-Sender: ethst3@unixs1.cis.pitt.edu To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: Omega Race Monitor 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 Are the Electrohome G05-802 and Wells Gardner 19V2000 (I think that is the number) connector compatible? That is the monitor I have in my Asteroids Deluxe that may be going into an Omega Race I am trading for. Thanks!!! Ed On Tue, 29 Jul 1997, Jeff Hendrix wrote: > Omega race uses a G05-802 monitor (the one found in MOST asteroids, AD, > BZ), lunar lander and early asteroids used a G05-801 and they are NOT plug > in compatible. The 801 has 2 plugs (power and signal) and the 802 has just > one molex connector. > > -jeff > > >Guys, > > > > Which monitor does Omega Race use, the G0-5? How hard is it to get a > >flyback for said monitor? (I've never had to replace one) > > > > One is being sold for a good price, and supposedly in great condition > >other than the fact that the monitor needs a flyback. > > > > If it's a GO-5, I think I have a few sitting around anyways (Or I can > >pick some up from Paul Frazee this weekend) but I really don't like to junk > >these monitors... > > > >Thanks, > > > >Joe > > jeffh@diac.com > > Buy/Sell/Trade classic video arcade games. > www.diac.com/~jeffh/ > > From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 29 19:01:49 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 19:01:47 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 19:01:44 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: cine CPU schematics up Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Zonn forwarded me a clean set of scans, so they're up on spies now, along with a scan of the 64 level adapter for Solar Quest. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 29 19:09:09 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 19:08:59 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 19:08:57 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: cine CPU schematics up Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com following up to my own post, if anyone is having problems decoding the scans there, let me know and i'll reencode them in a preferred(?) format, whatever that is (there are only a few dozen, it seems...) From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Tue Jul 29 20:48:49 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 20:48:41 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: jeffh@mail.diac.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 21:50:19 -0600 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: jeffh@diac.com (Jeff Hendrix) Subject: Re: Omega Race Monitor Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com I think they might be compatible, I have never seen a wells in an asteroids, but I have heard that some of them had them. I doubt if atari would make a seperate wiring harness just for a different monitor when G05-802's were reliable and very abundant. >Are the Electrohome G05-802 and Wells Gardner 19V2000 (I think that is the >number) connector compatible? That is the monitor I have in my Asteroids >Deluxe that may be going into an Omega Race I am trading for. Thanks!!! > >Ed > >On Tue, 29 Jul 1997, Jeff Hendrix wrote: > >> Omega race uses a G05-802 monitor (the one found in MOST asteroids, AD, >> BZ), lunar lander and early asteroids used a G05-801 and they are NOT plug >> in compatible. The 801 has 2 plugs (power and signal) and the 802 has just >> one molex connector. >> >> -jeff >> >> >Guys, >> > >> > Which monitor does Omega Race use, the G0-5? How hard is it to >>get a >> >flyback for said monitor? (I've never had to replace one) >> > >> > One is being sold for a good price, and supposedly in great >>condition >> >other than the fact that the monitor needs a flyback. >> > >> > If it's a GO-5, I think I have a few sitting around anyways (Or >>I can >> >pick some up from Paul Frazee this weekend) but I really don't like to junk >> >these monitors... >> > >> >Thanks, >> > >> >Joe >> >> jeffh@diac.com >> >> Buy/Sell/Trade classic video arcade games. >> www.diac.com/~jeffh/ >> >> jeffh@diac.com Buy/Sell/Trade Classic Video Arcade Games www.diac.com/~jeffh/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jul 30 00:07:50 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 30 Jul 1997 00:07:37 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 00:32:27 -0500 Subject: Re: Omega Race Monitor Message-ID: <19970730.015724.6510.1.gonzothegreat@juno.com> References: X-Mailer: Juno 1.38 X-Juno-Line-Breaks: 1-2,4,6-9,11,13-22,24-28 From: gonzothegreat@juno.com (Alan J McCormick) Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com On Tue, 29 Jul 1997 20:59:42 -0400 (EDT) Ed Henciak writes: >Are the Electrohome G05-802 and Wells Gardner 19V2000 (I think that is the >number) connector compatible? That is the monitor I have in my Asteroids >Deluxe that may be going into an Omega Race I am trading for. >Thanks!!! I can't attest to the long term but I used my upright BZ (19V2000) to test a cocktail GO5-802 after redoing *every* &$^#% solder joint on the deflection board. Worked just fine. My turn to ask a question now... I know that Omega Race used a GO5-802 but did any ORs have the nice standard 15 pin(?) connector? I have a CT OR and there isn't a connector (the wires are soldered to the deflection PCB) but I have another GO5-802 with OR phosphor burn that does. Maybe the cocktail didn't have the "Atari standard connector" but the cabaret did? Maybe the tube is a transplant from another game? Virtu-Al From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jul 30 00:07:53 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 30 Jul 1997 00:07:41 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 00:50:29 -0500 Subject: Re: (possible) replacement B&W HV assy Message-ID: <19970730.015724.6510.2.gonzothegreat@juno.com> References: <2.2.16.19970729164419.29d70d1a@pop3.concentric.net> X-Mailer: Juno 1.38 X-Juno-Line-Breaks: 0-22 From: gonzothegreat@juno.com (Alan J McCormick) Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com On Tue, 29 Jul 97 16:49 PDT Zonn writes: >>[..Cool HV unit discovery in an old IBM 3278 terminal monitor >deleted...] Interesting find Al. If you want to try to reverse engineer this puppy, here are two tips from Don Lancaster... Have a curious dentist/vet/med student x-ray it for you. This way you can figure out the PCB layout. I've wanted to try x-raying the Pacman+ hockey puck but I don't want to nuke the EPROMs... Masterbond sells some epoxy depotting gook. I can dig up their address if you like. >He probably made a million bucks selling Amway products and lives in >Manhattan or something, there is no justice... I would think Uncle Darwin will/has remove(d) this bozo from the gene pool. Darwin can be fickle about enforcement though. Virtu-Al From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jul 30 08:50:33 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 30 Jul 1997 08:50:25 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) X-Sender: clay@supra.com Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 08:57:10 -0800 To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: (possible) replacement B&W HV assy Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com [...] >He would hold onto the chassis with one hand, and with his other hand, take >a piece of non-insulated copper grounding wire and stick it under the cap, >right after the TV was turned off. [...] Wow. Ever see the Simpson's episode with "Which is smarter, Bart or a Hamster?" Zzzzap! Oww! Zzzzzap! Owwww! Zzzzzap! Owww! Back to Vectorlist stuff... I got my G-80 hardware all rigged up for programming this last weekend, so I should be finishing the menu system for the G-80 multigame pretty soon and get the rest of the project finished off ASAP. Is there interest in a 4-player Eliminator I/O expander board? (I'm already planning on doing some of the spinner encoder boards for ST/TS/ZK.) -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 Jul 30 08:54:50 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 30 Jul 1997 08:54:49 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 08:54:45 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: (possible) replacement B&W HV assy Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Have a curious dentist/vet/med student x-ray it for you. This way you can figure out the PCB layout. I've wanted to try x-raying the Pacman+ hockey puck but I don't want to nuke the EPROMs... ..its MUCH easier than that All the active parts are on a PC board on TOP of the potted flyback I put a picture of it up on the photos page on spies. I'm going to go back over to the place today with a voltmeter and try to measure it in circuit. So far it looks like: HV FOCUS +V(?) COM ??? but if you put 20-45V on +V and COM nothing happens. I'm a bit concerned that there doesn't appear to be any cathode voltage (~100v) pin. the thing has all house-numbered parts, and one national 14 pin IC on it. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jul 30 09:16:45 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 30 Jul 1997 09:16:44 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 12:16:27 -0400 (EDT) From: "Christopher X. Candreva" To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: forwarded msg 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 On Tue, 29 Jul 1997, Al Kossow wrote: > From: gonzothegreat@juno.com (Alan J McCormick) > What I have had problems with is the stupid little HV diode. The endcaps > get brittle and disintegrate. Schieve jury-rigs an endcap with silicone. I think I posted this already, but I replaced the HV diode in the G0-5/805 in my Asteroids Cocktail with an RCA SK7333. Works like a charm. -Chris ========================================================== Chris Candreva -- chris@westnet.com -- (914) 967-7816 WestNet Internet Services of Westchester http://www.westnet.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jul 30 09:59:52 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 30 Jul 1997 09:59:50 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: 30 Jul 1997 00:44 EDT To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com From: "Gregg Woodcock" Subject: re:G-05 pinouts Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com In message "G-05 pinouts", you write: >I was just comparing the 12 pin connector pinouts on the Omega Race >schematics with the G-05 drawing on Jess' web page, and they don't >appear to match: > >G-05 Omega Race >1 X in 1 Z in >2 X gnd 2 Y in >3 Y in 3 X gnd >4 Y gnd 4 Z gnd >5 Z in 5 Y gnd >6 Z gnd 6 X in >7 30 AC 7 30 AC >8 GND 8 30 CT >9 GND 9 6.3 AC >10 30 AC 10 30 AC >11 6.3 AC 11 GND >12 HTR GND 12 HTR 0V > >checking the actual pinouts might be a good idea before plugging >it in. the AC inputs appear to be equivalent, and I don't know >if i'd trust my set of Omega Race schematics (I found drawing >errors in the vector generator section) The drawings, if they say what you indicate, are incorrect; HOWEVER it may merely be a numbering convention problem (Midway decided to number the pins in a different way than the Atari/Wells-Gardner/Electrohome standard). Omega Race might, however, have another quirk; read on... Below is the beginnings of my mono vector monitor fixit file... First, let's make sure it is the PCB that is the problem and not the monitor (which is much more prone to failures). Disconnect the 12-pin Molex connector at the monitor. It has a pinout like this (use pin 11 to get oriented; pins 1, 3, and 11 are shaped like a "D" instead of an "O"): +----------+ | 1 2 3 | | 4 5 6 | | 7 8 9 | | 10 11 12 | +----------+ Flip the test switch inside the coin door and hit the reset button on the game PCB (or power cycle the machine). This will put you into test mode which will draw a very stable, all white screen (white is ideal since the RGB values should be identical to eachother). Set your meter for AC Volts and put the black lead into pin 8 of the game harness (this is a ground and should be black). You should get readings similar to the following: Pin # Description AC Voltage 1 X Out 6.68 2 X Ground 6.68 3 Y Out 6.69 4 Y Ground 6.69 5 Z Out 6.70 6 Z Ground 6.70 7 30VAC Center Tap 30.3 8 Ground Center Tap 0 9 Ground Center Tap 0 10 30VAC Center Tap 30.3 11 6.3VAC Center Tap 9.7 12 Heater Ground 3.0 Bad game boards will usually have X, Y, or Z Out = 0 VAC. If you get 6-7 VAC on all of them then your game board is probably OK. SPECIAL NOTE: (Some/All?) Omega Race games for some strange reason do not use pin 12. Mine had a separate wire soldered directly to the monitor board bypassing the connector and bridging the heater voltage from another point. Russel Willoughby discovered another potential pitfall with Omega Race. Game board connector J7 to the monitor can be put on BACKWARDS! The manual says that all of the connectors are keyed, making it impossible to put them on backwards without forcing them; this is obviously not true in the case of J7. The good news is that doing so, even if the game has been turned on and left on for long periods of time, does not cause any problems and everything should work if it is put on properly (if it worked before). If it looks like the game board is working then check all the fuses. The monitor heater voltage for most of these games comes right off a winding on the isolation transformer and through a fuse. This fuse is VERY prone to becoming loose so make sure it is a good tight connection. The next thing to check is the connectors on the monitor boards. They are VERY prone to bad solder joints. In fact, I have NEVER seen a deflection board which did not have this problem. Resolder them all just to be safe. The next most common problem with these monitors is the sockets on the two transistors mounted to the chassis of the high-voltage power supply. They like to become intermittent, especially the one on the regulator transistor. Clean them and make sure they are making good contact. About half of the monitors I work on have bad HV diodes in that the leads and/or their connectors are corroded beyond belief. Many times the diode will disintegrate to your touch. Please be aware that this diode CANNOT be checked with a diode test function on a DMM nor with an ohmeter; it is too beefy for those puny currents. If you don't have an HV probe, the only way to test it is to put it into a known working HV unit. Rick Schieve posted the following information about HV problems. It's from an article about the QuadraScan monitor. Problem: 90v is less than 80v. Procedure: 1) Measure the voltage on the anode of the Zener ZD900 or the emitter of Q901. The voltage should read 9 volts. If less, replace diode. 2) A key voltage measurement now must be made. Locate resistor R901 near the top edge of the board between Q900 and Q901. This 1.2K ohm resistor stands up about a half inch off the board. Place positive lead on the lead of the resistor closest to the edge of the board. Voltage Probable Causes ------- --------------- 9v Q901 shorted < 15v ZD901 shorted, Q900 or Q902 low gain. 25v Open Q900, Q902, Q903, R906 or T900. 3) If all components are ok, the oscillator circuit (Q903) may be loaded down by a defective component in the seconday of T900. With an ohmeter, check the following components for leakage: D903, C909, C906, and C907. The other components D901, D902 and the doubler cannot be checked with an ohmeter. The following procedure may be used: Note: When working with the doubler, always make certain that the CRT anode is discharged to ground. Unsolder the wire going from the high voltage transformer to the terminal of the doubler. Apply power and measure the 90V (pin 5 of R900). If the 90v comes up, replace the doubler. To determine if D901 or D902 are loading down the oscillator, unsolder one end of the diode and note if the 90v comes up to 90v. Richardson Electronics in LaFox, Illinois (708.208.2200) has replacement tubes for and they were extremely helpful. A 15" Monochrome XY costs about $75.00. Page 3 of the November 1979 Star*Tech Journal has a decent article called, "Atari's X-Y Monitor Adjustments" which does an OK job of describing how to properly adjust the deflection board. "Atari's new Quadrascan (tm) display system introduced in LUNAR LANDER (tm) should be adjusted correctly at the factory for maximum resolution. However, if brightness and contrast adjustments are required, plase follow these procedures. Adjustments are made on the deflection amplifier PCB located on the right side of the monitor when looking into the rear of the game. 1. Turn brightness (R516) and contrast (R526) all the way down (counter-clockwise). 2. Turn up brightness until [the majority of] images are barely visible. NOTE: The stars [in LUNAR LANDER] may not be visible. 3. Turn up contrast for desired clarity. This procedure will produce a very clear, bright picture, while minimizing any chances of phosphor burn caused by over-adjustment of the brightness control. NOTE: Only the brighness control (R516) and contrast control (R526) on this PCB are "field adjustable". All other controls, including X and Y linearity have been factory adjusted and should NOT be tampered with. -- 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 Jul 30 11:45:09 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 30 Jul 1997 11:45:01 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 11:44:57 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: cine schematic update Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com The sound schematics for Armor Attack, Boxing Bugs, Ripoff, Solar Quest Star Castle, Star Hawk, Sundance, Tail Gunner, and Warrior are up now along with the CPU drawings and the control panels if they were in the manuals. I've also fixed the 16 level video scan, which was a duplicate of the 64 level one. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Jul 30 14:45:40 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 30 Jul 1997 14:45:14 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Wed, 30 Jul 1997 14:45:10 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: 3278 HV assy notes Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com I went back to the junk shop, found one I hadn't ripped the assy out of, and took it over to their test bench. The reason I didn't see anything happen was I didn't wait long enough. It appears to have a built-in delay of a few seconds before the HV comes on. Just about everything from my first message was right. 400v >400v(focus) 46v COM ??? I still have no idea what the last pin is for. I looked at it with a scope, and nothing seems to be happening on it. The thing runs at around 22KHz. I assume the last pin must be the cathode voltage supply, or they're doing something else like a voltage divider on the 400v supply. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 31 08:33:43 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 31 Jul 1997 08:33:06 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 31 Jul 1997 09:33:58 -0600 From: Jess Askey Subject: HTML version of the Star Wars Troubleshooting Guide To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Message-id: <33E0B066.6F72@links.magenta.com> Organization: Believe me, I have none!! MIME-version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; I) 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 Hi all, I sat down these last 3 days and OCR'ed the troubleshooting guide for Star Wars. It is much nicer than scans since it prints out really sharp looking. You can get to it through the Star Wars page on my Vector page, its direct link is ... http://magenta.com/havoc/atari/vector/tech/starwars_troublshooting/starwars_troubleshooting.html I just wanted to let you all know. enjoy later jess -- Jess M. Askey Unofficial Atari Game Page ESLB/The Audio Analyst http://links.magenta.com/havoc 509 S. 2nd Street Unit B Laramie WY 82070 Shop: (307)721-9001 From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 31 17:16:36 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 31 Jul 1997 17:16:32 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Thu, 31 Jul 1997 17:16:29 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: replacement for 6012? Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com I was just looking at 12 bit D/A's with the thought of building a little cine > WG adapter, and came upon the Analog Devices DAC312 This part looks like it is pin compatible with the AMD 6012! The block diagram even looks like the AMD one in the '81 AMD Linear Data Book! Anyone want to try getting some 'samples'? BTW, i've started to put .pdf files of data sheets on the schematics page... From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 31 17:39:38 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 31 Jul 1997 17:39:32 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Thu, 31 Jul 97 17:44 PDT Message-Id: <2.2.16.19970731173845.365fde7e@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: replacement for 6012? Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com At 05:16 PM 7/31/97 -0700, you wrote: > >I was just looking at 12 bit D/A's with the >thought of building a little cine > WG adapter, >and came upon the Analog Devices DAC312 Very cool, I wish these boards weren't so rare. I think it would be fun to go back and "colorize" classic's like Star Castle, but who would ever see it? I suppose you could run it on the emulator but it just wouldn't be the same... BTW: I just finished updating the C-CPU description (the one on Bill's Cinematronics Home Page) to include the mapping of the colors of the Cine -> WG adapter. I can't FTP it from here and I won't be home until late tonight, but it should be out there tomorrow morning. This should help in designing the conversion board -- assuming you don't already have this information. It also now describes the 16 level mapping of Sundance and the 64 level mapping of Solar Quest. And if it's of any consequence, how to read the Coin Latch. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Jul 31 17:59:00 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 31 Jul 1997 17:58:53 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Thu, 31 Jul 1997 17:58:50 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Subject: Re: replacement for 6012? Sender: owner-vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist@goonsquad.spies.com cool. I'll update the copy on the schematics page when it appears. someone on RGVAC was looking for a TL182 for a cine sound board. I looked at all the sound schematics, and all of them only use TL081's for Op Amps. i wonder if he needs one for a Cine raster game?