VECTORLIST - The Mailing List For The Technical Discussion of Vector-Based Arcade Games

April_1998
Re: Cinematronics/Sega universal sound board...


From: Paul Kahler ( )
Date: Thu Apr 23 1998 - 21:34:56 CDT


You knew I'd show up :-)

  I like the idea of samples. As for the music circuit, it is use by
Solar Quest as well as Boxing Bugs. I made some sound board notes once to
try to categorize all as many as I could. You can check it out at:

http://www.oakland.edu/~phkahler/emu/Sounds.doc

Looking back, it's not completely clear but it's a start :-) I suspect
if you recorded all values sent to the music circuit, you find only a
small number of "notes" are actually played, so samples could be used - I'm
guessing here. As for the ramping sounds, I think Star Castle and RipOff
use something like an A/D feeding an R/C (to sweep slowly) feeding a VCO.
The bottom line is a squarewave output. I'd think a micro could simulate
the RC sweep and use a timer to output a squarewave - all the while handling
trigger decoding and sending sample commands to this other chip Clay found.
Oops, RipOff has 2 VCOs - may be possible?

BTW, if anyone wants to add the other games to the word document, feel free
to do so and send me a copy :-) I thought I documented all the ones I have
schematics for (or most). They're sort of ordered so similar designs are
next to each other - Tail Gunner is actually an oddball unless there's one
like it that I don't have (but it's still simple and strictly triggers).

I'll try to test some boards and get back to the menu system even if I don't
have a monitor. BTW Clay, my MAX502s never arrived :-(

-- 
 ___   __   _   _  _
|   \ /  \ | | | || |             Engineer/Programmer
|  _/| || || |_| || |__     " What makes someone care so much?
|_|  |_||_| \___/ |____)      for things another man can just ignore. " -S.H.


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