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 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 > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 344 Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 */ 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 Date: Wed, 2 Jul 1997 14:28:18 -0600 (MDT) From: "Kurt Mahan" In-Reply-To: <33bab60a0.3fdb > 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 > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 286 Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 > X-Sender: mmatelsk X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Wed, 02 Jul 1997 14:13:08 -0500 To: vectorlist From: Mit_Matelske (Mit Matelske) Subject: Amplifone blues... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 From: "Gregg Woodcock" Subject: re:SW -> ESB Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 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 Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 2 Jul 1997 14:36:56 -0800 To: vectorlist From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: SW -> ESB Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist >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 \/ 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 From: Zonn Subject: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707071855.AA27475@maileng3> To: vectorlist Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist > 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 From: Zonn Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707072036.AA28106@maileng3> To: vectorlist Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist > 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 From: Zonn Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707072134.AA28441@maileng3> To: vectorlist Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist > 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 From: Zonn Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 7 Jul 1997 15:25:13 -0800 To: vectorlist From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist >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 \/ 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 (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707072228.AA28788@maileng3> To: vectorlist Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist > 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 Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip References: Organization: Mayo Foundation Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 From: Zonn Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 > X-Sender: andersk X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0.1 (32) Date: Mon, 07 Jul 1997 16:33:45 -0600 To: vectorlist 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 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 From: Zonn Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 09:18:40 -0800 To: vectorlist From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist >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 \/ 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 From: Zonn Subject: Re: Crystal's new chip Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 From: Zonn Subject: Crystal's old chip...well maybe Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 From: Zonn Subject: Re: Crystal's old chip...well maybe Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 11:10:40 -0800 To: vectorlist From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Crystal's old chip...well maybe Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist >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 \/ 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 Subject: Re: Crystal's old chip...well maybe References: <2.2.16.19970708101201.3e6fb7d6@pop3.concentric.net> Organization: Mayo Foundation Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 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 > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 747 Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist [... 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 */ 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 Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 15:49:55 -0800 To: vectorlist From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: cheap PC's Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist >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 \/ 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 From: Zonn Subject: Re: cheap PC's Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 16:34:51 -0800 To: vectorlist From: Clay Cowgill Subject: AVG chip replacement Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 \/ 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 > 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 Subject: Re: AVG chip replacement References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 Date: Sat, 12 Jul 1997 18:06:51 -0500 Subject: Re: AVG chip replacement Message-ID: <19970712.181052.3478.5.gonzothegreat > 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 (Alan J McCormick) Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 13 Jul 1997 12:11:24 -0800 To: vectorlist From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: AVG chip replacement Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist >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 \/ 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 Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist From: jeffh (Jeff Hendrix) Subject: Re: AVG chip replacement Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 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 Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: vectorlist From: jeffh (Jeff Hendrix) Subject: sorry about that last email Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist I didn't check the address first, just did a reply. jeffh 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 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 > From: Frank Palazzolo To: "'vectorlist > Cc: "'emulator >, "'kmcsdc '" , "'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 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 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 Subject: Re: Star Wars / ESB Matrix Processor Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 Subject: Re: saving some games Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Mon, 21 Jul 1997 12:37:21 -0800 To: vectorlist From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: saving some games Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 \/ 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 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 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707221517.AA26410@maileng3> To: vectorlist Subject: Re: CineSound Samples Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist > 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 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 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist > > 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 > From: Frank Palazzolo To: "'vectorlist > 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 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 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 (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707221853.AA27708@maileng3> To: vectorlist Subject: Re: CineSound Samples Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist > 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 Design Engineer jwelser 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 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 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 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist > 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 Subject: Re: CineSound Samples Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist >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 (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707222155.AA28890@maileng3> To: vectorlist Subject: Re: CineSound Samples Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist > 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 Design Engineer jwelser 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 From: Zonn Subject: Re: CineSound Samples Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 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 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist > 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 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 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist > >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 (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707231520.AA01710@maileng3> To: vectorlist Subject: Re: CineSound Samples Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist > 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 Design Engineer jwelser 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 Subject: Re: CineSound Samples Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 From: Zonn Subject: Re: CineSound Samples Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 (Joseph J. Welser) Message-Id: <9707231718.AA02610@maileng3> To: vectorlist Subject: Re: CineSound Samples Cc: jwelser Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist > 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 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 23 Jul 1997 11:10:33 -0800 To: vectorlist From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Omega Race runs in simulation Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist > 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 \/ 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 Subject: Re: Omega Race runs in simulation Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 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 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist > 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 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist 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