From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Oct 1 13:16:42 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 1 Oct 1997 13:15:32 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Posted-Date: Wed, 1 Oct 1997 13:13:47 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <3.0.32.19971001151511.00929590 > X-Sender: mmatelsk X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Wed, 01 Oct 1997 15:15:12 -0500 To: vectorlist From: Mit_Matelske (Mit Matelske) Subject: Star Castle problems ... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist Alright Zonn and crew - So I finally replace the power transistors in my monitor in my Star Castle, and fire the game up. The led is flickering rapidly - damn. For I press on all the ribbon cables, to make sure that they are on well, and when I press the one leading to the control panel, the light stops flickering!!! I go and look at the monitor, and all I have is one ring of vectors, with the ends crossing each other, in the middle of the screen about 3 times to big! (what a run-on sentence) What is my best way to attack this problem? I have no other Cine games and I was using a switcher for my +5. Thanks for any and all help... Mit Matelske From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Oct 1 13:41:14 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 1 Oct 1997 13:41:07 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: <199710012034.PAA26736@fermat.mayo.edu> Content-Type: text/plain Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 4.1mach v148) In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19971001151511.00929590 > X-Nextstep-Mailer: Mail 4.1mach (Enhance 2.0b5) From: Ray Ghanbari Date: Wed, 1 Oct 97 15:34:58 -0500 To: vectorlist Subject: Re: Star Castle problems ... References: <3.0.32.19971001151511.00929590 > Organization: Mayo Foundation Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist You wrote: > What is my best way to attack this problem? While others chime in with real answers, I will mention that my Star Castle ("Working all the way!") is for sale. Looking for something in the low $200s. If folks have had people pestering them for this game, let me know. Game condition is rough (mainly side art), so probably not of interest to most people on this list (except maybe Paul ;-) Basically, I'm pricing it at the parts rate in hopes that it will find a loving home. Alas, I needed the space for my Star Wars, and am looking forward to the day I can again play these cnma classics in my Asteroids (hint hint Clay ;-) Machine is in lovely Rochester Minnesota. Ray From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Oct 1 13:43:55 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 1 Oct 1997 13:43:54 -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, 1 Oct 1997 13:44:58 -0800 To: vectorlist From: Clay Cowgill Subject: LF13201 quad switches... Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist In the parts-trivia category... Some of you may have noticed that the LF13201 has gone on Lifetime-buy from National Semiconductor. (It's going away.) (The 13201 is the quad analog switch used in the Atari Analog Vector Generator.) The newest JDR Microdevices catalog (#63) has not one, but *two* replacements for them... The Siliconix DG201ACJ and the Analog Devices ADG201AKN. The Siliconix has some beefier specs and a lower R/on resistance than the LF13201, the ADG201AKN has pretty much identical specs to the National Semiconductor part. The price is right on both-- $1.39 in singles! -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Oct 1 16:48:12 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 1 Oct 1997 16:48:00 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: zonn@concentric.net (Zonn) To: vectorlist Subject: Re: Star Castle problems ... Date: Wed, 01 Oct 1997 23:50:27 GMT Message-ID: <3433df03.79930353 > References: <3.0.32.19971001151511.00929590 > In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19971001151511.00929590 > X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist On Wed, 01 Oct 1997 15:15:12 -0500, you wrote: >Alright Zonn and crew - > >So I finally replace the power transistors in my monitor in=20 >my Star Castle, and fire the game up. The led is flickering >rapidly - damn. For I press on all the ribbon cables, to=20 >make sure that they are on well, and when I press the one >leading to the control panel, the light stops flickering!!! >I go and look at the monitor, and all I have is one ring of >vectors, with the ends crossing each other, in the middle of=20 >the screen about 3 times to big! (what a run-on sentence) When the LED quits flickering and the monitor is displaying something, your machine at that point, maybe working fine. Have you played with the pots on the monitor? If they were max'ed you could have them set so that the X and Y sizes are stretched way beyond = the edge of the screen. The other two pots control the length of the lines, they are used to set the end points so they don't cross. Make sure the cable going from the monitor to the CPU board is good, if = you have a loose connection here, stranges things can happen to the display. If the picture is also blurring and/or dim and/or unstable in size, you might have a high voltage problem. Low high-voltage will cause the = display to *bloom*. >What is my best way to attack this problem? I have no other >Cine games and I was using a switcher for my +5. I'd start by checking to see what's loose or shorting that's causing the CPU's reset LED to flicker -- do this without the monitor plugged in. = Then I'd attack the monitor. Check to see that the game runs the demo fine without the control panel plugged in, if this is the case, look for short/bad connections in the control panel/wiring harness. Do the obvious things check and reseat the ROMs and ALUs and anything = else socketed. It maybe the LED flicker has nothing to do with the control panel connector, it maybe a bad socket that's affected when that area of the board is pressed. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Wed Oct 1 22:02:04 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Wed, 1 Oct 1997 22:01:57 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: <34332BFB.1242FD67@istar.ca> Date: Wed, 01 Oct 1997 22:07:08 -0700 From: John Robertson Organization: John's Jukes Ltd. X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.02 [en] (Win16; U) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: vectorlist Subject: Re: LF13201 quad switches... References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist I have about ten or twenty of the LF13331's if anyone needs them. Asking $5C ($4us)each... John :-#)# Clay Cowgill wrote: > In the parts-trivia category... > > Some of you may have noticed that the LF13201 has gone on Lifetime-buy from > National Semiconductor. (It's going away.) (The 13201 is the quad analog > switch used in the Atari Analog Vector Generator.) > > The newest JDR Microdevices catalog (#63) has not one, but *two* > replacements for them... The Siliconix DG201ACJ and the Analog Devices > ADG201AKN. The Siliconix has some beefier specs and a lower R/on > resistance than the LF13201, the ADG201AKN has pretty much identical specs > to the National Semiconductor part. > > The price is right on both-- $1.39 in singles! > > -Clay > > Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager > _______________________________________________________________________ > /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay > \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ -- John's Jukes Ltd. 2343 Main St., Vancouver, BC, Canada V5T 3C9 Call (604)872-5757 or Fax 872-2010 (Pinballs, Jukes, Video Games) mailto:jrr "Old pinballers never die, they just flip out." From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Oct 2 07:03:03 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 2 Oct 1997 07:02:42 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: Paul Kahler Message-Id: <199710021402.KAA12594@saturn.acs.oakland.edu> Subject: Re: Star Castle problems ... To: vectorlist Date: Thu, 2 Oct 1997 10:02:51 -0500 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <3433df03.79930353 > from "Zonn" at Oct 1, 97 11:50:27 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 > >Alright Zonn and crew - > > > >So I finally replace the power transistors in my monitor in=20 > >my Star Castle, and fire the game up. The led is flickering > >rapidly - damn. For I press on all the ribbon cables, to=20 > >make sure that they are on well, and when I press the one > >leading to the control panel, the light stops flickering!!! > >I go and look at the monitor, and all I have is one ring of > >vectors, with the ends crossing each other, in the middle of=20 > >the screen about 3 times to big! (what a run-on sentence) The test pattern for Star Castle is one ring in the middle (not rotating) and 4 small boxes - on in the middle of each side of the screen. This pattern is for monitor/vector adjustment which it sounds like you need to do :-) Your friend, CREW :-) BTW, Clay & Bill. I can't buy anything right now. I've been thinking about getting out of this whole hobby & selling my stuff (except Tempest). Then again, I may not :-) -- ___ __ _ _ _ | \ / \ | | | || | 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 Oct 2 07:03:29 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 2 Oct 1997 07:03:25 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Posted-Date: Thu, 2 Oct 1997 10:02:27 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <3.0.32.19971002090239.0091b520 > X-Sender: mmatelsk X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Thu, 02 Oct 1997 09:02:41 -0500 To: vectorlist From: Mit_Matelske (Mit Matelske) Subject: Re: Star Castle problems ... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist > >When the LED quits flickering and the monitor is displaying something, >your machine at that point, maybe working fine. > >Have you played with the pots on the monitor? If they were max'ed you >could have them set so that the X and Y sizes are stretched way beyond the >edge of the screen. > >The other two pots control the length of the lines, they are used to set >the end points so they don't cross. > >Make sure the cable going from the monitor to the CPU board is good, if you >have a loose connection here, stranges things can happen to the display. > >If the picture is also blurring and/or dim and/or unstable in size, you >might have a high voltage problem. Low high-voltage will cause the display >to *bloom*. > >>What is my best way to attack this problem? I have no other >>Cine games and I was using a switcher for my +5. > >I'd start by checking to see what's loose or shorting that's causing the >CPU's reset LED to flicker -- do this without the monitor plugged in. Then >I'd attack the monitor. > >Check to see that the game runs the demo fine without the control panel >plugged in, if this is the case, look for short/bad connections in the >control panel/wiring harness. > >Do the obvious things check and reseat the ROMs and ALUs and anything else >socketed. It maybe the LED flicker has nothing to do with the control >panel connector, it maybe a bad socket that's affected when that area of >the board is pressed. > > >-Zonn > Zonn- Thanks for the advice!!! I did all the obvious things - reseat ROMS, ect... and yes now the flickering stoped completely. But, I still only get one circle in the middle of the screen. I had assumed that I could get the screen size down to the correct size using the pots, but just as I was going to test that last night, my buddies convinced me to go play some pool... Even with the cp unplugged the game still only displays one circle. Any ideas? Thanks again, Mit Matelske From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Oct 2 07:22:54 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 2 Oct 1997 07:22:35 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Posted-Date: Thu, 2 Oct 1997 16:18:15 +0200 (MET DST) Message-Id: <3.0.32.19971002092136.0097a550 > X-Sender: mmatelsk X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Thu, 02 Oct 1997 09:21:38 -0500 To: vectorlist From: Mit_Matelske (Mit Matelske) Subject: Re: Star Castle problems ... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist > >The test pattern for Star Castle is one ring in the middle (not >rotating) and 4 small boxes - on in the middle of each side of the >screen. This pattern is for monitor/vector adjustment which it >sounds like you need to do :-) > >Your friend, >CREW :-) > >BTW, Clay & Bill. I can't buy anything right now. I've been thinking >about getting out of this whole hobby & selling my stuff (except Tempest). >Then again, I may not :-) >-- > ___ __ _ _ _ >| \ / \ | | | || | phkahler@oakland.edu Engineer/Programmer >| _/| || || |_| || |__ " What makes someone care so much? >|_| |_||_| \___/ |____) for things another man can just ignore. " -S.H. > Well, I'll be damned!!! Don't I feel like a heel. Many thanks!!!! And as far as getting out of the hobby - DON'T do it. It is safer than sex and less expensive than drugs (at least for some of us) :) Mit Matelske From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Oct 2 07:26:54 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 2 Oct 1997 07:26:52 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Posted-Date: Thu, 2 Oct 1997 16:22:39 +0200 (MET DST) Message-Id: <3.0.32.19971002092601.009816d0 > X-Sender: mmatelsk X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Thu, 02 Oct 1997 09:26:02 -0500 To: vectorlist From: Mit_Matelske (Mit Matelske) Subject: Re: Star Castle problems ... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist > >Your friend, >CREW :-) > >BTW, Clay & Bill. I can't buy anything right now. I've been thinking >about getting out of this whole hobby & selling my stuff (except Tempest). >Then again, I may not :-) >-- > ___ __ _ _ _ >| \ / \ | | | || | phkahler@oakland.edu Engineer/Programmer >| _/| || || |_| || |__ " What makes someone care so much? >|_| |_||_| \___/ |____) for things another man can just ignore. " -S.H. > Whoops!!! Can someone also provide me the switch settings? Doesn't seems to be on spies... Thanks, Mit From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Oct 2 10:37:07 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 2 Oct 1997 10:37:02 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: zonn@concentric.net (Zonn) To: vectorlist Subject: Re: Star Castle problems ... Date: Thu, 02 Oct 1997 17:39:29 GMT Message-ID: <3433d5a6.143078190 > References: <3.0.32.19971002090239.0091b520 > In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19971002090239.0091b520 > X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist On Thu, 02 Oct 1997 09:02:41 -0500, you wrote: >Thanks for the advice!!! I did all the obvious things - reseat ROMS, = ect... >and yes now the flickering stoped completely. But, I still only get one >circle in the middle of the screen. I had assumed that I could get the >screen size down to the correct size using the pots, but just as I was = going >to test that last night, my buddies convinced me to go play some pool... > >Even with the cp unplugged the game still only displays one circle. >Any ideas? Paul's hit upon the most obvious reason for displaying a single circle, = you probably got your dip switches set to "diagnostic mode" which displays nothing but a big circle and four small boxes at the edge of the screen. It's either switch 7 or switch 1 (depending on how they installed the dipswitches). If the switches make no difference, adjust the pots on the monitor to see if you can see the four boxes around the edges of the screen. If so you could have a problem with the dipswitches, or more likely the buffer used to read the dip switches. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Oct 2 11:02:11 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 2 Oct 1997 11:02:09 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: zonn@concentric.net (Zonn) To: vectorlist Subject: Re: Star Castle problems ... Date: Thu, 02 Oct 1997 18:04:35 GMT Message-ID: <3435e097.145880101 > References: <3.0.32.19971002092601.009816d0 > In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19971002092601.009816d0 > X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist On Thu, 02 Oct 1997 09:26:02 -0500, you wrote: >Whoops!!! > >Can someone also provide me the switch settings? Doesn't seems to be on >spies... > >Thanks, > >Mit If you download my emulator (http://www.concentric.net/~Zonn) you can = find the switch settings for each game documented in the .INI file for each game. Here's Star Castle's ('0' means 'switch off', Switch 7 is the leftmost switch): ; Switch definitions: ; ; D------ 0=3DTest Pattern, 1=3DNormal ; -XX---- Unused ; ; ---CC-- 00 =3D 1 credit per 1 quarter ; 10 =3D 1 credit per 2 quarters ; 01 =3D 3 credit per 2 quarters ; 11 =3D 3 credit per 4 quarters ; ; -----SS 00 =3D 3 ships per game ; 10 =3D 4 ships per game ; 01 =3D 5 ships per game ; 11 =3D 6 ships per game -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Oct 2 12:51:28 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 2 Oct 1997 12:51:24 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: <34340829.2AC3 > Date: Thu, 02 Oct 1997 14:46:33 -0600 From: Todd Miller X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: vectorlist Subject: Re: Sega xy help References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-MIME-Autoconverted: from 8bit to quoted-printable by hippocrates.willowtree.com id OAA20955 Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist An update on my Space Fury, I found some more 2114's so I replaced all of them on the xy board & shuffled them around on the CPU board. Now it boots up fine, attract mode looks normal. After playing a few games on the scope, the only vector problem I have seen so far is that the 'ship' will get trashed, all other vectors are OK. When you get hit or go to the next level, the ship will look OK for a while, then get garbled up. It will also go all the way through the self test now, only that some speech & sounds are missing or garbage. Confident that the boards are now more stable, I hooked up the monitor so I could read what the self test was reporting. The monitor powered OK, I played a few quick games, intermittently the top half of the screen would go flat, so I quickly went to the self test, the first screen said that the video ram & multiplier were good, but down in the lower right corner there was a 'B', what does that stand for ? When I got to the system input screen, tells what dip SW settings are, the text was jumping around, some letters would displace up or down a line. By this time the top half of the screen was collapsing more often, so I powered it down, pulled out the deflection board.=20 After inspecting the board & the 2 daughter boards that go to the heatsink/transistor assembly, I saw a few cold solder joints. I wicked/reflowed all the Molex connectors, cleaned transistor sockets & reassembled. Still no top half of the screen :( I am going to order a Zanen kit, but wasn=92t there a discussion about him using underrated parts ? Knowing that the monitor is almost %100, I want to do what ever it takes to make it as reliable as possible. Is there a FAQ like G Woodcock=92s WG, but for the Sega monitors ? Any suggestions would help, I don=92t want to do any damage to this=20 monitor. --=20 Spam block, remove 32767's from e-mail address: Thanks Todd From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Oct 2 13:43:37 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 2 Oct 1997 13:43:01 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Comments: ( Received on motgate.mot.com from client pobox.mot.com, sender jenison ) Date: Thu, 2 Oct 1997 15:42:34 -0500 (CDT) From: Mark Jenison Message-Id: <9710021542.ZM13050@calcite> In-Reply-To: Todd Miller "Re: Sega xy help" (Oct 2, 2:46pm) References: <34314708.44E5 > <199710021959.PAA02464 > X-face: "@9[FFAftX<9}2=gaPlIyRv_K%h[>.@"8t}B2So!iv.\#M9NplA9bDudBQ|]E`WL9Kd,Tn2v.0OGcE<$yg{&}(m:mB\GO9L+yE}6=d17BM X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.2.1 10apr95) To: vectorlist Subject: Re: Sega xy help Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-MIME-Autoconverted: from 8bit to quoted-printable by calcite.cig.mot.com id PAA13052 Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist On Oct 2, 2:46pm, Todd Miller wrote: > Subject: Re: Sega xy help > > [ text/plain > Encoded with "quoted-printable" ] : An update on my Space Fury, I found some more 2114's so I replaced > all of them on the xy board & shuffled them around on the CPU board. > Now it boots up fine, attract mode looks normal. After playing a > few games on the scope, the only vector problem I have seen so far > is that the 'ship' will get trashed, all other vectors are OK. When > you get hit or go to the next level, the ship will look OK for a while, > then get garbled up. It will also go all the way through the self test > now, only that some speech & sounds are missing or garbage. > > Confident that the > boards are now more stable, Doesn't sound like it ;-). Garbled speech is usually signs of bad EPROMs= on the speech board (check the sockets, etc), and the sound board for Space = Fury is notorious for dropping sounds over time. > I hooked up the monitor so I could read > what the self test was reporting. The monitor powered OK, I played a > few > quick games, intermittently the top half of the screen would go flat, > so I quickly went to the self test, the first screen said that the > video ram & multiplier were good, but down in the lower right corner > there was a 'B', what does that stand for ? Software revision B. > When I got to the system > input screen, tells what dip SW settings are, the text was jumping > around, some letters would displace up or down a line. This is common even with totally working systems. It's ok. > By this time > the top half of the screen was collapsing more often, so I powered it > down, pulled out the deflection board. So it sounds like one of your deflection transistors is giving out. > After inspecting the board & > the 2 daughter boards that go to the heatsink/transistor assembly, I sa= w > a few cold solder joints. I wicked/reflowed all the Molex connectors, > cleaned transistor sockets & reassembled. Still no top half of the > screen :( I am going to order a Zanen kit, but wasn=92t there a > discussion > about him using underrated parts ? Knowing that the monitor is almost > %100, I want to do what ever it takes to make it as reliable as > possible. Zanen has a cap kit for the G08?? They didn't have one last time I order= ed. You're not confusing the G05-802 are you? > Is there a FAQ like G Woodcock=92s WG, but for the Sega monitors ? > Any suggestions would help, I don=92t want to do any damage to this > monitor. Not really. David Shuman one of the experts on this monitor. Also, I ha= ve a few notes about it in my Sega XY FAQ that you could look at, which also t= alks about replacements for the deflection transistors. BTW, How's those Sega XY Multigames going out there??? I've heard of two different people that have implemented it two different ways already. Also, could one of you techy people out there figure out how to bypass th= e coining timing circuit? It's a pain to try and credit by hand because of= the coin input timing. ________________ ______ ___ _____ __ / __/ / / / |/ / / |/ //|/|/|_______________ Mark Jenison / __/ /_/ / / / | // | / |__ __/ _ /__ \ jenison /___/___/_/_//_/_/_/|_//__|/__| / / / // / / Sega XY FAQ author /_/|_| /_/ /____/_/|_| ________________ The One and Only 4-player vector game From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Oct 2 14:08:49 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 2 Oct 1997 14:08:37 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: <199710022107.QAA22381@fermat.mayo.edu> Content-Type: text/plain Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 4.1mach v148) In-Reply-To: <9710021542.ZM13050@calcite> X-Nextstep-Mailer: Mail 4.1mach (Enhance 2.0b5) From: Ray Ghanbari Date: Thu, 2 Oct 97 16:07:18 -0500 To: vectorlist Subject: Re: Sega xy help References: <34314708.44E5 > <199710021959.PAA02464 > <9710021542.ZM13050@calcite> Organization: Mayo Foundation Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist You wrote: > Also, could one of you techy people out there figure out how to bypass the > coining timing circuit? It's a pain to try and credit by hand because of the > coin input timing. This was a feature request for the adapter PCB, right? Basically a pulse output triggered by the coin input. Ray From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Oct 2 14:49:54 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 2 Oct 1997 14:49:41 -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, 2 Oct 1997 14:50:38 -0800 To: vectorlist From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Sega xy help Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist >BTW, How's those Sega XY Multigames going out there??? I've heard of two >different people that have implemented it two different ways already. Mine is currently a single daughtercard that connects to the Z-80 socket on the CPU board. You need to install a "jumper" board in the socket where the security chip normally goes, and you replace the memory-mapper PROM. At that point you can get rid of the EPROM board entirely. Game selection works just fine by dip switches, but the "real" version is planned as a software menu-system. I have a "sneaky" memory mapper circuit made up out of a couple of PALs that allows selection of 4K-48K "chunks" of memory to be enabled. (So 1 64K EPROM can hold a 48K game, plus an 8K game, plus two 4K games for example. Mainly of interest if anyone wants write some new games for the G-80.) The PALs are kind-of a pain for me to develop right now (since I'm using GALs and the only programmer for those is at work), so I might just make an "easy" version that just bank selects 64K blocks. (And I'll pretend I don't notice all the wasted EPROM space. Must... Resist... ;-) I moved a Pentium machine with a PROMice on it out to the garage and have a G-80 setup to develop software now, (that's how I did the Astro Blaster hacks) so I'm kinda out of excuses for not getting back on it. :-) I do want to give it a try with MAME on the PC though, so I don't have to code in the garage... I did a title-screen for the Multigame a while back and got sidetracked making a "starfield" backdrop for it instead of implementing the bank-selecting code... Whoops. No great ideas (from me) for how to handle all the sound stuff. Control mapping is done by a PIC on another little card, but I don't really know how to connect it to the CPU board yet. A whole bunch of .156" connectors just seems like a royal pain... -Clay P.S. Keep your fingers crossed for me-- we *might* be getting one of those all-in-one prototype PCB makers here. That will REALLY speed up getting these projects done! ;-) (You just give it a gerber file of your finished printed circuit board and an hour or two later you get a two-layer drilled and routed PCB out the other side.) Please, oh, please, oh, please.... ;-) Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Oct 2 15:02:21 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 2 Oct 1997 15:02:20 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: <343426DC.3DA3 > Date: Thu, 02 Oct 1997 16:57:32 -0600 From: Todd Miller X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: vectorlist Subject: Re: Sega xy help References: <199709301532.LAA24466 > <9709301051.ZM19106@calcite> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist Mark Jenison wrote: > > Here's my standard offer: > > If you want, you can send me the entire boardset after your tested/verified the > EPROMs. I will test each board separately in my known working set up. For > every board that needs repaired or replaced, I will charge a flat fee of $10 > per board. That means you'd have to pay a maximum of $50 + S&H (in the > unlikely event that all boards minus the EPROM board were bad), and a minimum > of $10 + S&H. For this you will have a completely reliable Space Fury set. > Hi Mark, Thanks for the help, I'm plugging along. Do you have files for the Eproms for SF ? I was confirming checksums with my Eproms & a file I got from Ian's web page...none of them matched, so maybe his isn't rev 'B', or maybe I'm not using my data i/o right. Anyway.. what would you sell the individual boards outright ? Your $10 offer is good, but I kinda want to keep the old one's around for spares, then use good board's so I can determain what I have may be bad. LMK -- Spam block, remove 32767's from e-mail address: Thanks Todd From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Thu Oct 2 15:13:24 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Thu, 2 Oct 1997 15:13:14 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: zonn@concentric.net (Zonn) To: vectorlist Subject: Re: Sega xy help Date: Thu, 02 Oct 1997 22:14:57 GMT Message-ID: <34351ca1.161252591 > References: In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist On Thu, 2 Oct 1997 14:50:38 -0800, you wrote: >P.S. Keep your fingers crossed for me-- we *might* be getting one of = those >all-in-one prototype PCB makers here. That will REALLY speed up getting >these projects done! ;-) (You just give it a gerber file of your = finished >printed circuit board and an hour or two later you get a two-layer = drilled >and routed PCB out the other side.) Please, oh, please, oh, please.... = ;-) I'm beyond envious.... -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Oct 3 06:26:21 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 06:26:08 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 08:25:45 -0500 (CDT) From: X-Sender: jwelser@piglet.cc.utexas.edu To: vectorlist Subject: Transistor Number Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist Vector Posse, Does anybody happen to know the part numbers for the Cine. deflection transistors off hand? My Rip Off lost the bottom half of the screen last night (During a GREAT game we were having, too) and I forgot my manual at home. I will be really mad at myself, if, because of my own stupidity, I can't fix my Rip Off tonight... Thanks, Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------ Joseph J. Welser jwelser Design Engineer -- Crystal Semiconductor Corporation Ph.D. Student in E.E. -- University of Texas at Austin Work: jwelser P.O. Box 17847; Austin, TX 78760 ------------------------------------------------------------------ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Oct 3 06:45:40 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 06:45:35 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: Paul Kahler Message-Id: <199710031345.JAA09799@saturn.acs.oakland.edu> Subject: Re: Sega xy help To: vectorlist Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 09:45:57 -0500 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <34351ca1.161252591 > from "Zonn" at Oct 2, 97 10:14:57 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 > >P.S. Keep your fingers crossed for me-- we *might* be getting one of = > those > >all-in-one prototype PCB makers here. That will REALLY speed up getting > >these projects done! ;-) (You just give it a gerber file of your = > finished > >printed circuit board and an hour or two later you get a two-layer = > drilled > >and routed PCB out the other side.) Please, oh, please, oh, please.... = > ;-) > > I'm beyond envious.... You and me both :-) Hmmm... What employer in the Detroit area is likely to have cool EE toys... HAHAHAHAHAhahahahahahaha Yah Right! well, maybe 1 or 2. -- ___ __ _ _ _ | \ / \ | | | || | phkahler@oakland.edu Engineer/Programmer | _/| || || |_| || |__ " What makes someone care so much? |_| |_||_| \___/ |____) for things another man can just ignore. " -S.H. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Oct 3 07:57:06 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 07:56:48 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: <34350918.54BA > Date: Fri, 03 Oct 1997 11:02:48 -0400 From: Joel Rosenzweig Organization: Hewlett-Packard Medical Products Group X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0Gold (WinNT; I) Mime-Version: 1.0 To: vectorlist Subject: 19VLTP22 tubes References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist Hello fellow vectorheads, My amplifone tube says that it's a 19VLTP22 / M48AAWOOX. Based on Gregg Woodcock's findings, this tube is compatible with the 19VLUP22 used in the Wells Gardner vector monitors. According to my Amplifone schematics, a 19VJTP22 tube is used. (note the "J" instead of the "L") Some DejaNews searching revealed that this tube also has the same pinout as the VLT and the VLU tubes. My question is, which tube has the higher resolution, the VLT or the VJT? I just ordered a brand new 19VLT22 from Richardson Electronics. They claim that their manufacturer says "this is THE last one they will be able to make." Apparently, their manufacturer is no longer producing this particular glass shape and there are no more available. At any rate, I haven't investigated the availability of the VJT's, but I'd like to know if it's even worth pursuing. I was looking to retrofit every vector monitor I owned with one of these Amplifone tubes, that's about 8 more monitors. I hooked up the Amplifone to my Tempest last weekend, and it worked beautifully. I cobbled this monitor together from a mass of 4 HV and 4 deflection units in unknown but dubious condition. I got lucky. The first HV unit I tried started smoking .. but the second one worked! (They are all original red ones ... ) At any rate, I now know that I have 3 fully working deflection boards, and 1 working HV unit. A Wintron unit is on it's way, so that will make HV unit number 2 happy. I didn't even test HV 3 and 4 because one was missing Q4, and the other was missing the anode clip. I figured there must be "something" wrong with them, so until I have a few moments to work on them, I didn't even bother fixing the obvious and just trying them. Anyway, the picture was just so amazing .. I highly recommend retrofitting this tube into your Wells Gardners. I realize that Tempest looking "better" is a subjective term, but I really do think you should try it once! If you have any information on the dot pitch of the VJT vs the VLT, please let me know! Thanks, Joel- From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Oct 3 08:51:21 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 08:51:10 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: 03 Oct 1997 11:49 EDT To: vectorlist Cc: vectorlist From: "Mark Shostak" Subject: Starfields (was: Sega xy help) Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist In message "Sega xy help", clay writes: > I did a title-screen for the Multigame a while back and got sidetracked > making a "starfield" backdrop for it instead of implementing the > bank-selecting code... Whoops. Mr. Cowgill, This is to inform you that we hope *your* starfield isn't based on any particular pattern. We've had some um, trouble with starfields in the past. -The Management From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Oct 3 09:30:58 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 09:30:46 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Posted-Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 09:29:36 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <3.0.32.19971003112914.0091aaf0 > X-Sender: mmatelsk X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Fri, 03 Oct 1997 11:29:15 -0500 To: vectorlist From: Mit_Matelske (Mit Matelske) Subject: Re: Star Castle problems ... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist Thanks to all!!! After adjusting *every* pot on that monitor, I have a decent looking Star Castle game. One question - the background noise is just static - and I'm not talking about good static. The explosions sound great, but this constant noise... It's been a while since I played the game and was wondering what the background sounds (music? - just kidding) are suupose to be, and how to diagnose and fix the sound board. Thanks again, Mit From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Oct 3 09:42:31 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 09:42:29 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 11:41:43 -0500 (CDT) From: X-Sender: jwelser@piglet.cc.utexas.edu To: vectorlist Subject: Re: Star Castle problems ... In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19971003112914.0091aaf0 > Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist On Fri, 3 Oct 1997, Mit Matelske wrote: > > > Thanks to all!!! > > After adjusting *every* pot on that monitor, I have a decent looking > Star Castle game. One question - the background noise is just > static - and I'm not talking about good static. The explosions > sound great, but this constant noise... > It's been a while since I played the game and was wondering what > the background sounds (music? - just kidding) are suupose to > be, and how to diagnose and fix the sound board. The background sound should be a pulsing tone that gets faster pulsing as you shoot more and more segments out of the Star Castle. The Manual has an awesome section on how to diagnose the Sound board. If you don't have a copy, check on wiretap, but I'm not sure its there. Send me an email if you need a copy. Folow the procedure in the manual, but the background noise is generated by a cheesy DAC, a level shifter and limiter, and a VCO. First thing I would check is the VCO (an LM566 -- National has the datasheet on their web page) if you are getting static. You should get a nice low-frequency square wave out of there (use a scope to check.) Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Oct 3 09:45:08 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 09:45:06 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: zonn@concentric.net (Zonn) To: vectorlist Subject: Re: Transistor Number Date: Fri, 03 Oct 1997 16:47:28 GMT Message-ID: <34352047.227732577 > References: In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist On Fri, 3 Oct 1997 08:25:45 -0500 (CDT), you wrote: > >Vector Posse, > > Does anybody happen to know the part numbers for the Cine. >deflection transistors off hand? My Rip Off lost the bottom half >of the screen last night (During a GREAT game we were having, too) >and I forgot my manual at home. > > I will be really mad at myself, if, because of my own >stupidity, I can't fix my Rip Off tonight... > >Thanks, Hey Joe, Keep in mind that Al has scans of all the schematics on www.spies.com but to save you the trouble: 2N5878 - NPN 2N5876 - PNP Also, the pair of transistors used in the deflection of the WG monitors = are a slightly better replacement (same gain, a bit higher voltage rating, though not worth going out and retrofiting all your Cine'monitors). If = you have an old Zannen WG kit laying around you could use those. Don't mix = and match, use either the Cine' pair or the WG pair. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Oct 3 12:14:21 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 12:14:04 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: Paul Kahler Message-Id: <199710031914.PAA26611@saturn.acs.oakland.edu> Subject: Re: Star Castle problems ... To: vectorlist Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 15:14:23 -0500 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19971003112914.0091aaf0 > from "Mit Matelske" at Oct 3, 97 11:29:15 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 > Star Castle game. One question - the background noise is just > static - and I'm not talking about good static. The explosions > sound great, but this constant noise... > > It's been a while since I played the game and was wondering what > the background sounds (music? - just kidding) are suupose to > be, and how to diagnose and fix the sound board. The background sound is supposed to be a "droning" sound. A tone that rises and falls in pitch all the while. The pitch change increases in speed as the game proceeds. This should not sound anything like "static". It could get really anoying though if it's stuck at a particular pitch. For the curious, the droning circuit is a 3-bit D/A converter feeding an RC circuit (aprox 10 sec settling time) which feeds a VCO to generate the tone. But the details escape me :-) I'll try to check the manual over the weekend & see what might be broken. BTW, what ever happened to the sound generating/digitizing effort? I had to synthesize some cheap Star Castle sounds myself. -- ___ __ _ _ _ | \ / \ | | | || | phkahler@oakland.edu Engineer/Programmer | _/| || || |_| || |__ " What makes someone care so much? |_| |_||_| \___/ |____) for things another man can just ignore. " -S.H. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Oct 3 12:43:52 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 12:43:39 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: <199710031942.OAA26358@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: Fri, 3 Oct 97 14:42:25 -0500 To: vectorlist Subject: Re: Starfields (was: Sega xy help) References: Organization: Mayo Foundation Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist You wrote: > This is to inform you that we hope *your* starfield isn't based on > any particular pattern. We've had some um, trouble with starfields > in the past. We've all heard this story before, but even if I squint *real* hard, I don't see anything on my Star Castle. Is this an urban legend? Ray NB I think it would be criminal for Clay not to have an easter egg in his starfield ;-) From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Oct 3 13:00:55 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 13:00:42 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: zonn@concentric.net (Zonn) To: vectorlist Subject: Re: Starfields (was: Sega xy help) Date: Fri, 03 Oct 1997 20:03:09 GMT Message-ID: <34354cef.9127115 > References: <199710031942.OAA26358@fermat.mayo.edu> In-Reply-To: <199710031942.OAA26358@fermat.mayo.edu> X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist On Fri, 3 Oct 97 14:42:25 -0500, you wrote: >You wrote: >> This is to inform you that we hope *your* starfield isn't based on >> any particular pattern. We've had some um, trouble with starfields >> in the past. > >We've all heard this story before, but even if I squint *real* hard, I = don't =20 >see anything on my Star Castle. Is this an urban legend? > No, it's real. I talked to a guy that worked at Cinematronics and he = said the management was so upset they thought of stopping production. Then some guy said essentially "Even if I squint *real* hard, I don't see anything" and common sense prevailed. I've been told that once you've seen the picture, it's hard not to think = of it when you see the starfield. So does anyone have a collection of "Oui" magazines from 1980 ('81?)? I imagine that *even* the NET is not big enough to find those pictures in that sewage of porn out there... -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Oct 3 13:17:56 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 13:17:49 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: 03 Oct 1997 16:15 EDT To: vectorlist From: "Gregg Woodcock" Subject: Re: Starfields (was: Sega xy help) Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist In message "Re: Starfields (was: Sega xy help)", you write: >You wrote: >> This is to inform you that we hope *your* starfield isn't based on >> any particular pattern. We've had some um, trouble with starfields >> in the past. > >We've all heard this story before, I haven't... >NB I think it would be criminal for Clay not to have an easter egg in his >starfield ;-) Don't worry; I'm positive he will. BTW, as far as the Amplifone tubes in a W-G monitor goes; I have been running a SW/ESB 24/7 on location since I posted that about 6 months ago with *NO* problems (and a FANTASTIC picture). -- THANX...Gregg day 972.684.7380 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 Fri Oct 3 14:03:55 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 14:03:06 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: <199710032102.QAA29845@fermat.mayo.edu> Content-Type: text/plain Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 4.1mach v148) In-Reply-To: <34354cef.9127115 > X-Nextstep-Mailer: Mail 4.1mach (Enhance 2.0b5) From: Ray Ghanbari Date: Fri, 3 Oct 97 16:02:48 -0500 To: vectorlist Subject: Re: Starfields (was: Sega xy help) References: <199710031942.OAA26358@fermat.mayo.edu> <34354cef.9127115 > Organization: Mayo Foundation Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist You wrote: > So does anyone have a collection of "Oui" magazines from 1980 ('81?)? > > I imagine that *even* the NET is not big enough to find those pictures in > that sewage of porn out there... Tracking this down could be the first ever (and only?) legitimate cross post in RGVAC and rec.porn (or whatever ;-) That being said, I would love to see this picture (as a collector, of course... ;-) Question: how long until someone hacked the Star Castle ROMs to actually connect the dots? Ray From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Oct 3 14:14:56 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 14:14:51 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: Paul Kahler Message-Id: <199710032114.RAA29705@saturn.acs.oakland.edu> Subject: Re: Starfields (was: Sega xy help) To: vectorlist Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 17:14:44 -0500 (EDT) In-Reply-To: <34354cef.9127115 > from "Zonn" at Oct 3, 97 08:03:09 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 > >You wrote: > >> This is to inform you that we hope *your* starfield isn't based on > >> any particular pattern. We've had some um, trouble with starfields > >> in the past. > > > >We've all heard this story before, but even if I squint *real* hard, I = > don't =20 > >see anything on my Star Castle. Is this an urban legend? > > I told my wife there was something in the constellation and she just couldn't see it. Then I said "it's a woman" & she said "Oh my gosh it is". She also said something about the small triangle... > So does anyone have a collection of "Oui" magazines from 1980 ('81?)? > > I imagine that *even* the NET is not big enough to find those pictures in > that sewage of porn out there... I'd like to see it too. Scott said she has her foot up on a flowerpot or something. I think he rather likes telling the story, but I didn't think to ask him why he had OUI handy at work that day ;-) Oh well, back to creating the background for the company web site - Oh, look I've got a copy of Big 'Uns here in my desk, I think I'll put in some eye candy for observant web surfers... -- ___ __ _ _ _ | \ / \ | | | || | phkahler@oakland.edu Engineer/Programmer | _/| || || |_| || |__ " What makes someone care so much? |_| |_||_| \___/ |____) for things another man can just ignore. " -S.H. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Oct 3 14:38:23 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 14:38:06 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: zonn@concentric.net (Zonn) To: vectorlist Subject: Re: Starfields (was: Sega xy help) Date: Fri, 03 Oct 1997 21:40:33 GMT Message-ID: <34366172.14378917 > References: <199710032102.QAA29845@fermat.mayo.edu> In-Reply-To: <199710032102.QAA29845@fermat.mayo.edu> X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist On Fri, 3 Oct 97 16:02:48 -0500, you wrote: >You wrote: >> So does anyone have a collection of "Oui" magazines from 1980 ('81?)? >> >> I imagine that *even* the NET is not big enough to find those pictures= in >> that sewage of porn out there... > >Tracking this down could be the first ever (and only?) legitimate cross = post =20 >in RGVAC and rec.porn (or whatever ;-) > >That being said, I would love to see this picture (as a collector, of = course... ;-)=20 Yeah, I've already gone to all the engineers here and asked them if they have a 1980-1981 Oui collection (It was either '80 or '81 and I don't = know the month). Oh maybe I'll get fired, I'm already on probation for spamming the = intranet email with pro alien (the kind from other planets) propaganda (I claimed 'we' invented Silly Putty and Pringles and 'they're' stupid enough to buy them), that and I'm trying to convince the front office lady that I'm = Elvis incarnate. I think using the companies internet connection to search for porn might = be pushing things a little... Like they're going to find another hardware/software guru to finish this project (where I'm the solo engineer!) that's due the end of next week, right! I've got at least 14 days of absolute job security!! ...so what would that be under... alt.porn.pictures.eighties.oui.arcades, search on "Star Castle"? -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Oct 3 14:47:58 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 14:47:57 -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: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 14:48:47 -0800 To: vectorlist From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Starfields (was: Sega xy help) Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist >>NB I think it would be criminal for Clay not to have an easter egg in his >>starfield ;-) > >Don't worry; I'm positive he will. Yep, time to dust off Superpaint on the Mac again... ;-) (It lets you have a bitmap on one layer and an object-oriented drawing object layer on top of that... Perfect for, uhhh, vector-digitizing.) On a loosely (very loosely) related subject-- seems like about 10 or so years back Scientific American had an article on a little algorithm called "face bender" or something like that. You gave it a vector characterization of a person's face and it would build a caricature based on the vector dataset and a "difference" factor. Kind-of morphing without a texture map I'd say. Anyway, it'd be a kinda cool real-time effect for a vector display that had enough CPU oomph to pull it off. -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Oct 3 14:54:29 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 14:54:27 -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: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 14:55:17 -0800 To: vectorlist From: Clay Cowgill Subject: programmable logic Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist While I'm thinking of it... Have any of you used the Lattice GAL6001 FPLA for anything? It's a "78x64x36" FPLA with all sorts of buried feedback terms and whatnot for making state machines. Some nice features: 1) available from JDR for $8 in singles, and electrically erasable/programmable 2) should be supported by Lattice ISP Synario for free/cheap programming tools 3) 24 pin DIP package. 10 inputs on one side, 10 I/O's on the other. I don't really have an application in mind (other than maybe some part in a vector state machine), but I'd be curious to hear if any of you have played with it... -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Oct 3 15:01:30 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 15:01:28 -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: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 15:02:14 -0800 To: vectorlist From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: Starfields (was: Sega xy help) Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist >...so what would that be under... alt.porn.pictures.eighties.oui.arcades, >search on "Star Castle"? *scrounge* *scrounge*... Well, there's a hit from Altavista on "+OUI +magazine". www.webworksps.com/raven/oui.htm Looks like it just might be someone that posed once upon a time... -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Oct 3 15:05:05 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 15:04:54 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Posted-Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 18:04:31 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <3.0.32.19971003170413.0097dcc0 > X-Sender: mmatelsk X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Fri, 03 Oct 1997 17:04:15 -0500 To: vectorlist From: Mit_Matelske (Mit Matelske) Subject: Re: Star Castle problems ... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist At 11:41 AM 10/3/97 -0500, you wrote: > >On Fri, 3 Oct 1997, Mit Matelske wrote: > >> >> >> Thanks to all!!! >> >> After adjusting *every* pot on that monitor, I have a decent looking >> Star Castle game. One question - the background noise is just >> static - and I'm not talking about good static. The explosions >> sound great, but this constant noise... > > >> It's been a while since I played the game and was wondering what >> the background sounds (music? - just kidding) are suupose to >> be, and how to diagnose and fix the sound board. > > The background sound should be a pulsing tone that gets faster >pulsing as you shoot more and more segments out of the Star Castle. > > The Manual has an awesome section on how to diagnose the Sound >board. If you don't have a copy, check on wiretap, but I'm not sure its >there. Send me an email if you need a copy. > > Folow the procedure in the manual, but the background noise is >generated by a cheesy DAC, a level shifter and limiter, and a VCO. First >thing I would check is the VCO (an LM566 -- National has the datasheet on >their web page) if you are getting static. You should get a nice >low-frequency square wave out of there (use a scope to check.) > >Joe > > Joe- Could you email me that sound board diagnostic stuff... Checked on spies and could only find schematics. Thanks, Mit From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Oct 3 15:13:29 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 15:13:23 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: zonn@concentric.net (Zonn) To: vectorlist Subject: Re: programmable logic Date: Fri, 03 Oct 1997 22:15:51 GMT Message-ID: <34386aae.16743899 > References: In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist On Fri, 3 Oct 1997 14:55:17 -0800, you wrote: >While I'm thinking of it... > >Have any of you used the Lattice GAL6001 FPLA for anything? > >It's a "78x64x36" FPLA with all sorts of buried feedback terms and = whatnot >for making state machines. > >Some nice features: > >1) available from JDR for $8 in singles, and electrically = erasable/programmable > >2) should be supported by Lattice ISP Synario for free/cheap programming= tools > >3) 24 pin DIP package. 10 inputs on one side, 10 I/O's on the other. > >I don't really have an application in mind (other than maybe some part = in a >vector state machine), but I'd be curious to hear if any of you have = played >with it... I was just getting ready to spam vectorlist in search of interesting = logic arrays. I have a very nice vector generator design that's fully digital that uses 3 10 bit latches, an adder, a 10 bit 2 channel mux, and 2 ten = bit counters connected to the DACs. It very simple, but unfortunately I = can't find any commonly available micros the run fast enough to do this in software. You need to update the DAC counters on a digital vector generator at a 3.33mhz (avg) to generate the vectors. A 20mhz PIC internally divides the clock by four, so it runs at a 5mhz speed. Too slow. The new SX 50mhz part that runs at 50mhz (no internal divide by 4) could do it (well the counters would still have to be = external because of the number of I/O lines available, *and* it's still not fast enough to handle the counters), but are they available yet? And can it = be programmed using a standard PIC programmer? WSI makes a *very* fast processor that runs at 100mhz - at one clock per instruction, and can do multiple things on each clock, but of coarse = no-one sells the processor but WSI (they're only interested in quantity orders), and you have to buy their custom hardware to program it. How is the GAL6001 programmed? Must you buy a custom programmer from Lattice? (I've never had need to play with PALs, GALs, just an FPLA many years ago, and then just as an address decoder) -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Oct 3 17:14:55 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 17:14:37 -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: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 17:15:31 -0800 To: vectorlist From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: programmable logic Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist >I was just getting ready to spam vectorlist in search of interesting logic >arrays. I have a very nice vector generator design that's fully digital >that uses 3 10 bit latches, an adder, a 10 bit 2 channel mux, and 2 ten bit >counters connected to the DACs. It very simple, but unfortunately I can't >find any commonly available micros the run fast enough to do this in >software. You need to update the DAC counters on a digital vector >generator at a 3.33mhz (avg) to generate the vectors. Ahhh. We're looking at the same thing. You ran into the same "gotcha" that I did-- need speed for digital vector generator. Plus it seems silly (not to mention tedious to prototype) a small army of TTL logic... :-/ >A 20mhz PIC internally divides the clock by four, so it runs at a 5mhz >speed. Too slow. Right, this is why I went to an Analog Vector Generator like Atari did. Another way (that Atari also did, but never made it out the door) is to use a DSP with a couple serial DACs. The Analog Devices 2105 is cheap and friendly to program... >The new SX 50mhz part that runs at 50mhz (no internal >divide by 4) could do it (well the counters would still have to be external >because of the number of I/O lines available, *and* it's still not fast >enough to handle the counters), but are they available yet? And can it be >programmed using a standard PIC programmer? Supposedly they're sampling now (October) and full production in Q4. Programming doesn't look to be by a "standard" PIC programmer (like a PICMaster or something). Parallax however is offering a programmer/ICE for $249. That's pretty cool assuming it's a full speed ICE for that price. You *can* get away with overclocking PICs quite a lot. I've heard that 32MHz on the 20MHz parts is pretty solid, but that 40MHz is a little twitchy. >WSI makes a *very* fast processor that runs at 100mhz - at one clock per >instruction, and can do multiple things on each clock, but of coarse no-one >sells the processor but WSI (they're only interested in quantity orders), >and you have to buy their custom hardware to program it. Word has it that Western Design Center (the guys that own the IP for the 6502) have a fully synthesizable 6502 core in VHDL and Verilog. Depending on the process it's been run at up to 173MHz... :-) >How is the GAL6001 programmed? Must you buy a custom programmer from >Lattice? (I've never had need to play with PALs, GALs, just an FPLA many >years ago, and then just as an address decoder) I'm trying to figure that out. :-/ Lattice is big on their ISP (in circuit programmable) stuff, which is just a cable going from a few pins on a PC parallel port to a header on your board. You can program all their GALs, Generic Digital Switches, and FPGA's from the same 5-wire bus. Pretty slick. I'm not so sure about the 6001 and 6002 though. Might take a stand-alone programmer. :-/ I suppose you could always just use a 2032 or something with the ISP cable, but I've never seen them available in singles for cheap. (like JDR) -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Fri Oct 3 18:35:08 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Fri, 3 Oct 1997 18:35:05 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: zonn@concentric.net (Zonn) To: vectorlist Subject: Re: programmable logic Date: Sat, 04 Oct 1997 01:37:32 GMT Message-ID: <343597fe.336377 > References: In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist On Fri, 3 Oct 1997 17:15:31 -0800, you wrote: > >>I was just getting ready to spam vectorlist in search of interesting = logic >>arrays. I have a very nice vector generator design that's fully = digital >>that uses 3 10 bit latches, an adder, a 10 bit 2 channel mux, and 2 ten= bit >>counters connected to the DACs. It very simple, but unfortunately I = can't >>find any commonly available micros the run fast enough to do this in >>software. You need to update the DAC counters on a digital vector >>generator at a 3.33mhz (avg) to generate the vectors. > >Ahhh. We're looking at the same thing. You ran into the same "gotcha" >that I did-- need speed for digital vector generator. Plus it seems = silly >(not to mention tedious to prototype) a small army of TTL logic... :-/ > >>A 20mhz PIC internally divides the clock by four, so it runs at a 5mhz >>speed. Too slow. > >Right, this is why I went to an Analog Vector Generator like Atari did. >Another way (that Atari also did, but never made it out the door) is to >use a DSP with a couple serial DACs. The Analog Devices 2105 is cheap = and >friendly to program... The problem I have with going with the AVG design are the integrators themselves. They can only zero'd, and not preset to any random value. This makes it hard to emulate the Sega, Cinematronics and old Atari DVG systems. If I were to go with an analog design, I'd be tempted to use = the Cinematronics design. It gets around a lot of the problems of the integrator. I like the digital design for a couple of reasons: 1) You never have to worry about lines meeting up. All the analog = designs use critically time vector lengths to line up correctly, and they never really line up exactly. 2) This might be over kill, but by using somewhere between 2 and 4 meg of ROM (or possibly RAM) as table lookups between the counters and the DACs, you can do all the pincussioning and linearity control digitally. So = it's a lot of ROM, but ROMs are not *that* expensive, and it's not like I'm going into high quantity production. And once again it allows you to set the *excact* pincussioning and linearity needed by the monitor, no drifting, ever. My design differs a bit from the Atari DVG and the Sega (though I haven't fully deciphered the Sega) in that I've designed the Bresenham's = algorithm into some really simple hardware. The catch is that register values must = be pre-calculated by the PC, an option Atari and Sega didn't have. (Since they were both background VGs and didn't have there own processor, to = speak of.) I control the line draw speed on a clock by clock basis to assure = all angles are drawn at the same speed. The TTL design looks very workable = but uses something like 20 ICs! (Why are all TTL devices only 4 bits!) Most video cards with built in line draw use the bresenham algorithm, = since there is no rounding error regardless of the line line, unlike the = clocking method used by Atari (though it's pretty miniscule). >>The new SX 50mhz part that runs at 50mhz (no internal >>divide by 4) could do it (well the counters would still have to be = external >>because of the number of I/O lines available, *and* it's still not fast >>enough to handle the counters), but are they available yet? And can it= be >>programmed using a standard PIC programmer? > >Supposedly they're sampling now (October) and full production in Q4. >Programming doesn't look to be by a "standard" PIC programmer (like a >PICMaster or something). Parallax however is offering a programmer/ICE = for >$249. That's pretty cool assuming it's a full speed ICE for that price. > >You *can* get away with overclocking PICs quite a lot. I've heard that >32MHz on the 20MHz parts is pretty solid, but that 40MHz is a little >twitchy. Even if you overclock the PICs they still divide by four. To run a PIC = at the speed of the SX part (when programmed to the no divide mode) you = would have to run them at 200mhz! >>WSI makes a *very* fast processor that runs at 100mhz - at one clock = per >>instruction, and can do multiple things on each clock, but of coarse = no-one >>sells the processor but WSI (they're only interested in quantity = orders), >>and you have to buy their custom hardware to program it. > >Word has it that Western Design Center (the guys that own the IP for the >6502) have a fully synthesizable 6502 core in VHDL and Verilog. = Depending >on the process it's been run at up to 173MHz... :-) Wow! >>How is the GAL6001 programmed? Must you buy a custom programmer from >>Lattice? (I've never had need to play with PALs, GALs, just an FPLA = many >>years ago, and then just as an address decoder) > >I'm trying to figure that out. :-/ Lattice is big on their ISP (in = circuit >programmable) stuff, which is just a cable going from a few pins on a PC >parallel port to a header on your board. You can program all their = GALs, >Generic Digital Switches, and FPGA's from the same 5-wire bus. Pretty >slick. I'm not so sure about the 6001 and 6002 though. Might take a >stand-alone programmer. :-/ I suppose you could always just use a 2032 = or >something with the ISP cable, but I've never seen them available in = singles >for cheap. (like JDR) I went to there home page and have been looking at the isp parts. I'm wondering if you could program one of these to do the whole VG and eliminate any processor (Since my ZIP drive claims a 20mb transfer rate through the paralled port, I'm assuming I can talk to the VG at the 800k rate I believe I'm going to need. To bad, I wanted to use the serial port...) The parts are expensive, but if it was nearly the whole design it = wouldn't be so bad. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Sun Oct 5 17:12:33 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sun, 5 Oct 1997 17:11:49 -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, 5 Oct 1997 17:12:45 -0800 To: vectorlist From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: programmable logic Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist >The problem I have with going with the AVG design are the integrators >themselves. They can only zero'd, and not preset to any random value. >This makes it hard to emulate the Sega, Cinematronics and old Atari DVG >systems. If I were to go with an analog design, I'd be tempted to use the >Cinematronics design. It gets around a lot of the problems of the >integrator. True, but remember the trick about the slew rates on the WG and Amplifone color monitors... That Atari method of needing to zero the integrators to get to the center point kinda forces you to return to the center of the screen, so you tend not to have the big delta's of a parallel load (like Sega) which the WG and Amplifones can't keep up with. You can get around it by ordering your display list carefully though... >I like the digital design for a couple of reasons: > >1) You never have to worry about lines meeting up. All the analog designs >use critically time vector lengths to line up correctly, and they never >really line up exactly. Yup, although I think Atari's AVG is pretty good. The Vectrex (by contrast) is pretty bad, but it's going from an 8-bit DAC though too... >2) This might be over kill, but by using somewhere between 2 and 4 meg of >ROM (or possibly RAM) as table lookups between the counters and the DACs, >you can do all the pincussioning and linearity control digitally. So it's >a lot of ROM, but ROMs are not *that* expensive, and it's not like I'm >going into high quantity production. And once again it allows you to set >the *excact* pincussioning and linearity needed by the monitor, no >drifting, ever. That would be cool. I decided to cut the size of the Sega Multigame PCB and just use a single 27C040. It's only $6 from JDR... No worth the boardspace and decode logic to support '010's and '020's... >My design differs a bit from the Atari DVG and the Sega (though I haven't >fully deciphered the Sega) in that I've designed the Bresenham's algorithm >into some really simple hardware. The catch is that register values must be >pre-calculated by the PC, an option Atari and Sega didn't have. (Since >they were both background VGs and didn't have there own processor, to speak >of.) I control the line draw speed on a clock by clock basis to assure all >angles are drawn at the same speed. The TTL design looks very workable but >uses something like 20 ICs! (Why are all TTL devices only 4 bits!) That's pretty cool. You know, the TI 34010 graphics processor had some hardware instructions that made Bresenham's a snap. It was damn fast too-- plus dual-port DRAM control... Too bad it's obsoleted. :-( >Most video cards with built in line draw use the bresenham algorithm, since >there is no rounding error regardless of the line line, unlike the clocking >method used by Atari (though it's pretty miniscule). Yeah, still though, even with 10bits of D/A I think even the slight errors in Atari's method is probably pretty small compared to what can be resolved on the display. >Even if you overclock the PICs they still divide by four. To run a PIC at >the speed of the SX part (when programmed to the no divide mode) you would >have to run them at 200mhz! True. I dunno what kinda MIPS you're after. [ISP] >I went to there home page and have been looking at the isp parts. I'm >wondering if you could program one of these to do the whole VG and >eliminate any processor (Since my ZIP drive claims a 20mb transfer rate >through the paralled port, I'm assuming I can talk to the VG at the 800k >rate I believe I'm going to need. To bad, I wanted to use the serial >port...) Guts-iest move I ever saw, Mav. :-) Are you planning on using the ECP or EPP (or whatever the hell they're called) modes? I always thought that the "stock" parallel port was limited to around 100-150Kbytes/sec. (Maybe that was with an older processor driving it though...) I decided to use an auto-incrementing counter into my VRAM array for loading memory off the ISA bus. Just like the Super Nintendo. :-) (/WR auto-increments the memory pointer to the next address in VRAM.) >The parts are expensive, but if it was nearly the whole design it wouldn't >be so bad. You can get 2032's and 1016's pretty cheap in quantity, but I think the onesy-twosy stuff if steeper. The only time I was looking at them was to redo the Tempest vector generator in a single device. The main problem was the number of IO's. There was plenty of gates on even really small devices, but I ran out of I/O pins. :-/ Then again, I was trying to accomodate the 12 bit datapaths for the SRAMs still. You don't want to integrate SRAM cells in the FPGA. Eats WAY too much space. :-) As an aside, Cypress (I think it's Cypress) makes some 8-bit counters with preset and clear. (Kind-of a 74193 on steroids.) Might be hard to just buy off the shelf though. -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Sun Oct 5 17:35:56 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Sun, 5 Oct 1997 17:35:53 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Subject: Re: programmable logic To: vectorlist Date: Sun, 5 Oct 1997 19:44:18 -0600 (MDT) From: "Kurt Mahan" In-Reply-To: from "Clay Cowgill" at Oct 5, 97 05:12:45 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Message-ID: <343842720.4912 > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Length: 946 Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist > That's pretty cool. You know, the TI 34010 graphics processor had some > hardware instructions that made Bresenham's a snap. It was damn fast too-- > plus dual-port DRAM control... Too bad it's obsoleted. :-( Well, sort of.. Last time I checked you can still buy the chip, you just can't get any tech support, etc.. (and they aren't fixing any of the bugs).. Last time I checked Wms was still using it.. (yes, I wrote a lot of 34010 asm.. :) The chip wasn't THAT fast though. The only place that the chip's graphics instructions were used (as I remember) was in the diagnostics.. But it sure had a lot of other cool features.. Check out the interrupts as they're tied to the screen subsystem.. Kurt /* * This version of Kurt Mahan is currently being evaluated. Words he speaks * are those of him only and not those of Novell or anybody else. * * Novell Java Technologies R&D Group * * Kurt Mahan * kmahan */ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Oct 6 08:23:13 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 08:22:40 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 10:22:06 -0500 (CDT) From: X-Sender: jwelser@piglet.cc.utexas.edu To: vectorlist Subject: TECH: Amplifone Q's Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist It was my first weekend in my new house (that I wasn't moving stuff in) so I was able to fix/try to fix a few games. The good news: My Star Wars now works perfectly (..and there was much rejoycing...yea, yea) The bad news: The Amplifone in my Quantum is really sick. I replaced the following on the HV board: HV transformer, BU406D, 7824, 7924, electrolytic caps. I still get NO HV whatsoever. The deflection board seems good (I can hear clatter in the neck, AND the spot killer seems to be operating normally -- a little pulse when the game gets turned on, but then it goes off) The wierd part of it all is that the tube NEVER sparks, crackles, etc when I discharge it to disconnect the HV connection. It never sparks when I discharge it to re-connect the HV connection. In every monitor I've worked on, I've always been able to get some kind of spark/snap/whatever when I went to discharge it (even when it had just been sitting there, with the HV connection disconnected for a while....There also NO glow from the back of the neck (I even looked for thse sparks and glow at night.) Does this sound like a bad tube? There is no high-pitched whine from the HV transformer but there isn't from the WG HV transformers either, so I don't know if that is normal or not. I haven't checked voltages on the HV board yet (Remember, it was night time, and poking around on a HV board in the dark, while the monitor is on, is not my idea of a good time!) but will do that today. Any help would be appreciated...Thanks in advance! Joe BTW: Has anybody tried using the NTE cross for the SK part that is listed on Jess's page as a replacement for the HV diode in the GO-5? I don't think there is a place in town that sells SK parts, and I'd rather not mail order (I want my diode now, NOW!) ------------------------------------------------------------------ Joseph J. Welser jwelser Design Engineer -- Crystal Semiconductor Corporation Ph.D. Student in E.E. -- University of Texas at Austin Work: jwelser P.O. Box 17847; Austin, TX 78760 ------------------------------------------------------------------ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Oct 6 08:43:05 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 08:43:04 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 11:42:43 -0400 (EDT) From: "Christopher X. Candreva" To: vectorlist Subject: Re: TECH: Amplifone Q's In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist On Mon, 6 Oct 1997 jwelser wrote: > BTW: Has anybody tried using the NTE cross for the SK part that is > listed on Jess's page as a replacement for the HV diode in the GO-5? > I don't think there is a place in town that sells SK parts, and I'd > rather not mail order (I want my diode now, NOW!) As the person who found the crosses in the first place: While I used the SK part and haven't used the NTE: 1) NTE's web site brings up 527A when searching on either SK7333 OR H1812 (the original part in the Electrohome) 2) The part I actually used was an RCA SK series. It came from RCA in a sealed back, RCA logo on it, and the bag had both SK7333 and 527A on it. So while nothing is life is certain, I would say it's a good bet it will work. Just be sure you insulate it sufficently ! ========================================================== Chris Candreva -- chris -- (914) 967-7816 WestNet Internet Services of Westchester http://www.westnet.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Oct 6 08:46:27 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 08:46:26 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Posted-Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 08:46:02 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <3.0.32.19971006104615.00981240 > X-Sender: mmatelsk X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Mon, 06 Oct 1997 10:46:17 -0500 To: vectorlist From: Mit_Matelske (Mit Matelske) Subject: Re: TECH: Amplifone Q's Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist At 10:22 AM 10/6/97 -0500, you wrote: > > It was my first weekend in my new house (that I wasn't >moving stuff in) so I was able to fix/try to fix a few games. > > The good news: My Star Wars now works perfectly (..and >there was much rejoycing...yea, yea) > > The bad news: The Amplifone in my Quantum is really sick. >I replaced the following on the HV board: HV transformer, BU406D, >7824, 7924, electrolytic caps. I still get NO HV whatsoever. The >deflection board seems good (I can hear clatter in the neck, AND the >spot killer seems to be operating normally -- a little pulse when >the game gets turned on, but then it goes off) > > The wierd part of it all is that the tube NEVER sparks, >crackles, etc when I discharge it to disconnect the HV connection. >It never sparks when I discharge it to re-connect the HV connection. >In every monitor I've worked on, I've always been able to get some >kind of spark/snap/whatever when I went to discharge it (even when it >had just been sitting there, with the HV connection disconnected for >a while....There also NO glow from the back of the neck (I even looked for >thse sparks and glow at night.) Does this sound like a bad tube? There >is no high-pitched whine from the HV transformer but there isn't from the >WG HV transformers either, so I don't know if that is normal or not. > > I haven't checked voltages on the HV board yet (Remember, it >was night time, and poking around on a HV board in the dark, while >the monitor is on, is not my idea of a good time!) but will do that >today. > > Any help would be appreciated...Thanks in advance! > >Joe > >BTW: Has anybody tried using the NTE cross for the SK part that is >listed on Jess's page as a replacement for the HV diode in the GO-5? >I don't think there is a place in town that sells SK parts, and I'd >rather not mail order (I want my diode now, NOW!) > >------------------------------------------------------------------ >Joseph J. Welser jwelser >Design Engineer -- Crystal Semiconductor Corporation >Ph.D. Student in E.E. -- University of Texas at Austin >Work: jwelser >P.O. Box 17847; Austin, TX 78760 >------------------------------------------------------------------ > > Joe- I have had many tubes that had bad HV sections and never discharged at all. I know that tubes are suppose to absorb (?) a charge from the air, just sitting there, but I have not experienced that yet... I am assuming you have another Amplifone, why don't you just try your HV board in that monitor... Mit From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Oct 6 08:52:53 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 08:52:48 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 11:52:28 -0400 (EDT) From: "Christopher X. Candreva" To: vectorlist Subject: Re: TECH: Amplifone Q's In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist On Mon, 6 Oct 1997, Christopher X. Candreva wrote: > 2) The part I actually used was an RCA SK series. It came from RCA in a > sealed back, RCA logo on it, and the bag had both SK7333 and 527A on it. Of course, it came in a sealed BAG. -Chris ========================================================== Chris Candreva -- chris -- (914) 967-7816 WestNet Internet Services of Westchester http://www.westnet.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Oct 6 08:58:13 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 08:58:08 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: From: "Ozdemir, Steve" To: "'vectorlist > Subject: FPGA Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 08:56:39 -0700 X-Mailer: Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.995.52 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist G'day Clay (and folks), A while back I looked at putting the whole Cinematronics board onto a single FPGA. However two obstacles that I ran into were the RAM and the I/O pins. In your letter down below, Clay, you said that SRAM chewed up alot of the FPGA. Does that hold for dynamic RAM like the 256 words by 12 bytes of RAM on the Cinematronics board? With all the digital video output, control panel input and sound card interface, I also felt that I'd run out of I/O pins even with the largest package (4020, at the time). Right now, I'm looking at duplicating the Cinematronics Exercisor with a FPGA and making a universal translator for all Cinematronics control panels. These tasks seem better suited for FPGA. Much more gate intensive rather than register/RAM/IO. Steven S Ozdemir sso ps - These PIC intrigue me....how do they compare to FPGA for quick/easy implementation? >---------- >From: Clay Cowgill[SMTP:clay ] >Sent: Sunday, October 05, 1997 6:12 PM >To: vectorlist >Subject: Re: programmable logic > >>The problem I have with going with the AVG design are the integrators >>themselves. They can only zero'd, and not preset to any random value. >>This makes it hard to emulate the Sega, Cinematronics and old Atari DVG >>systems. If I were to go with an analog design, I'd be tempted to use the >>Cinematronics design. It gets around a lot of the problems of the >>integrator. > >True, but remember the trick about the slew rates on the WG and Amplifone >color monitors... That Atari method of needing to zero the integrators to >get to the center point kinda forces you to return to the center of the >screen, so you tend not to have the big delta's of a parallel load (like >Sega) which the WG and Amplifones can't keep up with. You can get around >it by ordering your display list carefully though... > >>I like the digital design for a couple of reasons: >> >>1) You never have to worry about lines meeting up. All the analog designs >>use critically time vector lengths to line up correctly, and they never >>really line up exactly. > >Yup, although I think Atari's AVG is pretty good. The Vectrex (by >contrast) is pretty bad, but it's going from an 8-bit DAC though too... > >>2) This might be over kill, but by using somewhere between 2 and 4 meg of >>ROM (or possibly RAM) as table lookups between the counters and the DACs, >>you can do all the pincussioning and linearity control digitally. So it's >>a lot of ROM, but ROMs are not *that* expensive, and it's not like I'm >>going into high quantity production. And once again it allows you to set >>the *excact* pincussioning and linearity needed by the monitor, no >>drifting, ever. > >That would be cool. I decided to cut the size of the Sega Multigame PCB >and just use a single 27C040. It's only $6 from JDR... No worth the >boardspace and decode logic to support '010's and '020's... > >>My design differs a bit from the Atari DVG and the Sega (though I haven't >>fully deciphered the Sega) in that I've designed the Bresenham's algorithm >>into some really simple hardware. The catch is that register values must be >>pre-calculated by the PC, an option Atari and Sega didn't have. (Since >>they were both background VGs and didn't have there own processor, to speak >>of.) I control the line draw speed on a clock by clock basis to assure all >>angles are drawn at the same speed. The TTL design looks very workable but >>uses something like 20 ICs! (Why are all TTL devices only 4 bits!) > >That's pretty cool. You know, the TI 34010 graphics processor had some >hardware instructions that made Bresenham's a snap. It was damn fast too-- >plus dual-port DRAM control... Too bad it's obsoleted. :-( > >>Most video cards with built in line draw use the bresenham algorithm, since >>there is no rounding error regardless of the line line, unlike the clocking >>method used by Atari (though it's pretty miniscule). > >Yeah, still though, even with 10bits of D/A I think even the slight errors >in Atari's method is probably pretty small compared to what can be resolved >on the display. > >>Even if you overclock the PICs they still divide by four. To run a PIC at >>the speed of the SX part (when programmed to the no divide mode) you would >>have to run them at 200mhz! > >True. I dunno what kinda MIPS you're after. > >[ISP] > >>I went to there home page and have been looking at the isp parts. I'm >>wondering if you could program one of these to do the whole VG and >>eliminate any processor (Since my ZIP drive claims a 20mb transfer rate >>through the paralled port, I'm assuming I can talk to the VG at the 800k >>rate I believe I'm going to need. To bad, I wanted to use the serial >>port...) > >Guts-iest move I ever saw, Mav. :-) Are you planning on using the ECP or >EPP (or whatever the hell they're called) modes? I always thought that the >"stock" parallel port was limited to around 100-150Kbytes/sec. (Maybe that >was with an older processor driving it though...) > >I decided to use an auto-incrementing counter into my VRAM array for >loading memory off the ISA bus. Just like the Super Nintendo. :-) (/WR >auto-increments the memory pointer to the next address in VRAM.) > >>The parts are expensive, but if it was nearly the whole design it wouldn't >>be so bad. > >You can get 2032's and 1016's pretty cheap in quantity, but I think the >onesy-twosy stuff if steeper. The only time I was looking at them was to >redo the Tempest vector generator in a single device. The main problem was >the number of IO's. There was plenty of gates on even really small >devices, but I ran out of I/O pins. :-/ Then again, I was trying to >accomodate the 12 bit datapaths for the SRAMs still. You don't want to >integrate SRAM cells in the FPGA. Eats WAY too much space. :-) > >As an aside, Cypress (I think it's Cypress) makes some 8-bit counters with >preset and clear. (Kind-of a 74193 on steroids.) Might be hard to just >buy off the shelf though. > >-Clay > >Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager >_______________________________________________________________________ >/\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay >\/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ > > > From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Oct 6 09:04:13 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 09:04:12 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: 06 Oct 1997 12:00 EDT To: vectorlist From: "Gregg Woodcock" Subject: re:TECH: Amplifone Q's Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist In message "TECH: Amplifone Q's", you write: > The wierd part of it all is that the tube NEVER sparks, >crackles, etc when I discharge it to disconnect the HV connection. >It never sparks when I discharge it to re-connect the HV connection. >In every monitor I've worked on, I've always been able to get some >kind of spark/snap/whatever when I went to discharge it (even when it >had just been sitting there, with the HV connection disconnected for >a while....There also NO glow from the back of the neck (I even looked for >thse sparks and glow at night.) Does this sound like a bad tube? There >is no high-pitched whine from the HV transformer but there isn't from the >WG HV transformers either, so I don't know if that is normal or not. Well the HV is totally unrelated to the heater as far as charges go. If you aren't getting heater then I believe there is a separate fuse just for taht 6.3VAC which you should be able to check. Fix that first since it should be simple. As far as the HV, there is definitely a problem. Again, check the fuses but it probably isn't there. Next check the wires connected to the focus and brightness adjustments (under those rubber things); these are almost always marginal and with all the wiggling putting in that new transformer one of them probably broke. Other than that, you'll have to check over the whole HV section. >BTW: Has anybody tried using the NTE cross for the SK part that is >listed on Jess's page as a replacement for the HV diode in the GO-5? >I don't think there is a place in town that sells SK parts, and I'd >rather not mail order (I want my diode now, NOW!) I have had 2 on order for 3 weeks but they haven't come in yet. I have no doubt that the NTE part will be just fine; why wouldn't it? -- THANX...Gregg day 972.684.7380 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 Mon Oct 6 09:51:49 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 09:51:39 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: Paul Kahler Message-Id: <199710061651.MAA20268@saturn.acs.oakland.edu> Subject: Re: FPGA To: vectorlist Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 12:51:27 -0500 (EDT) In-Reply-To: from "Ozdemir, Steve" at Oct 6, 97 08:56:39 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 > G'day Clay (and folks), > > A while back I looked at putting the whole Cinematronics board onto a > single FPGA. However two obstacles that I ran into were the RAM and the > I/O pins. In your letter down below, Clay, you said that SRAM chewed up > alot of the FPGA. Does that hold for dynamic RAM like the 256 words by > 12 bytes of RAM on the Cinematronics board? > > With all the digital video output, control panel input and sound card > interface, I also felt that I'd run out of I/O pins even with the > largest package (4020, at the time). > > Right now, I'm looking at duplicating the Cinematronics Exercisor with a > FPGA and making a universal translator for all Cinematronics control > panels. These tasks seem better suited for FPGA. Much more gate > intensive rather than register/RAM/IO. > > Steven S Ozdemir > sso The Cinematronics CPU has 256x12 bits of SRAM with separate Din & Dout. Zonn probably has the know-how to redesign the ROM interface to work with only 1 ROM which would reduce the number of pins by 8, so you'd need ummm 12x2 (vectors) + 6 (sound) + 15+8 (rom bus) + 24(DIP/CTRLS) = about 77 IOs. If you keep the IO multiplexing off the chip (which could work with the control panel FPGA), you'd need about 18 less or aproximately 60 IOs. Hmmmm YUK. If you could find A/Ds with built in latches, you could multiplex the XY data to get down near 50 IO. The rest of the board is about 125 74xx parts. What would be really nice is a VHDL implementation - wasn't someone working on that? Just more Paul babble... -- ___ __ _ _ _ | \ / \ | | | || | 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 Mon Oct 6 10:00:06 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 10:00:05 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Posted-Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 12:59:07 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <3.0.32.19971006115922.00922db0 > X-Sender: mmatelsk X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Mon, 06 Oct 1997 11:59:23 -0500 To: vectorlist From: Mit_Matelske (Mit Matelske) Subject: re:TECH: Amplifone Q's Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist > >Well the HV is totally unrelated to the heater as far as charges go. >If you aren't getting heater then I believe there is a separate >fuse just for taht 6.3VAC which you should be able to check. Fix that >first since it should be simple. > If remeber right, the 6.3VAC comes directly off of the power supply... I think ???? Mit From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Oct 6 10:07:38 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 10:07:37 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: zonn@concentric.net (Zonn) To: vectorlist Subject: Re: TECH: Amplifone Q's Date: Mon, 06 Oct 1997 17:09:43 GMT Message-ID: <343a17d5.167409666 > References: In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist On 06 Oct 1997 12:00 EDT, you wrote: >In message "TECH: Amplifone Q's", you write: >> The wierd part of it all is that the tube NEVER sparks, >>crackles, etc when I discharge it to disconnect the HV connection. >>It never sparks when I discharge it to re-connect the HV connection. >>In every monitor I've worked on, I've always been able to get some >>kind of spark/snap/whatever when I went to discharge it (even when it >>had just been sitting there, with the HV connection disconnected for >>a while....There also NO glow from the back of the neck (I even looked = for >>thse sparks and glow at night.) Does this sound like a bad tube? = There >>is no high-pitched whine from the HV transformer but there isn't from = the >>WG HV transformers either, so I don't know if that is normal or not. > >Well the HV is totally unrelated to the heater as far as charges go. >If you aren't getting heater then I believe there is a separate >fuse just for taht 6.3VAC which you should be able to check. Fix that >first since it should be simple. Well on an Amplifone the HV and heater are very related. The Amplifone is like the Sega X/Y montitor in that they drive the heater filament from a winding on the HV transformer. So if your HV section is not working, = your your CRT heater won't glow. It seems to me that running the heater off the HV transformer is just = more loading on the transformer. I guess the new Wintrons are pretty bullet proof, but for the old (still working) RED transformers it might be a = good idea to run the filament directly off one tap of the 25v transformer, through a diode and a couple of resistors (for details follow the = schematic of the WG X/Y monitor which does exactly this) instead of the HV transformer. Does your HV section still have one of the red HV transformers? If so, it's probably bad. If it's the new Wintron it's probably something else, make sure you = follow the wiring diagram very carefully, and that your using the newest wiring diagram (I guess when Wintron first came out with a replacement HV they = had the wiring diagram wrong, but that was a few years ago.) Don't know if I help much except to let you know that on an Amplifone, no heater glow usually means bad HV. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Oct 6 10:13:02 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 10:13:01 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 10:12:59 -0700 (PDT) From: aek (Al Kossow) To: vectorlist Subject: call from Wintron Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist just got a call from them, they said they had a unit fail, so there was going to be a few days delay before any of the Ampliphone HVTs go out.. From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Oct 6 10:32:45 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 10:32:25 -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, 6 Oct 1997 10:33:37 -0800 To: vectorlist From: Clay Cowgill Subject: Re: FPGA Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist >The Cinematronics CPU has 256x12 bits of SRAM with separate Din & Dout. >Zonn probably has the know-how to redesign the ROM interface to work >with only 1 ROM which would reduce the number of pins by 8, so you'd >need ummm 12x2 (vectors) + 6 (sound) + 15+8 (rom bus) + 24(DIP/CTRLS) >= about 77 IOs. If you keep the IO multiplexing off the chip (which >could work with the control panel FPGA), you'd need about 18 less or >aproximately 60 IOs. Hmmmm YUK. If you could find A/Ds with built in >latches, you could multiplex the XY data to get down near 50 IO. The >rest of the board is about 125 74xx parts. Ugggh. Boy, it's stuff like that that just kinda makes you want to make a functional equivalent instead. Then you get back into the debate that a 486/33 w/ motherboard is only about $50 and if you add in an ISA or Parallel Port Vector Generator card like Zonn and I are doing... ;-) >What would be really nice is a VHDL implementation - wasn't someone >working on that? I think Steve did that? Someone had a VHDL or Verilog model of it almost done. Was is Joe? -Clay Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager _______________________________________________________________________ /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Oct 6 10:38:24 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 10:38:22 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: <343922A1.75C2 > Date: Mon, 06 Oct 1997 11:40:49 -0600 From: Jess Askey X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: vectorlist Subject: Re: call from Wintron References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist Al Kossow wrote: > > just got a call from them, they said they had a unit fail, so there was going > to be a few days delay before any of the Ampliphone HVTs go out.. Uh Oh! :-0 I hope it was just a production flaw and not a design flaw. Im amazed at how hot my WinTron HVT runs, I wouldn't want to touch it very long. jess -- Jess M. Askey ************* My Page *************** ESLB/The Audio Analyst * http://magenta.com/havoc * 509 S. 2nd Street Unit B **********Pins/Vids For Sale ******** Laramie WY 82070 * http://magenta.com/havoc/game-spot * From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Oct 6 10:38:50 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 10:38:49 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-ID: From: "Ozdemir, Steve" To: "'vectorlist > Subject: RE: FPGA Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 10:37:11 -0700 X-Mailer: Microsoft Exchange Server Internet Mail Connector Version 4.0.995.52 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist G'day folks, I used Workview to capture the Cinematronics schematic. No ALU's in it yet. Never got around to trying to cram it into an actual device. The emulator work and the recent Cinematronics Exercisor work makes a Cinematronics FPGA kinda moot. Steven S Ozdemir sso >---------- >From: Clay Cowgill[SMTP:clay ] >Sent: Monday, October 06, 1997 11:33 AM >To: vectorlist >Subject: Re: FPGA > >>The Cinematronics CPU has 256x12 bits of SRAM with separate Din & Dout. >>Zonn probably has the know-how to redesign the ROM interface to work >>with only 1 ROM which would reduce the number of pins by 8, so you'd >>need ummm 12x2 (vectors) + 6 (sound) + 15+8 (rom bus) + 24(DIP/CTRLS) >>= about 77 IOs. If you keep the IO multiplexing off the chip (which >>could work with the control panel FPGA), you'd need about 18 less or >>aproximately 60 IOs. Hmmmm YUK. If you could find A/Ds with built in >>latches, you could multiplex the XY data to get down near 50 IO. The >>rest of the board is about 125 74xx parts. > >Ugggh. Boy, it's stuff like that that just kinda makes you want to make a >functional equivalent instead. Then you get back into the debate that a >486/33 w/ motherboard is only about $50 and if you add in an ISA or >Parallel Port Vector Generator card like Zonn and I are doing... ;-) > >>What would be really nice is a VHDL implementation - wasn't someone >>working on that? > >I think Steve did that? Someone had a VHDL or Verilog model of it almost >done. Was is Joe? > >-Clay > >Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager >_______________________________________________________________________ >/\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay >\/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/ > > > From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Oct 6 10:40:50 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 10:40:49 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: zonn@concentric.net (Zonn) To: vectorlist Subject: Re: FPGA Date: Mon, 06 Oct 1997 17:43:14 GMT Message-ID: <343e22fa.170264052 > References: In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist On Mon, 6 Oct 1997 10:33:37 -0800, you wrote: >>The Cinematronics CPU has 256x12 bits of SRAM with separate Din & Dout. >>Zonn probably has the know-how to redesign the ROM interface to work >>with only 1 ROM which would reduce the number of pins by 8, so you'd >>need ummm 12x2 (vectors) + 6 (sound) + 15+8 (rom bus) + 24(DIP/CTRLS) >>=3D about 77 IOs. If you keep the IO multiplexing off the chip (which >>could work with the control panel FPGA), you'd need about 18 less or >>aproximately 60 IOs. Hmmmm YUK. If you could find A/Ds with built in >>latches, you could multiplex the XY data to get down near 50 IO. The >>rest of the board is about 125 74xx parts. > >Ugggh. Boy, it's stuff like that that just kinda makes you want to make= a >functional equivalent instead. Then you get back into the debate that a >486/33 w/ motherboard is only about $50 and if you add in an ISA or >Parallel Port Vector Generator card like Zonn and I are doing... ;-) My thoughts exactly. You just post faster than me. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Oct 6 11:05:57 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 11:05:45 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Posted-Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 20:01:29 +0200 (MET DST) Message-Id: <3.0.32.19971006130524.0091b7b0 > X-Sender: mmatelsk X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Pro Version 3.0 (32) Date: Mon, 06 Oct 1997 13:05:25 -0500 To: vectorlist From: Mit_Matelske (Mit Matelske) Subject: Please bear with me... Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist OK boys, Bush league question of the week: What is the third lead on large radial capacitors for? I was revamping a my first Wells this weekend and was confused by this... Is it alright to replace the 4700 uf's on the d-board with caps that only have two leads? (I assume so, since two of the old leads go on the same mask) Thanks for putting up with me... Mit Matelske btw - Have any of ya'll played SW on mame? Impossible!! Thank God for the control yoke in the cockpit at home :) Maybe I just don't have the dexterity to use the arrow keys... From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Oct 6 11:23:27 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 11:23:25 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: zonn@concentric.net (Zonn) To: vectorlist Subject: Re: programmable logic Date: Mon, 06 Oct 1997 18:25:49 GMT Message-ID: <343f233f.170332308 > References: In-Reply-To: X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist On Sun, 5 Oct 1997 17:12:45 -0800, you wrote: >>The problem I have with going with the AVG design are the integrators >>themselves. They can only zero'd, and not preset to any random value. >>This makes it hard to emulate the Sega, Cinematronics and old Atari DVG >>systems. If I were to go with an analog design, I'd be tempted to use = the >>Cinematronics design. It gets around a lot of the problems of the >>integrator. > >True, but remember the trick about the slew rates on the WG and = Amplifone >color monitors... That Atari method of needing to zero the integrators = to >get to the center point kinda forces you to return to the center of the >screen, so you tend not to have the big delta's of a parallel load (like >Sega) which the WG and Amplifones can't keep up with. You can get = around >it by ordering your display list carefully though... Of course you can center a DVG anytime you like. But what you can't do with an Atari AVG is jump around the screen like the Cinematronics and = Sega games do. If you want to write your own games you can control the order = of your list, but if you want to run emulated games (more my goal) you don't have that kind of control. >>I like the digital design for a couple of reasons: >> >>1) You never have to worry about lines meeting up. All the analog = designs >>use critically time vector lengths to line up correctly, and they never >>really line up exactly. > >Yup, although I think Atari's AVG is pretty good. The Vectrex (by >contrast) is pretty bad, but it's going from an 8-bit DAC though too... I just picked up a Asteroids Caberet this weekend, and this is the first DVG game I own (well I have a non-working Omega Race) so I looked it over pretty carefully. It looks like they never did get the draw speed quite right since some angles are definitly brighter than others. But I really like the way the lines connect *perfectly*. You just can't get the = Tempest AVG to do that -- I'm talking perfect! Of course if you're controlling the vector time in software (using the = PIC) you could probably add fudge factors based on the length of the lines and get a better lineup than the AVG. >>2) This might be over kill, but by using somewhere between 2 and 4 meg = of >>ROM (or possibly RAM) as table lookups between the counters and the = DACs, >>you can do all the pincussioning and linearity control digitally. So = it's >>a lot of ROM, but ROMs are not *that* expensive, and it's not like I'm >>going into high quantity production. And once again it allows you to = set >>the *excact* pincussioning and linearity needed by the monitor, no >>drifting, ever. > >That would be cool. I decided to cut the size of the Sega Multigame PCB >and just use a single 27C040. It's only $6 from JDR... No worth the >boardspace and decode logic to support '010's and '020's... > >>My design differs a bit from the Atari DVG and the Sega (though I = haven't >>fully deciphered the Sega) in that I've designed the Bresenham's = algorithm >>into some really simple hardware. The catch is that register values = must be >>pre-calculated by the PC, an option Atari and Sega didn't have. (Since >>they were both background VGs and didn't have there own processor, to = speak >>of.) I control the line draw speed on a clock by clock basis to assure= all >>angles are drawn at the same speed. The TTL design looks very workable= but >>uses something like 20 ICs! (Why are all TTL devices only 4 bits!) > >That's pretty cool. You know, the TI 34010 graphics processor had some >hardware instructions that made Bresenham's a snap. It was damn fast = too-- >plus dual-port DRAM control... Too bad it's obsoleted. :-( > >>Most video cards with built in line draw use the bresenham algorithm, = since >>there is no rounding error regardless of the line line, unlike the = clocking >>method used by Atari (though it's pretty miniscule). > >Yeah, still though, even with 10bits of D/A I think even the slight = errors >in Atari's method is probably pretty small compared to what can be = resolved >on the display. Yeah, I doubt if you could even measure the error. The thing about the Breseham algorithm is that it appears to be less complicated, and I = believe I can control the draw speed precisely so that the intensity for any = angle will remain the same. But the increment test registers must be pre-calculated in software or the design would end up be much more complicated than the simple *step rate* registers used by Atari. > >>Even if you overclock the PICs they still divide by four. To run a PIC= at >>the speed of the SX part (when programmed to the no divide mode) you = would >>have to run them at 200mhz! > >True. I dunno what kinda MIPS you're after. Using PIC instructions I was able to write a Bresenham line draw loop in about 12 instructions. So if I want to drive the WG monitor at it's = rated slew rate I figured I needed to upate a 10bit DAC at a 3.33mhz rate, so I need a CPU with a 25ns instruction time. That would be a standard PIC running a 160mhz. The new SX could do it with a 50mhz clock since it can run an instruction on every clock (no internal divide by 4), giving it a 20ns instruction time. It's very tempting to just wait for this processor... >[ISP] > >>I went to there home page and have been looking at the isp parts. I'm >>wondering if you could program one of these to do the whole VG and >>eliminate any processor (Since my ZIP drive claims a 20mb transfer rate >>through the paralled port, I'm assuming I can talk to the VG at the = 800k >>rate I believe I'm going to need. To bad, I wanted to use the serial >>port...) > >Guts-iest move I ever saw, Mav. :-) Are you planning on using the ECP = or >EPP (or whatever the hell they're called) modes? I always thought that = the >"stock" parallel port was limited to around 100-150Kbytes/sec. (Maybe = that >was with an older processor driving it though...) I'm not sure what the speed is, or how ZIP calcuted their spec, but currently this is the unknown part of the equations and I'm not going to = go ahead with any design until I figure out how I'm going to get the data to it fast enough. My caclulation was on worst case data using a standard DVG. 10 bit starting and ending X/Y data, and a 12bit color - 800k per second (wince!). That assumes 500 vectors 40 times a second. On the Cinematronics games most only generate around 200 vectors 38 times a second, Sundance being the largest at 430+ vectors per frame. >I decided to use an auto-incrementing counter into my VRAM array for >loading memory off the ISA bus. Just like the Super Nintendo. :-) (/WR >auto-increments the memory pointer to the next address in VRAM.) > >>The parts are expensive, but if it was nearly the whole design it = wouldn't >>be so bad. > >You can get 2032's and 1016's pretty cheap in quantity, but I think the >onesy-twosy stuff if steeper. The only time I was looking at them was = to >redo the Tempest vector generator in a single device. The main problem = was >the number of IO's. There was plenty of gates on even really small >devices, but I ran out of I/O pins. :-/ Then again, I was trying to >accomodate the 12 bit datapaths for the SRAMs still. You don't want to >integrate SRAM cells in the FPGA. Eats WAY too much space. :-) Yeah, to save a lot of I/O I was thinking of using seperate counters and only running the clock pulse lines out of the isp1016. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Oct 6 11:34:22 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 11:34:20 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) From: zonn@concentric.net (Zonn) To: vectorlist Subject: Re: Please bear with me... Date: Mon, 06 Oct 1997 18:36:44 GMT Message-ID: <34412f59.173430559 > References: <3.0.32.19971006130524.0091b7b0 > In-Reply-To: <3.0.32.19971006130524.0091b7b0 > X-Mailer: Forte Agent 1.5/32.451 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist On Mon, 06 Oct 1997 13:05:25 -0500, you wrote: > > >OK boys, > >Bush league question of the week: > >What is the third lead on large radial capacitors for? >I was revamping a my first Wells this weekend and was >confused by this... > >Is it alright to replace the 4700 uf's on the d-board >with caps that only have two leads? (I assume so, since >two of the old leads go on the same mask) No problem, the third lead is a no connect (I believe, but won't swear to it). I'm sure it's only there to keep the capacitors from being = installed backwards, and maybe for a little extra mechanical support. -Zonn From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Oct 6 11:46:19 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 11:46:11 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 13:45:42 -0500 (CDT) From: X-Sender: jwelser@piglet.cc.utexas.edu To: vectorlist Subject: Re: FPGA In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist On Mon, 6 Oct 1997, Clay Cowgill wrote: > I think Steve did that? Someone had a VHDL or Verilog model of it almost > done. Was is Joe? It was me. I've got one done in Verilog. I still haven't tested it though, so I'm not guaranteeing anything. I'll try to put it in a public place (my lame web page, for instance) in the next few days if anyone's interested. (BTW: Before anyone asks, I'm NOT doing a version in VHDL. Masochism like that is definitely NOT my style....) Joe From goonsquad.spies.com!owner-vectorlist Mon Oct 6 13:07:32 1997 Return-Path: Received: by goonsquad.spies.com via sendmail with stdio id for vectorlist-outgoing; Mon, 6 Oct 1997 13:07:19 -0700 (PDT) (Smail-3.2 1996-Jul-4 #5 built 1996-Dec-13) Message-Id: Date: 06 Oct 1997 16:03 EDT To: vectorlist From: "Gregg Woodcock" Subject: re:Please bear with me... Sender: owner-vectorlist Precedence: bulk Reply-To: vectorlist In message "Please bear with me...", you write: >Is it alright to replace the 4700 uf's on the d-board >with caps that only have two leads? (I assume so, since >two of the old leads go on the same mask) The only caps with 3 leads are those that are both radial and axial (i.e. two of the leads are the same lead just on different ends of the body). The reason there are 2 holes for one of the leads is that depending on where you get your caps they will have either a small diameter (hole closest to the other hole) or large diamtere (hole farthest from the other hole). Get it? -- THANX...Gregg day 972.684.7380 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 becau