Re: Sega Multigame

>Clay,
>
>I'm not trying to rain on your parade here, but maybe you should hold off your
>release until you can make it a TRUE multi-game. I mean, what do you really
>buy from doing the menu system if you still have to do manual switching of the
>sound boards?

Good input, this is my rationale:

1) I can produce the CPU daughtercard now. (Something about "bird in the
hand worth two in the bush"... :-)

2) Creaping Featuritus was making the previous design too unwieldy for me
to get it all done.

3) Other people had expressed interest in the sound board tinkerings, so
they might well do better than I.

4) An all in one would probably run up to the "close to $200" range on a
per-unit basis when you add in the control router, the speech support
stuff, and the audio mux. With a global market of this thing at about 20
units, I don't want to scare people off.

>The IDEAL multigame would
>
>1) fit in a standard SegaXY cage
>2) combind the CPU/EPROM and SPEECH board into one board, leaving room for 2 XY
>boards and 3 sound boards (Maybe the daughterboard you already have could be
>expanded to included the speech circuitry?)
>3) Have some sort of "banking" of the sound boards (relays, whatever). Maybe
>you could make a run of backplane boards that support some sort of switching?
>4) a universal controller board for the control panel.

I agree with all these in theory. #1 is kinda nebulous-- there's some
stuff that I think will work better outside the card cage (control router,
audio mux, monitor adapter, etc.) #2 -- sounds good, but it'd probably
quadruple the PCB size which makes it cost prohibitive for me. #3 -- sorta
what I was thinking. #4 -- right, I mentioned that one I just don't have
the time/money to run that design at the same time.

>This, along with your menu system, would allow a single cage system, with no
>need to do any board swapping whatsoever, and a person could use a universal
>control panel that supports all games. Completely user-friendly and idiot
>proof.

Yup. That would be cool. I think that's the final goal, but it's just too
much for me to bite off. The "ID" outputs from the daughtercard will let
you hook up the control switcher, and a relay/mux satellite board for the
sound cards at a later time.

For me, I think I'll remove the speech board for now and plug in all the
sound boards. Then I'll either use an analog mux driven by the ID lines
for selecting the right sound output, or I'll wire in a Radio-Shack rotary
switch. ;-)

Tac/Scan and Star Trek share the Universal Sound board, so that's nice...

>I guess what I'm saying is from a customer perspective, what you're providing
>isn't enough to convince me to change my current game swapping technique.

That's cool. Not trying to twist your arm. This is definately a more
hacker level kit than the StarWars/ESB stuff. But then again, I think this
list spends a lot more time in "geek mode" than RGVAC. ;-)

>I'd personally wait longer to have a complete multigame system than to have a
>partial one now.

Good by me-- I know that if I wait to do "everything" all at once it'll
never get done though. ;-)

>Just my $.02. You don't want to re-live doing two runs like you did with the
>ESB kit, do you? ;-)

Actually, that worked pretty well. The first stuff went out and feedback
happened that prompted me to simplify some things and add some features.
Just the usual product-development cycle happening.

For what it's worth, I'll take a look at a little Audio-mux to handle the
sound cards. Maybe it makes sense to glue it on the control-mapper board.
You also have to remember that half my interest in the G-80 is in writing a
new game or two for it, and the CPU daughtercard gives me an easy method to
make it available...

-Clay

Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager
_______________________________________________________________________
/\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com
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Received on Mon Oct 6 16:58:24 1997