Development stuff...

Mr. Genius here (me) took yesterday off from work and forgot that the Sega
Multigame boards were coming FedEx, so I missed 'em. *Duhhhhh*... I
should have them today.

On to the real reason I was writing this. As I was driving around
yesterday I thought of another little PCB I want to do, but since it might
be of "general" interest I figure I'd bring it up here...

I have this major hacked-up method of testing boards involving aligator
clips and a PC power supply and some card edge connectors. I decided it
would be nice to make a little adapter that has 2 or three card-edge
connectors on it with every line brought out on a heavy trace on the PCB
and terminating at a test-point post. On the same PCB have a connector for
a "PC" type switching power supply and a "generic" video connector, control
connector, and Audio connector with a little audio amp.

Maybe something like:

     AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
   +------------------+
   | |B
   | |B
   | |B
   | |B
   | |B
   | PWR RGB CONT AUD |B
   +------------------+

A = 56 pin .156" connector
B = 44/36 pin .156" connector
PWR = .156" power connector post to match PC-AT power supply
RGB = DB-9 pin connector
CONT = DB-25 pin connector (two joysticks, six buttons, p1/p2 start, coins, etc)
AUD = Speaker and Line-level outputs

So you just plug it into the cardedge of a board and use little
alligator-clip jumpers to connect your voltages, controls, and signals
where needed. It's not exactly an "innovation" or anything, I just think
it'd be a much nicer (for me anyway) way of testing "unknown" boards.

Actually... Now that I think about it... I could put a couple of headers
in the middle of the board and allow for little "personality" modules to be
plugged in. (So you could have half a dozen "common" adapters-- Nintendo
Donkey Kong Type, Konami type, Capcom 56 pin, etc. for quick tests that
would hook up the video, controls, and power automatically...)

Ehhh, just a thought. :-)

-Clay

Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager
_______________________________________________________________________
/\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com
\/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/
Received on Wed Nov 26 11:42:36 1997