Re: Cine sound questions

On Mon, 1 Mar 1999 02:12:20 -0600 (CST), Alan McCormick <henson@terracom.net>
wrote:

>Here's a question I'd like to throw out to the Cinematronics gurus
>(Paul/Kurt, Zonn, etc)
>
>I'm using a modified version of Retrocade to "test" some Cine sound boards
>since I don't have a working Cine setup. It pumps the output of the sound
>port to the parallel port.
>
>The interface looks like this...
>
>Parallel port data00-->Cine sound data0
>Parallel port data01-->Cine sound data1
>Parallel port data02-->Cine sound data2
>Parallel port data03-->Cine sound data3
>Parallel port data04-->Cine sound data4
>Parallel port data07-->Cine sound data7

>
>I do have a noninverting buffer to isolate the soundboard from my parallel
>port just in case something goes funky on the soundboard side.

I have a very similar cable, but left off the buffer. (I like to live on the
edge!)

>My first question: The game boards I have only use sound data lines
>0,1,2,3,4 & 7. Do any of the other Cine vector games have a different
>layout?

All sound boards use this same layout, since all games use the same CPU.

There are some major differences in how these output are used though. Many of
the boards extended the number of outputs by attaching a shift register to a
couple of the I/O lines.

>Why did they skip bits 5 & 6?

Bit 5 is used to reset the coin counter's R/S flip flop, and bit six is used as
either the High/Low intensity bit, or the Strobe in grayscale/color bit,
depending upon the monitor.

>Secondly, I was told by another collector that WOTW used a slightly modified
>sound board from another game. What was the game and what was the mod?

The game was StarCastle and the full PCB cut & jumper mod to create a WOTW sound
card can be found at:

  http://www.zonn.com/Cinematronics/project1.htm

  (The most stagnant web page on the net!)

This is based on the board in my WOTW, I haven't reversed engineered what this
does to the schematic though...

>I plan on taping & digitizing the sounds for use in Retrocade but I'm sure
>they would be of use to the Cine hackers in developing the fabled "universal
>sound board".

Cool!

>Once I'm done with this, I need to scan an article I found in an old Science
>81 magazine called "Shootout at the Arcade" or something like that. It
>follows the development of Star Castle and Black Knight. There is one really
>interesting photo of a Cine dev platform with a manual for UCSD Pascal in
>plain view. The pinball stuff is neat too with pics of a whitewood BK
>running on William's pin dev platform.

I'd be real interested in this!

-Zonn
Received on Mon Mar 1 02:35:21 1999