A little ZVG (and ZVT) update

I thought I'd drop a little update on our ZVG plans.

Like Ian said in his email response to Joel's question, I've converted all the
ZVG drivers over to DJGPP. This was needed for two reason, #1 you can no longer
easily get a copy of the Borland compiler for 16 bit DOS, and #2, MAME uses
DJGPP, runs in protected mode, and I have to be compatible with that to place
the ZVG hooks into it.

For the ZVT, I've bought a few different off the shelf AVR development kits.
I'm going to pick the best one and use it as a front end to the ZVG. I'm
writing firmware that will run test patterns, selectable through an LCD menu to
allowing running the ZVG as a stand alone ZVT for analog monitors. The whole
package will fit into an off the shelf plastic enclosure. The ZVG is unchanged,
so you'll be able to pop the ZVG in and out of the ZVT enclosure (or just leave
there!) and still be able to run game emulation.

For Cinematronics monitors you will only need a development kit and our firmware
(it'll be on the website). Since the Cine monitors are digital you don't need a
ZVG to generate Cinematronics test patterns.

Currently I'm looking at using one of the kits at www.futurlec.com. The prices
are great (we couldn't even buy the sum of the parts for the prices they sell
the full boards for), they're based in Australia, though the packages ship from
NY. But they are very slow to ship.

We're going to publish the source and hex code for the AVR development kits, and
a part list, and step by step instructions of everything needed to make a ZVT.

I was working on MAME, when the person we're subleasing an office from informed
us that they were closing up shop and that we had until the end of this month to
be out. So we've spent the last few weeks desperately looking for office space,
found some, and then with wiring up the offices for telephone/CAT5, etc, we've
been pretty busy!

The building owner still has some changes to make before we can move in, so we
haven't started moving yet...but it looks like the next couple of weeks are
going to be busy!

-Zonn

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Received on Tue Mar 11 13:14:49 2003