RE: Tech WG6100

From: Clay Cowgill <c.cowgill_at_comcast.net>
Date: Tue Aug 29 2006 - 15:22:16 EDT

Oh, one other thing before I forget...
 
It's probably not interesting enough for an actual 'product' but it would
make for a cool little 'project' -- Analog Devices has the AD5290 digital
potentiometer available now. It's an 8-bit digital pot with an SPI-like
interface and comes in 10K, 50K, and 100K values.

The neat part about it (for vector games anyway) is that it supports a
bipolar voltage range of up to +/-15V and has very good "analog"
characteristics. Sooooo... it would be relatively simple to replace the
trimpots in something like the Atari AVG designs with little digital ones.
Nicely remote-controllable through software. :-)
 
The value might not match up perfectly for what's needed, but (worst case)
you could just use a smaller part of the available range, or (probably
better) change out a couple values in the opamp circuits to use what's
available in the AD parts more effectively.
 
Most games tend to be a "set and forget" when it comes to
center/size/BIP/etc, so since the pots aren't cheap (a few bucks in small
quantities) it would likely need to be a "just because it's neat" project,
but I still think it's be cool. ;-)
 
One application the *could* actually be useful would be to use them on a
"passthrough" type board (or even with a display corrector circuit) for
doing an old-school type multigame with multiple boards. You could
dynamically scale and adjust the video outputs depending on what game was
switched in...
 
Anyway, just thought I'd mention it in case anyone was looking for a
project. :-P
 
-Clay

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Received on Tue Aug 29 15:22:25 2006

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