Re: Cinematronics XY characteristics

At 05:46 PM 5/5/97 -0700, you wrote:
>
>Now that we've determined that the deflection characteristics of the
>Sega's are better than the Wells, what about Cine's performance
>compared to the B&W Atari monitor? Assuming that Atari B&W's are
>more likely to be found than a Cine, is it practical to build a
>board to adapt an analog Atari monitor to the Cine board set?

The Atari B&W monitors and Atari Color monitors ran at similar speeds, and
Boxing Bugs and Color WotW both use the Atari (WG) monitors, so speed is not
an issue.

The problem with the Cinematronics world is that the Monitors were
originally designed to accept all digital inputs (12 bits a piece for the X
and Y positioning, and 2 bits a piece for Trace-on and Bright signals, on
the standard Bi-Level monitor, another couple of bits for latching the
positioning information).

So the complexity of a B&W conversion board will on the order of that of the
Color Conversion board used in Boxing Bugs / WotW, minus a few op-amps
needed to drive the RGB guns instead of just one. But since you're going
through all this trouble you might as will leave the op-amps and have
yourself a full Cinematronics Color Conversion card.

However you do it you're going to need a couple of 12 bit DACs an analog
multiplexor/switch, some latches, a sprinkling of op amps to: Buffer the R/C
circuit, compensate for the blooming of things drawn around the edges (which
Cinematronics was able to do without that pesky VDR that Atari used), and if
the WG color monitor is to be driven, you'll need to compensate for the
inverted pincushion effect.

You'll also need some circuitry to switch between the different type
monitors used: 2 level, 16 level, 64 level, and Color.

A little more involved than just level shifting...

-Zonn
Received on Mon May 5 18:21:49 1997