Multigame idea #153263

I was looking over the CPU/Speech boards last night thinking about how
little I'd enjoy trying to recreate them in a new version, when another
idea hit me...

The CPU board is a likely candidate for the "host" board for a multi-game
add-on. The idea here is to simply remove the security chip, remove the
"boot" EPROM, and remove the Z-80....

...I can make a small daughtercard that plugs into the Z-80 socket. The
daughtercard can have a single PAL, a 27C020 (256Kx8 EPROM), a 27C64 (8Kx8
menu code), a Z-80, and a PIC. Probably some resistors and stuff too, but
that's no big deal. Since the control inputs come in on the CPU board
anyway, it makes the control input router (the PIC) a lot easier to deal
with, and since the Z-80 has all the control signals that's pretty clean
too.

That's a lot smaller than a G-80 bus card which keeps the price down, and
it saves us a slot since it'd get rid of the EPROM board.

(There's really not any reason that it couldn't have the SRAM and serial
ports for a development board either, but this might make for a good
"multigame only" type of board.)

Any thoughts?

-Clay

Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager
_______________________________________________________________________
/\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com
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Received on Tue May 6 15:07:04 1997