Re: Bizarre Tailgunner (2) Experience

At 03:34 PM 8/21/97 -0800, Clay Cowgill wrote:
>>Finally, if Zonn wanted to tweak the wait-state generator
>>he may as well make it work from a single ROM since 100ns and less are
>>readily available today. I for one have better things to do than write
>>a game to run on modified 20-year-old hardware :-)
>
>Oh, *waaahhh*. (That's my crying sound effect. ;-)
>
>You saying those of us writing games on modified 20-year-old hardware have
>nothing better to do? (Just kidding. Sorta. :-)
>
>FWIW, we've been buying 128Kx8 Flash and EPROM at 45ns for a few years now
>for use in modems and the prices have really gone down recently. Fast ROM
>access wouldn't be a big deal. A pretty fun little project for someone
>with some spare time would be to try to do a little 'C' compiler for the
>Cinematronics hardware. That'd be a neat project. ;-)

Yeah considering it has no stack! and only 256 words of memory!

I'm currently using a 6805 "C" compiler (another processor without a
*usable* stack), you have to run through many loops to write a "C" compiler
without stacks to pass arguments -- and recursion??? HA!

>>I suppose it's interesting to note that if Cinematronics had a clue they
>>could have extended the life of that basic design by a couple years. With
>>added memory and ROM, a little CPU speed boost, and an Atari color monitor
>>they probably could have done the likes of Star Wars on it.
>
>True. Does anyone know what the capabilities of the Cinematronics hardware
>used in Cosmic Chasm were like?

More like Quantum. It uses a 68k processor, a discreet VG, and a Z-80 with
a few of those GI sound chips for sound. It runs 4096 colors driven in a
way similar to that of the Cine->WG board (though not the same schematic
from what I can tell).

The PCB was laid out for a trackball, but only populated for the single axis
optical encoder. There are a few other bare spots on the board that were
there for future dreams...

-Zonn
Received on Thu Aug 21 16:00:22 1997