Re: Sega Multigame

Clay,
Count me in on one of those boards. I just bought a Star Trek Board set for my
Space Fury machine, but I would love to play them all instead.

By the way, I could use a Star Trek CP. Don't care about the overlay a I will be
scraping it for my Star Trek cockpit that I picked up.

What happened to the discussion about the universal spinner for ST, Tempest,
Arkanoid etc.

John Butler

Clay Cowgill wrote:

> >Clay,
> >
> >I'm not trying to rain on your parade here, but maybe you should hold off your
> >release until you can make it a TRUE multi-game. I mean, what do you really
> >buy from doing the menu system if you still have to do manual switching of the
> >sound boards?
>
> Good input, this is my rationale:
>
> 1) I can produce the CPU daughtercard now. (Something about "bird in the
> hand worth two in the bush"... :-)
>
> 2) Creaping Featuritus was making the previous design too unwieldy for me
> to get it all done.
>
> 3) Other people had expressed interest in the sound board tinkerings, so
> they might well do better than I.
>
> 4) An all in one would probably run up to the "close to $200" range on a
> per-unit basis when you add in the control router, the speech support
> stuff, and the audio mux. With a global market of this thing at about 20
> units, I don't want to scare people off.
>
> >The IDEAL multigame would
> >
> >1) fit in a standard SegaXY cage
> >2) combind the CPU/EPROM and SPEECH board into one board, leaving room for 2 XY
> >boards and 3 sound boards (Maybe the daughterboard you already have could be
> >expanded to included the speech circuitry?)
> >3) Have some sort of "banking" of the sound boards (relays, whatever). Maybe
> >you could make a run of backplane boards that support some sort of switching?
> >4) a universal controller board for the control panel.
>
> I agree with all these in theory. #1 is kinda nebulous-- there's some
> stuff that I think will work better outside the card cage (control router,
> audio mux, monitor adapter, etc.) #2 -- sounds good, but it'd probably
> quadruple the PCB size which makes it cost prohibitive for me. #3 -- sorta
> what I was thinking. #4 -- right, I mentioned that one I just don't have
> the time/money to run that design at the same time.
>
> >This, along with your menu system, would allow a single cage system, with no
> >need to do any board swapping whatsoever, and a person could use a universal
> >control panel that supports all games. Completely user-friendly and idiot
> >proof.
>
> Yup. That would be cool. I think that's the final goal, but it's just too
> much for me to bite off. The "ID" outputs from the daughtercard will let
> you hook up the control switcher, and a relay/mux satellite board for the
> sound cards at a later time.
>
> For me, I think I'll remove the speech board for now and plug in all the
> sound boards. Then I'll either use an analog mux driven by the ID lines
> for selecting the right sound output, or I'll wire in a Radio-Shack rotary
> switch. ;-)
>
> Tac/Scan and Star Trek share the Universal Sound board, so that's nice...
>
> >I guess what I'm saying is from a customer perspective, what you're providing
> >isn't enough to convince me to change my current game swapping technique.
>
> That's cool. Not trying to twist your arm. This is definately a more
> hacker level kit than the StarWars/ESB stuff. But then again, I think this
> list spends a lot more time in "geek mode" than RGVAC. ;-)
>
> >I'd personally wait longer to have a complete multigame system than to have a
> >partial one now.
>
> Good by me-- I know that if I wait to do "everything" all at once it'll
> never get done though. ;-)
>
> >Just my $.02. You don't want to re-live doing two runs like you did with the
> >ESB kit, do you? ;-)
>
> Actually, that worked pretty well. The first stuff went out and feedback
> happened that prompted me to simplify some things and add some features.
> Just the usual product-development cycle happening.
>
> For what it's worth, I'll take a look at a little Audio-mux to handle the
> sound cards. Maybe it makes sense to glue it on the control-mapper board.
> You also have to remember that half my interest in the G-80 is in writing a
> new game or two for it, and the CPU daughtercard gives me an easy method to
> make it available...
>
> -Clay
>
> Clayton N. Cowgill Engineering Manager
> _______________________________________________________________________
> /\ Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. clay@supra.com
> \/ Communications Division http://www.supra.com/
Received on Mon Oct 6 18:26:54 1997