Re: Tomcat Proto Report

This is just all too great... Hope to see something coming from it as well!!!

Thomas43@aol.com wrote:
>
> I had a chance to meet Jed Margolin and play the vector Tomcat prototype which designed while at Atari. Jed has worked on such classics as Battlezone, Star Wars, Hard Drivin and Firefox. He also morphed the Audio Reg I into the Audio Reg II board. His prototype game, Tomcat is basically a demo package used to demonstrate the new Vector hardware that he designed. It is not a complete game.
>
> Here is a rundown of the Tomcat game-
>
> 1. Tomcat uses a new board design that incorporates new technology for the time frame (1985). It was designed after Star Wars. The game uses a TI DSP chip and a redesigned Vector Generator circuit as well as a 68010 CPU. The game was basically cancelled after vector technology was declared 'DEAD' by the technology team. All the remaining monitors were scrapped. The tubes were discarded, and the deflection boards and HV boards were sent to the customer service department for customer repairs and RMA's. You can see a picture of the board at http://www.safestuff.com/tomcat.jpg
>
> 2. The board I saw, was plugged into a Star Wars cabinet via an Adapter harness. No other changes were made to the Star Wars cabinet. The controls are standard Star Wars. There are no Tomcat specific graphics.
>
> 3. The game is basically a demo of a plane flying over a grid like terrain. You can play a combat mission where you shoot at an enemy plane, or you can pay a training mode where there are no enemies. There is no score, and the game ends when you run out of fuel. You can control the plane in one of two modes. The first allows you to fly like a real plane (basically, the controls do not self center, and you must constantly adjust your angle and elevation). The second self centers the plane at all times. There are no sounds in the demo.
>
> 4. There is a second version of the demo that runs on a slightly modified Star Wars board set (it was Star Wars serial # 2). This version does not have the grid lines, but it does have some obstacles on the ground. Just imagine Battlezone from the air. You can shoot tanks and planes. You aircraft is a helicopter in this version. The controls are more difficult in this version. You must tilt forward and down, and then apply the thrust to move forward (like a real helicopter). The only problem, is that no clipping at all is done by the software. This puts the monitor in danger of meltdown the whole time. At one point it looked like the hardware was trying to draw on the back of the tube!!
>
> 5. Jed said he was willing to release the schematics for the board, so we could get a good look at the vector generator design. Also included on the Tomcat board set was a TTL proto version of the AVG chip. The schematics for this are also in the Tomcat documentation. Jed said that the company who had been manufacturing the chips, threw away the master masks, so he was forced to create the 'OOPS Board'. You can see a picture at http://www.safestuff.com/avgproto.jpg
>
> 5. I will get screenshot of the game in action, the next time I talk with Jed. We blew up the red flyback while trying some of the diagnostics tests. Jed had an adapter harness that allowed him to connect a Wells Gardner 6100 HV cage to the Amplifone monitor. He did have to add a small transformer to power the filament voltage. The quality of the vectors and the convergence of his monitor was incredible. It's the best I have ever seen. (I forgot my digital camera on that visit)
>
> 6. Jed said he was interested in brining the game to California Extreme this year, and he was going to create a web page with more information about Vector Generators and Tomcat. He will post the schematics and if he can get clearance, possibly the ROMS and the source code. Maybe someone wants to take this demo and make a complete game. He is very busy, so this make take him a while. Please be patient. Jed is a great guy, and hopefully many of you will get a chance to meet him at CE 2001.
>
> Scott
> www.safestuff.com
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Received on Mon Feb 5 19:11:00 2001