Re: Sega G-80/Cinematronics Multigame Soundboard

 

It's a little early to tell for sure, but I'm fairly certain there will be a little microcontroller sitting in front of the sound chips (like a PIC or an AVR or something).  The micro will have some "smarts" based on which game is selected so that it knows a couple things about whether or not a particular sound command is a one-time trigger or if a continuous loop is required.  (The micro will handle looping a background sound sample too.)  In front of the Micro will probably need to be something like a PAL that can capture the native "bus" transactions from either the G-80's backplane or the Cinematronics sound port.  (The PAL receives the writes, alerts the Micro, and the Micro takes the proper action depending on which game is selected and what sound is triggered.)

 

The PAL and micro would change depending on if it was Sega G80 or Cinemat support (or something else-- maybe Asteroids/Lunar Lander sounds on an Asteroids Deluxe board for a multigame or whatever).

 

In this way the sound chips are abstracted from the design, so if they end up not working, or if something better (more voices per chip) comes along the Multigame's don't need to change-- just the microcontroller code to run the sound processor(s).

 

-Clay