atarifan49

Pontius Xorcist, on Sun Feb 26, 2012 5:49 PM, said:

Looking at the schematics on Atari Museum (Side A) the transformer output has a center tap. There's nothing on the schematic to say otherwise, so it could only be assumed that it is a straight split of the voltages (8.3V 0V 8.3V).

Glenn

I recently ran into an interesting learning situation during a large disassembly project. I had the following hex byte sequence that appeared three times in the code being disassembled:

23 20 00 00 00 6C

This translates to the following when disassembled:

MOVE.L #$6C,D0

Well, when I reassembled using SMAC the assembler would recognized that this can be optimized to a 2 byte code and produce:

70 6C

Unfortunately, there was no switch to force SMAC to not optimize such code. But it was easy work around to place a DC.W followed by a DC.L to just force the operand/operands I needed at those locations. I guess some of the Atari dev tools, whether for PC, Linux or the TT030 had some optimization issues with them.

So far, SMAC and SLN have been wonderful to use on my PC. I don't have to mess with VMWARE emulation just to run some dev tools.

Now if we could only have a way to improve the debugger tools (WDB or RDBJAG) and use the Skunk board for some serious in-system trace/debug work!

Glenn

I have a beige video pinball but no stunt cycle. Stunt Cycle would be cool to have. I remember playing the arcade game a lot when I was a kid - definitely took skill with the throttle.

Glenn

atarifan49, on Sat Sep 24, 2011 8:39 PM, said:

The chip was made using n-channel MOS metal gate process - which was the most common process for high speed logic at the time. It required +5V, +12V and -5V.

I recently asked Al Alcorn this question - What sparked the idea for video music?

Al Alcorn answered:

Quote

Glenn

happy_comrade, on Mon Sep 19, 2011 6:30 AM, said:

It would be nice if there were any details about the custom I.C. used in the Video Music. You can read the patent to get an idea and give you more insight to how it works. I did get to briefly talk with the inventer of the Video Music and he said that you can't make the chip these days anyway. I think he said he was made using a NMOS process that is no longer used in the industry.