30 Jun
2006
30 Jun
'06
4:13 a.m.
Don Y wrote:
There is one that only draws *curves* (circles).
Things that you
would expect to be "straigh" look quite amusing.
Heh. I heard about some of the fun the Atari engineering team went through to
get the AVG going. Apparently some undetermined parameters meant that only one
type of capacitor worked properly in the AVG circuit. Anything else displayed
severe non-linearity.
There's a CRT clock around somewhere that has an onboard sine generator (might
be two sine generators) that's used to generate "proper" curves. Personally,
I
like the sharp angles on the Atari vector font - the curves look a bit too..
well.. perfect :)
Another firm made some *really* slick (analog) modules
that
would do 3D transforms. I think their intended use was
military (they were *way* too expensive for use in arcade
pieces)
I never really got into analog design. I can do simple opamp stuff (current
sense amplifiers, basic add/subtract/multiply signal processing) but I've
never designed a 200MHz oscilloscope front-end amplifier or anything like that.
See if you can find an Electrohome XY monitor.
Electrohome? Oh yes. They made the G08 didn't they? The "pyromaniac's arcade
monitor", allegedly prone to catch fire with very little provocation.
I seem to recall an entry in one of the Atari vector FAQs that said something
to the effect of "If you are the owner of one of these monitors, you should
also be the owner of a very good electronics-grade fire extinguisher."
They made one
model that you could *emulate* a raster-scan monitor with!
(most vector monitors had very slow deflection rates).
So I've noticed. Something like ten microseconds per inch for the
Wells-Gardner 6400, or 200uS to cover the whole screen.
I am not sure if it was ever available for public
consumption, though.
It would be neat to find one if it was. A couple of saw generators and an
LM1881 should be enough for the scan signal generation.
(I can probably find a manual to dig up a model
number)
Sure, if it's not too much trouble.
Thanks.
--
Phil. | Kitsune: Acorn RiscPC SA202 64M+6G ViewFinder
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