Lynxpro Posted July 1, 2014 Share Posted July 1, 2014 Well, one Pokey trumps ten TIA chips, that's for sure. But unless you're trying to play organ music in game, I don't really see the need for quad Pokey.: Atari's Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back arcade games used Quad POKEYs; I wouldn't call those examples "organ music". 16 channels of audio on classic games is cool regardless. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BalloonFighter Posted July 4, 2014 Share Posted July 4, 2014 This is an awesome device! Can't wait to hear about any progress on this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MAC-42 Posted July 5, 2014 Share Posted July 5, 2014 For arcade perfect conversions of many Atari coin-ops? Yes!!! I'd be happy with just dual POKEY, really. (I certainly wouldn't turn down quad, of course.) And this has applications beyond just ports from the arcades. Think of the way you'd always lose a sound channel, for instance, in Legend of Zelda when your life meter was low. Your game music was cut in half because of this. All you'd have left was the melody over the repeating life meter tone. Even just adding dual POKEY capability prevents that problem in original 7800 games that could be written in the future, as well as opening up a few more channels to play with. Or we could just do it in TIA. Well, all of this is idle speculation in any event. I guess we'll see what's in store in time. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted July 5, 2014 Share Posted July 5, 2014 Sound effects can be handled by the TIA; it's plenty good enough for things like blips and explosions. Let the Pokey handle the background music 24/7. Also does this device handle everything the Pokey does (100% compatable) or just the music elements? This device could also serve as a drop in replacement for arcade boards, 8-bit computers, and (if it's super accurate) for chip tune composers. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mos6507 Posted July 19, 2014 Share Posted July 19, 2014 I knew something like this would happen sooner or later. I hope it can be done economically. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lynxpro Posted July 19, 2014 Share Posted July 19, 2014 Sound effects can be handled by the TIA; it's plenty good enough for things like blips and explosions. Let the Pokey handle the background music 24/7. Also does this device handle everything the Pokey does (100% compatable) or just the music elements? This device could also serve as a drop in replacement for arcade boards, 8-bit computers, and (if it's super accurate) for chip tune composers. True. It should be noted that Atari Games kept using POKEYs in a lot of their arcade games post 1984 just for sfx [well, Tetris used a POKEY for music too] while the music was handled by the Yamaha YM2151 - because the AMY didn't get finished - and speech synthesis by a TI chip. All of the audio was generally managed by a 6502 while the arcade CPUs were generally Motorola 68000s or 68010s. That's a lot of hardware. But yes, the Star Wars games were Quad POKEY. Crystal Castles was Dual POKEY. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+bcombee Posted August 19, 2014 Share Posted August 19, 2014 Octopart shows pricing for the NXP ARM Cortex-M3 chip in the $2-3 range, depending on packaging and quantity purchased. See http://octopart.com/partsearch#!?q=LPC1313 There's no FPGA component here, just a very tiny ARM core with a bunch of peripherals. I wonder if the HOKEY is just handling the audio registers and output; for use in carts, there's no need to hook up keyboard scan, serial I/O, or potentiometer scan features. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted August 20, 2014 Share Posted August 20, 2014 Octopart shows pricing for the NXP ARM Cortex-M3 chip in the $2-3 range, depending on packaging and quantity purchased. See http://octopart.com/partsearch#!?q=LPC1313 There's no FPGA component here, just a very tiny ARM core with a bunch of peripherals. I wonder if the HOKEY is just handling the audio registers and output; for use in carts, there's no need to hook up keyboard scan, serial I/O, or potentiometer scan features. There's a bunch of different parts on that page. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted May 29, 2015 Share Posted May 29, 2015 You can just make out the chip serial in the picture as lpc1313f, which is an ARM Cortex-M3 chip. Are you sure that's a M3? Does the M3 have a DAC in it? Too lazy to go look, I am just playing with a M4 (well, I plan to, when I have a chance) and this old thread got me wondering. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andromeda Stardust Posted May 29, 2015 Share Posted May 29, 2015 Are you sure that's a M3? Does the M3 have a DAC in it? Too lazy to go look, I am just playing with a M4 (well, I plan to, when I have a chance) and this old thread got me wondering. You can make a "poor man's" DAC by using a resistor ladder. Uzebox uses this technique to generate analog AV. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevEng Posted May 29, 2015 Share Posted May 29, 2015 Are you sure that's a M3? Does the M3 have a DAC in it? Too lazy to go look, I am just playing with a M4 (well, I plan to, when I have a chance) and this old thread got me wondering. Pretty sure. I downloaded his picture and blew it up, and while the numbers were fuzzy I could make them out. The M4 series from NXP is lpc43##, so the numbers for that look quite different. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevEng Posted May 29, 2015 Share Posted May 29, 2015 After a bit of search it seems that RN1, RN2, RN3, and RN4 are SMD resistor arrays containing 4 resistors each. Coincidentally, pokey has 4 bits of volume and 4 voices. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted May 29, 2015 Share Posted May 29, 2015 No worries, was just curious. The one I am about to start playing with is from Freescale. http://cache.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/data_sheet/K20P64M72SF1.pdf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted April 29, 2017 Share Posted April 29, 2017 Almost two years on ... any progress? In the absence of both the XM and Concerto (neither of which may see the light of day for most active hobbyists and retrogamers), a working HOKEY implementation would allow so many more great-sounding homebrews for the 7800, as well as saving any number of the dwindling supply of POKEYs for A8, 5200 and arcade machine repair. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted April 29, 2017 Share Posted April 29, 2017 Almost two years on ... any progress? In the absence of both the XM and Concerto (neither of which may see the light of day for most active hobbyists and retrogamers), a working HOKEY implementation would allow so many more great-sounding homebrews for the 7800, as well as saving any number of the dwindling supply of POKEYs for A8, 5200 and arcade machine repair. You do realize that Concerto and HOKEY are both Fred's, right? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted April 29, 2017 Share Posted April 29, 2017 You do realize that Concerto and HOKEY are both Fred's, right? Yes, I know. Just because Fred is stymied or having very slow progress with Concerto doesn't necessarily mean HOKEY is similarly "stuck." Perhaps my post was made with the subconscious hope that Fred or Al would pipe in with a surprise "Hey, Concerto may be harder than we all thought, but look what we've got for all those BBQC carts we'll be selling later this year!" Or something. I admit to having been called an eternal optimist at times in the past. *sigh* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cjameslv Posted April 30, 2017 Share Posted April 30, 2017 (edited) Well i believe neither of those have been pre-ordered or paid for by anyone, so one would think the timelines are entirely up to Fred as he owes us nothing. This isn't like Curt's XM (6+years correct?) that many people fronted money for and got nothing in return. So if the Concerto or Hokey ever do happen i'm sure we will get an update posted, until then i see no point in resurrecting a 2 year old thread to ask for an update. Edited April 30, 2017 by cjameslv Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted April 30, 2017 Share Posted April 30, 2017 Well i believe neither of those have been pre-ordered or paid for by anyone, so one would think the timelines are entirely up to Fred as he owes us nothing. This isn't like Curt's XM (6+years correct?) that many people fronted money for and got nothing in return. So if the Concerto or Hokey ever do happen i'm sure we will get an update posted, until then i see no point in resurrecting a 2 year old thread to ask for an update. Well, pardon me, but I do. My prior post stated a very legitimate reason to inquire. A number of recent POKEY-enabled hacks, rewrites and homebrews have been created in the last several years and POKEYs are getting costly. That's reason enough to ask if anyone knows anything further, two years after this post was made. Lord knows Fred's Harmony Cart is a godsend and worth every penny I paid for it and then some. If that's his sole contribution to our hobby, he'll still be revered and thanked for many, many years to come. Maybe Concerto's problems with the flaky 7800 hardware and the several variants made by Atari are indicative of wider generalized issues using modern hardware with these machines. Maybe HOKEY is in the same boat. If that's the case, that's fine. I fail to see why asking about HOKEY in a thread Fred himself started after two years of silence should be out of line. It's not like people have been asking over and over again for weeks or months straight, as people periodically do regarding the XM and the Concerto. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zonie Posted May 22, 2017 Share Posted May 22, 2017 I like the purple. Our Board maker must be the same as yours... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted May 22, 2017 Share Posted May 22, 2017 Yours look like they are from OSH. You can actually get purple boards from almost anyone. The VersaBoard's used in the store, are the same purple. I have another board I also made purple (from China). What is your board for? Looks like a PI add-on of some sort. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zonie Posted May 23, 2017 Share Posted May 23, 2017 (edited) Yeah. OSH. good quality. decent pricing for the initial 3. It's a touchscreen driver we are developing to read touchscreen coordinates and convert it to ascii or other data over the keyboard port or Serial port for old automated machinery which didn't originally have touchscreens. Edited May 23, 2017 by Zonie 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.