Re: Need Info on Third Millenium Engineering Arcade Board

[scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter)]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

In article <1147053171.616351.67700@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
touvell@gmail.com <touvell@gmail.com> wrote:
>Does anyone have any information on the Arcade Board, from Third
>Millenium Engineering? I'd like to find the manual and software, as
>well as any other information such as reviews, any software written to
>take advantage of it, a box scan, etc.
>
>I've put a picture of the board and a link to one review that I've
>found on Apple2Info.Net, at:
>
>http://apple2info.net/hardware/arcadeboard/arcadeboard.htm

Just from looking at the chips on it, you can infer that it's a graphics and
sound enhancement.  The TMS9918A is the same video controller used in the
TI-99/4A, and the AY-3-8910 was a somewhat common sound chip back in the
day.  You have 16K of memory on the card which is used by the
9918, an onboard switch between Apple II video and 9918 video (similar to
the switch you'd have on an 80-column card), and a bit of glue logic.  Where
the video and audio chips get mapped into the Apple II's address space is
anybody's guess, unless documentation turns up someplace or you reconstruct
a schematic from your board and figure out its function from that.

You might find these pages useful for more info on what the chips can do:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_TMS9918
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AY-3-8910

  _/_
 / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
(IIGS( http://alfter.us/            Top-posting!
 \_^_/ rm -rf /bin/laden            >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFEX27cVgTKos01OwkRAhgaAJ9pt3lLJ31hR2JShkWiPrY+4ls06wCgmcUg
9T+uuRu/jQyFVhpfAPnu1fY=
=bxJ7
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----