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juice2839

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Posts posted by juice2839

  1. Posted · Edited by juice2839

    I haven't tested on an adam yet, hope to this weekend. I don't notice a lot of noise with mine. The one issue I have is that it works on one of my CV, but not on the other (flat out fails). The OPCODE works perfect on both. I'm guessing that maybe the JB requires all the juice it can get, and my one CV doesn't supply enough!. I wonder what would happen if you combine the JB with with one of the HB carts that also requires all the voltage it can get. I think it's Lord of the Dungeons, would it cause a problem with JB on a well running CV? Maybe I'll try this weekend and see what happens.

     

    This is interesting. The juicebox does not draw much power at all. Maybe a few milliamps more than the Opcode SGM. If you PM me I would like to figure out why it's not working on one of your CV's and the Opcode does..

  2. Posted

    Wrong. The Eve module is in a plastic case the same as your module.

     

    My mistake it is surrounded by metal foil in the container.

     

     

     

    Wrong. I have an Eve speech module and it does not produce any extra noise.

     

    I never said it produced noise. I said it was away from the Adam and in effectively a faraday cage.

  3. Posted · Edited by juice2839

    Yes, I understood that fact when Fred explained to me what he thought the issue was in a private message. I'm not trying to jump on the badgering bandwagon here as I had already decided to keep the unit as a backup to the Opcode SGM as well as for playing games that take advantage of the speech chip.

     

    One thing to note concerning this Speech Chip is that it is the same exact one used back in 1985/86 by Eve Electronics in their Speech Synthesizer/Clock Card Expansion Unit for the ADAM Computer and there is not an issue with line noise/static even when used now on an ADAM. So something was missed in the design when the Speech Chip was added to the Juice SGM and it probably has something to do with what Nanochess mentioned a couple of posts previously.

     

    The EVE sits in a full metal can away from the Adam. Basically in a faraday cage. That is one way to deal with the noise produced by the Adam.

    Another thing to note; I pulled out my trs80 color computer and speech sound cartridge. This uses the exact same speech and sound chip as the say game. It produced the exact same type buss noise on the trs80...

  4. Posted

    I have spent the past few days fully analyzing the noise levels and signals coming from the speech game module, Coleco and Adam. Here is the technical details of that analysis. Unfortunately some people could not appreciate that it would take a little time to analyze things and demanded immediate action..

     

    The colecovision and adam were designed and built in the 80's. The pcb's do not have ground planes and they are inherently noisy. If you turn up the volume on your TV with nothing plugged in you will hear the noise. They used 2 metal plates on the top and bottom to effectively make a ground plane. If those are removed the noise is worse. I suspect that is the case with some of you with more noise issues. The noise you are hearing is called buss noise. What this is .... is just what you'd think it is. It's the sound of the data and address lines changing from 1 to 0. If you listen close you can hear different frequencies and not noise actually. That's the sound of the CPU doing it's thing.

     

     

    The AY-3-8912 has a low impedance output with a level of 1 VPP. When this signal is fed directly into the coleco or adam it is relatively noise free because there is no amplification and the buss noise gets drowned out. The speech chip on the other hand has a very high impedance and low output voltage. This device must be amplified. The op amp amplifies the speech chips output by a factor of 10. When this happens the buss noise is also amplified. This is not a defect in design nor a ground plain issue with the speech game module. This is inherently a problem with 80's technology. The fact is most of you probably don''t remember the 80s or maybe you were not there, but this was how the hardware ran.. Now I understand it's the 2010's and everyone expects crystal clear fiber optics quality sound..

     

    There are 2 ways I see this buss noise can be reduced. one is to make sure all your ground plane metal plates are installed and your capacitors are all good on your Coleco and Adam. The second is if you are only going to use the AY sound and not the speech you can disable the op amp mixer.

     

    If anyone has any questions, needs help or wants more information you can PM me. I'll do my best to help and explain.

     

    I hope this clears up some concerns.

     

    Thanks,

     

    Fred

  5. Posted

    It's extremely rare (IE: I have never seen a bad filament on a vectrex and I have worked on more than I can count). Again I suggest you get the logic pcb working then go from there. If your not getting anything (dead) try the ay-3-8912 sound chip first. If this chip is bad you get no video, no sounds and no joysticks. I have seen this fail a few time with your symptoms. If you get it to play blind then you can go from there and get your display working. I have a spare CRT I'd part with if you indeed needed one, but I bet you don't.

  8. Posted

    Pretty much anything you could think of as far as hardware was developed for the ADAM (serial and parallel interfaces, memory expanders, midi, 80 column units, hard drives (RLL, MFM, IDE), speech unit, sound digitizers, etc., etc.), but not everything is easily acquired anymore except for what ADAMcon has available at ann.hollowdreams.com.

     

    The BIG one that is missing and would be a huge hit for the retro-community would be an SD Drive that was capable of using emulator disk and data pack image files. There was one developed by Else about 5 years ago, but he only made 1 and never followed through with plans to produce and sell them. There is a lengthy thread on hear where Else describes and supplies pictures of his ADAMnet SD Drive if you are interested in searching it out. The only drawback to me was the image files where accessed by pressing buttons or switches on the PCB instead of the preferred method of through a software program like AtariMax does with their Ultimate SD Cart.

     

    Anyway, I could see, and many others will probably chime in to agree, an ADAMnet SD Drive being a good seller and it would serve a great purpose in limiting all the wear and tear on our aging Digital Data and Disk Drives!

     

     

    I think it could be done with a little investment and time. I would start out making a prototype with something like an Arduino Nano and sd card reader. The tricky part is probably figuring out how the data is transferred with the tape drive and making an interface to mimic it, but if I found some other people that knew some of the technical side to the Adam it would be a project I would do...

  11. Posted

    he seems to have a hard time... its not that hard to open the colecovision and keep the front lable intact....

     

    colecomaster sell new front lable...so if you want the easy way... just remove the lable remove 3 little screew and order a new lable...

     

    Right. I have never used a screwdriver to ever pry them apart. You just pull on the front and it will come apart. over the ridge. He makes it look like a struggle. :)

  15. Posted

    AHH finally I see... I think I know what's happening. The software checks for the PSG by looking poking around and looking at the AY-3-8910 registers. For some reason the special adams happen to give the result the software is looking for. I'll have to look at the Nanochess code to see exactly how he is testing for the AY-3-8910 then we can determine why some adams work and some don't.. But it comes down to a false positive from the special adams for the presence of the PSG. Technically all the SGM games will run on any Adam as far as I can tell as long as you either disabled the PSG test or hooked up a PSG to it.

     

     

     

     

     

     

    ok this is from thexder diag test on my special adam... on this unit game start but no sound

    4D3034A3-7677-436B-86CA-C032616E11E7.jpg

    this is the same game on my normal adam the game dont work and sgm require msg appear
    1AC53489-A2DE-45D2-83A0-03C35799A814.jpg

    you see on the special adam the diag test show the psg ok but not on the normal adam

  19. Posted

    Thanks for the code. I'm just waiting Alek complete his emulator support and my next game will take advantage of the speech game module. But would be very nice if you could produce a Module that works with French Secam Scart Colecovision. :)

     

    If someone has one of these consoles they would like to donate for me to disassemble and figure it out I would.

  22. Posted

     

     

    You know what's funny about this, is that King's Valley worked for me the first time I booted it today. However the second time, I received the "SGM Required!" screen. When I pressed Reset, it bypassed this SGM Required screen, and was back to normal. Must be a latency issue with the extra RAM detection.

     

    this is without a SGM installed? If so can you boot it a couple times with the * key pressed and see if the kings valley diagnostic passes the PSG sometimes?

  24. Posted

    Niad are you positive Kings Valley works? If you hold down the * when it boots does it pass the PSG at the beginning?

     

     

     

    A while back, chart45 posted about a Stand-Alone ADAM Memory console he owned that could play all SGM required games (Thexder, King's Valley, etc... not talking about the ADAM Super Game conversions or other games that are enhanced by the presence of the SGM) without a SGM plugged into the side Expansion Port. Suffice it to say that a lot of us were skeptical until he posted pics and then a video.

     

    So yesterday I received a Memory Console that I won on eBay (it's minty) and in my testing, I have found that this Memory Console will play all the SGM required games (sans sound as the SGM sound chip is used) as well. They include:

     

    - King's Valley

    - Thexder

    - Rollerball

    - Goonies

    - Galaga

    - TwinBee

     

    Using Nanochess' SGM Test Utility rom image with NO SGM plugged in, I get the following results which I don't even remember now if they are the same with a SGM plugged into the ADAM:

     

    DETECTED: Coleco ADAM

    Base 24K RAM Ok

    Lower 8K RAM Ok

    Failure in the Sound Chip ...... (because the SGM is not plugged in)

     

    I'll be taking the system apart to compare with my other ADAM system that can only play the games listed above if and only if the SGM is attached. I doubt there will be anything physically different between the two that will be obvious, but it's a start.

     

    So if you have been waiting for an SGM for a while, you can always try picking up an ADAM and ask the seller if it will play all SGM required games. Be prepared to get some weird response though! :P

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