Troubleshooting guide

Cinematronics Vector Monitor Repair Guide v.1.0
Page 50 of 53
Appendix E: Using an Electrohome G05 or Wells-Gardner V2000
What? You have read all this and you say you don’t have a Cinematronics monitor to play with, but
you still want to play Star Castle, Rip Off or Space Wars? If you have more money than sense,
follow along as we discuss using an Electrohome G05 or Wells-Gardner V2000 vector monitor in
place of a Cinematronics vector monitor!
[ MORE TO BE ADDED]
Notes from Zonn:
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Your biggest problem with doing a Cine->WG board is that you are forced to use 12 bit parallel
DACs, which are expensive. The Cine design is pretty much going to force you to find ~1 to 2 us
settling time parts.
You might be able to save some money by using single supply 12 bit DACs and shifting the
voltage after the analog switch and R/C stuff. This also allows the use of the much more available
and less expensive 74HC4066 switches, which are only single polarity switches. The LF13331
switches are bi-polar, and also expensive (when they were available).
You cannot, however, use serial DACs. They would require a parallel to serial conversion and there
is no time allocated in the hardware to allow this. The DACs are latched and the Z-axis is turned
on for the draw, there’s no “clock data into DACs” time, which at minimum would take 16 clock
cycles, if both DACs were simultaneously clocked.
When building a Cine->WG replacement, one has no control over the timing, this is all done on the
CCPU board. Same with the voltage values being sent to the DACs. The CCPU is sending out 12-
bit DAC information, and is expecting to time the charge of a preset R/C constant. Changing any
of the parameters: DAC voltages, R or C, will result in screwed up timings and vectors of incorrect
lengths.
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