Namco Pole Position
This article is a generic description of Namco's "Pole Position" hardware. For the specific arcade game, see Pole Position.
The Namco Pole Position was an arcade system board, which was first used by Namco in 1982 for the Pole Position arcade games; it was one of the first system boards to utilize stereo and quadraphonic sound, and used NVRAM to save its high scores after a machine was turned off. It was also the first arcade system to use 16-bit microprocessors, with two Zilog Z8002 processors.[1][2] It was the most powerful and expensive arcade system upon release, costing $4200[2] ($8.02 thousand in 2016). The hardware is capable of pseudo-3D, sprite-scaling.
Namco Pole Position specifications
- Board composition: CPU board, video board, audio board[3]
Processors
- Main CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 3.072 MHz[4]
- Performance: 8/16-bit instructions @ 0.445 MIPS (million instructions per second)[5]
- Secondary CPU: 2× Zilog Z8002 @ 3.072 MHz[6]
- Performance: 16/32-bit instructions @ 1.536 MIPS (0.768 MIPS, 4 cycles per instruction, per CPU)[7]
- I/O MCU: Fujitsu MB8843 @ 1.54 MHz & Fujitsu MB8844 @ 1.54 MHz[8]
- Performance: 4/8-bit instructions @ 3.08 MIPS (1.54 MIPS, 1 instruction per cycle, per MCU)[9]
- Capabilities: Input/output controllers (type 1) handle the controls[10]
- Sound CPU: One of the secondary CPU's used for sound,[10] possibly additional Zilog Z80 for sound[11]
- Sound chips:[6][11][12][13]
- Namco 52xx Audio Processor @ 1.536 MHz: 6 PCM wavetable synthesis channels, 4-16-bit audio depth, up to 48 kHz sampling rate, stereo & quadraphonic output
- Namco 54xx Audio Generator @ 1.536 MHz: Explosion sound generator,[6] noise generator,[14] 4-channel quadraphonic muxer
- 2× Fujitsu MB8843 MCU @ 1.54 MHz:[8] 4/8-bit instructions @ 3.08 MIPS,[9] handles speech[10]
- GPU chipset: 3× Namco 02xx GFX Shifter[11] (16-bit video shifter),[6] 2× Namco 03xx Playfield Data Buffer,[11] Namco 04xx Sprite Address Generator,[6] Namco 09xx Sprite RAM Buffer[11]
Memory
Graphics
- Video resolution: 256×224 to 384×264 pixels[6]
- Color palette: 4096[15] (12-bit RGB)
- Colors on screen: 3840[6]
- Graphical planes: 2 tilemap layers (1 background, 1 text), 1 road layer[6]
- Sprite capabilities: Line buffers, vertical position buffer,[15][16] sprite-scaling,[6] sprite flipping, mid-frame palette swap[15]
- Colors per sprite: 16 (4-bit)[6]
- Sprite sizes: 16×16 (64 bytes) and 32×32 (256 bytes)[6]
- Sprite RAM: 6 KB[6]
- Sprites on screen: 24 (32×32) to 96 (16×16)
- Sprite pixels per scanline: 512[15]
- Sprites per scanline: 16 (32×32) to 32 (16×16)
List of Namco Pole Position arcade games
- Pole Position (1982)
- Pole Position II (1983)
- Top Racer (1982) - bootleg of Pole Position
References
- ↑ http://www.vasulka.org/archive/Writings/VideogameImpact.pdf#page=23
- 1 2 http://www.vasulka.org/archive/Writings/VideogameImpact.pdf#page=25
- ↑ https://archive.org/stream/polepositiontm-2184thprinting111/PolePositionTM-2184thPrinting-1-1-1
- 1 2 3 "Schematic Package Supplement". Pole Position Operation, Maintenance, and Service Manual (pdf). Milpitas, California: Atari, Inc. 1982. pp. 92–104. Retrieved 2014-02-03.
- ↑ http://www.drolez.com/retro/
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 https://github.com/mamedev/mame/tree/master/src/mame/drivers/polepos.c
- ↑ http://maben.homeip.net/static/s100/zilog/z8000/Zilog%20Z8000%20reference%20manual.pdf#page=67
- 1 2 http://msdb.lapli.fr/?display=detail&value=polepos
- 1 2 http://www.datasheetarchive.com/dlmain/Datasheets-112/DSAP0049295.pdf
- 1 2 3 Namco Pole Position hardware page at System16.com - The Arcade Museum
- 1 2 3 4 5 http://www.multigame.com/NAMCO.html
- ↑ https://github.com/mamedev/mame/tree/master/src/emu/sound/namco.c
- ↑ http://www.arcade-museum.com/manuals-videogames/P/polepos.pdf
- ↑ http://www.pin4.at/pro_custom.php
- 1 2 3 4 5 http://web.archive.org/web/20130104201547/http://mamedev.org/source/src/mame/video/polepos.c.html
- ↑ http://www.arcade-museum.com/manuals-videogames/P/Pole_Position_SP218_8th_Printing.pdf
External links
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, April 02, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.