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Atari Cat Box, can we build an emulator ?
Level42:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=011&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&viewitem=&item=320099802086&rd=1&rd=1
That's a lot of money...
Basicaly it's not a teriibly hard device to "emulate". Schematics and ROM files are available. Shouldn't it be possible to emulate the entire thing on a computer and do the very last part in hardware only ? As far as I can understand, this device selects adresses then writes a value to that adress and reads it back to verify. Or am I over-simplifying things ?
It shouldn't be that hard to build the hardware using, f.i. a LPT1 port.
More info:
http://www.gamearchive.com/General/Data_Sheets/atari_cat_box/
http://www.gamearchive.com/Video_Games/Manufacturers/Atari/signatures/signature_howto.pdf
Crax:
That would be awesome if there was some community built testing tool that people could take with them when going to get a cab. I would love to have an item that can test a board/monitor as it's hard to know when you are buying something from someone that says "it's just a monitor problem" or "it's just a board problem, the monitor works great" if it's really true.
ChadTower:
Tools like that exist. You can take a pattern generator with you to test a monitor, or even just a compatible board to swap in.
As for testing boards, bring a small RGB monitor with an adapter that would take a signal from that board.
Level42:
--- Quote from: ChadTower on April 11, 2007, 01:43:20 pm ---As for testing boards, bring a small RGB monitor with an adapter that would take a signal from that board.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, but that will only tell you IF the board is running or not. What we want to know (and what a Cat Box can do) is what part of the PCB is defective.
ChadTower:
There are test rigs like that as well, though they're not portable and they are very specific to a board or set of boards. Necessarily so, too, unless you wanted to write an app that was aware of the test routines of all boards and had an external interface that you could plug in.
Hrm, now that I think about it, that's a hella painful app to write, but could be possible. Not feasible given the market but certainly possible.
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