Namco Pole Position
The Namco Pole Position is 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 uses 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] ($11.1 thousand in 2020). 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]
- 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
- http://www.vasulka.org/archive/Writings/VideogameImpact.pdf#page=25
- https://archive.org/stream/polepositiontm-2184thprinting111/PolePositionTM-2184thPrinting-1-1-1
- "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/
- https://github.com/mamedev/mame/tree/master/src/mame/drivers/polepos.c%5B%5D
- http://maben.homeip.net/static/s100/zilog/z8000/Zilog%20Z8000%20reference%20manual.pdf#page=67 Archived 2015-06-09 at the Wayback Machine
- http://msdb.lapli.fr/?display=detail&value=polepos
- http://www.datasheetarchive.com/dlmain/Datasheets-112/DSAP0049295.pdf%5B%5D
- Namco Pole Position hardware page at System16.com - The Arcade Museum
- http://www.multigame.com/NAMCO.html
- https://github.com/mamedev/mame/tree/master/src/emu/sound/namco.c%5B%5D
- http://www.arcade-museum.com/manuals-videogames/P/polepos.pdf
- http://www.pin4.at/pro_custom.php
- https://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
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