Using a color monitor on a Space Invaders.

John Hermann

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Apr 23, 2001, 10:21:10 AM4/23/01

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There have been recent posts about using using a color
monitor on a Space Invaders machine. I responded to those
posts by saying that there shouldn't be any problems.
Well, this past weekend, I was messing around with some
SI boards, and looked into using a color monitor. The
video out of space invaders is a composite signal, so
you can't just connect the video signal to one or more
colors of the color monitor, and the sync to the sync
because there is no separate sync signal off of the
space invaders PCB. I was able to get the color monitor
to work, so it is possible. I'll give you a hint;
pin 8 off of the 7455 located at A-6 is the sync signal.

Best Regards,

John Hermann
Buy, Sell, Trade, and Repair Video and Pinball Machines.
Located near Dallas, TX.
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Circuit/8393

Al Kossow

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Apr 23, 2001, 3:35:53 PM4/23/01

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From article <9c1dom$mdj$2...@tilde.csc.ti.com>, by John Hermann <jher...@cabbage07.dal.mslp.ti.com>:

> There have been recent posts about using using a color
> monitor on a Space Invaders machine. I responded to those
> posts by saying that there shouldn't be any problems.

Normally, you would use a Taito three board (eprom labeled
'CV') board set in a SI Color.

From memory, Midway didn't release a color version of SI.

John Hermann

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Apr 23, 2001, 5:01:19 PM4/23/01

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Al Kossow <a...@spies.com> wrote:
>Normally, you would use a Taito three board (eprom labeled
>'CV') board set in a SI Color.
>
>From memory, Midway didn't release a color version of SI.

Actually, the discussion was about using a color monitor in
place of the old B&W monitor. I was somewhat surprised
at how well the picture looked using the color monitor;
but I think the B&W picture is better. I didn't play
around with different combinations of red, green and blue
to see if I like having a blue or red space invaders
image, however.

Russel Willoughby

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Apr 23, 2001, 6:26:47 PM4/23/01

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On 23 Apr 2001 21:01:19 GMT, John Hermann
<jher...@cabbage07.dal.mslp.ti.com> wrote:

>Actually, the discussion was about using a color monitor in
>place of the old B&W monitor. I was somewhat surprised
>at how well the picture looked using the color monitor;
>but I think the B&W picture is better. I didn't play
>around with different combinations of red, green and blue
>to see if I like having a blue or red space invaders
>image, however.

If you hooked the video output from the game board to the monitor's R,
G and B inputs simultaneously, wouldn't that result in a white image
onscreen? Or would this cause some horrible damage to the monitor
and/or game board?

Russel Willoughby
<< rus...@bellsouth.net >>

andyr

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Apr 24, 2001, 4:07:06 AM4/24/01

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If you hook RGB together, you get black background and white foreground.
Your monitor looks b/w at that point...

I've used color monitors in space invaders many times. John is right, you
get the signal just before it's AND'd and it works fine...

Andy

John Hermann

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Apr 24, 2001, 10:55:16 AM4/24/01

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Thanks Andy; couldn't have said it better.