Notes from Hardware meeting on 9/28/88

Attendees : Albaugh, Arvidson, Downend, Hoff, Ly, Mc Carthy, Mc Namara, 
		Meyette, Moncrief, Moore, Ray, Snyder, Stempler. 

The original of this document will reside (for a few months) at 
	KIM$USERDISK:[MCCARTHY.HARDWARE]hdw92888.mtg

Summary of discussions:
. Glenn Mc Namara was welcomed as a new Tech. Assoc. for Johns team.
  Mike Huy Nguyen is a new engineer working on system 3-D with Morgan et al.
A new engineer (Ted ???) will be starting in a couple of weeks in Johns 
team. We still have two open requisitions for techs or tech associates, 
one each for Chris's and Rich's team.

. Components:
  Rick Meyette and Erwin Arvidson gave an account of what is happening with
the deactivation of some of the older components. Thanks, guys, for coming
by. If you need to re-activate a component call components, or give them a 
CER. 
  
RAM IC availability is still a problem. Current pricing for static RAMs is 
about $3.60 - $6.00 for 8Kx8 (depending on how soon you want them and what 
speed you need) and around $12 for 32Kx8. Erwin was asked to source 32Kx8 
parts as they will be used on ESCAPE...
VRAMs and DRAMs are major problems for those using them.

If anyone can summarize either the current V/DRAM or Static RAM situation 
with pricing information, please VAXMAIL it to me or sys$mail:hardware.

Rich Moncrief expressed concern at the lack of central information about 
components and component costs using either AVL or DATATRIEVE. Rick 
Meyette suggested that the TR card program that they are working on may 
help that situation.

. Planning.
  The rest of the meeting was devoted to long term planning and discussion 
of hardware issues. 
Most people expressed a general lack of strategic planning, coordination, 
direction, communication, and/or goals. Rich, Chris and John indicated 
that in finding a solution to these problems they had no desire to 
dictate, but would rather let the Engineers define the direction to go.

They suggested four main areas that could be defined as long term goals.
These were : 
    Common hardware chip set
    Standardization
    Cost reduction
    New design innovation
Analysis of Competitor products was added by Rick Moncrief as a 
valuable exercise.

John Ray suggested a coordinated monthly meeting as a valuable
communications exercise. Rick Moncrief suggests that as a group we have the
talent to do the best, lowest cost hardware of any of our competitors, then
asks what will we have a year from now. 

A strategic planning session was set up for 10.00am on Thursday, with Rich 
Moore, John Ray, Chris Downend, Pat Mc Carthy, Gary Stempler, Doug Snyder
and Rick Moncrief attending. Lyle Rains joined in the discussion towards 
the end. Some notes from this meeting :

It was stated that the current target is for 8-10 new game start-ups in the 
coming year. The existing hardwares were stated as : Driver, 3-D, 
Romalot, Qdeck/War, Cyberball, Tetris, Growth-Motion, though Romalot, 
Qdeck/War, Cyberball and Tetris were closely related to each other.

. Chip-set / cost-reduction / standardization.
  A Common hardware chip set leads to both Standardization and Cost
reduction. The STAMP chip set was stated as the basis of a high quality
$100 stamp type hardware. The VAD chip is expected to save $10, the Shifter
chip $5-$8 depending on what extra hardware features were required. Doug
expressed interest in a doing a Priority Chip with many applications.
Continued use of stamp type hardware for a significant portion of our
products is expected. This makes a cost effective stamp chip set a very
desirable asset. 

. Innovation.
  New design innovation was required to provide growth opportunity. Current 
or new innovative hardware ideas are:
    Driver (Moncrief et al).
    System 3-D (Hoff et al).
    Growth Motion (Snyder).
    Growth and rotate (new suggestion). Ala Assault.
    Bit Map (new suggestion). Possible a TMS34010 and a TWIG, or some 
				    other low cost bit map system.

Some new innovative hardwares should be developed in advance before a game
project and programmer is assigned. Doug demonstrated the value of this
with his Growth Motion Object hardware. 


. Analysis of Competitor products:
  Doug, Gary and Rick agreed to cost out some of our competitors hardwares.
The general feeling was that our competitors have no significant
electronics cost advantage over us for equally capable hardwares. The main
difference between competitor games and our games was the quantity of
memory, (program and graphics). We appear to use twice as much memory. 


. Support:
  The main requirements for support at the moment are in AUDIO hardware and 
an ASAP development system.

The S.A. Audio board did the job it was required to do i.e. separate Audio
technical advances from Project schedules and provide a common standard
audio configuration. The SAC audio board on the other hand is far to
expensive for what it does. Until someone can come up with a more effective
way to do what we want in terms of generating audio there will probably be
little on no hardware effort put into audio. We can try to cost reduce both
the S.A. board and the SAC board but that is not the most effective use of
a Hardware engineers time at the moment. Rick suggested that the ELSIE chip
may be a solution. That is an Analog devices 2100 DSP packaged with RAM,
ROM, TIMER and Serial port all in one chip, available sometime nest year.
Doug suggested that the ASAP chip may also provide a solution. 

Lyle suggested that an ASAP development system was a high priority as no 
development on the ASAP chip (expected early next year) could be done 
until one was available. Doug, Pat and Gary agreed to get together soon to 
work out some of the fundamental issues. 

Current plans expressed by the engineers are :-
Pat : 	Incorporate MOB into Romalot, (MOBALOT)
	Design the VAD chip,
	Work on ASAP development system.

Doug : 	Continue development on Growth Motion object
	Convert Growth MO hardware to use ASAP when available
	Work on ASAP development system.

Gary :	Continue War/Qdeck
	Possibly look at a new Growth/Rotation method.
	Work on ASAP development system.


Thank you for reading this far.
Comments and discussion on all of the above are welcomed.