On Thu, 28 Jan 1999 08:52:10 -0800 marquis De writes: >-well, like i said, i could spend years re-inventing the wheel, but id >rather spend time loading up the DSP chips with algorithms to >encode/decode THX, AC-3 (5.1, and 7.1) and prologic, Use a low-end Pentium mother board (should be well under $100 these days) and a small IDE hard drive to get started. You may be able to fit all the software in ROM later, perhaps replacing the BIOS ROM with your code. This would be a whole lot simpler than building your own CPU board, PCI interface, etc. which would be reinventing the wheel. The DSP probably comes with development software intended to run on a PC anyway, right? If this is a one-off project or inteneded to sell for an astronomical price, there isn't much need to optimize it. >and then either >enable the tubes at the same time, or maybe two channels, and the dsp >on the other 4, or whatever ' Control the tube unit through a serial or parallel port. You don't need the bandwidth of a PIC slot to change a few voltages or switch relays once in a while. Keeping audio circuits away from high-speed computer busses is usually a good idea. A PIC could be used in the tube unit for example to interpret commands received by RS-232. ___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]