>  Steve Thackery
>  Suffolk, England.

I have to agree with Steve on this one we have lots of old video games in
storage at work (amusement arcade) and the work that went into the circuit
boards full of old TTL and CMOS is far more creative then anything produced
today which is all software and a few, very large, dedicated chips which when
go faulty you just have to bin them and get a new one.  But the old stuff is
just a pure art form if you ask me.

I would like to see if any of the new electronic engineers out of university
could, from ground up design a slot machine with three reels plus nudges and
payout using just 12volt relays.  We have on at work and it's a master piece.
 OK I think most could, but how many would go straight for the CPU's + PIOs ,
etc.

> I disagree!  I think it would most likely receive lots of admiring glances
>  from modern electronics designers.  The thing is, no-one would dream of
>  implementing Pong in hardware these days: it's just crying out for a
>  software solution.  Similarly, video signal generation is just handed over
>  to a two buck chip these days.
>
>  No, I would say that for sheer ingenuity, electronics designs probably
>  peaked back in the late '70s (i.e. before the widespread adoption of
>  microprocessors and microcontrollers, and VLSI chips).  I've seen some
>  amazing stuff done with boards chock full of CMOS and TTL chips (plus the
>  inevitable analogue driver board bristling with power transistors and heat
>  sinks!).  You gotta hand it to those guys, they were just brilliant.
>
>  I have a pal who used to work in the games machine industry (Bell Fruit in
>  the UK).  Monstrously complex non-microprocessor designs continued on for
>  ages in their industry.  The manufactures had access to a wide range of
>  functional modules which they'd developed over the years and were very well
>  tried and tested.  They had a tremendous amount invested in those designs,
>  and they had a tremendous amount invested in the expertise and training of
>  their electronics guys.  Some games machines from the late 70's and even
>  early 80's were just packed with PCBs, every one plastered with CMOS and
>  TTL.  You can imagine that it was pretty scary to throw that lot away and
>  start again with a microprocessor!  It means a complete revamp of your
>  entire development and manufacturing environment, plus a big churn of
staff,
>  plus another revamp of the support infrastructure........
>
>  There was also an interesting interim period when they would use EPROMS -
>  i.e. a microprocessor support chip - in non-micro applications.  For
>  example, they would often use them to store those jazzy lighting sequences
>  for the front panel.  The EPROM was built into the TTL/CMOS circuitry,
>  rather than sitting on an address and data bus.
>
>  Ah, reminiscing is good for the soul!  Or are we old farts just being
boring
>  bastards?
>
>  Steve Thackery
>  Suffolk, England.

Ye, reminiscing is good for the soul.