Someone has a White Mountain "MPSD 3V/5V C3x DSP Emulator Pod available. Apparently, it is the pod only. Does anyone know if it is compatible with Spectrum Digital MPSD emulators and scan test tools, and if so what the rest of the equipment looks like?
Thanks,
Mark
Those are ancient. Did quite a bit of C32 myself, many moons ago. Maybe time to update the platform :)
I'd guess the White Mountain parts are not compatible with Spectrum Digital, but have no hard basis for saying it.
I was going to suggest contacting Spectrum Digital, but I couldn't even find a website for them anymore.
Good luck,
Robert
Thank you Robert.
I understand that Spectrum Digital has been out of business for over ten years now.
Unfortunately, updating the platform is not an option.
Thanks,
Mark
Hi Mark-
If you're willing to build your own, possibly the Spectrum Digital schematics and firmware have, after so many years, been open sourced or possibly Texas Inst has them. Spectrum Digital was essentially TI's main emulator supplier for the better part of 20 years. Some components (all ?) would be EOL but the design is simple enough so it should be possible to find replacements or modify the design.
-Jeff
Thanks Jeff,
We are willing to build our own, if we can locate the schematics for the Rev B CCA, since that is the revision that works on our system. Charlie is taking your suggestion and posted it on TI E2E. We are also looking at doing some reverse engineering, but having the schematic would be easier. I looked at some of the major components on the board, and they appear to be available.
Well, it was in summer 1997 in Cassel, Germany, when I was working with this Emu, it was good stuff a that time costed about six thousand German Marks. The problem was to get the DSP stuff running reliably on full speed without the Emu, well, because I lacked experience :-).
But for what reason do you now, almost thirty years later, have to dive into the past (with(out) a spacetime machine?), interesting. As to those kits in general, myself would rather expect that any pod-, across-, etc.- compatibility will be missing by default, as the end of horizon will be supporting some same signal standards that manufacturer's specs are met, and often there was more than one solution only.
So, personally, although there may be some documentation available, fully agreeing to what the other members say, I would rather put the energy on a new development, and by the way, why the 'C32 ? Has to do possibly with servo or hard disc drive control ... ? Anyway, 'C32 has some interesting features compensating budget trade-offs to the 'C30 including further development at that very time.
But I still believe - well old-fashioned in view of today's high clock rates for DSP and multicore- or megamodules like https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/sm320c6472-hirel..., - in full-featured bus architectures, because finally the campaign might be made on the hardware-level - it's the cables.
What every you do, I wish you good luck, and beth the force with you.
greets,
AGoldstine.
P.S.: Besides I understand, that today's DSP-Dev-Kits are price-intensive, eg. the developers of Waldorf changed over to use normal processors for there latest synthesizers (as far as says their marketing on Frankfurt music fair). But personally this may be kind of a treachery as using software lib's instead of firmware-coded (~hard-wired) math functions. But it depends on many parameters, only one is computing power - as for musical instruments, synthesizers, low latency in response is an issue. However, in turn, making a synth based on sampling (to take the easiest approach), one may rather seldomly use the complex arctanh function. So, to close this ideological ex-course, one could quite well use an old 'C32 or as was done as to said music machines, a Moto56K derivative - as it depends.
