Neha Patil (Editor)

Namco Pole Position

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The Namco Pole Position was an arcade system board, which was first used by Namco in 1982 for the Pole Position arcade games; it was one of the first system boards to utilize stereo and quadraphonic sound, and used NVRAM to save its high scores after a machine was turned off. It was also the first arcade system to use 16-bit microprocessors, with two Zilog Z8002 processors. It was the most powerful and expensive arcade system upon release, costing $4200 ($8.12 thousand in 2017). The hardware is capable of pseudo-3D, sprite-scaling.

Contents

Namco Pole Position specifications

  • Board composition: CPU board, video board, audio board

    • Processors

  • Main CPU: Zilog Z80 @ 3.072 MHz
  • Performance: 8/16-bit instructions @ 0.445 MIPS (million instructions per second)
  • Secondary CPU: 2× Zilog Z8002 @ 3.072 MHz
  • Performance: 16/32-bit instructions @ 1.536 MIPS (0.768 MIPS, 4 cycles per instruction, per CPU)
  • I/O MCU: Fujitsu MB8843 @ 1.54 MHz & Fujitsu MB8844 @ 1.54 MHz
  • Performance: 4/8-bit instructions @ 3.08 MIPS (1.54 MIPS, 1 instruction per cycle, per MCU)
  • Capabilities: Input/output controllers (type 1) handle the controls
  • Sound CPU: One of the secondary CPU's used for sound, possibly additional Zilog Z80 for sound
  • Sound chips:
  • Namco 52xx Audio Processor @ 1.536 MHz: 6 PCM wavetable synthesis channels, 4-16-bit audio depth, up to 48 kHz sampling rate, stereo & quadraphonic output
  • Namco 54xx Audio Generator @ 1.536 MHz: Explosion sound generator, noise generator, 4-channel quadraphonic muxer
  • 2× Fujitsu MB8843 MCU @ 1.54 MHz: 4/8-bit instructions @ 3.08 MIPS, handles speech
  • GPU chipset: 3× Namco 02xx GFX Shifter (16-bit video shifter), 2× Namco 03xx Playfield Data Buffer, Namco 04xx Sprite Address Generator, Namco 09xx Sprite RAM Buffer

    • Memory

  • RAM (random-access memory)
  • Z80: 8 KB
  • Battery back-up NVRAM: 2 KB
  • Video RAM: 5 KB (2.5 KB SRAM, 2 KB sprite RAM)
  • Sound RAM: 1 KB
  • Z8002: 8 KB video RAM (3 KB SRAM, 4 KB sprite RAM)
  • ROM (read-only memory)
  • Z80: 16 KB
  • Z8002: 240 KB

    • Graphics

  • Video resolution: 256×224 to 384×264 pixels
  • Color palette: 4096 (12-bit RGB)
  • Colors on screen: 3840
  • Graphical planes: 2 tilemap layers (1 background, 1 text), 1 road layer
  • Tile size: 8×8 pixels
  • Colors per tile: 3
  • Scrolling: Horizontal and vertical
  • Sprite capabilities: Line buffers, vertical position buffer, sprite-scaling, sprite flipping, mid-frame palette swap
  • Colors per sprite: 16 (4-bit)
  • Sprite sizes: 16×16 (64 bytes) and 32×32 (256 bytes)
  • Sprite RAM: 6 KB
  • Sprites on screen: 24 (32×32) to 96 (16×16)
  • Sprite pixels per scanline: 512
  • Sprites per scanline: 16 (32×32) to 32 (16×16)

    • List of Namco Pole Position arcade games

  • Pole Position (1982)
  • Pole Position II (1983)
  • Top Racer (1982) - bootleg of Pole Position

    • References

    Namco Pole Position Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA