Tests and Experiments

This article will be a repository for various and miscellaneous tests and experiments relative to this project.

=Clock Frequency= The game system updates the electrics at set regular intervals, defining a maximum clock rate. The specifications in the game claim a 0.01 second clock tic spacing, or 100 Hz frequency. However, several results indicated this to be in error so I devised an experiment to determine the actual clock speed. The results sadly indicate a speed roughly half of the stated one.

Here is a picture of the test setup:

The bank on the right is programmed as a counter (the data in each location is the address of itself + 1 ). With a direct feedback as shown, it should cycle through all 16 digits, updating at the speed of the clock. The 7-segment above it shows that indeed, it cycles too fast to see.

The bank to its left is programmed to function as a divide by 16. Only 1 of 16 input values will output a pulse. That output pulse is fed to the counter on the left so we can observe the changes.

It takes just over 5 seconds to cycle the counter through its full count when the circuit runs. That means 256 tics take about 5.12 seconds which gives 50 tics per second. Exactly half of the stated speed.