Vectrex - Computer and Vector Generator

Computer and Vector Generator

The computer and vector generator were designed by Gerry Karr. The computer runs the game's computer code, watches the user's inputs, runs the sound generator, and controls the vector generator to make the screen drawings. The vector generator is an all analog design using two integrators: X and Y. The computer sets the integration rates using a digital-to-analog converter. The computer controls the integration time by momentarily closing electronic analog switches within the operational-amplifier based integrator circuits. Voltage ramps are produced that the monitor uses to steer the electron-beam over the face of the phosphor screen of the cathode ray tube. Another signal is generated that controls the brightness of the line.

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