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Third Millenium Engineering Arcade Board

Third Millenium Engineering Arcade Board

Third Millenium Engineering Corporation (1983)

The Arcade Board used a Texas Instruments 9918A video display processor and a General Instruments AY-3-8910 programmable sound generator to generate sprite graphics, music, and sound effects. This gave the Apple II graphics and sound capabilities to match those of other 8-bit computers of the time from TI, Atari and Commodore.

These added capabilities were accessed through a set of ampersand extensions to Applesoft BASIC called Amparcade.

While the Arcade Board made it possible to write arcade games in Applesoft BASIC, a machine had to be equipped with an Arcade Board in order to run the game. I'm not aware of any software written to take advantage of the board.

Information gleaned from a comp.sys.apple2 newsgroup thread in 2004 indicates that the single wire coming from the top right corner of the board connects to the center of the RCA jack video port of the Apple II to provide video passthrough. The top RCA jack is the video output to a composite monitor, and the bottom RCA jack is the monoaural audio output. The 4-pin molex connector between the two RCA jacks is for an RF modulator.

Resources

Thanks to Michael J. Mahon for supplying the disk image and source code.

Amparcade Disk
The Amparcade diskette contains the Amparcade extensions to Applesoft and several demo programs. This is a ShrinkIt disk archive of a 5.25" DOS 3.3 diskette.

Commented Aparcade Source
Commented Source Code for the Amparcade Interpreter

Thanks to Paul R. Santa-Maria for the following:

TMS9918 Manual
Texas Instruments 9900
TMS9918A/TMS9928A/TMS9929A
Video Display Processors manual in Adobe PDF format. (2.75 MB)

Amparcade Disassembly
Disassembly of the Amparcade Interpreter.

Thanks to Scott Alfter for pointing me to these Wikipedia entries with technical information on the 9918A and AY-3-8910 chips used by the Arcade Board.

A review of the Arcade Board appeared in the February 1984 issue of Creative Computing, (This is the text of that review from the atarimagazines.com Classic Computer Magazines Archive. See below for a PDF file of the review with the pictures.)

Thanks to Jean-Marc Boutillon for the following scans.

Creative Computing Arcade Board Review
A review of the Arcade Board (and SuperSprite board) from the February 1984 issue of Creative Computing in PDF format. (2 MB)

An advertisement for the Arcade Board in a 1983 Nibble magazine with a "Special Introductory Price."

An advertisement from the June 1983 issue of Softalk magazine.

A press release that appeared in the November 1983 issue of Call A.P.P.L.E.

A short press release that appeared in the July 1983 issue of inCider magazine.

A press release from Volume 4, Number 7, 1983 of Nibble.

If you have the documentation or any other information on the Arcade Board, please contact me.

© 2005 Dave Touvell.
All Rights Reserved.
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