[bhaidet]

Could the "Very high speed" of the counter not refer to how many times it can count in a second but its response time to a change of input? I am not sure exactly how it works, but the high speed may just mean that whatever triggers the sensor (probably photogate) is only blocking the photogate for a short time, meaning that it is small and/or moving fast.

Even launching a few balls into a goal a second is "fast" from the game prospective, but is nothing for a computer (and the parts list had LAN adapters that enabled direct IO, I believe somebody posted.) There must be some reason for FIRST to add extra circuitry between the computer and the sensor. If the network is not fast enough to register a goal with whatever sensor it is, the adding of a "quantizing" counter between them would eliminate this problem.

People said that in Aim High the counters were unreliable, does anyone know why? was it a speed-of-signal-pulse issue?

If used like this, this part seems like it would probably have been inserted as a tweak as the GDC played and tested (and figured that it wouldn't work well without it). I can see it happening.




photogate input: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ._____/\__________

Time the network is looking for a response (when high): ----____----____-

it would not be recorded because the pulse happens when the network is not listening



with the "quantizer"

photogate input: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ._____/\__________
signal to network: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ._____/----\______

Time the network is looking for a response (when high): ----____----____-

this time the signal and the async time the network is "looking" line up, so there will be a score detected.