Re: Apple II Euromod / Apple II Europlus

[Peter Ibbotson <pibbotson@gmail.com>]

On Friday, 10 May 2013 08:05:41 UTC+1, Ewen  wrote:
> <pibbotson@gmail.com> wrote:
> > At TNMOC at Bletchley Park I saw something that called it's self a 
> > "Colour Viewdata" in an ITT2020 case. I did want to see inside but
> > the whole thing was screwed down and from the back it didn't look 
> > like it ever had Apple family parts inside.
> > (I think it was used for teletext or Prestel in the UK)
> 
> 
> Prestel was a service provided in the UK for some years, and was a
> similar information system to Minitel in France. It used the same
> character set as the Teletext pages that were transmitted over analogue
> TV in the UK. Prestel died many years ago, but Teletext survived until
> last year, when the UK went digital for all its TV services.
> 
> However you did not need a special computer to access Prestel, as my own
> commercial program Data Highway that was sold by PACE in Europe, was
> able to access it in full colour using a //e or //c. On a basic II+, you
> only got a B&W display, and to get the display in colour, you needed a
> special Teletext card that PACE sold in the UK.
> 
> I think that special Viewdata version of the ITT2020, was probably what
> I remember seeing in estate agants (realtors) to access custom pages on
> Prestel. It would have been an ITT2020 inside, and would have run custom
> software. 
> 
> Cheers - Ewen

Next time I go up there I'll try and make some arrangements to see what's inside, when I was up there last time I was at a conference and was wandering around during the lunch break so didn't have much time. From memory I think this particular box was part of the "server" end of either teletext or Prestel. 

I did a EGA/VGA version of the Prestel character set many years ago for a terminal emulator on the PC. I'd forgotten about the Pace Prestel cards.