Re: How true...

[bieling@terra.es]

On Apr 21, 9:19 pm, Charlie Springer <R...@regnirps.com> wrote:
>
> Don worked as a designer for Conrac or Phillips IIRC and new video inside and
> out. I don't know where "misguided" comes from. It worked and did what he
> wanted. What else can you ask from a project?
>
> -- Charlie Springer

I needed to understand how could it be that pressing a key on the
Apple II put a character on the TV screen, and that's why I read this
book back then, around 1977-1978. I knew how to build multi-digit
(multiplexed) 7-segment displays (wow), but a CRT display was much
more cool, and versatile...

So I had a real "TV typewriter" sitting on my desktop (the Apple II),
and reading the book I learned what was the magic behind it, although,
the TV Typewriter in the book had less characters/row, less rows/
screen, no high-resolution nor color nor... I realized it "could do
nothing" by himself but displaying characters on the screen. My fault,
but it was a bit deceptive.

I didn't know then that the book is in fact the 2nd version of the TV
Typewriter project that was published in the Radio Electronics
magazine back in 1973 (see the wikipedia). I was reading a brand-new
best-seller high-tech book of a device that... by 1977-78 was already
a bit outdated.

Eric Clever, AFAIK, talks about what seems to be a 3rd revision of the
TV Typewriter, one that incorporates what for me was missing in the
2nd version, namely processing ability, in the form of a 6502 cpu, and
he argues a "lack of understanding about the aims and purposes of
embedded development" because "the scheme throws away 85% of the cpu
bandwidth". Being that a processor is what I missed in the earlier TV
Typewriter, I'd agree that incorporating one to the design just to
throw away 85% of its power does not look like a very bright idea, at
least for me.

That said, Don Lancaster and Walter G. Jung are the masters that wrote
the (Cook) books that thrilled me when I was young.

--Jorge.