Sorry about the background music!! This video was a bit of a learning experience.. it was only the fourth one I'd ever made, and the first where I was doing a 45 minute documentary with animations and such. I was still learning sound levels. The newest videos I think are finally dialing that in. But this is still my favorite.. Don Lancaster is a personal hero of mine and I felt the TVT deserved to be highlighted in its own right. I tried to do it justice. Thanks to everyone who gave this one a watch!
Please keep making content. You have what it takes. I really enjoyed this. Sub and Notified. Serious, there is a lot of trash out there, but your video was hilarious.
@Trigger TheSound I've been trying to figure out what to do about that. It's my 2nd major video and it suffered a litrle from my inexperience. The hard part is letting go of the views and comments. I wish UA-cam allowed do overs. But I am definitely hoping to revisit this and the early videos.
@@TechTimeTraveller Meh, keep it as is, it's obviously a stepping stone and should be preserved as such. I honestly had no problem with the BGM, I feel it suits the homespun feel of the project. I LOVE your sense of humor too, nothing wrong with some laughter along with the history lesson. I'm honestly surprised that your channel is this new, hoping to see MUCH more content to come from you. You got an instant sub from me from the last video I watched of yours... literally SECONDS before this one, that was the one you did on the "hard drives as bricks" fraud scandal which just had me DYING with laughter all throughout! You love what you do and clearly know your tech history, so keep up the awesome work! 😍😅😁👍
This was a fantastic video, but the music made it really hard to concentrate on the content. I for one would love to see an alternative version without the background music.
"First time someone typed a character on a keyboard and seen it show up on the screen right in front of them" was long before 1973. The Mother of All Demos happened in 1968 and apparently Engelbart didn't see word processing as remarkable enough to comment on, since he was already demoing much more impressive things like networking, the mouse and hypertext.
Yes absolutely. I have a couple of 'glass teletypes' that predate the TVT by a couple years. I was just taking aim at Woz's assertion that he got there first. That is how he put it in iWoz, however he has been quoted elsewhere saying something to the effect of same but 'on a home computer', which I think is demonstrably false also. But I think in terms doing it in the home, Lancaster was probably first.
@@TechTimeTraveller some Woz fans interpreted this as "a computer owned by a normal person" but when I pointed out the 1962 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LINC and showed the picture of it in Mary Wilkes' parent's home they claimed that since it was bought with grant money it didn't count. The Apple I was just an expansion of a terminal Woz had previously built instead of a completely new project so I am sure he wouldn't consider the TVT to be equivalent, just as he dismissed the Altair as being the same thing as his 1971 Cream Soda computer (which it sort of was as first shipped and most certainly wasn't when in a reasonable configuration).
Smalltalk 72 was already graphical, but yeah, it wasn't the garage box type of computer. It was pretty "high end" research. The kind of research Apple then claimed and called their own research (at least Jobs did).
i was writing firmware for a well-known company. they were using a chip designed for matrix keyboard scanning that became unavailable. they even tried gray market sources and ended up with empty packages when they x-rayed them! i remembered from Lancaster's CMOS Cookbook an analog switch chip that was controlled like a 74138. Cheap and multiple manufacturers. I brought the book in and showed it to an engineer and they redesigned the boards to use that chip and it made my reputation at that company and I was in good.
In 1976 I was in high school electronics lab and my teacher said go to the tv studio they have a problem with the prompter for the in school tv channel. In the control room was a tv typewriter that was not working. I spent 2 months tinkering with it reading the manuals (Don's articles) to learn how it worked. I ended up getting it kind of working but is was very touchy. It also had a sync lock board so it could overlay on video. In the end I read almost every book Don would write. And would learn enough from his books to go on to design a 6502 homebrew system in 1977. I Fondly remember it as my first true intro into the digital world. It was much different then with no internet but we felt we were at the start of a new age... little did we know what was to come
Looked at Don Lancaster’s Wikipedia page and was sad to find out that he’s passed now. I love learning about these older electronics projects that came decades before I was born. I respect the efforts that went into making something affordable and moderately approachable.
In 1981 I interfaced a TVT (some later model in a single large board) to a homebrew 6800 computer that acted as a terminal for the University of São Paulo's Burroughs B6900 computer. This was in turn connected to two very large black and white TV sets that were placed in strategic places. Previously students and professors stood in a physical line to use the computer and personally fed their cards into the reader and then grabbed their listing from the printer as that came out. This was replaced by rooms full of terminals and the line became virtual. The huge characters of the TVT were perfect for letting a person standing at the back of a crowd know when it was their time to pick up their listing.
This is quickly becoming one of my absolute favorite channels. The quality is outstanding and the topics are fascinating and not talked about enough. I do hope you continue to make great videos!
Thank you! That means a lot to me! I have a bunch on the go. I plan to try and keep a schedule of every couple of weeks.. some will be bigger efforts like the TVT video (that one took about 100 hours), most will be things like show n tells, repairs, etc. I don't want to just crank out 'content' for its own sake though, so the schedule is not quite in stone... more like a goal.
Don Lancaster, one of the legends, I remember from the early 80's. Forrest Mims. Jim Butterfield, Steve Wozniak... I knew Jim Butterfield (in Toronto; RIP) personally.
I did avidly read Don Lancaster's TV typewriter books, and used the information to create a TV display device for an early single board computer, which was the "junior computer", a clone of sorts of the KIM-1 single board 6502 based development board designed by the Dutch electronics magazine "elektuur" (now Elektor" ). It used the idea of using the CPU (the 6502) to do most of the work, just like the Sinclair ZX-80. Even though the PCB manufacturer produced my prototype PCB in mirror image, I forgot to tell them which side was the solder side and which side the component side, a rookies mistake :-) , I still managed to get it to work by folding over the legs of the various TTL DIP IC's over so the IC's were mounted "dead bug" style. and soldering the euro-connector interface to the junior computer on the back of the PCB. I had devised my own character-set inspired by the OHIO SCIENTIFIC's clone UK 101 character-set which included block graphics and card symbols. And it worked great notwithstanding the somewhat wavy nature of the screen (too much ripple on the power supply) and the fact that the junior could only "compute" during the blanking intervals. In the end my boss decided not to market my TV interface.
07:35 I loved that SWTPC keyboard. The only keyboard I could find at the time with a square cutout! Much easier than the stepped TAB, RETURN and SPACE bar ! p.s. I remember the joy of jumping from 110 to 300 bps. 1200 was heavenly. 9600 was a year or two later.
I recently just picked up the very first edition of that keyboard.. the one Don Lancaster designed for Popular Electronics in 1974. Pretty similar although fewer keys and a bit more delicate.
Don Lancaster is a stone-cold hero of the micro computer age. I built a computer from a kit and then I found out I really needed a CRT terminal. But the prices of those things! Enter TV typewriter at a third or a fourth of the price of a modest commercial terminal. I didn't know anything about electronics, but it's Don to the rescue again with TTL Cookbook. Still one of my favorite technical writers. What a gifted man.
And he was so helpful! I'm asking him about a project he did 40+ years ago and he was still willing to email and troubleshoot with me. The saying 'don't meet your heroes' does *not* apply to Don Lancaster.
I have been reading Don's stuff for many years. His case against patents helped me put the brakes on when an invention company was trying to get their hooks in me. 20 years later I saw where they were ousted as scammers. Much Thanks to Don Lancaster!
Great presentation. I built a version of the TVTW using point to point wiring rather than printed circuit boards. I started with Don's schematic, and partitioned the logic into the same 3 boards. However, I used flexible wire and connectors so I could get to all the components to measure voltages. Do used 512 bit shift registers for the memory, but I used 1024 bit shifters so I could have two pages. The "hidden" page was just shifted through during video refresh, and to switch pages, the hidden page bypass was just suppressed for one video frame. Originally, I used an ASCI keyboard I bought from B&F Enterprises. I actually visited B&F in 1973. The place was outside of Boston. It was filled with all kinds of surplus electronic stuff. Later, after I built a home brew 8080 computer, I modified the TVTW and keyboard to interface them to the 8080. Lots of fun. I wrote a very compact "game of life" with the TVTW as the display and the keyboard as the input to set up the cells. I still have the stuff in my "museum" along with good photographic records. Thanks!
I'm in my 40s, my dad bought an Apple ][+ when it came out because he was a ham radio guy and had tried and failed to build a computer. "You'd be surprised how hard it was." - Now that I hear the Don Lancaster name again, This is the group of projects he was discussing. And my dad was real good fixing tube radios and tv's. He understood the electrons and waves like some thing he could hold in his hand. I'd love to see like say, audrino code that accomplishes what those 1973 chips and boards did with ascii and character advancement, etc. Really cool channel!
Dude, the algorithm is on your side. This showed up as a full yt ad below a tech tangents video I was watching. Definitely subscribing. You are gonna blow up man
This was one of the first projects I built as a kid. I read about it in Radio-Electronics. I was in high school and needed a terminal for my 8080 kit. It was a lot of fun to build and use.
This is dedication to a replica on a level I have not seen in a long time. Mighty fine work, and a very in-depth exploration of what it took to create such a beautifully primitive and powerful device.
Hey thanks for taking the time to answer my comment! The song seems like it'll be really fun to play. I appreciate your videos and the level of detail you put into them. Thanks again.
This is a high quality, entertaining video. I’m impressed with the whole thing, and that’s before I get to the subject itself - which is just fascinating. Really well done!
I really enjoyed this. I’m just old enough (62) to remember this era of computing where the first complex piece of home computing we owned was the Texas Instruments Sr-50 calculator which after an unfortunate incident in my high school engineering class was sent in for repair and was replaced by the even cooler SR-51. Also took a Fortran class in hs (FORTRAN 3) which introduced me to the teletype to connect with UIC’s mainframe system. My brother and I after college was the Commodore-64 color computer with tape drive and printer. The programmable sprites were a big innovation as was the modem connection to The local BBS communities. So much advancement in such a short time!
Very cool! I've been a fan of Don Lancaster since reading his articles in (I think) the early '90s, in Computer Shopper - tucked into those phonebook-sized issues among the ads for PC clones and assorted parts, the era's version of ebay, One article I recall vividly was on how to hack together a high-end Apple laser printer from a surplus board and a much cheaper printer. I picked up a used copy of "TV Typewriter Cookbook" a few years back - I think a copy is downloadable from Don's site - and keep wanting to put a replica of one of the versions together, though I realize I could just bodge together an Arduino equivalent in an afternoon. Thanks for going into such detail on this, it's a great watch.
Don Lancaster was my nerd idol after I graduated from Tech school in 1980. I remember all those great projects and articles he published in Radio Electronics.
Just rediscovered this channel... great content... great production. Was in High School in the '70s... avid reader of Popular Electronics, Radio Electronics, etc... remember Don Lancaster's stuff well. Fun and interesting time for electronics technology. Advances were fast and furious... and very accessible to the hobbyist. Led to degrees in engineering followed by a 40+ year career in tech... now blissfully retired. Cut my teeth on Altairs, PDP8s, PDP11s and Data General Novas... as well as single board 8080s, 6502s and Z80s... stone knives and bearskins compared to anything out there today... as I watch this on my android tablet which has thousands of times more power than anything from back in those days...
all right, born in 75? Really cool seeing someone closer to my age talking about vintage electronics from a "been there" perspective. I was born in 1980, and that seems like a big world of difference, but in America home computing was slow going. Compared to across the ocean where they were doing home computing for almost every household in the UK the US was way behind. I was so very VERY interested in computers ever since I was just a little girl, but the only computer I got to use regularly in the early 80s was my 1st brother's grandparent's computer, the Commodore 64. I'd have to wait until 1st grade to play with Apple II computers at school. And still, we had no home computer because my parents foolishly thought all I'd do with it was play video games. By the time I got grand dad's old computer it was 1993 and the machine was on its way out for bigger, grander machines. I did care though, I finally had something I could learn on, and I used it nearly every single day. I did have to re-learn how to type though, since computers in the 80s still used the old typewriter positions of certain symbols and the modern keyboard layout that we know today was not standard. Sorry I went off on such a tangent. I just want to say that this 40 year old lady is now subscribed to your channel and I hope to see many many more videos from you.
Many thanks for the vote of confidence! Hard to believe we are all up in our 40s now. Life goes so fast. I'm glad you're enjoying these. I'm enjoying exploring an area of tech that doesn't get a ton of attention. There were so many interesting things going on in the mid to late 70s that I missed. We got our first computer (a Vic 20) around 1980 or 81.. so this whole world that was going on before didn't exist to me until I discovered ebay. The next video, which I am finishing up, is about the Digital Group.. very interesting company that went out of business in 1979. Hope to get it out soon and thanks again for the sub!
Don't know if you're interested, but I think a huge factor in UK home computing is that the Spectrums and similar machines used cassette tapes for storage. Cheap, easy to trade, easy for ambitious amateurs to sell. In the US, and specifically for games, we went from cartridges to floppy disks with copy protection. Floppies were relatively expensive. None of my teenage friends thought their little attempts at programming, games or otherwise, could ever be sold or even just distributed. It was very different for my friends in the UK.
I've never been good at programming, but reading the jargon file made me feel like I understood something about the early days of computing and this video reminds me of that anthropological thrill of seeing people do something amazing you barely understand.
I’m so glad I came across your channel! I totally forgot about the Lancaster TVT I have in storage I built in the seventies and mounted on a masonite board to use with my IMSAI 8080 so I wouldn’t have to toggle in the binary. Thanks for a great job. I’m binging on the rest of your fare. Your voice and delivery remind me of another great channel, This Old Tony.
This is an awesome video (or should I say a full-length documentary) on the subject! Kind of reminds me of LGR Tech Tales but much more retro. As others have already said, I too feel that this is exactly the kind of information that's in a desperate need of an in-depth, hands-on attention these days. To honor and reminisce the dawn of the personal computing in a very enjoyable way. Thank you for taking the precious time and doing exactly that!
A friend and I both built the TV typewriter in our junior year of High school. Took a while to debug due to bad chips. But we both got them working. Built a Altair 8800 the next year and interfaced it with a serial link to the TV typewriter.
I thought I recognized that keyboard! I had two of those MDS keyboard-to-tape units in my teen bedroom! I used them as desks and puttered with them at times. And I followed Lancaster in all of his articles. Thanks for the great trip down memory lane!
Great video and thank you giving a little bit of pre history to the TV Typewriter and giving credit to those who came before Apple. The two Steve's definitely deserve to be remembered for everything they did in building "Apple", but they always took more credit than they deserved.
I remember seeing Lancaster's 'Cheap Video Cookbook' in the library in my childhood, at the time I had no EE education so it didn't really make sense, but it was still fascinating for some reason.
Oh yess... sesame street, that animation with the marbles numbers and flashing numbers... psychadelic. Excellent documentary! I didn't knew this was even in 70's before the micro's in the early 80's. I have respect for these people.
Pretty enlightening video. I was unaware of Don Lancaster and the TV Typewriter. In the fall of 1973, I was a freshman in high school and had a Television Production class. We used a Kapco Enterprises KG-1632 Character generator which basically had just a bit more functionality than the TV Typewriter. I still have this unit, but I have never found any further information on the company that produced it. Anyway, if I was using this unit in the fall of '73, there must have been other developers out there with TV Typewriters already?
I'm currently, slowly, making my way through the BYTE magazine archives, and of course see articles from Don Lancaster and references to the TV Typewriter a bunch. Thanks for this great documentary which answered many of my questions.
I've been binging on your videos this evening, and they're all terrific. It's great to see a nice long, in-depth overview of this foundational equipment. I'm getting pretty tired of retro channels that are 80% washing and retrobrighting C64s!
Actually, I AM part of Technology Connection's audience...and TechMoan's as well! I literally JUST discovered this channel now and have become an INSTANT fan and sub, so I would say your guess is quite correct! 😅😁👍
Thank you so much for this video! I was born in 1978 and at some point (evidently between 1973 and 1978) my father (an electrical engineer in the 60's-mid 80's) built one of these that sat up high on a filing cabinet. I was rarely allowed to touch it, but I would sneak typing sessions here and there just to play around. He had built it encased in thick Plexiglas, and I vaguely remember seeing stacked boards like you mention. I always knew it was impressive but I hadn't realized just how difficult a lot of the parts had to be to obtain. Like you say, we are so spoiled now with being able to grab electronic components on a whim cheaply and easily. Even if he had access to stuff through work (which I doubt) it had to be a challenge to get and build everything. SUBSCRIBED!
Many thanks for the sub and very glad you enjoyed the video! Do you know what became of your father's machine? Even finding pictures of original TVTs is tricky business!
Sadly I'm pretty sure it was tossed out when we moved from Chicago to Las Vegas in 1993. He had so many 70s era electronics projects that were lost to time, unfortunately.
@@sethbramwell This is so frustrating. At some point I walk up to my old man and I ask him 'So... remember that weird computer you had laying around 30 years ago in the shelf that we threw out? Do you remember what it was?' And he be like, 'Oh, that - I built that one from an article in some German computer magazine'. And now I absolutely hate the fact that I had some 3 or 4 old computer projects laying around the house and they got thrown out in the 90s because we never would've guessed those machines would spike interest in people some 30 years later (especially since some chips are becoming more and more unobtainable). So many regrets.
Yeah I remember Don Lancaster... He dropped a lot of gadgets to the pages of Popular Electronics. I was reading them starting in the early 70's. 1973 I was in the fifth grade and already building electronic gadgets.
This early era of electronics is both fascinating and terrifying to look back at from the modern computer age, a time when computers were built by hand in garages and the solution to a design not having a feature you wanted was to solder on a circuit that added those features yourself.
I was in the 4th or 5th grade when the TV Typewriter came out, but I had had electronics magazines from 1956 on. I was also buying new magazines, and by the time I was in the fifth grade I was "playing" with electronics and electricity. By the time i was 17 I was rewiring household electricity and rebuilding computers. The computers I rebuilt had only one circuit board, and modifications had to be done by butchering traces on the mother board and using hookup wire to reroute and rewire things. Heck, I was even piggy backing chips in dead cock roach style to add extra address decoding for the CPU. No one now needs to modify circuit boards to add new features, just drop in a new card. In those days computers were fun, less proprietary, more software shared, less copyright crap because we were the ones making the software, not big companies who squeeze out every dime....
I actually built a device to add an image to the upper right of the TVTW screen as a computer science project. I had a blast designing and adding this gizmo to the SWTP kit!
Pronounced Tin ah ha. Don is a great guy. Years ago I spent a 4th of July with him and Bee. We chatted the day away, and I went with him to meet the fire department and help setup fireworks. It was great. Like meeting my hero. I read every article, and bought all his books. Thanks for the video!
Cheap Video Cookbook and Son of Cheap Video were my favorite tech books ever. Still have them on a bookshelf next to my bed. I just loved the idea of using a 6502 running strange code out of a tiny ROM to generate all the signals necessary to scan display memory and generate H & V sync signals.
I‘ve got this video as an commercial in the video suggestions and I‘m just so glad I clicked on it! It‘s just so informative, interesting and the 45 minutes just felt like 10. Great work, please keep going with it and I hope that you‘re getting more views soon, you totally deserve it! :)
Thank you for providing this trip down memory lane. I received one of the original set of stackable boards from a friend and got it working and installed it in a wood cabinet. It wasn’t particle but I did learn a lot getting it to work on my Explorer S100 kit. It was a slight improvement over my noisy mechanical baudot terminal. The 70s was a great time for tinkerers.
I wanted to build one for the longest time, but many of the of the components are pretty scarce, andnthe project is massive. The TVT6 is pretty amazing in that it consolidates the whole thing waaay down. I saw you have an unassembled kit for this, might you make a replacement board (as to not mess with your original kit) and try to build one in the future? It seems like it would be much simpler, and allow SBC builders to add on a terminal pretty cheap and easily. Great video, and very nice work on your TVT!
I kind of got lucky building mine when I did. I'll talk about this more in a followup video but essentially I was aided in my quest for the rarer parts (the Signetics 8288s particularly) by a big liquidation sale on ebay. The shift registers are almost completely unavailable. I got lucky on those. But the thing I had the most trouble with was the crystal. I could not find a 4561.920khz crystal anywhere. It wouldn't have been a showstopper.. you can have one custom made, but I wanted the thing to look authentic. I ended up scoring a couple of 4520khz crystals off ebay and that seems to run the thing well enough. The TVT6 PCB artwork is available in the original magazine article, which is posted on americanradiohistory.org (think that's the site..) as well as Lancaster's tinaja.com site. I'm reluctant to open the sealed package on mine but might if folks need a dump of the PROM to get it going.
@@TechTimeTraveller Yeah, I recall luck had as much to do with building one today as it did back then, as you mentioned in the video. The ROM should just be a character lookup table like the 2513, no? In which case no need to open your kit? BTW, your channel is EXCELLENT. It encompasses my favorite era (and what I see as the critical transition period), the mid 70s until the very early 80s, when there were no rules because nobody even knew what a computer should be yet. Please keep at it, your content is very good!
The character generator for the 6 5/8 is a 2513 I think, yes. But there is also a PROM that contains the control program to interface it with a KIM-1. They also offered custom programming for other systems. Any capable programmer could probably create one themselves for whatever project they had in mind. Many thanks for the kind words. The 70s are a favourite era of mine. The channel will sort of go wherever timeline-wise but a lot of it will focus on that era as it is so important.
@@TechTimeTraveller Ah yes...now that I look at the old build article, it seems there are code listings for writing to ROM or typing into the keypad on startup.
Great video, notwithstanding the loud background music, I found it very interesting. I had Don's book 'The Cheap Video Cookbook' back in the very late 70s with the intention of possibly building a video display for my F8 single board development kit. However the video circuitry described in the book was really IIRC specifically for the KIM-1 and relied on a mysterious 'upstream tap' signal that basically did cycle-stealing from the processor, so that stymied my hopes of a more generic version. Is the Feb 1973 R-E magazine article for building the keyboard available online anywhere? I looked but couldn't find it. EDIT Never mind, I just found it on the deramp site!
I've really enjoyed watching this and other videos on your channel. I especially like the humor - just the right balance in my opinion. The scene where you are reluctant to push the key then switch to a fireball was classic! Keep up the great work. I am a tad senior to your age. Built my Quest Super Elf when I was 12 - no internet - different world back then. These videos bring back so many memories.
Glad you enjoyed it! I enjoy doing the humor bits as they give me a chance to work with special fx. The TVT was definitely a ways before my time but I nonetheless find it very interesting. I guess you didn't hang onto your Quest Super ELF? Those are getting pretty pricey these days!!
02:58 - "But while the average person might not have been salivating..." shown over a clip from a Salvo commercial. Salivating vs. Salvo. Well played, Sir.
Many thanks for watching. The video isn't quite perfect (I get some complaints about the honky tonk piano), but I'm very proud of it. I wanted to do a proper homage to Don Lancaster. Quite an amazing gentleman.
Bro. What the fuck? This channel is fucking incredible. How have I only just now been suggested this channel by the UA-cam algorithm? Solid channel and content. Crazy how much these dudes did to make computers so accessible and all I use my computer for is watching videos of Age of Empires 2 competitions and hardcore pornography.
So many people seem to be complaining about the music. I think it was ambient enough to be unnoticeable and gave a pleasant richness to the background (especially since it wasn't some standard electronic music people usually use in retro computer videos) - there is some high pitch noise for example at 31 minutes. Some people like David from The 8-bit Guy have mentioned that with age some noises are no longer audible to some people and that he himself usually checks audio track for noise by looking at sound graph - so perhaps I simply don't find the music as offensive because I don't hear some parts people deem "loud" with my advancing age or my audio setup is better balanced. But all in all - two videos in - superb content. Thank you very much.
A very interesting story. I remember Miniscribe very well but wasn't aware of the story behind their failure. Thanks for an entertaining look into the past.
Thank you for sharing both your own craft, along with the research and backstory to lodge it firmly in the timestream. This was a fun watch, and I do enjoy the way you approach both video editing and information presentation.
I like these types of vids, please include tons of ads and pages from old magazines like Bytes or what not as well as footage from back then for context. Never had heard of that TVT or Lancaster, so that's great. Bios on not well known people who made a difference or made something unique is great. Thanks!
The late 60s and early 70s were the golden age of electronics as the transition from vacuum tubes to transistors and ICs was all but complete. Then came the analog to digital era. I built one complex project from Radio Electronics magazine. That was the vidicon TV camera by Gary Davis. I had the pleasure to meet Gary 40 years after the fact and discuss it with him. There was, as mentioned in this video, a serious schematic error I was never aware of. The horizontal sync coming out of the camera was 40 volts pk-pk! I was able to get the picture on a vacuum tube Setchell Carlson TV I owned by direct video input. So, the project was a success. Gary asked me if I'd seen the correction in the following issue of the magazine. I had not. All I could say to him was, "DOH!". It was still a cool project. It was my second TV camera and I was only 14 when I built it.
Very Interesting video for someone interested in history of personal computer and old display technologies. I learned a lot from it. Thank you very much.
I have that keyboard. I deisgned / build a PCB that interfaced with it, scanning rows. The parallel outout went into a Super Elf (1802) and was used for many years. Although the Super Elf was given away, I still have the keyboard.
I wish I had bought a couple more when they were cheap. The keyboard guys have gone crazy on them and they go for over a grand now. If you're talking about the Microswitch unit, that is. I ranted about that Honeywell unit in another video where the seller separated it and now no one wants the terminal itself because it has no keyboard. Oh well.. good news for you anyway since you have a valuable antique. If you ever bring it out feel free to email me some pics.. love to see those old 60s microswitch units.
9:28 "Don Championed its use with so-called surplus keyboards that had been recycled from devices like key-to-tape machines." Awesome detailed research! The cover of BYTE September 1975?
Born in 1972. I can tell you that my first direct exposure to computer equipment was either an Asteroids machine at the local movie theater or when my cousin's parents bought a Sears Tele-Video game system (aka Atari 2600) 😊 When I went into a Radio Shack and played with the TRS-80 Model III, it was a magical moment. Our first home computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer 2.
Wow this was a nostalgia trip. I started my electronics journey in high school in the 90s, right on the cusp of the modern electronics era. I'm building a keyboard at the moment and my inner 13 year old geeks right out at the kind of things that are possible these days. But part of me does miss the old hand-drawn or iron-transfer PCB days.
High quality information in here, very nice! Suggestion: leave the music out entirely. The looping piano piece in the background was really grating after a while.
We seem to have split opinion on that subject. I'm not sure I can satisfy everyone, I like to style my videos after full on documentaries and the music they use is quite pronounced. But what I've been trying to do is dial it way down and muffle it a bit during narration. And also avoid plinky piano pieces. I don't like having zero as I'm still not a fan of my own voice alone yet.
This is amazing. I just bought the TV typewriter cookbook on amazon. I really want to try and build one myself but I have a lot to learn since I'm a beginner in electronics. Most people my age are into Raspberry Pi and Arduino but I am fascinated by the old stuff. :)
Yeah this was a bit before my time as well.. for me it's reading the old letters to editor in magazines and stepping through the process just like they did (well, with some necessary modern deviations).. it brings the scene back to life on a way.
I remember reading the original articles from Don Lancaster as a kid. It was fun to know that stuff like this was reachable by ordinary people. I never built anything I read about but I did build a Lafayette Shortwave radio, and it didn't work!
In the 70s my favorite Don Lancaster publication is the CMOS COOKBOOK first published in 1977. The edition I have is a first edition seventh printing 1982 paperback, published by Howard W. Sams & Company. The book focused on the CMOS 4000 B-Series, very easy to use and very low power. I remember being challenged at work in a contest with other EEs to build the lowest power periodic blinky LED light for a vehicle monitor. Much like you see in cars today, that blinky light on the dash board at the base of the windshield. The final design ran for over 5 years on a 9V battery. I don't really know how long it lasted after the 5 years because I changed jobs. From the 4000 B series offerings the 4046 Phase Locked Loop is probably the most interesting IC I used. PLLs are really fascinating to me. The 4060 14 stage binary ripple counter with internal oscillator was also a lot of fun.
Mike, I don't know for sure, but this seems like the project my father described trying to build "out of a magazine". before I was born. I was born on Apple day 4/11/76. When Apple ][+ came out, we got one, and he was so amazed by how it worked. This gives me an Idea of what was going on. Knowing him, he probably tried to build a keyboard.
All your videos are so high quality and educational! I collect and enjoy reading older BYTE magazines and Popular Electronics, and these videos are a great supplement. Thanks!
Sorry about the background music!! This video was a bit of a learning experience.. it was only the fourth one I'd ever made, and the first where I was doing a 45 minute documentary with animations and such. I was still learning sound levels. The newest videos I think are finally dialing that in. But this is still my favorite.. Don Lancaster is a personal hero of mine and I felt the TVT deserved to be highlighted in its own right. I tried to do it justice. Thanks to everyone who gave this one a watch!
Please keep making content. You have what it takes. I really enjoyed this. Sub and Notified. Serious, there is a lot of trash out there, but your video was hilarious.
could you re-upload without the music? it is so bad
@Trigger TheSound I've been trying to figure out what to do about that. It's my 2nd major video and it suffered a litrle from my inexperience. The hard part is letting go of the views and comments. I wish UA-cam allowed do overs. But I am definitely hoping to revisit this and the early videos.
@@TechTimeTraveller Meh, keep it as is, it's obviously a stepping stone and should be preserved as such. I honestly had no problem with the BGM, I feel it suits the homespun feel of the project. I LOVE your sense of humor too, nothing wrong with some laughter along with the history lesson.
I'm honestly surprised that your channel is this new, hoping to see MUCH more content to come from you. You got an instant sub from me from the last video I watched of yours... literally SECONDS before this one, that was the one you did on the "hard drives as bricks" fraud scandal which just had me DYING with laughter all throughout!
You love what you do and clearly know your tech history, so keep up the awesome work! 😍😅😁👍
This was a fantastic video, but the music made it really hard to concentrate on the content. I for one would love to see an alternative version without the background music.
"First time someone typed a character on a keyboard and seen it show up on the screen right in front of them" was long before 1973. The Mother of All Demos happened in 1968 and apparently Engelbart didn't see word processing as remarkable enough to comment on, since he was already demoing much more impressive things like networking, the mouse and hypertext.
Yes absolutely. I have a couple of 'glass teletypes' that predate the TVT by a couple years. I was just taking aim at Woz's assertion that he got there first. That is how he put it in iWoz, however he has been quoted elsewhere saying something to the effect of same but 'on a home computer', which I think is demonstrably false also. But I think in terms doing it in the home, Lancaster was probably first.
OH GREAT AND MIGHTY TECH TIME TRAVELER, PLEASE FIND A PLACE THIS IS SOLD AT A REASONABLE PRICE. MOSTLY SOMEWHERE BETWEEN THE 30$-40$ PRICE RANGE.
@@TechTimeTraveller some Woz fans interpreted this as "a computer owned by a normal person" but when I pointed out the 1962 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LINC and showed the picture of it in Mary Wilkes' parent's home they claimed that since it was bought with grant money it didn't count.
The Apple I was just an expansion of a terminal Woz had previously built instead of a completely new project so I am sure he wouldn't consider the TVT to be equivalent, just as he dismissed the Altair as being the same thing as his 1971 Cream Soda computer (which it sort of was as first shipped and most certainly wasn't when in a reasonable configuration).
Many young home hobbiests could not raid into XEROX palo alto laboratory.....
Smalltalk 72 was already graphical, but yeah, it wasn't the garage box type of computer. It was pretty "high end" research.
The kind of research Apple then claimed and called their own research (at least Jobs did).
Don Lancaster's books had a whole lot to do with the development of my career.
i was writing firmware for a well-known company. they were using a chip designed for matrix keyboard scanning that became unavailable. they even tried gray market sources and ended up with empty packages when they x-rayed them! i remembered from Lancaster's CMOS Cookbook an analog switch chip that was controlled like a 74138. Cheap and multiple manufacturers. I brought the book in and showed it to an engineer and they redesigned the boards to use that chip and it made my reputation at that company and I was in good.
In 1976 I was in high school electronics lab and my teacher said go to the tv studio they have a problem with the prompter for the in school tv channel. In the control room was a tv typewriter that was not working. I spent 2 months tinkering with it reading the manuals (Don's articles) to learn how it worked. I ended up getting it kind of working but is was very touchy. It also had a sync lock board so it could overlay on video. In the end I read almost every book Don would write. And would learn enough from his books to go on to design a 6502 homebrew system in 1977. I Fondly remember it as my first true intro into the digital world. It was much different then with no internet but we felt we were at the start of a new age... little did we know what was to come
Looked at Don Lancaster’s Wikipedia page and was sad to find out that he’s passed now. I love learning about these older electronics projects that came decades before I was born. I respect the efforts that went into making something affordable and moderately approachable.
In 1981 I interfaced a TVT (some later model in a single large board) to a homebrew 6800 computer that acted as a terminal for the University of São Paulo's Burroughs B6900 computer. This was in turn connected to two very large black and white TV sets that were placed in strategic places.
Previously students and professors stood in a physical line to use the computer and personally fed their cards into the reader and then grabbed their listing from the printer as that came out. This was replaced by rooms full of terminals and the line became virtual. The huge characters of the TVT were perfect for letting a person standing at the back of a crowd know when it was their time to pick up their listing.
This is quickly becoming one of my absolute favorite channels. The quality is outstanding and the topics are fascinating and not talked about enough. I do hope you continue to make great videos!
Thank you! That means a lot to me! I have a bunch on the go. I plan to try and keep a schedule of every couple of weeks.. some will be bigger efforts like the TVT video (that one took about 100 hours), most will be things like show n tells, repairs, etc. I don't want to just crank out 'content' for its own sake though, so the schedule is not quite in stone... more like a goal.
Don Lancaster, one of the legends, I remember from the early 80's. Forrest Mims. Jim Butterfield, Steve Wozniak... I knew Jim Butterfield (in Toronto; RIP) personally.
I did avidly read Don Lancaster's TV typewriter books, and used the information to create a TV display device for an early single board computer, which was the "junior computer", a clone of sorts of the KIM-1 single board 6502 based development board designed by the Dutch electronics magazine "elektuur" (now Elektor" ).
It used the idea of using the CPU (the 6502) to do most of the work, just like the Sinclair ZX-80.
Even though the PCB manufacturer produced my prototype PCB in mirror image, I forgot to tell them which side was the solder side and which side the component side, a rookies mistake :-) , I still managed to get it to work by folding over the legs of the various TTL DIP IC's over so the IC's were mounted "dead bug" style. and soldering the euro-connector interface to the junior computer on the back of the PCB. I had devised my own character-set inspired by the OHIO SCIENTIFIC's clone UK 101 character-set which included block graphics and card symbols. And it worked great notwithstanding the somewhat wavy nature of the screen (too much ripple on the power supply) and the fact that the junior could only "compute" during the blanking intervals. In the end my boss decided not to market my TV interface.
07:35 I loved that SWTPC keyboard.
The only keyboard I could find at the time with a square cutout!
Much easier than the stepped TAB, RETURN and SPACE bar !
p.s. I remember the joy of jumping from 110 to 300 bps. 1200 was heavenly.
9600 was a year or two later.
I recently just picked up the very first edition of that keyboard.. the one Don Lancaster designed for Popular Electronics in 1974. Pretty similar although fewer keys and a bit more delicate.
Holy moly this professional production quality is worthy of being on tv itself.
Thank you. Much appreciated.
You deserve so many more subs. Your videos are like watching an interesting history lesson. Props to you.
Don Lancaster is a stone-cold hero of the micro computer age. I built a computer from a kit and then I found out I really needed a CRT terminal. But the prices of those things! Enter TV typewriter at a third or a fourth of the price of a modest commercial terminal. I didn't know anything about electronics, but it's Don to the rescue again with TTL Cookbook. Still one of my favorite technical writers. What a gifted man.
And he was so helpful! I'm asking him about a project he did 40+ years ago and he was still willing to email and troubleshoot with me. The saying 'don't meet your heroes' does *not* apply to Don Lancaster.
I have been reading Don's stuff for many years. His case against patents helped me put the brakes on when an invention company was trying to get their hooks in me. 20 years later I saw where they were ousted as scammers. Much Thanks to Don Lancaster!
Yet another video that makes me want a collectors item I don’t have the money nor space for, LOL.
Ikr
Great presentation. I built a version of the TVTW using point to point wiring rather than printed circuit boards. I started with Don's schematic, and partitioned the logic into the same 3 boards. However, I used flexible wire and connectors so I could get to all the components to measure voltages. Do used 512 bit shift registers for the memory, but I used 1024 bit shifters so I could have two pages. The "hidden" page was just shifted through during video refresh, and to switch pages, the hidden page bypass was just suppressed for one video frame.
Originally, I used an ASCI keyboard I bought from B&F Enterprises. I actually visited B&F in 1973. The place was outside of Boston. It was filled with all kinds of surplus electronic stuff. Later, after I built a home brew 8080 computer, I modified the TVTW and keyboard to interface them to the 8080. Lots of fun. I wrote a very compact "game of life" with the TVTW as the display and the keyboard as the input to set up the cells. I still have the stuff in my "museum" along with good photographic records. Thanks!
I'm in my 40s, my dad bought an Apple ][+ when it came out because he was a ham radio guy and had tried and failed to build a computer. "You'd be surprised how hard it was." - Now that I hear the Don Lancaster name again, This is the group of projects he was discussing. And my dad was real good fixing tube radios and tv's. He understood the electrons and waves like some thing he could hold in his hand.
I'd love to see like say, audrino code that accomplishes what those 1973 chips and boards did with ascii and character advancement, etc.
Really cool channel!
You should replicate that keyboard, because there’s not that many regular ASCII keyboards on the market for people to use nowadays.
Dude, the algorithm is on your side. This showed up as a full yt ad below a tech tangents video I was watching. Definitely subscribing.
You are gonna blow up man
This was one of the first projects I built as a kid. I read about it in Radio-Electronics. I was in high school and needed a terminal for my 8080 kit. It was a lot of fun to build and use.
Cool story! Do you know if it’s still around?
This is dedication to a replica on a level I have not seen in a long time. Mighty fine work, and a very in-depth exploration of what it took to create such a beautifully primitive and powerful device.
Hey thanks for taking the time to answer my comment! The song seems like it'll be really fun to play.
I appreciate your videos and the level of detail you put into them. Thanks again.
Don Lancaster's articles and books were fun to read. He was a real genius.
This is a high quality, entertaining video.
I’m impressed with the whole thing, and that’s before I get to the subject itself - which is just fascinating. Really well done!
I had no idea this existed, nice video.
I really enjoyed this. I’m just old enough (62) to remember this era of computing where the first complex piece of home computing we owned was the Texas Instruments Sr-50 calculator which after an unfortunate incident in my high school engineering class was sent in for repair and was replaced by the even cooler SR-51. Also took a Fortran class in hs (FORTRAN 3) which introduced me to the teletype to connect with UIC’s mainframe system. My brother and I after college was the Commodore-64 color computer with tape drive and printer. The programmable sprites were a big innovation as was the modem connection to The local BBS communities.
So much advancement in such a short time!
This channel is a stroll down memory lane.... I miss my Apple //e. Love the history lessons.
"roll their own" was comedy gold. you thought that would fly under the radar but I caught it hard in the gut.
Very cool! I've been a fan of Don Lancaster since reading his articles in (I think) the early '90s, in Computer Shopper - tucked into those phonebook-sized issues among the ads for PC clones and assorted parts, the era's version of ebay, One article I recall vividly was on how to hack together a high-end Apple laser printer from a surplus board and a much cheaper printer.
I picked up a used copy of "TV Typewriter Cookbook" a few years back - I think a copy is downloadable from Don's site - and keep wanting to put a replica of one of the versions together, though I realize I could just bodge together an Arduino equivalent in an afternoon.
Thanks for going into such detail on this, it's a great watch.
Don Lancaster was my nerd idol after I graduated from Tech school in 1980. I remember all those great projects and articles he published in Radio Electronics.
He was really great in helping me with this! So glad I got the chance to interact with him.
Very cool. The production value of this video is crazy high for such a green channel, keep it up!
Just rediscovered this channel... great content... great production. Was in High School in the '70s... avid reader of Popular Electronics, Radio Electronics, etc... remember Don Lancaster's stuff well. Fun and interesting time for electronics technology. Advances were fast and furious... and very accessible to the hobbyist. Led to degrees in engineering followed by a 40+ year career in tech... now blissfully retired. Cut my teeth on Altairs, PDP8s, PDP11s and Data General Novas... as well as single board 8080s, 6502s and Z80s... stone knives and bearskins compared to anything out there today... as I watch this on my android tablet which has thousands of times more power than anything from back in those days...
all right, born in 75? Really cool seeing someone closer to my age talking about vintage electronics from a "been there" perspective. I was born in 1980, and that seems like a big world of difference, but in America home computing was slow going. Compared to across the ocean where they were doing home computing for almost every household in the UK the US was way behind. I was so very VERY interested in computers ever since I was just a little girl, but the only computer I got to use regularly in the early 80s was my 1st brother's grandparent's computer, the Commodore 64. I'd have to wait until 1st grade to play with Apple II computers at school. And still, we had no home computer because my parents foolishly thought all I'd do with it was play video games. By the time I got grand dad's old computer it was 1993 and the machine was on its way out for bigger, grander machines. I did care though, I finally had something I could learn on, and I used it nearly every single day. I did have to re-learn how to type though, since computers in the 80s still used the old typewriter positions of certain symbols and the modern keyboard layout that we know today was not standard.
Sorry I went off on such a tangent. I just want to say that this 40 year old lady is now subscribed to your channel and I hope to see many many more videos from you.
Many thanks for the vote of confidence! Hard to believe we are all up in our 40s now. Life goes so fast.
I'm glad you're enjoying these. I'm enjoying exploring an area of tech that doesn't get a ton of attention. There were so many interesting things going on in the mid to late 70s that I missed. We got our first computer (a Vic 20) around 1980 or 81.. so this whole world that was going on before didn't exist to me until I discovered ebay.
The next video, which I am finishing up, is about the Digital Group.. very interesting company that went out of business in 1979. Hope to get it out soon and thanks again for the sub!
Don't know if you're interested, but I think a huge factor in UK home computing is that the Spectrums and similar machines used cassette tapes for storage. Cheap, easy to trade, easy for ambitious amateurs to sell. In the US, and specifically for games, we went from cartridges to floppy disks with copy protection. Floppies were relatively expensive. None of my teenage friends thought their little attempts at programming, games or otherwise, could ever be sold or even just distributed. It was very different for my friends in the UK.
I've never been good at programming, but reading the jargon file made me feel like I understood something about the early days of computing and this video reminds me of that anthropological thrill of seeing people do something amazing you barely understand.
I’m so glad I came across your channel! I totally forgot about the Lancaster TVT I have in storage I built in the seventies and mounted on a masonite board to use with my IMSAI 8080 so I wouldn’t have to toggle in the binary. Thanks for a great job. I’m binging on the rest of your fare. Your voice and delivery remind me of another great channel, This Old Tony.
This is an awesome video (or should I say a full-length documentary) on the subject! Kind of reminds me of LGR Tech Tales but much more retro. As others have already said, I too feel that this is exactly the kind of information that's in a desperate need of an in-depth, hands-on attention these days. To honor and reminisce the dawn of the personal computing in a very enjoyable way. Thank you for taking the precious time and doing exactly that!
A friend and I both built the TV typewriter in our junior year of High school. Took a while to debug due to bad chips. But we both got them working. Built a Altair 8800 the next year and interfaced it with a serial link to the TV typewriter.
That’s fricking awesome
SUCH A NICE VIDEO! ONLY 77 VIEWS??!
I thought I recognized that keyboard! I had two of those MDS keyboard-to-tape units in my teen bedroom! I used them as desks and puttered with them at times. And I followed Lancaster in all of his articles. Thanks for the great trip down memory lane!
Great video and thank you giving a little bit of pre history to the TV Typewriter and giving credit to those who came before Apple. The two Steve's definitely deserve to be remembered for everything they did in building "Apple", but they always took more credit than they deserved.
I remember seeing Lancaster's 'Cheap Video Cookbook' in the library in my childhood, at the time I had no EE education so it didn't really make sense, but it was still fascinating for some reason.
All that cryptic code! :)
Oh yess... sesame street, that animation with the marbles numbers and flashing numbers... psychadelic. Excellent documentary! I didn't knew this was even in 70's before the micro's in the early 80's. I have respect for these people.
I remember pouring over his book as a teenager, great stuff
Don was the Man!
All Hail Don..
This was great! Looking forward to the build video!
Pretty enlightening video. I was unaware of Don Lancaster and the TV Typewriter. In the fall of 1973, I was a freshman in high school and had a Television Production class. We used a Kapco Enterprises KG-1632 Character generator which basically had just a bit more functionality than the TV Typewriter. I still have this unit, but I have never found any further information on the company that produced it. Anyway, if I was using this unit in the fall of '73, there must have been other developers out there with TV Typewriters already?
I remember reading about that several years back. Just tells me the world was ready for home computers.
I'm currently, slowly, making my way through the BYTE magazine archives, and of course see articles from Don Lancaster and references to the TV Typewriter a bunch. Thanks for this great documentary which answered many of my questions.
Wow, this is a great milestone in hobby computer history. I vaguely remembered it but now I feel like an expert. Great video!
It's really cool that you built your own replica
I've been binging on your videos this evening, and they're all terrific. It's great to see a nice long, in-depth overview of this foundational equipment. I'm getting pretty tired of retro channels that are 80% washing and retrobrighting C64s!
This was a really cool video. I appreciate the time you took to add humor and go into detail. Look forward to seeing more!
The audience of the channel Technology Connections would probably enjoy this video, if you’re thinking of running another ad.
Actually, I AM part of Technology Connection's audience...and TechMoan's as well! I literally JUST discovered this channel now and have become an INSTANT fan and sub, so I would say your guess is quite correct! 😅😁👍
Thank you so much for this video! I was born in 1978 and at some point (evidently between 1973 and 1978) my father (an electrical engineer in the 60's-mid 80's) built one of these that sat up high on a filing cabinet. I was rarely allowed to touch it, but I would sneak typing sessions here and there just to play around. He had built it encased in thick Plexiglas, and I vaguely remember seeing stacked boards like you mention. I always knew it was impressive but I hadn't realized just how difficult a lot of the parts had to be to obtain. Like you say, we are so spoiled now with being able to grab electronic components on a whim cheaply and easily. Even if he had access to stuff through work (which I doubt) it had to be a challenge to get and build everything. SUBSCRIBED!
Many thanks for the sub and very glad you enjoyed the video! Do you know what became of your father's machine? Even finding pictures of original TVTs is tricky business!
Sadly I'm pretty sure it was tossed out when we moved from Chicago to Las Vegas in 1993. He had so many 70s era electronics projects that were lost to time, unfortunately.
@@sethbramwell This is so frustrating. At some point I walk up to my old man and I ask him 'So... remember that weird computer you had laying around 30 years ago in the shelf that we threw out? Do you remember what it was?' And he be like, 'Oh, that - I built that one from an article in some German computer magazine'. And now I absolutely hate the fact that I had some 3 or 4 old computer projects laying around the house and they got thrown out in the 90s because we never would've guessed those machines would spike interest in people some 30 years later (especially since some chips are becoming more and more unobtainable). So many regrets.
the music is lovely... that semi computer terminal looks epic asf too
Yeah I remember Don Lancaster... He dropped a lot of gadgets to the pages of Popular Electronics. I was reading them starting in the early 70's. 1973 I was in the fifth grade and already building electronic gadgets.
"Roll their own". Very nice!
This early era of electronics is both fascinating and terrifying to look back at from the modern computer age, a time when computers were built by hand in garages and the solution to a design not having a feature you wanted was to solder on a circuit that added those features yourself.
I am now on Don's web site... That man did a lot to make my early days of electronics fun
I was in the 4th or 5th grade when the TV Typewriter came out, but I had had electronics magazines from 1956 on. I was also buying new magazines, and by the time I was in the fifth grade I was "playing" with electronics and electricity. By the time i was 17 I was rewiring household electricity and rebuilding computers. The computers I rebuilt had only one circuit board, and modifications had to be done by butchering traces on the mother board and using hookup wire to reroute and rewire things. Heck, I was even piggy backing chips in dead cock roach style to add extra address decoding for the CPU. No one now needs to modify circuit boards to add new features, just drop in a new card. In those days computers were fun, less proprietary, more software shared, less copyright crap because we were the ones making the software, not big companies who squeeze out every dime....
I actually built a device to add an image to the upper right of the TVTW screen as a computer science project. I had a blast designing and adding this gizmo to the SWTP kit!
Pronounced Tin ah ha. Don is a great guy. Years ago I spent a 4th of July with him and Bee. We chatted the day away, and I went with him to meet the fire department and help setup fireworks.
It was great. Like meeting my hero. I read every article, and bought all his books.
Thanks for the video!
Cheap Video Cookbook and Son of Cheap Video were my favorite tech books ever. Still have them on a bookshelf next to my bed. I just loved the idea of using a 6502 running strange code out of a tiny ROM to generate all the signals necessary to scan display memory and generate H & V sync signals.
I‘ve got this video as an commercial in the video suggestions and I‘m just so glad I clicked on it! It‘s just so informative, interesting and the 45 minutes just felt like 10. Great work, please keep going with it and I hope that you‘re getting more views soon, you totally deserve it! :)
Thank you for providing this trip down memory lane. I received one of the original set of stackable boards from a friend and got it working and installed it in a wood cabinet. It wasn’t particle but I did learn a lot getting it to work on my Explorer S100 kit. It was a slight improvement over my noisy mechanical baudot terminal. The 70s was a great time for tinkerers.
I've always wanted to learn more about this! I've also never gotten an ad for a good video before, which is strange.
My parents had such a carpet. I loved it!
I wanted to build one for the longest time, but many of the of the components are pretty scarce, andnthe project is massive. The TVT6 is pretty amazing in that it consolidates the whole thing waaay down. I saw you have an unassembled kit for this, might you make a replacement board (as to not mess with your original kit) and try to build one in the future? It seems like it would be much simpler, and allow SBC builders to add on a terminal pretty cheap and easily.
Great video, and very nice work on your TVT!
I kind of got lucky building mine when I did. I'll talk about this more in a followup video but essentially I was aided in my quest for the rarer parts (the Signetics 8288s particularly) by a big liquidation sale on ebay. The shift registers are almost completely unavailable. I got lucky on those. But the thing I had the most trouble with was the crystal. I could not find a 4561.920khz crystal anywhere. It wouldn't have been a showstopper.. you can have one custom made, but I wanted the thing to look authentic. I ended up scoring a couple of 4520khz crystals off ebay and that seems to run the thing well enough.
The TVT6 PCB artwork is available in the original magazine article, which is posted on americanradiohistory.org (think that's the site..) as well as Lancaster's tinaja.com site. I'm reluctant to open the sealed package on mine but might if folks need a dump of the PROM to get it going.
@@TechTimeTraveller Yeah, I recall luck had as much to do with building one today as it did back then, as you mentioned in the video. The ROM should just be a character lookup table like the 2513, no? In which case no need to open your kit?
BTW, your channel is EXCELLENT. It encompasses my favorite era (and what I see as the critical transition period), the mid 70s until the very early 80s, when there were no rules because nobody even knew what a computer should be yet. Please keep at it, your content is very good!
The character generator for the 6 5/8 is a 2513 I think, yes. But there is also a PROM that contains the control program to interface it with a KIM-1. They also offered custom programming for other systems. Any capable programmer could probably create one themselves for whatever project they had in mind.
Many thanks for the kind words. The 70s are a favourite era of mine. The channel will sort of go wherever timeline-wise but a lot of it will focus on that era as it is so important.
@@TechTimeTraveller Ah yes...now that I look at the old build article, it seems there are code listings for writing to ROM or typing into the keypad on startup.
Great video, notwithstanding the loud background music, I found it very interesting.
I had Don's book 'The Cheap Video Cookbook' back in the very late 70s with the intention of possibly building a video display for my F8 single board development kit.
However the video circuitry described in the book was really IIRC specifically for the KIM-1 and relied on a mysterious 'upstream tap' signal that basically did cycle-stealing from the processor, so that stymied my hopes of a more generic version.
Is the Feb 1973 R-E magazine article for building the keyboard available online anywhere? I looked but couldn't find it.
EDIT Never mind, I just found it on the deramp site!
I've really enjoyed watching this and other videos on your channel. I especially like the humor - just the right balance in my opinion. The scene where you are reluctant to push the key then switch to a fireball was classic! Keep up the great work. I am a tad senior to your age. Built my Quest Super Elf when I was 12 - no internet - different world back then. These videos bring back so many memories.
Glad you enjoyed it! I enjoy doing the humor bits as they give me a chance to work with special fx. The TVT was definitely a ways before my time but I nonetheless find it very interesting. I guess you didn't hang onto your Quest Super ELF? Those are getting pretty pricey these days!!
02:58 - "But while the average person might not have been salivating..." shown over a clip from a Salvo commercial. Salivating vs. Salvo. Well played, Sir.
Had no idea about the TV Typerwriter. I learned a lot and was entertained in the process. Thanks!
Many thanks for watching. The video isn't quite perfect (I get some complaints about the honky tonk piano), but I'm very proud of it. I wanted to do a proper homage to Don Lancaster. Quite an amazing gentleman.
Wow, very interesting story and build!
Thank you for sharing.
Raise your hand if you remember the book (and even saw it for sale a/o borrowed it from a library)! *raises hand*
The algorithm led me here. And I'm glad I did, this was pretty interesting and funny.
Bro. What the fuck? This channel is fucking incredible. How have I only just now been suggested this channel by the UA-cam algorithm? Solid channel and content. Crazy how much these dudes did to make computers so accessible and all I use my computer for is watching videos of Age of Empires 2 competitions and hardcore pornography.
So many people seem to be complaining about the music. I think it was ambient enough to be unnoticeable and gave a pleasant richness to the background (especially since it wasn't some standard electronic music people usually use in retro computer videos) - there is some high pitch noise for example at 31 minutes. Some people like David from The 8-bit Guy have mentioned that with age some noises are no longer audible to some people and that he himself usually checks audio track for noise by looking at sound graph - so perhaps I simply don't find the music as offensive because I don't hear some parts people deem "loud" with my advancing age or my audio setup is better balanced. But all in all - two videos in - superb content. Thank you very much.
A very interesting story. I remember Miniscribe very well but wasn't aware of the story behind their failure. Thanks for an entertaining look into the past.
This is fascinating to learn about so thank you!
Holy cow how does tis cannel only have 5k subs while putting out quality content like this as far back as a year ago???
Thank you for sharing both your own craft, along with the research and backstory to lodge it firmly in the timestream. This was a fun watch, and I do enjoy the way you approach both video editing and information presentation.
I like these types of vids, please include tons of ads and pages from old magazines like Bytes or what not as well as footage from back then for context. Never had heard of that TVT or Lancaster, so that's great. Bios on not well known people who made a difference or made something unique is great. Thanks!
The late 60s and early 70s were the golden age of electronics as the transition from vacuum tubes to transistors and ICs was all but complete. Then came the analog to digital era. I built one complex project from Radio Electronics magazine. That was the vidicon TV camera by Gary Davis. I had the pleasure to meet Gary 40 years after the fact and discuss it with him. There was, as mentioned in this video, a serious schematic error I was never aware of. The horizontal sync coming out of the camera was 40 volts pk-pk! I was able to get the picture on a vacuum tube Setchell Carlson TV I owned by direct video input. So, the project was a success. Gary asked me if I'd seen the correction in the following issue of the magazine. I had not. All I could say to him was, "DOH!". It was still a cool project. It was my second TV camera and I was only 14 when I built it.
Very Interesting video for someone interested in history of personal computer and old display technologies. I learned a lot from it. Thank you very much.
Wow you video production is absolutely excellent! I can see myself spending way too much time on this channel.
Hey TimeTraveller, awesome vid. I found it thoroughly interesting, and funny. Sort of got me interested in vintage electronics.
I have that keyboard. I deisgned / build a PCB that interfaced with it, scanning rows. The parallel outout went into a Super Elf (1802) and was used for many years. Although the Super Elf was given away, I still have the keyboard.
I wish I had bought a couple more when they were cheap. The keyboard guys have gone crazy on them and they go for over a grand now. If you're talking about the Microswitch unit, that is. I ranted about that Honeywell unit in another video where the seller separated it and now no one wants the terminal itself because it has no keyboard. Oh well.. good news for you anyway since you have a valuable antique. If you ever bring it out feel free to email me some pics.. love to see those old 60s microswitch units.
Really great video!! I love how informative and entertaining your channel is. Keep it up!
Hello from the UK.
I still have my CMOS Cookbook by Don Lancaster and remember the TVT and BitBoffer in the contents.
Wow, great video and a great portion of knowledge. You've got my sub, dear sir!
9:28 "Don Championed its use with so-called surplus keyboards that had been recycled from devices like key-to-tape machines." Awesome detailed research! The cover of BYTE September 1975?
While I never built the TVT, I still have the cookbook, and used it in the late 70's to build TV interfaces for the PET/CBM computers
Born in 1972. I can tell you that my first direct exposure to computer equipment was either an Asteroids machine at the local movie theater or when my cousin's parents bought a Sears Tele-Video game system (aka Atari 2600) 😊 When I went into a Radio Shack and played with the TRS-80 Model III, it was a magical moment. Our first home computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer 2.
Wow this was a nostalgia trip. I started my electronics journey in high school in the 90s, right on the cusp of the modern electronics era. I'm building a keyboard at the moment and my inner 13 year old geeks right out at the kind of things that are possible these days. But part of me does miss the old hand-drawn or iron-transfer PCB days.
High quality information in here, very nice! Suggestion: leave the music out entirely. The looping piano piece in the background was really grating after a while.
We seem to have split opinion on that subject. I'm not sure I can satisfy everyone, I like to style my videos after full on documentaries and the music they use is quite pronounced. But what I've been trying to do is dial it way down and muffle it a bit during narration. And also avoid plinky piano pieces. I don't like having zero as I'm still not a fan of my own voice alone yet.
This is amazing. I just bought the TV typewriter cookbook on amazon. I really want to try and build one myself but I have a lot to learn since I'm a beginner in electronics. Most people my age are into Raspberry Pi and Arduino but I am fascinated by the old stuff. :)
Yeah this was a bit before my time as well.. for me it's reading the old letters to editor in magazines and stepping through the process just like they did (well, with some necessary modern deviations).. it brings the scene back to life on a way.
I remember reading the original articles from Don Lancaster as a kid. It was fun to know that stuff like this was reachable by ordinary people. I never built anything I read about but I did build a Lafayette Shortwave radio, and it didn't work!
In the 70s my favorite Don Lancaster publication is the CMOS COOKBOOK first published in 1977. The edition I have is a first edition seventh printing 1982 paperback, published by Howard W. Sams & Company. The book focused on the CMOS 4000 B-Series, very easy to use and very low power. I remember being challenged at work in a contest with other EEs to build the lowest power periodic blinky LED light for a vehicle monitor. Much like you see in cars today, that blinky light on the dash board at the base of the windshield. The final design ran for over 5 years on a 9V battery. I don't really know how long it lasted after the 5 years because I changed jobs. From the 4000 B series offerings the 4046 Phase Locked Loop is probably the most interesting IC I used. PLLs are really fascinating to me. The 4060 14 stage binary ripple counter with internal oscillator was also a lot of fun.
I built one in 1973. Never had it working 100%.
Mike, I don't know for sure, but this seems like the project my father described trying to build "out of a magazine". before I was born. I was born on Apple day 4/11/76. When Apple ][+ came out, we got one, and he was so amazed by how it worked. This gives me an Idea of what was going on. Knowing him, he probably tried to build a keyboard.
Great video. Thank you for sharing.
All your videos are so high quality and educational! I collect and enjoy reading older BYTE magazines and Popular Electronics, and these videos are a great supplement. Thanks!
I had that book when I was younger-- maybe still do somewhere.