1980s VP-380 Video Pointer: $920 TV Arrow Generator
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 10
StringerNews1
I guess your audience is far too young to remember -Bozo's Circus- or -The Grand Prize Game- on the same show in which the contestants were selected by camera operators who panned and tilted wildly across the audience as arrows superimposed on the picture singled out one boy or girl in the audience to come down and play the game. it was quite an honor to be the one in between the alternating arrows in the 1960s to whenever the show petered out. IIRC it was scaled down from an hour-long noontime show to a half-hour morning show _sans_ audience (and a slight name change, -The Bozo Show- IIRC) some time around 1980, and kept going in one form or another into the new century. The Grand Prize Game ended when the live audience did, and so this For. A box wouldn't have seen duty at WGN-TV for that purpose, though I'm curious what they did use back in the '60s.
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I guess your audience is far too young to remember -Bozo's Circus- or -The Grand Prize Game- on the same show in which the contestants were selected by camera operators who panned and tilted wildly across the audience as arrows superimposed on the picture singled out one boy or girl in the audience to come down and play the game. it was quite an honor to be the one in between the alternating arrows in the 1960s to whenever the show petered out. IIRC it was scaled down from an hour-long noontime show to a half-hour morning show _sans_ audience (and a slight name change, -The Bozo Show- IIRC) some time around 1980, and kept going in one form or another into the new century. The Grand Prize Game ended when the live audience did, and so this For. A box wouldn't have seen duty at WGN-TV for that purpose, though I'm curious what they did use back in the '60s.
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hobbified
It's actually pretty cool how this kind of overlay tech works. Because it doesn't sample a frame, store it in memory, add a cursor to it, and then display it. If it did -that- in the early 80s, it would be a $50, 000 box instead of a $1, 000 box. Instead it snoops on the sync signals of the video that it's passing through, figures out what moment in time corresponds to each pixel on the screen, and then switches back and forth on the fly between passing through the original video signal, and replacing it with a signal of pure white (or black. Does that at around 5MHz, assuming a 320-pixel horizontal resolution. That's not bad, and it requires a kind of cleverness that's as much analog as it is digital.
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It's actually pretty cool how this kind of overlay tech works. Because it doesn't sample a frame, store it in memory, add a cursor to it, and then display it. If it did -that- in the early 80s, it would be a $50, 000 box instead of a $1, 000 box. Instead it snoops on the sync signals of the video that it's passing through, figures out what moment in time corresponds to each pixel on the screen, and then switches back and forth on the fly between passing through the original video signal, and replacing it with a signal of pure white (or black. Does that at around 5MHz, assuming a 320-pixel horizontal resolution. That's not bad, and it requires a kind of cleverness that's as much analog as it is digital.
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AXT
I had one of these float over my desk quite recently, also from a medical background, it does indeed work just with a ROM and syncs up the address contents with the frame sync to overlay the pointers - thats also why it needs a video signal input to work. I had another For-A device though that was another level on top of this, the VTW-200 Video Typewriter which overlaid text onto composite video - also using just ROM and logic chips. Could do two whole pages of text, in multiple sizes and with a couple of effects. Impressive kit for the time really.
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I had one of these float over my desk quite recently, also from a medical background, it does indeed work just with a ROM and syncs up the address contents with the frame sync to overlay the pointers - thats also why it needs a video signal input to work. I had another For-A device though that was another level on top of this, the VTW-200 Video Typewriter which overlaid text onto composite video - also using just ROM and logic chips. Could do two whole pages of text, in multiple sizes and with a couple of effects. Impressive kit for the time really.
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Morahman7vnNo2
So the entire device, is essentially -hardware- built around -software-?
4: 33 all of those are Texas Instruments TTL for Logic Gates. That ceramic EPROM in the middle is where most of the cost of the unit came from, as they're still quite expensive to this day.
I think someone should build a newer version of this, using an 8-bit microcontroller like the PIC.
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So the entire device, is essentially -hardware- built around -software-?
4: 33 all of those are Texas Instruments TTL for Logic Gates. That ceramic EPROM in the middle is where most of the cost of the unit came from, as they're still quite expensive to this day.
I think someone should build a newer version of this, using an 8-bit microcontroller like the PIC.
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533
Hey boss. I'm putting a presentation about endangered wildlife. Which birds are more susceptible to the meanness of bulldozers. I need a cursor to circle around a bird very quickly. Can I have a 1000 dollars to make my dream a reality? HAHAHA I love the idea of a 1K for a cursor on a video. Thanks LGR. You made my day
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Hey boss. I'm putting a presentation about endangered wildlife. Which birds are more susceptible to the meanness of bulldozers. I need a cursor to circle around a bird very quickly. Can I have a 1000 dollars to make my dream a reality? HAHAHA I love the idea of a 1K for a cursor on a video. Thanks LGR. You made my day
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JackTradesman
People also paid hundreds for laser pointers back then (a broken one was the first ever eBay sale. Now they're at dollar stores or for pennies online. I remember all the fancy patterns you could screw into them.
Being a teenager and getting to scream at kids who brought them into theaters was so fun.
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People also paid hundreds for laser pointers back then (a broken one was the first ever eBay sale. Now they're at dollar stores or for pennies online. I remember all the fancy patterns you could screw into them.
Being a teenager and getting to scream at kids who brought them into theaters was so fun.
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Traugott
I was hoping this could display more than one pointer at a time. Seeing how this propably was used in a medical background, it would've made sense. Maybe showing students -You can see damage to the bone here, here and here- (and keeping the arrows on the things you pointed to first.
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I was hoping this could display more than one pointer at a time. Seeing how this propably was used in a medical background, it would've made sense. Maybe showing students -You can see damage to the bone here, here and here- (and keeping the arrows on the things you pointed to first.
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Just
It-s crazy how such a simple task required such an expensive device. Times really have changed. This is a really cool device though and I want one for my TV so I can point at things when watching VHSs with my mates.
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It-s crazy how such a simple task required such an expensive device. Times really have changed. This is a really cool device though and I want one for my TV so I can point at things when watching VHSs with my mates.
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child
When you were showing off the mainboard POSes and EPROM and other internal components, I woulda been absolutely thrilled to see that arrow appear and point as each component as you discussed it.
But alas.
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When you were showing off the mainboard POSes and EPROM and other internal components, I woulda been absolutely thrilled to see that arrow appear and point as each component as you discussed it.
But alas.
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Rob
I know someone who made money video taping medical conventions. This pointer may have been used to point out details from a live top-down video view of either a cadaver or a patient undergoing an operation.
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I know someone who made money video taping medical conventions. This pointer may have been used to point out details from a live top-down video view of either a cadaver or a patient undergoing an operation.
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