Tools: Scriptovision Super Micro Script Video Titler Is Almost A Home...

Terminals, however, are in many cases based on general purpose architectures, just lashed to restrictive firmware — a good example would be the DEC VT220 which is controlled by our old friend the Intel 8051 — and game consoles likewise fall naturally in this category. Plus, there's a third group of computer-adjacent devices that qualify as well: the video titlers.

Well, Canada, you have your own indigenous video titlers as well, and here's one designed and manufactured in beautiful Montréal: the Scriptovision Super Micro Script, circa 1985.

More important than that, though, it has socketed EPROMs we can theoretically pull and substitute with our own — though we'll have to figure out why the ROMs look like nonsense, and there's also the small matter of this unit failing to generate a picture. Nevertheless, when we're done, another homegrown Canadian computer will rise and shine. We'll even add a bitbanged serial port and write a MAME emulation driver for it so we can develop software quickly ... after we fix it first.

Notwithstanding filmed art and transparencies, early static television titles were generated by monoscopes, modified cathode ray tubes that fired their electron guns at embedded plates marked with a metallized image. These units then assimilated the reflected particles into a sharp monochrome video signal. Related devices like the 1953 Hughes Typotron or 1954 Convair Charactron used a double-deflection system where an electron beam was first used to illuminate selected glyphs in a perforated stencil anode and then onto the desired position on the screen.

By 1980 a number of relatively inexpensive video display chips were available on the open market, all capable of basic text output and even some simple graphics, including the Signetics 2637 Universal Video Interface (UVI), the Texas Instruments TMS9918 Video Display Processor (VDP) and the Motorola 6847 Video Display Generator (VDG). Videotape recording had also gotten less expensive in the meantime, putting it within reach of a sufficiently determined (or financially irresponsible) enthusiast, and these were certainly the very same people who wanted to do their own character work just like the TV studios. It's not exactly clear what would qualify as the first home video titler, and many early home computers were likely used for such a task, but one Canadian company in particular surely has a strong claim.

The VDG is a nearly autonomous chip which generates an image from connected memory

Source: HackerNews