t1n Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 (edited) Just searched a little and pleasantly suprised to see AtariAge also has an Apple II forum so a quick question, perhaps some opinions if I may ask? Being on AtariAge, some of you may have encountered this http://atariage.com/forums/topic/120523-130xe-runs-the-show-update-on-script-roller-system/ and the corresponding output that this system was designed to generate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lmf6THfCYg More commonly (more commonly videoed and posted on youtube I should probably say) the same system runs on an Amiga and looks like this: Recently a video appeared on youtube showing this: from a date prior to anything seen before on youtube. It is subtly different in a number of ways: font, scrolling, how the timestamp at the top middle looks, but most importantly I think: the colours. It's possible this was a one-off, I think United Video went through a few iterations of hardware to find something suitable before they apparently settled on the Atari and Amiga. So the quesitons are: 1) (from not much I admit) does this look like it was generated by an Apple II? 2) Does anyone happen to have any hardware or software lying around in their collections like some do with the Atari version referenced above? TIA Edited March 7, 2015 by t1n Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 It could be an Apple but it's difficult to tell with all that noise. The scrolling looks a bit fast though and Apple wasn't known for such apps. I would guess it's an Amiga though. It's what the cable company used where I lived in college and I even got to work on that machine.You'd occasionally see a Guru Meditation Number that was caused by a stack overflow in the code.I think that went away once it was updated. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R.Cade Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 Since it looks like artifact color, I would guess it's an Atari. The Apple can't scroll like that (I don't think). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 Since it looks like artifact color, I would guess it's an Atari. The Apple can't scroll like that (I don't think). That "artifact color" is probably just due to NTSC and the VCR. An Amiga doesn't look that good on a TV. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
t1n Posted March 7, 2015 Author Share Posted March 7, 2015 Cheers for the input thus far! It's definitely not an Amiga, the clip is from 1983! Of course Amigas ran the system later (and, presumably was the platform settled upon after some experimentation). The Atari code we do have (see linked post above) is sufficiently different to make me think it's not an Atari, but it certainly could be, the thought had crossed my mind. Interesting that the Apple can't me made to sroll like that. That's probably one of the big tells. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesD Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 I didn't look at the date before. The colors seem to match the Apple palette. If you look at the video, there appears to be fairly wide boarders. If you only had to scroll a portion of an Apple screen I'm sure it could do that. The scrolling isn't synced to the VBLANK so that might fit with it being an Apple II.There is also the possibility it was a completely custom machine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
potatohead Posted March 11, 2015 Share Posted March 11, 2015 I don't think this was an Apple. The colors look about right, but the text seems to have better than 140 pixels of resolution associated with it. An Apple could scroll like that if it were not doing much else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
t1n Posted March 11, 2015 Author Share Posted March 11, 2015 (edited) Yeah I make it about 180, possibly 192 lines, the Apple II could only do 140? <edit> haha, just did a google search and the result was resolution was 280x192....... Edited March 11, 2015 by t1n Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
potatohead Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 That's 280 monochrome. The video is color, and for an Apple, that means having two pixels next to one another minimum is needed to form one white pixel. Individual pixels, on an NTSC color display, will actually show as color pixels, orange, blue, magenta, green. Lots of color patterns are possible too. For this type of display, the effective resolution would be 140 pixels to generate a reasonably artifact free text display as shown in the video. An Apple doing that kind of text, with that shape, etc... would likely be showing more artifacts in the text areas than we see happening in the video. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Great Hierophant Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 Also, I think that the text, which is in 40 columns, looks a much less blocky than an Apple II could manage outside of the double high resolution graphics mode, which did not yet exist on the date given in the video. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iamgroot Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 I just finished an Apple version that I uploaded to Asimov. The Disk Image name is called "Cool Demos.2mg" and run the program called "Cable.tv" A text file can be created for each time parameter. I included one text file that took longer to type in than it did to create the program. A few things left out are. There is no clock code to show the time The bottom line is not scrolled on to the screen but is printed outright And you will have to create your own text files for the TV guide. But all in all, it looks pretty sharp. I used a bold font which is very readable and the scrolling is a little slow at 1 Mhz, but is to be expected. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
potatohead Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 Cool. I wonder if this was done on a PC with CGA? The artifact colors make sense, particularly the fringing around the text. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Great Hierophant Posted March 19, 2015 Share Posted March 19, 2015 Cool. I wonder if this was done on a PC with CGA? The artifact colors make sense, particularly the fringing around the text. I would disagree, at least with true IBM hardware. With old IBM CGA, the usual color fringing around white text is blue and red. Purple and green are much more natural for an Apple II. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
potatohead Posted March 19, 2015 Share Posted March 19, 2015 Yeah, it's confusing. Hard to tell what running through video equipment did, or maybe if they generated that text on an odd pixel... Could that be a double high-res screen and scroll like that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike (K8LH) Posted July 19, 2015 Share Posted July 19, 2015 (edited) The first couple hundred United Video EPG and EPG-II Character Generators did indeed use Apple II system boards. I'm the guy who wrote the firmware for the manufacturer (Syntronics, St Clair Shores, MI) and that video of my work certainly brings back many fond memories (grin)... Cheerful regards, Mike Edited July 19, 2015 by Mike (K8LH) 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
potatohead Posted July 19, 2015 Share Posted July 19, 2015 Shoulda went with the color artifacts. They sure looked like an Apple. Thanks for confirmation! Somehow that text just didn't seem like it would work in 140 pixels. Nice work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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