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Weird and surprising old school tech

Started by biggytitbo, June 01, 2016, 01:40:27 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Steven

#30
Very good doc on the Antikythera Mechanism. Technology vouched safe and secreted by a greedy priesthood, and if that wasn't the case and things like this weren't eventually lost, the Industrial Revolution could have happened in times before Christ.

biggytitbo

^^ Got a decent port of Prince of Persia aswell.

doppelkorn

I've been binging on this sort of stuff a bit recently.

Not particularly weird or surprising, but there's a cool guy on YouTube called the 8-bit-guy who does videos about this kind of thing.

How old-school sound worked
How old-school tape drives worked (mentioning recording programs off the radio and off flexidisc)
How old-school graphics worked p1
How old-school graphics worked p2

And there's always good old Digitizer2000

Obscure (and less obscure) first-party peripherals we never really wanted


Blumf

Quote from: doppelkorn on July 03, 2016, 03:25:19 PM
And there's always good old Digitizer2000

Obscure (and less obscure) first-party peripherals we never really wanted



Wrong link numbnuts:
http://www.digitiser2000.com/main-page/would-you-add-on-and-eve-it-first-party-peripherals-we-never-really-wanted

I did want the Game Gear TV tuner. TV, on the bus!!

Also, they have a lightgun in that pic (not mentioned in the article), but they were awesome. Do they still work with modern TVs?


(the best one, because it looked like it was from space)

biggytitbo

Spectrum with a modem add on as big as itself -


lazarou

Quote from: Blumf on July 03, 2016, 05:22:15 PM
Also, they have a lightgun in that pic (not mentioned in the article), but they were awesome. Do they still work with modern TVs?



Sadly not. They don't even work very well with flat CRTs, it's either a proper, old-school TV or you're out of luck. With modern LCD or LED screens they won't work at all.

If you want a modern equivalent, you'll need something like an Aimtrak and some emulators.

doppelkorn

My mate at work mentioned last week that he's just got Duck Hunt going on the NES for his two young daughters. I'll ask him what gun/TV he's using.

doppelkorn

So here's how the NES Zapper worked. It actually detected changes in light on the screen, which were drawn on for an (almost) imperceptibly short time.

QuoteWhen the trigger on the Zapper is pressed, the game causes the entire screen to become black for one frame. Then, on the next frame, all valid targets that are on screen are drawn all white as the rest of the screen remains black. The Zapper detects this change from low light to bright light, and determines if any of the targets are in the zapper's hit zone. If a target is hit, the game determines which one was hit based on the duration of the flash, as each target flashes for a different duration.[15][16][17] After all target areas have been illuminated, the game returns to drawing graphics as usual. The whole process is almost imperceptible to the human eye, although one can notice a slight "flashing" of the image. Although the Zapper just detects light, it can only be used on CRT displays. It will not work on LCDs, plasma displays or other flat panel displays due to display lag. This darkness/brightness sequence prevents the possible issue caused by pointing the Zapper right next to or into a light bulb.[17][18][19] Older light guns did not use this method, making it possible to cheat and get a perfect hit score in a way not possible using the NES Zapper.

Beagle 2

Incredible!

I'm still a bit confused about the different targets/time duration thing though?

PLS EXPLAIN

doppelkorn

I assume it went something like this (might be wrong)

1. Trigger depressed
2. Screen goes wholly black (start counting frames now - 1)
3. Target 1 is drawn in white (frame count - 2)
4. Target 2 is drawn in white (frame count - 3)
5. Target 3 is drawn in white (frame count - 4)
6. Screen is drawn back in full colour (frame count - 5)

So the screen is black for five frames (seems a bit long actually), and the gun determines which target it hit by how long it's white for (1, 2 or 3 frames).

That's a guess, and it doesn't actually involve flashing.

doppelkorn

#40
OK, this video explains it very, very well. Jump to 03:50 for the meat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3tBk-LYyzo

I was basically right but it's more like this:

1. Trigger depressed
2. Screen goes wholly black (start counting frames now - 1)
3. Target 1 is drawn in white (frame count - 2)
4. Target 1 erased and 2 is drawn in white (frame count - 3)
6. Screen is drawn back in full colour (frame count - 4)

So you get a total of three frames in black. In the US this was apparently 16ms per frame, so 48ms. Barely perceptible. Each target would be flashed for one frame each. The video shows a maximum of two simultaneous targets on screen, but there may have been more, extending the total length of black screen time.

Also dispels the myth about being unable to use it on flat screen CRTs...

Beagle 2


AsparagusTrevor

I remember the Namco GunCon 3 that was released with LCD/Plasma TVs in mind, it used two sensor bars that went at either side of the TV.

So that Aimtrack gun works basically like the Wii remote and its sensor bar? I think the Wii remote works decently as a lightgun, on some games like House of the Dead and Ghost Squad you can hide the pointer and calibrate so it works more arcade-like point and shoot rather than the default mouse-pointer like aiming. I miss lightgun games. It seem to be a dead genre on consoles now, died with the PS3's Move games and its Wii ports. The PS3 port of HotD Overkill was grand.

Big Jack McBastard

The sight(s) were ridiculous:



There was that Nintendo one that looked like a mini rocket launcher


Dex Sawash

SuperScope worked on my rear projection ca.1992





edit- but I suppose that TV function was closely related to CRT

doppelkorn

Not all light guns used the exact same technology as the NES Zapper. The video I linked to explains a bit more.

Rizla

The Novachord, built by Hammond (the organ guys) in 1939. World's first polyphonic synthesiser. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BNvemnifWc

Dex Sawash

Quote from: Rizla on July 06, 2016, 12:15:46 AM
The Novachord, built by Hammond (the organ guys) in 1939. World's first polyphonic synthesiser. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BNvemnifWc

the first minute of that is terrifying


Twed

Still a thing in Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiofax

It's so domestic and usual that we take it for granted, but Teletext was amazing. A digital magazine stuffed into the unused parts of an analogue television signal, in the early 70s?! Amazing.

Mr Banlon

Quote from: Rizla on July 06, 2016, 12:15:46 AM
The Novachord, built by Hammond (the organ guys) in 1939. World's first polyphonic synthesiser. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BNvemnifWc
The Leslie cabinet/speaker to go with the Hammond is also a cracking bit of kit

Rizla

Quote from: Mr Banlon on July 06, 2016, 07:55:53 PM
The Leslie cabinet/speaker to go with the Hammond is also a cracking bit of kit

Apparently Mr Hammond hated the Leslie speaker, he reckoned they made his organs sound stupid. From the same era, the Ondes Martenot (still manufactured) was designed to be played through several different speakers including one with sympathetic strings over the cone, and one with a metal gong for a cone.


Rizla

Techmoan's youtube channel is pretty good if you enjoy outmoded audio/visual formats. I'd never heard of the Tefifon until now - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBNTAmLRmUg&index=20&list=PLN2yCnHTG_6qxmv_pdBxWxCPsbA1Cl2RI. It's a bit like an 8-track cartridge but using needle and groove instead of magnetic tape.

Blumf

Oh yes, Techmoan is well worth a look for stuff like this. HD video tapes, wire recorders, and more.

I liked the Cantata 700:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WQbJ0VFrFQ&list=PLN2yCnHTG_6qxmv_pdBxWxCPsbA1Cl2RI&index=36

Dex Sawash

Quote from: Blumf on July 06, 2016, 11:04:41 PM
Oh yes, Techmoan is well worth a look for stuff like this. HD video tapes, wire recorders, and more.

I liked the Cantata 700:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WQbJ0VFrFQ&list=PLN2yCnHTG_6qxmv_pdBxWxCPsbA1Cl2RI&index=36

I could stare for hours into the top of one of those at the reels counter-rotating at different speeds.

buzby

Quote from: doppelkorn on July 04, 2016, 12:08:16 PM
So you get a total of three frames in black. In the US this was apparently 16ms per frame, so 48ms. Barely perceptible. Each target would be flashed for one frame each. The video shows a maximum of two simultaneous targets on screen, but there may have been more, extending the total length of black screen time.

Also dispels the myth about being unable to use it on flat screen CRTs...

It wasn't the screen shape that was the issue, it's the refresh rate. The game's timing was designed around 50Hz (PAL) or 60Hz (NTSC) displays. Most home computers and consoles that were designed to connect to a TV via a modulator, Composite Video or RGB connection had their video display frequency (and by assocation their system clock interrupt) set to be the same as the refresh rate of the screen (which is why the games and music usually played slighly faster on NTSC systems).

The interrupt is generated at the point the screen blanking pulse is sent in the PAL or NTSC signal (when the electron beam is turned off to allow it to return to the top of the screen without overwriting the raster image it's just drawn), and so is known as the Vertical Blanking Interval (VBI). On the computer/console this was converted into a timing interrupt on the processor (the Vertical Blanking Interrupt). Games programmers were slaves to the VBI as all your processing needed to be done within 1 VBI, so everything had to be ready to draw the next display frame. Due to PAL and NTSC using interlacing, the VBI happens twice per frame, which is why it's 50Hz for the UK - it gives you 25 whole frames per second (it was also convenient for the early TVs before cheap, reliable oscillator-driven clock circuits became available as they could slave their timing from the mains 50Hz frequency).

The reason why this all went to pot for light guns with modern displays is that the game's target detection timing was tied into the VBI. If you had an advanced CRT TV like a Philips MatchLine or Sony Trinitron that had 100Hz refresh rate it started to go a bit dodgy. These TVs effectivey doubled the refresh rate by converting the incoming raster signal into a digital sequence, storing it in RAM and displaying it twice in the same time frame (and the screen could use faster-decaying phospors, which reduced smearing and ghosting on fast-moving images - the main reason for moving to100Hz).

The VBI frequency of the game would therefore only be half that of the TV, and the image would only be displayed for half the time (though it's displayed twice in the time period). Detecting targets then became 'hit and miss' (pardon the pun) as the digitisation of the raster induced a small lag in the timing, and it became dependent on the response time of the photodiode in the gun (if it wasn't fast enough it may end up missing the white square in the target frame it's being aimed at) and the point in each VBI cycle the game program was looking for the target input from the gun.

For Plasma and LCD TFT displays, the refresh rate of the screen can be totally divorced from the VBI frequency (the incoming video is digitised and stored, and then displayed at the screen's native refresh rate), which usually means old lightgun games that relied on the VBI timing won't work on them.

biggytitbo

I liked the one about the picocassette - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5FqjQlFBDM



In an alternative universe where we never had solid state memory cards we might have phones and mp3 players powered by these things now.

Steven

Quote from: Mr Banlon on July 06, 2016, 07:55:53 PM
The Leslie cabinet/speaker to go with the Hammond is also a cracking bit of kit

Originally to get the phasing vocals on Tomorrow Never Knows, Lennon wanted to hang upside down tied to the ceiling and swing around the microphone, George Martin sensibly suggested "That's a good idea John, but let's try it with this Leslie cabinet rotating speaker first.."

He also hated his own singing voice and wanted to know if there was a way to alter it by plugging it directly into the desk like they did their guitars, George Martin sensibly suggested "That's a good idea John, but we'd have to install a jack directly into your voice box.."

JesusAndYourBush


Twed