The Cheap Video Cookbook

This book was the follow-on to Lancaster's book on the TV Terminal, which was the first book to describe an affordable way of building your own video terminal. The Cheap Video Cookbook picked up where the author's TV Typewriter Cookbook ended. In 1978, this was a super low-cost way to get words, pictures, and op-code out of a computer and onto on ordinary TV set with minimum modifications to both. You will find complete do-it-yourself nuts and bolts construction details with thoroughly documented and debugged support software. Inside are details on the seven IC circuit called the TVT 6 5/6. You could build this for as little as $20 in 1978, and then software and module program it for virtually any alphanumeric format known at the time, including a scrolling 24 lines by 80 characters; or for virtually any graphics format of that day including a 256 × 256 mode and four-color graphics modes - hefty stuff for the 1970's. Those seven ICs gave cursor, loading, and editing capabilities, and did everything within the limited bandwidth ability of an ordinary TV set of that era. The system ran on most any 6500 or 6800 system, and could be adapted to other microcomputers. It is absolutely laughable to think this was the state of the art in video display systems 30 years ago, but it is very well written and documented. Since you can get a used copy so cheaply it might be worth it for electronics history buffs. I still have my copy, which I actually used to build a video display controller back in the early 80's. It really is a pretty good source for showing absolute beginners the electronics nuts-and-bolts of what goes on in a video display system. Nobody builds individual systems any more, so consider it a well-written book on a lost art.