4 ms·

I worked at a company that made video titlers in the 80s. They tried all kinds of interesting memory technology including bubble memory and CCD memory. I reme

I worked at a company that made video titlers in the 80s. They tried all kinds of interesting memory technology including bubble memory and CCD memory. I remember they deployed CCD shift register memory to customers, but it was pretty error prone- your text would get corrupted over time. They made a 68000-based high resolution titler with fast SRAM for the display refresh memory. This would have been crazy expensive except that the image was stored in compressed format, and decompressed on the fly during display, so they only needed something like 64KB. It looked great, but composing the image (from annotated text) was very slow. I think Chyron just used lots of DRAM in their similar products (pretty sure they used 8086).

randall 5y ago
Can we be friends? hn@randallb.com
LocalH 5y ago
I'm not sure what the earlier Chiron units used for a CPU (I think I read somewhere that the Chiron II used the DataMate-70 minicomputer), but I'm pretty sure that Chyron's iNFiNiT! series used 68k CPUs (possibly a 68060 in the higher end units?). I think I've said this on HN before, but professional character generators are woefully underdocumented. In a lot of ways, they were at the pinnacle of computing power (generating quality NTSC imagery is much more easier said than done). I'd love to see something like an emulated Datavision D-3000 one day. Modern computers can push around video well enough that such things could actually be shoehorned into a modern workflow (make the emulator into an NLE plugin that is scriptable and you'd be much of the way there).
- ct520 5y ago
  Had to look up Datavision D-3000 in action. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt-gN-cIpxs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt-gN-cIpxs Crazy!
- jhallenworld 5y ago
  I think it was the Chyron VP-1 / VP-2: https://archive.org/details/chyron-vp-1-manual/page/n57/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/chyron-vp-1-manual/page/n57/mode... http://www.oldvcr.tv/collection/index.html?Mode=View&Brand=Chyron&Model=VP-2&Ref=1 http://www.oldvcr.tv/collection/index.html?Mode=View&Brand=C... But not much RAM- maybe it was Scribe, but I see both big Intel and Moto chips in it: https://www.ebay.com/itm/265204467651?_trkparms=ispr%3D1&hash=item3dbf6b07c3:g:GegAAOSw35ZdNjw-&amdata=enc%3AAQAGAAAA4AEUGf%2B4m73zMft9zQ%2BF9ZiKpFrXs330%2BsiNqka7abhCGFjYUcffU18BqhD2eNlE8HUQi1rdLCKFAZznmYMmSMVApiXvtBClwwPe5cgdfbN4hKXICNVyC2lW%2BWR%2FgRE5eSrwnBhTYBb7Ol1yrM70eoOCag6aPpSkDPHYQJOHoteKuqpuc4S7DgmPekN9yU7eniB%2FKSLQlYffTU9c%2FBhK%2BAldrql0YQOL1ct%2FySZ%2FI3Hq4%2Fj8lUjpuO5KROA%2BARUKzIGUqSPBFX5Zo0fl4%2BPVYZR5uBTf9YQaCM7QY0timlj0%7Ctkp%3ABFBMtvef9_Vf https://www.ebay.com/itm/265204467651?_trkparms=ispr%3D1&has... https://www.ebay.com/itm/234061007923?_trkparms=ispr%3D1&hash=item367f1f8c33:g:YZgAAOSw5TtdNjyw&amdata=enc%3AAQAGAAAA4F51CekrnKbdEbpktyrfn2yONGROJuQSwADaGYUnOvqMYYO77G%2BoxW08be%2FSgAjOcsc5vJxf%2FQBCcr4hj7mabDU4dStMZm8vE0Gaf0gNCLDOi7mq2RvQWnhHaW72IfBeJbEGfmkPzdG0cHoMLOiKXGJ0bU3pUVRSIu7wLkRW6lKmqe%2Fqcp1J698SL7HYTqnPZ3FbBHKLKjQ0DuKCd6VMr%2BR%2FbhP0zqVmhh5Bmi42FmpQBi7iKCzkcDEdaUCu3h2nGt3thcRaLHcnjpfYnXleD5%2BOp6YyFJJIyGHeuwTLHhUs%7Ctkp%3ABFBM4uXF9_Vf https://www.ebay.com/itm/234061007923?_trkparms=ispr%3D1&has...
  - LocalH 5y ago
    I see an 020/881 combination in that Scribe. I also see the Intel chip but can't read it either. My guess is it's a 386
hughrr 5y ago
Philips used CCD shift registers in their very early digital oscilloscopes (PM3310/PM3311) as well. This was then shifted into an 8085 based computer which rendered it out to the display. Absolutely horrible scopes to use and repair however. Was the only way to get 50MS/s though in the 80s!

randall 5y ago

Can we be friends? hn@randallb.com

LocalH 5y ago

I'm not sure what the earlier Chiron units used for a CPU (I think I read somewhere that the Chiron II used the DataMate-70 minicomputer), but I'm pretty sure that Chyron's iNFiNiT! series used 68k CPUs (possibly a 68060 in the higher end units?). I think I've said this on HN before, but professional character generators are woefully underdocumented. In a lot of ways, they were at the pinnacle of computing power (generating quality NTSC imagery is much more easier said than done). I'd love to see something like an emulated Datavision D-3000 one day. Modern computers can push around video well enough that such things could actually be shoehorned into a modern workflow (make the emulator into an NLE plugin that is scriptable and you'd be much of the way there).

ct520 5y ago
Had to look up Datavision D-3000 in action. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt-gN-cIpxs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt-gN-cIpxs Crazy!
jhallenworld 5y ago
I think it was the Chyron VP-1 / VP-2: https://archive.org/details/chyron-vp-1-manual/page/n57/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/chyron-vp-1-manual/page/n57/mode... http://www.oldvcr.tv/collection/index.html?Mode=View&Brand=Chyron&Model=VP-2&Ref=1 http://www.oldvcr.tv/collection/index.html?Mode=View&Brand=C... But not much RAM- maybe it was Scribe, but I see both big Intel and Moto chips in it: https://www.ebay.com/itm/265204467651?_trkparms=ispr%3D1&hash=item3dbf6b07c3:g:GegAAOSw35ZdNjw-&amdata=enc%3AAQAGAAAA4AEUGf%2B4m73zMft9zQ%2BF9ZiKpFrXs330%2BsiNqka7abhCGFjYUcffU18BqhD2eNlE8HUQi1rdLCKFAZznmYMmSMVApiXvtBClwwPe5cgdfbN4hKXICNVyC2lW%2BWR%2FgRE5eSrwnBhTYBb7Ol1yrM70eoOCag6aPpSkDPHYQJOHoteKuqpuc4S7DgmPekN9yU7eniB%2FKSLQlYffTU9c%2FBhK%2BAldrql0YQOL1ct%2FySZ%2FI3Hq4%2Fj8lUjpuO5KROA%2BARUKzIGUqSPBFX5Zo0fl4%2BPVYZR5uBTf9YQaCM7QY0timlj0%7Ctkp%3ABFBMtvef9_Vf https://www.ebay.com/itm/265204467651?_trkparms=ispr%3D1&has... https://www.ebay.com/itm/234061007923?_trkparms=ispr%3D1&hash=item367f1f8c33:g:YZgAAOSw5TtdNjyw&amdata=enc%3AAQAGAAAA4F51CekrnKbdEbpktyrfn2yONGROJuQSwADaGYUnOvqMYYO77G%2BoxW08be%2FSgAjOcsc5vJxf%2FQBCcr4hj7mabDU4dStMZm8vE0Gaf0gNCLDOi7mq2RvQWnhHaW72IfBeJbEGfmkPzdG0cHoMLOiKXGJ0bU3pUVRSIu7wLkRW6lKmqe%2Fqcp1J698SL7HYTqnPZ3FbBHKLKjQ0DuKCd6VMr%2BR%2FbhP0zqVmhh5Bmi42FmpQBi7iKCzkcDEdaUCu3h2nGt3thcRaLHcnjpfYnXleD5%2BOp6YyFJJIyGHeuwTLHhUs%7Ctkp%3ABFBM4uXF9_Vf https://www.ebay.com/itm/234061007923?_trkparms=ispr%3D1&has...
- LocalH 5y ago
  I see an 020/881 combination in that Scribe. I also see the Intel chip but can't read it either. My guess is it's a 386

hughrr 5y ago

Philips used CCD shift registers in their very early digital oscilloscopes (PM3310/PM3311) as well. This was then shifted into an 8085 based computer which rendered it out to the display. Absolutely horrible scopes to use and repair however. Was the only way to get 50MS/s though in the 80s!