[Coco] Light pen stuff was:Re: Software testing for FDC emulator

[gene heskett]

On Tuesday, April 26, 2011 04:24:37 PM Steve Bjork did opine:

> No, my driver was for basic programs and not games.  Mostly used as a
> "select from a menu" type operations.  It only need to find what
> character the pen is pointing at.  Any yes, I can find what character on
> the the pen pointing to in 1/10 of second.
> 
> Yes, it was CPU intensive.  Yes, it did flash the screen.  But it was
> cheap $20 input device that used the screen.  (The days before a mouse.)
> 
> But back then everything was CPU intensive.
> 
> You must be an electrical engineer since you used term "phase locked
> loop" to describe an programming technique.  Am I right?
> 
> Steve
> 
Pretty much Steve, the only thing missing is the sheepskin on the wall.  
Born in 1934, I was a geek before the word was invented, quitting school to 
go out and fix tv's for a living when I was about 15 yo.  So I have an 8th 
grade education, but I have been chasing electrons to make them do useful 
work since the late 40's.  I switched from consumer servicing to broadcast 
engineering in '62, and finished out my working career by being the chief, 
and often only engineer, at WDTV, ch5 in Weston WV from late 84 till I 
figured my replacement was able to cope on June 30, 2002.  Along the way I 
collected a degree from the University of Hard Knocks, a 1st phone, a 
C.E.T., and eventually a G.E.D.

Along the way I have built 2 bits of gear for use at a tv station that 
wound up having a decade plus worth of usefulness, writing the code and 
building the hardware from scratch, the 2nd such project using a coco2 to 
replace a profile storage accessory for a GVG 300 series video switcher 
that was 4x faster & a lot easier for the Tech Directors to use than GVG's 
own $20,000 kit for that function.

I normally troubleshoot to the part level.  And I'm equally at home with 
$12,000 worth of bent Fujinon lens parts lined up from one end of the bench 
to the other.  News reporters are hell on cameras...  Or building an AZ-EL 
mount for an AFC 3.9 meter dish from scratch.

I may have to turn in my JOAT ticket though, I am not proud (but it worked 
well anyway) of the welding I did with a MIG welder yesterday.  Not enough 
practice, I hadn't plugged it and turned on the gas in a couple of years.

All that, and $1.33, will get you a 16 ounce cup of Joe to go at the 
nearest 7-11. ;-)

> On 4/26/2011 11:20 AM, gene heskett wrote:
> > On Tuesday, April 26, 2011 02:09:34 PM Steve Bjork did opine:
> >> Last time I checked,  1/10 of a second is 100 milliseconds, not 10
> >> milliseconds.
> >> 
> >> This is how I get in trouble.  They misquoted me!
> > 
> > In this case, I was running on my electronics autopilot, one of those
> > cases where my brain is running several sentences ahead of the
> > fingers, and I miss-quoted you.  My apologies.
> > 
> > However, 10ms vs 100 ms still isn't long enough to reliably obtain the
> > pixel being pointed at unless you are actually playing phase locked
> > loop games, which are both cpu intensive, and the flashing of the
> > screen pixels would be a dead giveaway for proper aim by the gamer,
> > not good.
> > 
> > To play phased locked loop and continuously track it once it has been
> > acquired would only need a 9 pixel pattern.  That could be done in 100
> > milliseconds if the lcd itself was fast enough.  Some of the first
> > ones weren't that fast.
> > 
> >> Steve (often misquoted) Bjork
> 
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-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
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<http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html>
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