[Coco] What are you tankful for this Thanksgiving?

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 21 November 2018 16:55:02 Melanie and John Mark Mobley 
wrote:

> I was told to be thankful for the small things, so I am thankful for
> the electron.
> I am also thankful for the RCA 1802 microcontroller.
> I am running the Emma 02 emulator for the 1802 "Membership Card".
> The front panel interface works.  Toggle in the bits and test your
> code.  Switches and LEDs galore.  And when you grow tired of the front
> panel interface you can switch to terminal mode.
> If you ever wanted to try a front panel interface then this may be the
> thing for you.
> You can clear the address and you can increment the address.  If you
> want to go to address 100 then you need to increment 100 times.  There
> are no LEDs for the address.  So keep you programs small or move to
> the terminal interface.  Front panel interfaces can be fun for a short
> time but soon you want to move on to a monitor and keyboard.
>
> -John Mark Mobley

Thats a very interesting micro John. I built some memory and a hardware 
video for it to display the running time (think 9.9 second down to 1.9 
for an academy leader in front of a commercial tape) all on s-100 
breadboard cards in a huge video format that could be read on a 5" B&W 
monitor beside the tape machines of the day from 15 feet away and made a 
Cosmac Super Elf into a video production tool that was still in use at 
KRCR-tv in Redding CA about 17 years after I'd gone on down the road 
looking for greener pastures, circa 1979 as the first thing I ever built 
that used a micro as its brain.

I still have a typed in paper copy of that code, and a broadcast cart 
with 3 copies of that code on a reachable shelf above me. A trophy I 
think it could be called. All this years before I saw my first coco.

Funny thing I always have to grin about, at the NAB a few months later, 
MicroTime had a prototype on the table that didn't do 2/3rds of what 
mine could. I mentioned I had already done that and much more to the 
sales rep on the other side of the table, then went on down the aisle to 
see what else was new. Coming back by the table 45 minutes later, it was 
gone and they didn't have even a prototype, same guy claimed it didn't 
exist. I left, snickering under my breath that they had just confirmed 
they had more lawyers than design engineers, and the lawyers didn't want 
to get sued by someone who had done it first.

Their loss, as I was prepared to make a deal for a small piece of it if 
they took my drawings and code and put it on the market. Sadly I didn't 
have the resources to do it myself. The potential market was only 4 or 5 
hundred units, which is how it is to this day in broadcasting since 
theres only so many tv stations and not all of them actually do their 
own commercial production.

Such is life I guess... Thanks for the memories John.

-- 
Cheers John, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>