H19 in a box
Terry Smedley
Glenn Roberts
On Mar 18, 2024, at 12:51 AM, Terry Smedley <terry....@gmail.com> wrote:
There's been some discussion in recent threads about hardware alternatives to H19s.
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Darrell Pelan
Joseph Travis
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glenn.f...@gmail.com
Is there an obvious choice for flat panel that would fit in an H9 or H19 cabinet? I know there are companies that specialize in drop-in replacements for CRTs but they’re big bucks.
Here’s a 12” on amazon
There were others that showed up in search. Just wondering if anyone’s looked into this deeper…
I presume one would have to create some kind of shroud or filler so account for differences in size between the screen and the cabinet…
- Glenn
From: se...@googlegroups.com <se...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Joseph Travis
Sent: Monday, March 18, 2024 2:27 PM
To: se...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [sebhc] Re: H19 in a box
That would be very cool to stuff into a H9 with a flat panel screen!
On Mon, Mar 18, 2024 at 2:21 PM Darrell Pelan <pel...@gmail.com> wrote:
Very Nice!
On Monday, March 18, 2024 at 12:51:36 AM UTC-4 Terry Smedley wrote:
There's been some discussion in recent threads about hardware alternatives to H19s.
Here's a RS232-level serial to VGA box that emulates an H19. Starting with the Propeller VGA terminal circuit that has been published in several places (for example, here: https://www.maccasoft.com/electronics/vga-serial-terminal/ or here: https://www.tindie.com/products/maccasoft/vga-serial-terminal-kit-for-rc2014/), I modified the firmware to faithfully emulate an H19, and put it in a box with RS232-level serial input. The idea was to create a tiny box that could be connected to an H8-4 (or H8-5) serial port and provide complete H19 functionality with a PC keyboard and display.
The hardware to do this is straightforward, and has appeared in many places. Dr. Baker included a similar circuit on his Pinculum board. As Glenn noted in another thread, the more difficult task is to create a faithful H19 emulation in firmware. I don't claim my Propeller firmware is 100% accurate, but I believe it to be very close. If anyone is interested, I'll post the source for the H19 emulation or screen snaps from whatever programs are deemed good tests.
The "FLAG.BAS" (from a HUG disk) photo was made using an early prototype just to demonstrate the addition of VT-100 color attributes to the H19.
tas
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Mitchell Smith (KB3GKC)
Joseph Travis
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glenn.f...@gmail.com
Right. Pricier than I was expecting. There are also conversion kits that let you take the display out of an old laptop and repurpose it as an HDMI. That could be another way to go. I’ll have to look into that some more as I’ve got a few old laptops gathering cobwebs…
- Glenn
From: se...@googlegroups.com <se...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Joseph Travis
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2024 4:32 PM
To: se...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [sebhc] Re: H19 in a box
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Darrell Pelan
W2HX
Hmmm. For just a little more money than this display, couldn’t you just purchase a complete H19? Instead of trying to embed an H19 into an H9? I feel I am missing something critical to understanding this!
73 Eugene W2HX
My Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@w2hx/videos
From: se...@googlegroups.com <se...@googlegroups.com>
On Behalf Of Darrell Pelan
Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2024 8:15 PM
To: SEBHC <se...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [sebhc] Re: H19 in a box
I ordered one that will be here Monday. I'll let you know how close the physical dimensions are to the H89. Is the H9 CRT close to the same size? The one I ordered is 16:9 instead of 4:3, so that is an issue as well. link
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glenn.f...@gmail.com
The assumption is the days are numbered for any CRT-based H19 since they’re all 40+ years old. This is an exploration of what it would take to make something that has the “feel” of an H19 and is 100% compatible but on a modern internal platform. Such a platform would also enable additional cool stuff (e.g. color, really high speed, who knows what else…). My version of this idea would retain the H19 cabinet and keyboard and replace the CRT with a flat panel screen. Terry has basically already built the guts of one of these using a Propeller processor – external USB keyboard and VGA monitor for video.
There’s also a discussion threaded in here about doing something similar for the H9.
Oh yeah and some discussion of putting the guts of a ’19 in an ’09 cabinet? Not sure I see the point of that …
- Glenn
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Joseph Travis
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Mark Garlanger
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Lee Hart
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Mark Garlanger
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Terry Smedley
Glenn Roberts
On Mar 20, 2024, at 3:01 PM, Terry Smedley <terry....@gmail.com> wrote:
FWIW, the font used in the Propeller VGA engine is 9x16 for a 720x400 image. The H19 graphics characters are mapped into the upper half of the 8-bit font space. There's enough space in that font to build the alternate character and alternate graphics symbols that Heath introduced (IIRC) in the 29 series terminals.tas<H19_GRAPHFONT-1.jpg>
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<H19_GRAPHFONT-1.jpg>
Joseph Travis
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Terry Smedley
Joseph Travis
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glenn.f...@gmail.com
Used to love to do stuff like that in Excel! great job.
Mark: we never did track down the auxiliary character ROM for the Sigmasoft board. Just wondering if there’s an image somewhere of the alternate character set (or even a description)? Could re-create it if we knew what the characters were…
- Glenn
From: se...@googlegroups.com <se...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Terry Smedley
Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2024 4:18 PM
To: SEBHC <se...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [sebhc] Re: H19 in a box
Glenn:
I created an Excel worksheet that allowed me to build a font character by shading cells, then the worksheet computed the bytes used by the Propeller engine to produce that character. The conversion from image to font definition bytes wasn't straightforward (at least to my brain), but now that I've got the magic decoder ring built, it would be easy to tune up or implement additional graphics characters.
TL;DR - The font character is broken into four 4x9 sections, each of which requires 5 bytes of storage. The order of bits in those 5 bytes is a little convoluted. An aggregation tab in the Excel worksheet glues the 5-byte character definitions into 'DB' statements that can be pasted into the Propeller source program. The screen snap shows the derivation of a typical font character.
tas
On Wednesday, March 20, 2024 at 12:33:06 PM UTC-7 Glenn Roberts wrote:
Looks great Terry. Did you manually convert the font from Heath’s 8x10 to the new 9x16?
Sent from my iPad
On Mar 20, 2024, at 3:01 PM, Terry Smedley <terry....@gmail.com> wrote:
FWIW, the font used in the Propeller VGA engine is 9x16 for a 720x400 image. The H19 graphics characters are mapped into the upper half of the 8-bit font space. There's enough space in that font to build the alternate character and alternate graphics symbols that Heath introduced (IIRC) in the 29 series terminals.
tas
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On Wednesday, March 20, 2024 at 10:42:07 AM UTC-7 Mark Garlanger wrote:
To make it look right in my emulator, I've had to double the height. To add the interlace effect, I kept every other line blank. 8x19 could work, but as you pointed out graphic characters would be off.
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