A lot of the cost of a video terminal was the screen. Yet nearly everyone had a TV, and used TVs have always been fairly cheap, too. That’s where Don Lancaster came in. His TV Typewriter Cookbook was the bible for homebrew video displays. The design influenced the Apple 1 computer and spawned a successful kit for a company known as Southwest Technical Products. For around $300 or so, you could have a terminal that uses your TV for output.
The wild West days of home computing must’ve been an absolutely fascinating time to live through. I know we have quite a few old-timers in the audience here, so there’s bound to be folks here who used this.
Amazing
I’m not quite old enough to have used this book myself, but I’m of the generation that grew up with the TI 99/4A, the TRS-80 CoCo 2, the Atari 400, and the Commodore VIC-20, all of which directly benefited from Don’s work. My first exposure to BASIC programming was as a six year old with the 99/4A, and while I never was good enough at programming to make a career of it, the experiences I had early on with these low cost home computers spurred my interest in technology and led to my current career as an IT manager, and my hobby as an electronics tinkerer.
I used a TV from a garage sale and a tape deck for data on my first computer, a Timex Sinclair 1000! When I upgraded to a VIC 20 and C64 that TV continued to be my monitor! It was years before I had a proper monitor! Such nostalgia.