Classic Canadian Video {Hardware} Turns into Homebrew Pc

Are you within the temper for a retrocomputing deep dive into the Scriptovision Tremendous Micro Script? It was a Canadian-made classic video titler from the 80s, and [Cameron Kaiser] has written up a journey of restore and reverse-engineering for it. However his work is excess of only a refurbish job; [Cameron] transforms the gadget into one thing not in contrast to 8-bit homebrew computer systems of the period, in a position to add and run customized applications with a restricted blister keypad for enter, and displaying output on a composite video monitor.

A video titler just like the Tremendous Micro Script gave folks the power to show bitmapped pictures (like textual content or easy graphics) onto a video stream electronically. A standalone gadget, beneath the hood, it makes use of a 6502 as CPU and a Motorola 6847 VDG video chip. [Cameron] observes that architecture-wise, it really had quite a bit in widespread with early 8-bit house computer systems. Certain, it carried out just one “job” however that basically had extra to do with its restrictive firmware than anything.

[Cameron] obtained a used unit and repaired it, reverse-engineered the scrambled tackle and information traces (an anti-cloning and anti-tampering measure), and transformed it into one thing for which he may write his personal software program and run his personal applications. As for importing these applications? A bit-banged serial port on I/O borrowed from the blister keypad, working at a frankly fairly respectable 19.2 kbps.

We hope you’re intrigued, as a result of [Cameron] has another shock: he created a MAME emulator for the Tremendous Micro Script referred to as SMSBUG. Initially created to make software program growth simpler, its existence additionally means anybody can take part on the classic computing enjoyable. The emulator, together with different useful utilities and information, is offered on GitHub.