LGR - The FOR-A VP-380 Video Pointer

LGR

Oh yeah, it is a densely-packed beast inside resulting in quite a bunch of heft. I love it.

Cleverly Blonde

I got to say I am impressed by the responsiveness of the pointer. It seems to move VERY smoothly and responsively to the joystick. I can imagine that would be important for medical practices.

Cyclone

I have the same Sony Trinitron monitor, but mine has a built in tuner. Is yours dag gone heavy as well?! Amazed at the weight of such a small screen, but I'm glad I saved it from the recycle pile at work.

well, cant say this was pointless.

LGR

Ah that sucks. Yeah I was happy to find this one with rather low hours of use, considering it was ex-medical surplus.

LGR

It really is a lovely look. Dat aperture grill.

Oh man, I have that same PVM! Mine doesn't have the front door though :( I have a newer, larger Ikegami but I always come back to the 1271Q. You really just can't beat that Trinitron mask.

Sandro Huber

Nice, I got the exact same PVM, but with a dark gray case. Sadly, it starts to show it's age, it got very picky which RGB input devices it likes, I can't get a stable V-Hold anymore

LGR

Thank you!

BastetFurry

You surely could. My educated guess is that the system hangs to the H- and V-Sync generated by the video input, the analogue stick is attached to an AD, that feeds a comparator which compares to a TTL counter which triggers another counter that reads out the EPROM bitmap and whites or blacks out the pixels that are 1 in the EPROM. The switches on the front select some high bits on the adress lines of the EPROM and there you have it. The blinking mode is achieved with the NE555 i spotted on Clints short teardown. Simple enough to build yourself, your only problem, and why that thing is so expensive, is certification.

JennaKay

This just reminds me even more of how revolutionary a Video Toaster setup with multiple monitors, dual VCRs, and genlocks for a few thousand bucks back in the day must have been.

How have I not spotted your new intro until now, it's fantastic. Crisp, succint and retro-futurist all in one. Nice one chief.

Steve Lovelace

"Pattern moooode."

Steve Lovelace

It seems like something that Professor Farnsworth from Futurama would invent, a la the Finglonger.

The positioner reminds me of the analogue joystick I had with the Dragon 32

Laser tech probably wasn't efficient enough to be a handheld device in the 80's. I don't think they were a thing till the mid 90's.

Brian Gordon

Why didn't they just use a laser pointer?!

This is the kind of device that amaze me! A device designed exclusively to surimpress a pointer on any video. It looks like a joke, a story on some dystopian technologic nonsense full of single-purposed devices, and an actual old useful real device from the 90s. All at the same time! Great video!

Jeremy Abel

Oh nice! I have a FOR-A timebase corrector box (FA-210), cool to see what other stuff they made! I'd love to read the contents of that eeprom, would be fun to see if you could write your own data to it and replace the arrows.

Bastien Nocera

Weird how the square pattern’s right edge doesn’t seem to line up.

Zachary Outen

Isn’t the human race just great, building a wildly over complicated and expensive machine that basically achieves the same purpose as just pointing at the screen with your finger

I could see this being used in the 80's by a TV Station that was covering a football game, along with its uses in the medical field. Usually, they were pretty expensive since they were pretty specialized, since there wasn't a huge market for them. I used a similar device when I worked in master control at a low power TV station in the early 2000's that superimposed a small black or white "bug" on the screen indicating the call letters of the station. We'd use a toggle switch to fade in/fade out the bug when we went to commercials. However, it had an issue where if you had shuffled across the carpet, building up a static charge, then toggle the switch, you'd cause the bug to either switch colors or move to a random location on the screen.

LGR

Fresh pooooottts

bee !!

was that a FRESH POTS reference? bc if so, hell yeah

LGR

I understood some of these words 👍

avfusion

Good ole Phillips/Texas Instruments composite rivalry. I remember those little compositor overlay chips. They would send a pulse for each scanline and each individual blanking interval, and you could put a modulated signal on another pin that would "overwrite" that part of the screen. It's really simple stuff under the hood, and that's what made them so robust. No logic, no fancy microcontroller, just an EPROM full of shapes and timing pots. Mmmmm, 80's

LGR

He's really gotten into a good groove lately, what an awesome channel.

Leigh Beattie

Brain got mixed up and thought this was a Technology Connections video for a second. Also, do a collab with Technology Connections ;).