LGR - Kodak DisplayMaker Video Graphics System

kissfan003

Hi Clint! I am just across 40 - east of you. Love your shows. Keep the retro fires burning! I appreciate you!

LGR

Happy to hear it, this was quite fun to explore :)

LGR

Haha, with each suggestion taking like an hour to draw. Fun for the whole family :P

LGR

Thank you!

LGR

Awesome he worked there so long! And yeah the whole story of Kodak floundering when it comes to digital imaging tech is nuts.

I'm from Rochester NY, and my Dad worked for Kodak for over 25 years. I can tell you that Kodak was constantly dabbling in all sorts of technologies with no clear plan. Hell they invented the digital camera and failed to capitalize on it, their whole business was centered on film but for some odd reason they spent money on R&D in all kinds of other wacky areas.

Florian Joffrin

Particularly loved that one! I like the new logo, too.

I would pay good money to see you twitch stream this - draw suggestions from the chat :)

Tyler Kurth

I love when you dive into long forgotten (usually for a good reason) tech junk. This was a very interesting one!

Ezydenias

I know it ain't too relevant but overheadprojectors in east Germany are always called Polylux (which was the companies name who made them in the GDR) but in west Germany they say overheadprojector which is just weird. I mean why would west Germans use an English word since the 60s or whenever that thing saw the light of day. Makes you think, or at least me, maybe I am just weird.

Deckard Games

Fancy new intro logo. Reminds me of The Matrix. I approve! I bet it was made with the brand new and awesome Kodak DisplayMaker 😁

Rob Caporetto

Intro wise, you've always done a great job with short and sweet, and this new one totally keeps to the tradition ;) As for the DisplayMaker? Just wow. The concept is nice, but even by 80's hardware standards, that rendering time is a killer. Let alone the incredibly clunky interface to create slides. Certainly an interesting spot of tech regardless!

LGR

I do too, I've been trying to think of some way of incorporating that into one of my intros. If not this one, then something else.

Ian Guebert

Look at this photo-GRAPH!

Wallace Fung Wooh Sheen

Like the new slick intro, but i do miss the old keyboard sound. Maybe you can somehow incorporate it with the new floppy sound.

The Enforcer

I have to imagine the Displaymaker was some old leftover stock that was never sold. I can't imagine a company buying it and not using it, especially with it costing nearly $2k back in the day. Also, that keyboard... blarg. It reminds me of the ZX Spectrum or the early (later?) Commodore PETs that didnt have the big chunky keyboards. Regarding your video edits, I do like the new intro (along with dem floppy sounds). And more Computer Chronicles footage? I approve.

Iron Arse Hands

I like the new intro graphic! I think the Kodak DisplayMaker could be used to enhance your end of year YouTube stats presentation. Just think of the possible pie charts (and time required to make).

DannyDK

I like the old intro better

It's awesome, especially the floppy sound :D

Alyxx the Rat

Okay that new logo looks fucking sweet :D

I dig the new logo into. Short quick sweet.

LGR

Don't think I have one to test unfortunately. And thanks!

LGR

Happy to hear that. Nothing like a nice disk drive noise.

LGR

Heh, yeah that statement pretty much sums it up!

avfusion

Oh shoot, didn't even think about it, but does it run any better with an NEC V20 on board? Also the new logo is pretty cool

LGR

I've got a number of them, plan to eventually!

Douglas Holmes

Love the new intro, the floppy sounds remind me of the 486 we had when growing up. That is one of two sounds that remind of my early PC days, the second is the sound of the dot matrix printer.

The 8-Bit Guy

Neat device. Pointless, but neat!

Also love the new intro

Hey Clint I love your videos can you review vcr games

LGR

Thanks! I'm sure I'll tweak it a bit, but it seemed to me to be an appropriately nostalgic noise to be in an intro :)

PureBlueOctopus

Love the floppy disk sound in the intro!

LGR

Happy to share it. And yeah I dig that stand, purposely sought it out to look styling, hehe.

LGR

I'll never tire of that.

LGR

Thanks! It's licensed from Epidemic Sound.

Never seen or heard of this or the Videoshow, interesting! Love that bent wood monitor stand, that's styling.

Whenever it takes it's time to render a screen... make a new sandwich (Boy I love LGR Foods!) It would be funny to make an interface cloning this system to work with GNU Plot... add a ton of timers to make it take forever :P

Tom

LOOK AT THIS GRAPH. I see you Chad

That's some groovy music you got going there bud, where is it from?

LGR

Heh, yeah I do wonder how long people's sealed collections will stay sealed when it's in the hands of future generations. Can hardly stand to keep stuff sealed myself!

LGR

Yeah there were just so many options hitting the market around the time this came out. Poor Kodak being slow to the digital imaging game once again.

LGR

Could very well be! And yeah I've uploaded the images in the comment with the link above.

Chris Munch

That's a great find someone sent you - amazing that stuff like that is just sitting unused in a box for 30 years. It's like in another 50 years when I'm dead and someone is going through my stuff and they find a boxed sealed copy of Corpse Killer for the Sega CD 32X and they're going to wonder why I resisted opening the package to play it for my entire life.

Richard Shears

Thanks, another great retrospective into hardware that was obsolete before release. :-). I can’t help but think an Amiga would provide a better tool for the task this weirdness provides oh and by 1988 you could scan in 4096 colours (HAM mode) albeit with an additional component, I think the newtek was out by then Datel also had image capture device although I think it was only grayscale at that time.

Carey Brown

I'm really curious about those disk images myself. I see, from the other comments, that you are probably going to/already updated them to the internet archive (kudos once again!!!). Armchair speculation in the meantime, I'm guessing this is running some form of stripped down CP/M-86. It certainly fits the hardware specs, the filename convention, and the fact that the disks aren't readable by MS DOS: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M-86" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M-86</a>

LGR

Certainly wasn't up to my expectations either, considering the potential on this hardware. I'd hate to imagine how long it'd take to use the frame grabber for capturing photos!

LGR

A local legend indeed! I've been wanting to get over his way and see if I can do a video on that someday, actually. I've seen a few on YouTube and it looks incredible.

LGR

Certainly tempted to swap the BIOS and see what happens, if I can find a fitting chip! And yeah it's unreasonably slow, haha. Even typing a single graphical letter takes a couple seconds.

Deckard Games

Just like a PC but its not 😂 Weird stuff indeed. Never seen one of these before. Funny to see how things ran so slow with that processor. Came as a surprise.

Jeremy Abel

So if you ever want to dive further down the rabbit hole of computers integrating with early video tech, there's a guy named Dave Sieg who lives in Asheville who you should chat with. He runs the only working Scanimate machine, and you can find more info here: <a href="http://www.scanimate.com/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.scanimate.com/</a> I think he's interface that thing with an SGI Indie machine. I have a bunch of machines of a style called "Digital Picture Manipulator", and they all run on Motorola 68k chips and interface with floppy drives and all that. I've always wondered if those use any kind of DOS. I'd imagine they'd have to, right? Do you know when embedded Linux became more of a thing? These devices are circa 1984 I think

avfusion

Looking at the inside, I think it could run some form of DOS. Seems like all its missing is a suitable BIOS ROM. Also, that thing has an 8087 and still runs THAT SLOW? Wowzers. That's not endearing.

LGR

Ha! That'd be an immense amount of work but it'd be awesome nonetheless. GRAPHS!

LGR

Oh I've got plenty of ways to back up the disks, with things like TeleDisk, the Kryoflux etc. I've made raw images already. The challenge is being able to read the file structure/formatting of the resulting image, which seems to only be successful on the Display Maker itself.

BastetFurry

Can you fire up the 486 and try grabbing images with VGA-Copy? Maybe us reversers can get something useful out of these disks.

MrFortyFive

I'll be sorely disappointed if all the information in the 2019 retrospective (Please do one!) isn't presented through DisplayMaker. Just think of all the graphs and charts you can make!

LGR

Yeah the explosion in their popularity is a fascinating trend to look back on how it evolved. I recommend Computer Chronicles' two-part series on desktop presentation from 1989: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysJZn3wqsAw" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysJZn3wqsAw</a>

LGR

It'd certainly be useful for that! Bunch of other machines used the same chips. I know the Atari 600XL uses them for the popular 64K upgrade, for one.

LGR

Audio's untouched, the keyboard just sucks haha. There's a bit more resistance and delay with each key press than you'd expect.

JennaKay

After seeing this, I can see why Powerpoint and forgotten packages like Scala really ruled the day. It's interesting to see so many packages out there with competing goals from the late 80s and early 90s. I think outside of its obvious gaming appeal, Video Toasters and Scala were the most interesting work Amigas were put to.

I had one of these back in the day. Not sure where or how I came about it, but yes, quite an odd specialized use of hardware. I think I ended up tearing into it and parting it out if memory serves correct.

Asaf Sagi

Wait, but how many farts, though? (Cool piece of tech, awesome video)

Joe Conti

Great review! The audio when you were demonstrating the keyboard seemed slightly off but maybe that's just how terrible the mechanisms were. Not sure. The Pie chart was probably the best part. Wonder if you could swap the BIOS in this thing with a DOS compatible...