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TV Typewriter Cookbook

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Can't believe there are no reviews here for this amazing book. It is a hacker's classic. The book that came out of nowhere in the mid-70's when people were just becoming aware that you could build real stuff using digital circuits. The object of this book is to build a serial terminal from really low level components, such as TV tubes, parallel keyboards (or even a home-built keyboard), using the most basic, low-level chips and circuits. Covers things like character encoding schemes, making your own character and graphics ROMs, simple bus design, and modifying TV sets and Selectric keyboards to work in these devices. The book also systematically documents most of the important digital chips that were available on a commodity basis at that time. This book pretty much defined what was meant by the term "home-brew." Well written and still a useful reference even today, and always fun to browse.

The TV typewriter was the first affordable way for ordinary people to connect a computer to a video display, and was the invention of Don Lancaster. This book contains the instructions on how to build this ancient device, and it is a hoot for any combination electronics hobbyist/history buff.

Don Lancaster was working on the design a high resolution video display at work when he realized that a cheap display, attached to a typewriter and a television, could be popular and economical for the masses. Don's first cut at the TV Typewriter was completed in 1973 and used TTL digital logic and 512 bits of shift register memory. There was a built-in RF modulator so you could connect it to any TV. Microprocessors were brand-new technology and RAM was very expensive per memory location, so they were not part of the design. Professional terminals cost over one thousand dollars, so 120 dollars was not considered to be expensive to electronics enthusiasts in comparison. Don's design was a video terminal that could display 2 pages of 16 lines of 32 upper case characters on a standard television. This seems primitive now, but it was the first real step forward in home computing. This book was not based on that original design, but was the result of some improvements Don made on it, and was printed in 1976. It was more than just a guide on building the simple typewriter/TV interface, though. It also gave information on building interfaces for accessories, including a cassette interface and an interface to what passed for a printer in those days. The following is the table of contents:

Chapter 1. Some Basics
Chapter 2. Integrated Circuits for TVT use
Chapter 3. Memory
Chapter 4. System Timing - Calculation and Circuits
Chapter 5. Cursor and Update Circuits
Chapter 6. Keyboards and Encoders
Chapter 7. Serial Interfaces
Chapter 8. Television Interfaces
Chapter 9. Hard Copy and Color Graphics