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Cromemco dazzler replica project

Little update on the Dazzler, as presumed, the hardware is capable for tweaking (to some extent). Here are two examples:

1. Hight resolution color mode

1718102451884.png

You have to look closely, I am sorry that the evironment is currently too bright to give a better impression. What we see here are all available colors in the 4x4 hires mode. Simply achieved by switching the foreground color on the fly on every new pixel line (using the flags delivered by the 0EH input port).

2. 225 colors mode


Again, not easy to show. The Dazzler here uses a color image for the even pixel lines in color mode, and switches to a greyscale image in greyscale mode for the odd pixel lines. Again utilizing the flags from the 0EH input port. The effect is some kind of eye-averaging across the two interlaced images changing with 31 Hz frequency, which can give the illusion of up to 15 colors with 15 shades (=225 max). To be honest, there are probably less colors, since color intensity in the color mode and intensity in greyscale mode overlap. Unfortunately impossible to record, also my mobile phone unfortunately is not capable exposing photographs across two interlaced frames, but the short video gives an idea how it looks like.

Creating the correct two separations from a single photograph, however, is a challenge. Mainly because we have two intensities in the color mode. It is probably easier to use the bright colors only, but we will loose contrast.

Small correction: The two images are changed with every field, so the change frequency should be 62 Hz, not 31 Hz.
 
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Start here: https://www.jedec.org/

Some enterprising companies have obtained (and published on the web) some of the reports. But I could not comment on that...

Dave

Well, you could comment on it, but I suspect that as in the old James Bond movies; "If I tell you I'd have to kill you"

But to cross the Atlantic and throw in some American humor, from the TV series Monk, he said: "If you want to kill me that is ok, I just need to know"

It is almost impossible to believe that anything related to a 74 series TTL IC's could be top secret, but I have seen stranger things happen.

Back in about 1974 when I was a teenager, I knew a girl who had joined the Army. She was doing an electronics course. One night she phoned me up and asked if I could help her. She had an exam the following day and was worried about it because she was struggling with some of the material. I said ok, I'd try to help. But she said, its all top secret. I said ok no worries I won't say anything, just try to help.

I was pretty intrigued by the whole thing. Anyway when I got to look at the coursework I was stunned, it was about vacuum tube problems that were at least 30 years old. Luckily I had an interest in these because I had been making tube stereo amplifiers and tube guitar amps, so I knew all about it and helped with the questions, but it made me wonder about things that were "Top Secret"

Many years later I was reading a story about the 1st Gulf War. There was some sort of ammunition factory in Iraq that the Americans wanted to bomb. They had the "secret" GPS coordinates in their classified intel files. They bombed it, but it was the wrong address. They accidentally bombed the Chinese emabassy on the opposite side of the road. But, the ironic thing was, that the address that they wanted to bomb was listed in the local telephone directory.

These sorts of lessons taught me that when things get too "secret", only chaos comes of it.
 
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I used to watch Monk over in the UK!

Dave
I guessed you would be a Monk fan.

One of my daughters really liked Monk.

One day after going into a room she came out and said: There is a problem with the light in the room.

I said, what do you mean ? She went on to explain that the lamp fitting in the ceiling had been placed off center and it just didn't look right. (the kind of thing that would have driven Monk crazy)

So I checked it with a ruler and it was about 5 inches off center. I had never noticed it.

As Monk pointed out; " If you paid attention you'd be worried too"
 
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Hi,

Has anybody here modified an old XBox game controller to work as a Cromemco DAZZLER JoyStick?

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Hi,

Has anybody here modified an old XBox game controller to work as a Cromemco DAZZLER JoyStick?

.
In case you missed it, there is an entire recent discussion here on the topic of building a replica of the Cromemco DAZZLER joystick:

The XBox game controller design is in no way compatible with the design of the Cromemco DAZZLER joystick. The only component you might be able to use is the joystick assembly itself (ie the gimbal and potentiometers) along with the circuit board described in the above discussion to build a Cromemco joystick replica.
 
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