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Drivers for CPT Genius Portrait CRT

E

eeguru

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 14, 2011
Messages
1,618
Location
Atlanta, GA, USA
I've been fascinated with portrait-oriented CRTs since I first saw them in the 80s. The fascination turned real when I got my first about a year ago - a Tandy VGM-150 mono VGA display. And I am a big fan of AT&T 3B2s and will some day finally own a Blit or derivative.

But, I recently acquired a Genius display made by the CPT Corporation and the matching ISA driver card that goes with it:

1221181558.jpg

I haven't tried connecting it to a machine yet. There is no power switch. I presume a signal is sent by the card once it received ISA bus power to turn on the CRT voltage.

The CPT Wiki Page refers to drivers for MS-DOS and others software support (eg. PC-Write, WordPerfect, WordStar, Lotus 1-2-3, etc) for 80 x 66 line text mode and Windows 3.x support for presumably 720 x 990+ mono graphics mode. Also being a second dedicated card, it appears you could run it along side other CGA/EGA/VGA cards in a system. Google search turns up a bunch of noise for anything CPT - as it is such a short generic acronym.

Anyone know where I might find support software for the card and display?
 
I don't have the drivers, but, to quote that Wiki:
"The product was originally developed by Micro Display Systems of Hastings Minnesota as the VHR-400"

Now, ZSoft PC Paintbrush+ 1.66 supports the following:
MDS Genius VHR, 736x1008 2 color
 
Man, I wish I could help, but had to comment. That is a thing of beauty. Really cool.
 
Are you still looking for drivers? I just got 3 of these monitors and a bunch of cards and I think I have working driver disks
 
Hello eeguru & mudmin,

I have disks for the CPT 9000 because I was the original author when I worked at CPT Corporation. I will be glad to send you copies.
Unfortunately my original CPT 9000 monitor has died and cannot be repaired; the tube is shot. I'm very excited to see that mudmin has "3 of these monitors"!
Mudmin - I will gladly purchase one, or more, of your CPT monitors, if you would care to part with them. Please contact me. (metasoft@erols.com)
 
mudmin said:
Are you still looking for drivers? I just got 3 of these monitors and a bunch of cards and I think I have working driver disks
Click to expand...
Hello mudmin,

I have disks for the CPT 9000 because I was the original author when I worked at CPT Corporation. I will be glad to send you copies.
Unfortunately my original CPT 9000 monitor has died and cannot be repaired; the tube is shot. I'm very excited to see that you say you have "3 of these monitors"!
I will gladly purchase one, or more, of your CPT monitors, if you would care to part with them. Please contact me. (metasoft@erols.com)
 
eeguru said:
I've been fascinated with portrait-oriented CRTs since I first saw them in the 80s. The fascination turned real when I got my first about a year ago - a Tandy VGM-150 mono VGA display. And I am a big fan of AT&T 3B2s and will some day finally own a Blit or derivative.

But, I recently acquired a Genius display made by the CPT Corporation and the matching ISA driver card that goes with it:

View attachment 1062349

I haven't tried connecting it to a machine yet. There is no power switch. I presume a signal is sent by the card once it received ISA bus power to turn on the CRT voltage.

The CPT Wiki Page refers to drivers for MS-DOS and others software support (eg. PC-Write, WordPerfect, WordStar, Lotus 1-2-3, etc) for 80 x 66 line text mode and Windows 3.x support for presumably 720 x 990+ mono graphics mode. Also being a second dedicated card, it appears you could run it along side other CGA/EGA/VGA cards in a system. Google search turns up a bunch of noise for anything CPT - as it is such a short generic acronym.

Anyone know where I might find support software for the card and display?
Click to expand...
Hello eeguru,

I have disks for the CPT 9000 because I was the original author when I worked at CPT Corporation. I will be glad to send you copies.
 
eeguru said:
I've been fascinated with portrait-oriented CRTs since I first saw them in the 80s. The fascination turned real when I got my first about a year ago - a Tandy VGM-150 mono VGA display. And I am a big fan of AT&T 3B2s and will some day finally own a Blit or derivative.

But, I recently acquired a Genius display made by the CPT Corporation and the matching ISA driver card that goes with it:

View attachment 1062349

I haven't tried connecting it to a machine yet. There is no power switch. I presume a signal is sent by the card once it received ISA bus power to turn on the CRT voltage.

The CPT Wiki Page refers to drivers for MS-DOS and others software support (eg. PC-Write, WordPerfect, WordStar, Lotus 1-2-3, etc) for 80 x 66 line text mode and Windows 3.x support for presumably 720 x 990+ mono graphics mode. Also being a second dedicated card, it appears you could run it along side other CGA/EGA/VGA cards in a system. Google search turns up a bunch of noise for anything CPT - as it is such a short generic acronym.

Anyone know where I might find support software for the card and display?
Click to expand...
Hello eeguru,

What you have there is not just a display board. It is actually an entire 8080 word processor on a single board, that was made to run on the PC/AT bus. CPT's first, and best selling, product was the CPT 8000 a dedicated word processing system built around the Intel 8080 and custom display/disk hardware. At the end of CPT's run, the PC was eroding-away much of the market and a special project was initiated. The entire CPT 8000 machine was reduced to a VLSI, with supporting PAL and RAM chips. That's what that board contains. As an after thought, a Hercules compatible display board was piggy-backed on back. When inserted into a PC/AT it transformed the PC into a CPT word processor. As a secondary feature, the Hercules card could be enabled and a full 800x600 portrait display could be shown. I wrote drivers for Windows and GEM (Digital Research's GUI version of CP/M) [GEM was very good actually - better than Windows at that time, looked and functioned almost exactly like Apple Macintosh, but was years before] Also drivers for Ventura Publisher and AutoCAD were made. Since the CPT 8000 was self-contained and running on that board, the operator could "toggle" between the DOS/Windows/GEM programs that were running on the PC and the CPT word processing program, just by pressing a key combination. This allowed CPT to continue to sell to users who were very familiar with their word processing program (still one of the best word processors I've ever used) and the new graphics programs that were becoming available on the PC. This single board transformed a PC/AT into true hybrid system with a full-page portrait display and multi-processor/multi-tasking capabilities. Other boards were created to provide backward connection and functionality with CPT's WordPak and SRS-45 multi-user external disk systems. It was quite a powerful board for its time.

I will dig-out my old CPT 9000 disk archives and hopefully make some copies for you. As posted below, sadly my CPT monitor died and I cannot use my 9000 at this time. Maybe I could purchase one of your monitors..?

Hope to hear from you.
 
mudmin said:
Are you still looking for drivers? I just got 3 of these monitors and a bunch of cards and I think I have working driver disks
Click to expand...
I have disks for the CPT 9000 because I was the original author when I worked at CPT Corporation. I will be glad to send you copies.
Unfortunately my original CPT 9000 monitor has died and cannot be repaired; the tube is shot. I'm very excited to see that you say you have "3 of these monitors"!
I will gladly purchase one, or more, of your CPT monitors, if you would care to part with them. Sending this message again, as I have not seen a reply from earlier messages. Hoping you are out there...
 
eeguru said:
I've been fascinated with portrait-oriented CRTs since I first saw them in the 80s. The fascination turned real when I got my first about a year ago - a Tandy VGM-150 mono VGA display. And I am a big fan of AT&T 3B2s and will some day finally own a Blit or derivative.

But, I recently acquired a Genius display made by the CPT Corporation and the matching ISA driver card that goes with it:

View attachment 1062349

I haven't tried connecting it to a machine yet. There is no power switch. I presume a signal is sent by the card once it received ISA bus power to turn on the CRT voltage.

The CPT Wiki Page refers to drivers for MS-DOS and others software support (eg. PC-Write, WordPerfect, WordStar, Lotus 1-2-3, etc) for 80 x 66 line text mode and Windows 3.x support for presumably 720 x 990+ mono graphics mode. Also being a second dedicated card, it appears you could run it along side other CGA/EGA/VGA cards in a system. Google search turns up a bunch of noise for anything CPT - as it is such a short generic acronym.

Anyone know where I might find support software for the card and display?
Click to expand...
Hello eeguru,

I am resending this replay because I never heard back from you. I would be interested in purchasing the monitor & board, if you wish to part with them.

What you have there is not just a display board. It is actually an entire 8080 word processor on a single board, that was made to run on the PC/AT bus. CPT's first, and best selling, product was the CPT 8000 a dedicated word processing system built around the Intel 8080 and custom display/disk hardware. At the end of CPT's run, the PC was eroding-away much of the market and a special project was initiated. The entire CPT 8000 machine was reduced to a VLSI, with supporting PAL and RAM chips. That's what that board contains. As an after thought, a Hercules compatible display board was piggy-backed on back. When inserted into a PC/AT it transformed the PC into a CPT word processor. As a secondary feature, the Hercules card could be enabled and a full 800x600 portrait display could be shown. I wrote drivers for Windows and GEM (Digital Research's GUI version of CP/M) [GEM was very good actually - better than Windows at that time, looked and functioned almost exactly like Apple Macintosh, but was years before] Also drivers for Ventura Publisher and AutoCAD were made. Since the CPT 8000 was self-contained and running on that board, the operator could "toggle" between the DOS/Windows/GEM programs that were running on the PC and the CPT word processing program, just by pressing a key combination. This allowed CPT to continue to sell to users who were very familiar with their word processing program (still one of the best word processors I've ever used) and the new graphics programs that were becoming available on the PC. This single board transformed a PC/AT into true hybrid system with a full-page portrait display and multi-processor/multi-tasking capabilities. Other boards were created to provide backward connection and functionality with CPT's WordPak and SRS-45 multi-user external disk systems. It was quite a powerful board for its time.

I will dig-out my old CPT 9000 disk archives and hopefully make some copies for you. As posted below, sadly my CPT monitor died and I cannot use my 9000 at this time. Maybe I could purchase one of your monitors..?

Hope to hear from you.
 
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