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Where are they now?

Wow, I didn't know Zilog was not only still around but still selling the Z80. You know you've made a legendary product when its still selling 33 years later.
 
Vlad, the EZ80 line is worth investigation, if you like fooling with embedded designs.

One aspect of the monochrome display that no other display type can boast of is the near-infinite resolution. The screen is not "pixelated" as in other display types. This was a huge advantage when it came to projection TVs and film recorders.

Anyone remember the CBS system field-sequential color TV?
 
Wow, I didn't know Zilog was not only still around but still selling the Z80. You know you've made a legendary product when its still selling 33 years later.

I got one in my 2-year-old calculator :mrgreen: .

I also got one in my Gameboy Color and one in my Gameboy Advanced (both of those are intergrated in a bigger IC, and slightly edited for better preformance of course).

It also does well as a microcontroller, just like the 80186.
 
I guess this article is around 2 years old? Wish I could see a date. Was certainly interesting though. Surprisingly I had only thought about it a few times but never quite realized the plain PDA market as being dead as it is due to smart phones which certainly killed my interest, minus palmtops or early tech.

Amiga has still had it's following and still does and has already had several products come out and be sold out and discontinued (Pegasus motherboard, and now AmigaOne being the latest official Amiga product). AmigaOS4 has been out for a year and a half or so and although it took time playing catchup (initial release didn't have usb lol) it's patched, being sold, and still there. Not to mention the AmigaAnywhere platform which was certainly an interesting concept and I guess isn't dead (saw something about it a few days ago). I had a few games on my smartphone and PDA that ran under AmigaAnywhere. I would have developed stuff for it but the package was a bit over $100 and it was a bit more than my hobbiest interest could afford.

Palm has officially came out with phones now (wasn't it bought by 3com?) so they aren't dead. No clue regarding the popularity, although I'd certainly rather have one than my work crapberry. Windows Mobile phones were only fun from the vast amount of free applications out for them, and I guess I just hate new technology so I can't see myself ever wanting an I-phone. I've had mp3 players (cd players) which I think kick ass and play the discs I was already burning as a backup so why would I ever want a ipod either. Anywho.. was interested at a few of the postings but did wonder about the accuracy of some (dated?).

- John
 
Interesting article remembering some vintage products and updating what happened to them.

http://tech.msn.com/howto/articlepcw.aspx?cp-documentid=19017036&gt1=40000

Do you remember all 25 that were talked about in the article? I sure do.
Only one.

I remember the EPSON FX 80 i hade one to my ATARI ST, there was a graphic font program Callus or Callista that made your Atari convert your documents (vector graphic?) and then print it out.

Quite amazing result i remember, and some very nice fonts. Later i got a Mac Emulator Cartridge called Aladin that emulated a Mac 68k.

The most amazing with that piece of Aladin hardware was that it let you read Mac discs on ATARI. It somehow sampled the content into ram, it could not read the format because the sectors and tracks was written in wrong speed ...or something... but somehow managed to interpolate the values? by spinning the floppy driver to max, it sounded real weird. The Atari people probably know more about it.

The EPSON was very robust, kind of miss it.

JT
 
The most amazing with that piece of Aladin hardware was that it let you read Mac discs on ATARI. It somehow sampled the content into ram, it could not read the format because the sectors and tracks was written in wrong speed ...or something... but somehow managed to interpolate the values? by spinning the floppy driver to max, it sounded real weird. The Atari people probably know more about it.

Are you perhaps thinking of Dave Small's Magic Sac?
 
Yes, I remember all those products. Although I've never owned an Atari.

I have a 9 pin sitting beside me and people look at me funny when I hand them printouts. lol It's a Roland PR-1012 and I've also got a couple of 1015s stashed away. Dot matrix is cool and it still works nicely. One of the good things about them is the price of "ink". We recently bought a very nice laser printer which works like a charm. Like many other models it was only 50 bucks. The killer is that toner refill costs $85.

I was disapointed in the article's reference to monochrome displays. He didn't mention the inteface and I think that is where the difference is. I'm using the same LCD monitor for my DOS as my Linux and in DOS it's essentially monochrome - so what. It's still VGA. I think he should have mentioned TTL, because that is where the real difference is. The monitor he mentions from Dell is probably VGA although they don't have the decency to give the spec. Can you even buy a mono adaptor any more?
 
The only monochrome monitors I've seen that were cool in the last 8 years were these little 6 or 9" CRTs that did svga. We used it for a slightly portable hack and for testing systems. Either way, they were really for POS (sale) systems like registers which I'd guess a lot of cheaper companies would still use, although our primary supermarket chains here have all gone to LCD based displays.
 
If you're looking for a decent 12" monochrome monitor for, say, a PC MDA card, don't overlook the word processors. Brother, in particular, marketed several models of their typewriter-with-monitor where the monitor is a nice amber MDA-compatible (DE9 plug and all) unit. These often have much less screen burn than their PC relatives.
 
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