Can you believe Ceefax actually came out in 1974? and then Oracle ITV adopted the same standard in 1976?
It is a shame our digital services which are available via the red button on our TVs are not accessible. I used to own a Commodore 64, man I loved that beast. The SID sound chip was purely awesome and I also remember MARI in Wallsend on Davy Bank. I used to know a few local programmers who were training there. I wonder if those Raspberry Pie computers are accessible? Chris On 26 May 2012, at 15:48, Gordon Smith wrote: > Hi Martin > > On 26 May 2012, at 13:17, Martin McCormick <[email protected]> wrote: > > That is quite okay. I tend to ramble on too long, anyway. > > Isn't that a problem inherent to most radio amateurs? Perhaps that's why I > dislike rubber-stamp QSOs. :) > > Martin Said: > > I don't honestly think that the low-speed data transmission capability > feature in the video was ever used, > here, to it full capabilities. Your version of this particular toy was a lot > better than ours. > > I know that I for one definitely benefitted from it back in the 80s. When I > had my second Acorn BBC model B computer, I bought myself a teletext adapter > which allowed me to download and decode teletext on to the machine. I wrote > a couple of programmes to make the reception of teletext easier. One of > which was actually adopted by the manufacturer of the specific type of > adapter I was using, as it filled a gap that their programmers hadn't > considered. It allowed the user to not only download and display the pages > in real time, but also to download and chronologically save the page and all > sub-pages on to disk. For instance, the news pages were always indexed at > page 100. One item of news would be transmitted as page 100/1, another was > 100/2, etc.. Now, if you happened to open the page when 100/120 was being > transmitted, it was possible to download the bottom part of a story before > you received the first part, as the transmissions were rotated in sequence. > So, I wrote a > small utility which would look at the page numbers and then the sub-page > numbers. It would then look for the first page in the sequence, which always > started with "/1". Then it would save that first sub-page to disk and > proceed to the second, third and so on until it received the first page over > again. Once all pages were saved the programme would assemble the entire > sequence for you, remove all unwanted graphics until only the text remained. > Then it would offer you the option to either permanently save the page and > all of its sub-pages to either individual files or sequentially into one > file, or to display the page for you so that you could scroll sequentially > through all of the pages in the right order. > > There were two rival teletext adapters on the market at that time which > worked with the BBC model B and the BBC Master. Acorn themselves > manufactured one such adapter and the second one, (the one I personally chose > to buy) was produced by a company called Morley Electronics based in Wallsend > in Northumberland, here in North-East England. Morley asked me if I would > object to them distributing my programme, and did so for about a year until > the BBC changed the format of their teletext transmissions internally which > broke my software. By that time I'd moved on to using a Commodore C64 and so > I sent them the raw source for the application which was written in 6502 > assembler which you could actually incorporate and run as part of BBC BASIC. > Unfortunately, Morley went out of business not long after that time owing to > the fact that Acorn bought the rights to their teletext adapter when their > chief designer jumped ship. But anyway now it's me who is waffling. > > Radio Netherlands used to have a weekly short wave program called "Media > Network" which dealt with broadcast and > media technology around the world and they sometimes mentioned teletext > systems in Europe. I remember thinking along the lines > of "How Neat!" as one could send any sort of digital data on this channel if > it was configured correctly. > > The BBC World Service had a similar programme actually which was transmitted > every Wednesday evening at 23:15 hours, UTC. It was called "World Radio > Club", and it was highly useful for those interested in the propagation > conditions around the world and the impact they had on radio listening and > transmission. > > Gordon > > > ======================================= > > The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus > and worm-free > > To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web > pages located at > http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat > > You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at > either of the following websites: > > http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html > > Or: > <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> > you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: > <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> > > --------------------------------------- ======================================= The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]> you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> ---------------------------------------
