Just added a new article transcription.
This time the elusive Michael Synergy, from the first issue of Mondo 2000, interviews key people involved with the original Max Headroom telefilm and series.
I’ve mentioned this show before, but I figured I’d tackle the whole series here in this one post.
Let me tell you: The Prisoner is a truly incredible show. Don’t sleep on it. In fact, consider it required viewing.
It’s a thorough mind-fuck of a war between unstoppable forces and the immovable object. It’s the grand-daddy of many a subsequent TV show’s mysteries, most notably there’s an obvious influence on LOST. At least to me. Though that show went down a different path, the basic kernel of mystery and raw “is this really happening” fuckery is unmistakable to me.
A quick refresher: our protagonist is an ex-spook who angrily shows up one day and and retires from the job with a tea-cup smashing slam of his fist on the desk.
His head full of secrets, valuable to both ‘sides’, he’s gassed in his own home and wakes up in The Village — a small microcosm of a perfect community where people are issued numbers instead of using their names. Escape is made nigh impossible, enforced by a gang of thugs and a bizarre (sentient…?) white ball that smothers people to death.
The people running The Village, headed by the ever-changing form of No.2, just want to know: why did you resign?
No.6, as he’s labelled, not knowing which side his captors are on, refuses to answer the question. He’s valuable to whoever is running the show, so they’ll do everything short of physical torture to try and break him. The various ways in which they attempt to pry this information from him in each episode is quite impressive, and imaginative. And often downright cruel.
I’ll include a brief synopsis (via Wikipedia) as a refresher and talk a bit about each one.
Oh, and uh, it goes without saying but: _spoilers._
And these were watched in the order Shout Factory put them in. I recognize and even noticed that some episodes feel out of order — Dance of the Dead, most notably, suggests No.6 has ‘just arrived’.
There’s a recommended fan-authored viewing order that, in retrospect, I might have followed. But what’s done is done…
…about half way through the series run I started keeping realtime observations and commentary as I watched each episode. I circled back afterward and made some quick notes on a speedy rewatch of the first six, but they’re nowhere near as detailed.
Anyway, onward…
After waking up in the Village and discovering his captivity there, No.6 encounters a friend from the outside who may have a possible escape.
They really pull out all the stops for the first episode — the sheer wall to wall insanity at times is impressive. The series doesn’t quite put the pedal down quite like it does here, going forward, but that’s a good thing.
If you watch this and enjoy it, yeah, it’s safe to say you’ll be all set for the rest of the series.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
A new prisoner, Nadia, may have information about the Village that makes an escape attempt possible.
You might think that it’s a bit early in the run to have him escape all the way back home, being only the second episode. But I choose to see it as a show of power: look at how convincing a fake they can create. How far you think you’ve gotten — yet every single step along the journey was artificial.
But then there’s the whole thing where the series is probably being shown out of order, but let’s take the wins where we can.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
A desperate No.2 manipulates No.6’s dreams to discover where his loyalties lie.
An interesting exploration using “what would No.6 have done” to figure out his loyalties. Fun watching No.2 sweat in fear of the big red phone, too.
⭐⭐⭐
Presented with the opportunity, No.6 runs for election to the post of No.2.
This isn’t the weakest episode of the series, but for some reason I found myself struggling to pay attention. Just a mind-fuck to screw with him. What else is new?
⭐⭐⭐
No.2 replaces No.6 with an identical duplicate (played by McGoohan) to weaken the real Six’s sense of identity.
This was so damned good. There was even a moment or two where even I was questioning the real No.6’s authenticity. But what’s really great is that they go the extra mile in the last third of the story to turn The Village’s plan to break him, into an escape attempt. If No.6 didn’t botch a bit of personal information, he might have genuinely escaped. (Well… I thought that way until “Many Happy Returns”, at least.)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
An important prisoner’s new speed-teaching machine can be used to indoctrinate everyone into believing the same thing, posing perhaps the greatest threat to No.6’s independence.
A classic Trek story: secret hidden intelligence turns out to be a computer. Damned well-done story, though. Three years of education in 3 minutes! I enjoyed it despite not just borrowing a Trek “computer god” cliche but also defeating it with the usual “tainted data input” that causes the machine to eat itself.
This episode made me lose a whole Saturday investigating the Professor’s typewritten manuscripts.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
After waking to find the Village deserted, No.6 returns to England, but he does not know whom he can trust there.
After seeing how far No.6 got in The Chimes of Big Ben you’d be forgiven for spending most of the episode waiting for the other shoe to drop. The journey he takes, making a raft, getting picked up by gun-runners, and stowing away in a truck on the way to England makes for an impressive episode, with very little dialogue for half the episode.
What’s interesting here is that he really DID escape, and he was able to get information about The Village to his associates. Even locating it somewhere off the coast of Morocco before being cruelly jettisoned back into The Village by the end.
This one was a delight and it really kept me guessing. But what’s interesting here is that No.6 did make contact, he did reveal what happened to himself, he did give them a general idea of where he was being kept, and they weren’t in on it. And none of that was undone or otherwise subverted by the end. An interesting choice.
In theory, in light of this, a rescue mission should not out of the question. Though that’s never alluded to during the episode.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
No.6 tries to save an old friend who is headed for destruction at the hands of the Village.
Maybe the worst episode so far? Only the pure grit of Mary Morris’ performance as this installment’s No.2 keeps this one interesting. She’s a bit over the top at times, especially looking into the camera cackling madly before the credits roll. But still, she’s quite memorable.
It’s recommended that this be seen as the second episode of the series, and the events and dialog that go with it, seem to concur. The episode has elements that either got dropped or at least not explicitly stated before (No.6 being assigned an ‘observer’ for example).
The episode seems more of a showcase for insanity, and an attempt at cementing No.6’s fate.
No.6 thinks he has a means to tell the prisoners from the wardens.
Another one that feels like an early episode. Probably even right after Dance of the Dead. More “getting to know” the island. Prisoners vs guardians.
A weak escape attempt considering Six SURELY must know even stepping foot on British soil doesn’t mean he’ll actually have escaped. Actually escaping from The Village doesn’t mean you’re free.
But it’s hard to be fair about the show’s intentions considering the actual order of them is up for interpretation. There’s a low-level of continuity, but even that’s scrambled a bit.
Mediocre episode, but the “Battle Chess” theme in the first quarter is fun.
⭐⭐⭐
No.6 takes revenge on a sadistic No.2 for the death of another prisoner.
Yet again, this one feels like an early episode…. though the plot could easily have made for a fine penultimate episode. No.6 turns the tables on the new No.2, stoking his paranoid tendencies, making him afraid of everyone around him until he finally breaks, calling in for a new No.2 to replace himself. That’s crazy.
I wasn’t sure about this No.2 — he was intense out of the gate, and physical, actually striking No.6. Something we’ve never seen before. 2’s are usually hands-off masterminds kind of characters. But seeing him slowly lose his grip and spiral out of control was incredible.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
To save the Village from calamitous consequences, No.6 must intervene in a Village power struggle and prevent the assassination of the retiring No.2 by his successor.
Definitely one of the weaker entries. An interesting premise, pitting one No.2 against another, but it struggles to keep it interesting. It even devotes over 3 minutes to a phony sport supposedly invented by Patrick McGoohan himself.
⭐⭐
No.2 stirs the Village to ostracize No.6, and then takes even more drastic measures to cure Six’s “unmutuality”.
Another episode where the tables are turned on the current No.2. It feels like a bit of a cop-out that they didn’t actually do the full “social conversion” on him, but considering it’s a weekly TV series, we can’t do TOO much harm to our protag.
⭐⭐⭐
Deprived of his memory and placed in another man’s body, No.6 travels back to England to seek a missing scientist. Nigel Stock portrays Six for most of this episode.
One of the more daring, fantastical sci-fi plots, the Wikipedia summary spells it all out. An interesting premise, with a different actor playing No.6 for the entire episode.
Another story where No.6 is literally back home on British soil, yet he’s not really free. We get a peek into some of his personal details, too.
This might be my second or third favorite post-Arrival episode, but by far the least interesting No.2, existing only to get hornswoggled in the end by an elderly white man.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
In an Old West setting, a lawman who resigned is trapped in a town called Harmony where the Judge wants him to be the new sheriff – by hook or by crook.
This one goes right off the rails immediately. If you didn’t know the actor and the typeface on the episode title and minimal credits, you’d never know this was an episode of The Prisoner and just assume it was some random western.
An interesting premise: kind of a microcosm of the entire series, but in Western form. Unfortunately the actual plot is so thin that it has trouble filling the hour without long drawn out stretches of scenes, and all the fist-fights allowed by law. But when you get down to it, this is basically The Girl In Lover’s Lane crossed with vaguest suggestion of The Prisoner, Westworld, and every other generic western.
The ending takes a twist, but with more of an unsatisfying “What the fuck was THAT?” whimper, rather than a real doozy of an angle.
Anyway, I bet if I looked we could find some other shows around the same time using the same Western sets. They’re elaborate, damned good looking TV sets. I can’t believe they’d have been erected just for one novelty episode… probably just heard of the opportunity and slapped together a quick script to take advantage of them. If not, it sure feels like it.
Sigh. Well, nobody can accuse The Prisoner of not having a large variety of settings to keep things fresh. It just doesn’t always work.
EDIT: Turns out this episode was quite literally filler.
⭐⭐
No.6 avoids the assassination attempts of a beautiful woman while foiling the plots of her megalomaniac father.
This one is… I can’t help but describe it as a drug-fueled over-indulgence. Like a 50 minute long music video.
It just hits the ground running and forces you to piece together things as it goes along. Except none of that matters, since none of this happened because it’s stories he invented for children…?!
Ambitious… The Prisoner certainly takes some big swings, and it usually hits it out of the park. Being that this and Living in Harmony were among the final episodes filmed, it might admittedly be premature to think maybe it’s best there wasn’t a second season. This just feels like desperation to do something different.
Up until the last quarter I was actually enjoying the inventiveness and creativity put into the whole thing. I LOVE the ‘poisoned’ shot glass and the creative use of the rear projection screen during the driving sequence, for instance.
But once it gets to the Napoleon stuff, and the reveal at the end… eeh.
This was like one of those episodes of Bob’s Burgers where the kids all tell different stories, and that’s the WHOLE episode. Same idea. More or less.
⭐⭐
No.2 subjects No.6 to “Degree Absolute”, a desperate, last-ditch effort to subdue him – an ordeal that will not end until it breaks one of them.
Hooooooly shit. Was this the Infinity War to the series finale’s Endgame? This was crazy intense. I mean, wow. These two just going off into a bizarro psychological showdown. A lot of screaming. This feels like an episode that if they knew about it, they’d never have given these guys money to make this series. And I love it.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
No.6 encounters the forces in charge of The Village, but can he finally escape?
You know that last week of school before Summer where you’re obviously done with school, and the teachers stop trying, and it just devolves into skipping classes and generally screwing around, getting away with anything until the bus comes at the end of the day?
That’s the series finale of The Prisoner. It decomposes into a crazy, unhinged, strange, abstract art piece.
I don’t know if it was good television, but it was one hell of a show.
And it conclusively ended.
With some minor asterisks.
It’s a shame that it spiraled out like this. A large part of really appeals about the show’s basic premise was that it was the usual “out there” supers-spy stuff, but it was grounded. More or less. Mind swapping machines notwithstanding. Instead of an ending that suits that ‘groundedness’, it quite literally takes off into orbit.
Frankly, I’d rather have had it be open-ended without a conclusion (which I’d feared), than go out the way it did.
Bit of a monkey’s paw wish seeing a proper finale, I suppose.
Hell of a ride, though. 🥃
EDIT: This was apparently a rocky, last minute scramble to assemble a finale. It’s kind of impressively weird in it’s own right given those conditions. Supposedly McGoohan had to “go into hiding in the mountains for two weeks, until things calmed down”. I kind of believe that. 😉
⭐⭐⭐
| viewed order | episode title | rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arrival | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 2 | The Chimes of Big Ben | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 3 | A. B. and C. | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 4 | Free for All | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 5 | The Schizoid Man | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 6 | The General | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 7 | Many Happy Returns | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 8 | Dance of the Dead | ⭐⭐ |
| 9 | Checkmate | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 10 | Hammer into Anvil | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 11 | It’s Your Funeral | ⭐⭐ |
| 12 | A Change of Mind | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| 13 | Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 14 | Living in Harmony | ⭐⭐ |
| 15 | The Girl Who Was Death | ⭐⭐ |
| 16 | Once Upon a Time | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| 17 | Fall Out | ⭐⭐⭐ |
Check out the wonderful end of the decade “wigout” monologue from CT’s own “Wigmaster” on WPLR from the final Friday of 1989 (and the 80s).
Over on Hacker News there was an entry about the “awful” Amiga Kickstart 1.x icon and why it looked the way it did. This led to a link over on Stack Overflow where it was revealed that this was graphic actually drawn in a vector style, as opposed to raster pixels.
They also provided the actual bytes used to render the graphic. I thought it’d be fun to write a little parser to render these bytes.
And so did several other people, apparently, as I’m discovering now. 😐
Anyway, here’s my humble Codepen. And if that goes down, the original code is below the embed. 😎
(I skipped flood fill because I used two.js for this, and didn’t realize until it was too late that I’d chosen poorly. Easy enough to swap out the graphics library, but it’s time to move on.)
See the Pen Amiga Kickstart vector parser by Toby D (@Fortyseven) on CodePen.
/*
Inspired by:
https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/13897/why-was-the-kickstart-1-x-insert-floppy-graphic-so-bad/13901
2021-03-06
\*/
const floppy = [
0xff, 0x01, 0x23, 0x0b, 0x3a, 0x0b, 0x3a, 0x21, 0x71, 0x21, 0x71, 0x0b, 0x7d,
0x0b, 0x88, 0x16, 0x88, 0x5e, 0x7f, 0x5e, 0x7f, 0x38, 0x40, 0x38, 0x3e, 0x36,
0x35, 0x36, 0x34, 0x38, 0x2d, 0x38, 0x2d, 0x41, 0x23, 0x48, 0x23, 0x0b, 0xfe,
0x02, 0x25, 0x45, 0xff, 0x01, 0x21, 0x48, 0x21, 0x0a, 0x7e, 0x0a, 0x8a, 0x16,
0x8a, 0x5f, 0x56, 0x5f, 0x56, 0x64, 0x52, 0x6c, 0x4e, 0x71, 0x4a, 0x74, 0x44,
0x7d, 0x3c, 0x81, 0x3c, 0x8c, 0x0a, 0x8c, 0x0a, 0x6d, 0x09, 0x6d, 0x09, 0x51,
0x0d, 0x4b, 0x14, 0x45, 0x15, 0x41, 0x19, 0x3a, 0x1e, 0x37, 0x21, 0x36, 0x21,
0x36, 0x1e, 0x38, 0x1a, 0x3a, 0x16, 0x41, 0x15, 0x45, 0x0e, 0x4b, 0x0a, 0x51,
0x0a, 0x6c, 0x0b, 0x6d, 0x0b, 0x8b, 0x28, 0x8b, 0x28, 0x76, 0x30, 0x76, 0x34,
0x72, 0x34, 0x5f, 0x32, 0x5c, 0x32, 0x52, 0x41, 0x45, 0x41, 0x39, 0x3e, 0x37,
0x3b, 0x37, 0x3e, 0x3a, 0x3e, 0x41, 0x3d, 0x42, 0x36, 0x42, 0x33, 0x3f, 0x2a,
0x46, 0x1e, 0x4c, 0x12, 0x55, 0x12, 0x54, 0x1e, 0x4b, 0x1a, 0x4a, 0x17, 0x47,
0x1a, 0x49, 0x1e, 0x4a, 0x21, 0x48, 0xff, 0x01, 0x32, 0x3d, 0x34, 0x36, 0x3c,
0x37, 0x3d, 0x3a, 0x3d, 0x41, 0x36, 0x41, 0x32, 0x3d, 0xff, 0x01, 0x33, 0x5c,
0x33, 0x52, 0x42, 0x45, 0x42, 0x39, 0x7d, 0x39, 0x7d, 0x5e, 0x34, 0x5e, 0x33,
0x5a, 0xff, 0x01, 0x3c, 0x0b, 0x6f, 0x0b, 0x6f, 0x20, 0x3c, 0x20, 0x3c, 0x0b,
0xff, 0x01, 0x60, 0x0e, 0x6b, 0x0e, 0x6b, 0x1c, 0x60, 0x1c, 0x60, 0x0e, 0xfe,
0x03, 0x3e, 0x1f, 0xff, 0x01, 0x62, 0x0f, 0x69, 0x0f, 0x69, 0x1b, 0x62, 0x1b,
0x62, 0x0f, 0xfe, 0x02, 0x63, 0x1a, 0xff, 0x01, 0x2f, 0x39, 0x32, 0x39, 0x32,
0x3b, 0x2f, 0x3f, 0x2f, 0x39, 0xff, 0x01, 0x29, 0x8b, 0x29, 0x77, 0x30, 0x77,
0x35, 0x72, 0x35, 0x69, 0x39, 0x6b, 0x41, 0x6b, 0x41, 0x6d, 0x45, 0x72, 0x49,
0x72, 0x49, 0x74, 0x43, 0x7d, 0x3b, 0x80, 0x3b, 0x8b, 0x29, 0x8b, 0xff, 0x01,
0x35, 0x5f, 0x35, 0x64, 0x3a, 0x61, 0x35, 0x5f, 0xff, 0x01, 0x39, 0x62, 0x35,
0x64, 0x35, 0x5f, 0x4a, 0x5f, 0x40, 0x69, 0x3f, 0x69, 0x41, 0x67, 0x3c, 0x62,
0x39, 0x62, 0xff, 0x01, 0x4e, 0x5f, 0x55, 0x5f, 0x55, 0x64, 0x51, 0x6c, 0x4e,
0x70, 0x49, 0x71, 0x46, 0x71, 0x43, 0x6d, 0x43, 0x6a, 0x4e, 0x5f, 0xff, 0x01,
0x44, 0x6a, 0x44, 0x6d, 0x46, 0x70, 0x48, 0x70, 0x4c, 0x6f, 0x4d, 0x6c, 0x49,
0x69, 0x44, 0x6a, 0xff, 0x01, 0x36, 0x68, 0x3e, 0x6a, 0x40, 0x67, 0x3c, 0x63,
0x39, 0x63, 0x36, 0x65, 0x36, 0x68, 0xff, 0x01, 0x7e, 0x0b, 0x89, 0x16, 0x89,
0x5e, 0xfe, 0x01, 0x22, 0x0b, 0xfe, 0x01, 0x3b, 0x0b, 0xfe, 0x01, 0x61, 0x0f,
0xfe, 0x01, 0x6a, 0x1b, 0xfe, 0x01, 0x70, 0x0f, 0xfe, 0x01, 0x7e, 0x5e, 0xfe,
0x01, 0x4b, 0x60, 0xfe, 0x01, 0x2e, 0x39, 0xff, 0xff,
];
class AmigaVectParser {
constructor(bytes, elem) {
this.palette = ["#FFFFFF", "#000000", "#7777CC", "#BBBBBB"];
this.offset = [0, 0];
this.prevOffset = [0, 0];
this.curColor = 0;
this.isDrawing = false;
this.buffer = bytes || [0xff, 0xff];
this.done = false;
this.two = new Two({ width: 640, height: 400 }).appendTo(elem);
}
doCmd(cmd_pair) {
if (cmd_pair[0] === 0xff) {
this.isDrawing = false;
if (cmd_pair[1] === 0xff) {
// cmd_done
this.done = true;
return;
} else {
// cmd_colorSet
this.curColor = cmd_pair[1];
return;
}
} else if (cmd_pair[0] === 0xfe) {
// cmd_floodFill
this.isDrawing = false;
this.pointer += 2; //TODO FLOOD FILL
return;
}
if (!this.isDrawing) {
// first coordinate in a poly-line
this.prevOffset[0] = cmd_pair[0];
this.prevOffset[1] = cmd_pair[1];
this.isDrawing = true;
return;
} else {
// continuing the poly-line
this.offset[0] = cmd_pair[0];
this.offset[1] = cmd_pair[1];
let line = this.two.makeLine(
this.prevOffset[0] * 2,
this.prevOffset[1] * 2, // doubling up X/Y to make it easier to see at 640x400
this.offset[0] * 2,
this.offset[1] * 2
);
line.stroke = this.palette[this.curColor];
line.linewidth = 1;
this.prevOffset[0] = this.offset[0];
this.prevOffset[1] = this.offset[1];
}
}
draw() {
let cmd = [0, 0];
let pointer = 0;
this.done = false;
while (!this.done) {
cmd[0] = this.buffer[pointer++];
cmd[1] = this.buffer[pointer++];
this.doCmd(cmd);
}
this.two.update();
}
}
renderer = new AmigaVectParser(floppy, document.getElementById("draw-shapes"));
renderer.draw();
This is a weird post. Another one of those random things I never set out to write. But for some reason I feel the need to document things when there’s little solid information online. Seeing anything go down the memory hole depresses me, so the least I can do is keep something alive with what I find.
I was surfing some old TV commercials from the 70s and 80s, as one does.
Eventually I came across this old CKCO Canadian TV station promo from 1983 called “We’re Bringing It Home To You” over on the wonderful Retrontario channel on YouTube.
The promo features a quick montage tour of all the hot new technology and crew behind the station you’re currently enjoying.
One of the machines that brings you their quality content has a fancy rack focus effect very early in the clip, at the 3 second mark. It’s on a keyboard with the label “Datacom 1200” across the top:
Once in a while I get mentally snagged by something like this.
I see a technology from the era I don’t recognize and go on a little detour for a half-hour reading about it. (Imagine this behavior spread out over a lifetime and a lot of things about me begin to make a lot of sense.)
Anyway, this time around I couldn’t find… well, anything. The entire search engine bandwidth for “Datacom 1200” in 2020 is devoted to a product from a Brazilian company named “Datacom” that sells a family of network hardware. And one of the lines features “1200” in the name.
Hey, it’s almost 40 years later. Whatchewgonnado?
Actually, it’s only partially true that I didn’t find anything. I fibbed a smidge.
In fact, the first search result for “Datacom 1200” is an empty listing on an printer ink company’s website. Among the various third-party ink replacements they provide, under their “Other” category, is the “Bell DataCom 1200“. 🤔
Ahh! Indeed, searching “Bell DataCom” as a full brand name sent me on a little trip that included this ad from Bell Canada in a mid-October 1974 issue of The Ottawa Journal; presumably* two older models of Datacom, the 500 and 600.
(I say ‘presumably’ because the Amiga 500 came out after the Amiga 1000; numerical superiority is not always an indicator of temporal positioning! 😉)
The Bell Datacom is a line of old school printer terminals from the Bell Canada’s “Computer Communications Group”.
Pretty much what I expected. No real surprise there.
“The Datacom 500 terminal is a compact, self-contained and quiet unit that allows office personnel to send and receive messages from a remote computer. It is ideally suited for consumer-finance applications and such transactions as journal entries, payment inquiries and file up-dating.”
“The Datacom 600 is a buffered keyboard teleprinter. This general purpose unit is useful in a wide variety of applications such as accounting information processing, order entry and invoicing, and inventory control.”
One interesting, apparently unrelated thing to note: “For more information, just dial Operator and ask for Zenith 33000.”
My first thought: maybe these Bell-branded terminals are actually sourced from a Zenith supplier and rebranded. Zenith, after all, dipped their toe into the computer world for a minute there, around that time.
But here’s the thing: do a search for “Zenith 33000”. You’ll find a lot of old newspapers returning results (from various sites that want you to subscribe to all of them to get access to a single article… good luck on that).
And it’s not limited to Bell, or even this line of terminals:
This, however, is a dead end.
“Zenith 33000” is a Zenith number. Turns out this was a system of toll-free calling prior to modern toll-free numbers.
A fun bit of telephony trivia, to be sure, but it’s completely unrelated to anything here. 😏
A December 18th issue of Computerworld from 1978 refers to the 1200 model specifically, on it’s introduction:
“The Datacom 1200 family of teleprinters has been introduced by the Computer Communications Group (CCG). Available as a receive-only (RO) terminal or equipped with a keyboard, Datacom 1200 prints bidirectionally at a maximum speed of 180 char./sec and produces up to 132 char./line.
Vucom Output
“Supplied by Digital Equipment Corp., the Datacom 1200 receive-only teleprinter can serve as a hard-copy output device for the Vucom 1, 3 and 4 series of CRTs, as a peripheral printer for mini- and microcomputer systems and for remote multicopy printing from a host data base in a stand-alone configuration.
“Rates for the Datacom 1200 in Canada are $2,715 for the RO model, with an additional $150 for the keyboard send-receive version. Filed rental rates, which are subject to regulatory approval, are $146/mo for the RO model, with an additional $7/mo for the KSR unit. Maintenance costs $44/mo.
Supplied by DEC, huh? Now that’s interesting. From 1970 to the 80s, the once mighty Digital offered their famous DecWriter series of line terminals.
And I’m gonna call it now: the Bell Datacom 1200 is probably a rebranded DecWriter III.
I can’t find anything specifically saying so, but I will make my case, and let you decide!
But here’s my smoking gun…
The keyboard of the DecWriter III compared to the corner of the Datacom 1200 we’re seeing in the promo spot:
I feel good about this. The evidence is pretty convincing. There’s just not any official word I’m finding. Yet.
If you find anything, or know first-hand, hit me on Twitter and I’ll update this post.
One super interesting thing about “Bell Datacom” is that it shows up in a LOT of ink supplier listings — the 1200 model, specifically. In fact, ink listings take up most of the “Bell Datacom 1200” search results on Google.
Even Staples seems to have an atrophied entry for it in their ink category. Guessing there’s a lot of copy/pasting of “machines that use ink” among companies, and either the 1200 still gets play today (unlikely considering how little direct information there is on it), or it simply never got culled over the years.
This was a hell of thing to write based on a half second blip.
I just wanted this to be little more than an “I SEE YOU, DATACOM 1200” type post for anyone in the future who might look for it, and be confused by the lack of information. I didn’t expect to do a full on bit of research, and even come to a reasonable conclusion about it. Huh.
Until next time. 🍻
(This is a mirror from swtpc.org [archive.org], which itself is a mirror from BYTE Magazine. Minor formatting changes have been introduced.)
Written by Manfred and Virgina Peschke
BYTE, Feb 1976, Pages 72 and 73
BYTE Magazine sponsored a symposium on November 7 and 8, 1975 in Kansas City MO regarding the interchange of data on inexpensive consumer quality audio cassette drives.
These drives may be used as one of the mass storage devices in the first generation of personal computers, and will retain importance for some time to come as a means of interchange of software between computer enthusiasts who purchase products of the small systems industry.
In order to promote the growth of the industry, BYTE sought to achieve an industry standard on audio cassette data interchange through a working conference.
We extend our greatest appreciation to the 18 people who worked very hard until late Friday night and Saturday morning to discuss the multitude of problems and solutions associated with digital recording on auto cassettes. The names of the participants are listed in Table 1.
In spite of the short time available, the participants were able to draft a set of provisional standards which seems to promise great reliability and is rather inexpensive to implement; implementations may be entirely in hardware, or may require a mix of software and some minimal hardware.
Considerations were given to the problems of speed variation among recorders and playback equipment, start and stop delays, recording density (or speed) versus reliability, and recording frequencies to avoid interference with the telephone network in case some users plan to transmit the tones of the cassette over the phone lines.
On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Felsenstein and Mr. Mauch volunteered to write up the consensus among the participants as to a provisional standard which has been reproduced below.
Provisional Audio Cassette Data Interchange Standard
The consensus among the participants of the audio cassette standards symposium at Kansas City MO sponsored by BYTE Magazine is as follows:
| Ray Borrill | 1218 Prairie Dr, Bloomington IN |
| Hal Chamberlin | The Computer Hobbyist, P 0 Box 5985, Raleigh NC 27607 |
| Tom Durston | MITS, 6328 Linn NE, Albuquerque NM |
| Lee Felsenstein | LGC Engineering, 1807 Delaware St, Berkeley CA 94703 |
| Joe Frappier | Mikra-D, 32 Maple St, Bellingham MA |
| Bill Gates | MITS |
| Gary Kay | Southwest Technical Products Corp, 219 W Rhapsody, San Antonio TX 78216 |
| Bob Marsh | Processor Technology, 2465 Fourth St, Berkeley CA 94710 |
| Harold A Mauch | Pronetics, 4021 Windsor, Garland TX 75042 |
| Bob Nelson | PCM, San Ramon CA |
| George Perrine | HAL Communications Corp, Box 365, Urbana IL 61801 |
| Ed Roberts | MITS |
| Richard Smith | The Computer Hobbyist, P 0 Box 5882, Raleigh NC 27607 |
| Les Solomon | Popular Electronics, 1 Park Av, New York NY 10016 |
| Michael Stolowitz | Godbout Electronics, Box 2355, Oakland Airport CA 94614 |
| Paul Tucker | HAL Communications Corp |
| Mike Wise | Sphere, 791 S 500 W, Bountiful UT 84010 |
| Bob Zaller | MITS |
So, a couple weeks ago I was watching this video tribute to Super Mario World‘s 30th anniversary.
At around the 17:20 mark, in the middle of talking about various tie-in products to promote the game, it brings up Mario & Yoshi’s Adventure Land. A one-episode animated movie that follows Mario and Luigi through, essentially, the events of Super Mario World.
What makes it unique is that it this is a “VCR game” of sorts that uses the Terebikko: an interactive ‘quiz’ device that mimics a telephone. Mario calls you. The phone rings. You pick it up. He asks you a question that needs a 1, 2, 3, or 4 response. (Or red, green, yellow, blue.)
You press the answer within the allotted time, and you get a response. (Near I can tell, it mutes the phone for the inappropriate response, but that’s something we’re going to find out definitively.)
And it’s more than just Mario. There’s a whole catalog of videos made for it in Japan, including Dragon Ball Z and Sailor Moon.
I found it all oddly fascinating. And my curiosity started to kick in. It seemed so simple, but it was a clever idea. I loaded the audio into Audacity and realized I could make out binary… uh oh.
See, one of the things I’ve always had an interest in, but never got a chance to try was demodulation of a digital signal from an audio file. Like the screeching of a modem, or a game loaded off an audio tape into a ZX Spectrum. That kind of thing. This seemed like the perfect on-ramp for it.
With very little actual information online, this also seemed like a perfect reverse engineering project in general.
I found out they released a version of this in the United States in 1989 under the Mattel label, a year after it’s debut in Japan from Bandai, and… I found one on eBay for under $20 shipped. 😎
So now I’m, seemingly, irrevocably committed to this project, now that money is involved. 😏
Here’s what I’m planning. I’ve already spent a couple days dicking around and have a stack of notes. I’m hoping to get at least several decent blog posts out of this adventure:
That last one is unlikely, but hey, if I haven’t burned myself out on the entire thing by that point, who knows?
UPDATE (2021-03-10): I’ve finally setup a site wiki for content like this. Here’s the entry for the Terebikko: https://wiki.network47.org/terebikko
I didn’t go over every word of this, but I’m fairly sure these are the reenacted insane ramblings of Francis E. Dec. Besides, the phrase “Gangster Computer God” is pretty much his THING. 😉
Francis E. Dec (January 6, 1926 – January 21, 1996) was an American lawyer and outsider writer who was best known for his typewritten diatribes that he independently mailed and published from the late 1960s onward. His works are characterized by highly accusatory and vulgar attacks on various subjects, often making use of phrases like “Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God” to slander hierarchies that he believed were engaging in electronic harassment against him.
Here’s a sample of his… work… 🤯
If you thought absurdist comedy was a more modern invention, might I point you in the direction of Stan Freberg?
I wasn’t previously familiar with him, but now that I’m going through his catalog of works and reading up on his history, I can’t help but wonder what other great comedic heroes of the bizarre have slipped under my radar…
I was flipping through some old Omni magazines (July 1983) that I’d dug up while cleaning out some boxes, and I found a treasure trove of awesome retro goodness. So, I’m going to start scanning! The first one is the Columbia Video Game Club, much like it’s scammy cousin the Columbia House Music Club, except for video game cartridges.
At $4.95 A Game You Can’t Miss.
Take any one of these video games for only $4.95 when you join the Columbia Video Game Club and agree to buy just 2 more games at regular Club prices in the coming year.
Just look at the video games offered here… all available for home enjoyment on your Atari® Video Computer System™! They retail anywhere from $26.95 to $34.95 each, yet you can have any one for only $4.95 — with membership in the Columbia Video Game Club! This is an exciting new service that offers you the newest home video games on a convenient shop-at-home basis — and at great club savings!
How the Club works: approximately every six weeks (up to 9 times a year) you will receive the Club’s colorful Video Game Magazine. It announces the Hit Game Selection…generally a brand-new arcade winner. In addition, the Magazine will picture and describe many other video games, new gadgets to upgrade your own Atari® system, helpful hints on how to improve your scores, a poster, and much more.
If you want the Hit Game Selection, you need do nothing — it will be sent to you automatically. If you want one of the alternate games offered — or nothing at all — just tell us so on the response card always provided and mail it by the date indicated. You’ll always have ten days to make your decision. If you ever receive a game without having had ten days to decide, return it at our expense.
The game cartridges you order will be mailed and billed to you at regular Club prices — which currently range from $24.95 to $29.95, plus shipping and handling, and appropriate sales tax. Remember, you don’t have to buy a video game every time you hear from us — your only membership obligation is to buy as few as two games in the coming year, and you may cancel membership at any time after doing so. If you decide to continue, you’ll be eligible for our generous money-saving bonus plan.
10-Day Free Trial: we’ll send complete details of the Club’s operation with your introductory cartridge. If you are not satisfied for any reason whatsoever, just return everything within 10 days for a full refund and you will have no further obligation. So mail the coupon now!
WANT STILL ONE MORE GAME for $4.95? You can have ANY TWO of these video games for only $.95 each — if you agree to buy four more (at regular Club prices) in the coming two years! Just check box in application and enclose $9.90 for your two games.
All applications subject to review; Columbia Video Game Club reserves the right to reject any application or cancel any membership.
Columbia Video Game Club, Dept. 2CQ, 3000 North 35th Street, Terre Haute, IN 47811, 1-800-457-0866 (In Indiana call 812-466-8125 collect.)
GC18/F83
