Weird Thing: MFJ-1480B Video Title-r
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- čas přidán 19. 06. 2024
- This is a "quick" (it isn't) review (not really) of a weird object from an unexpected company. The device itself is probably not that remarkable, but the total mystery of its function and its origin from a company that most decidedly does not make this sort of thing adds a lot of flavor.
People have noticed the LGBT tape in the background! I made that as a mockup and I'm currently trying to figure out how to get real sleeves manufactured. If you're interested in one whenever that happens, put your email here: forms.gle/G1vNU8T5dJDzqXh27
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00:00 Intro
02:29 Summary of prior art
05:30 Hardware overview
10:29 Demonstration
21:59 Conclusion
23:39 Outro/Credits - Věda a technologie
SOME UPDATES: A subscriber called MFJ and this time got someone who had the manual! Which I now have! So I'm going to do a quick followup soon where I demo the rest of the features (THERE AIN'T MUCH.) That manual makes NO MENTION of amateur radio. I suspect my original guess was right - MFJ just decided to do this because they felt like it.
Great video! Thanks for the follow-up.
If I have one criticism... Put THAT cat on the screen and I'm briefly no longer listening... This won't bother dog-people, but I'm immediately seriously distracted.
I like how you can focus on one subject. For example; I have no idea what to do with my all-metal-case x-ray machine keyboard. I just saw that it was mint, had a PS2 connector, and looked expensive. Paid under two dollars, but still takes up space...
@@pierrejeanf.dupuis4150 Hahaha, well, people kept complaining that he wasn't onscreen enough!
Believe me, it's incredibly hard for me to focus! I'm being constantly pulled in twenty directions by my interests, and I've obtained so many things because they were just fascinating, with no idea what to do about them, and the amount of space it's all taking up is... impressive.
He beat me to it. Was going to call Mighty Fine Junk and see about the same thing. Now that I think about it, I wonder how many calls they just suddenly had for some old equipment they made over 30 years ago. They're probably still scratching their heads.
@@ericnelson4540 oh my god i never thought about that, hahaha. it's almost certainly one person fielding all the calls
So interesting! I would have put a lot of money on this being in the market of putting your amateur callsign onto fast-scan amateur TV.
Honestly I'd probably watch a 2 hour video about the video mixer.
At some point it'll happen, I kinda want to build up more audience before I do extremely long form single-focus material, heh.
@@CathodeRayDude also, is that "A" button a centering button, rather than Tab? That's what it seemed to look like, and why it only did it once.
@@CathodeRayDude If you keep putting out content like this, you'll be able to do it in no time. I'm personally really looking forward to the time it does 👍
@@benjammin2020 that's what I thought. If you type one word and then press A, it would make it more obvious about whether it's tabbing or centering.
@@Ck87JF Maybe the A/B/C buttons are for different offsets? Like, if you wanted to have "tab stops" or something for different lines of text, you would program those to whatever offset you want and use them instead of hitting space a bunch of times.
I might actually know why this takes such a weird power supply! Ham radio equipment, especially older equipment like this, doesn't tend to have switched-mode power supplies, since they have an annoying tendency to spit out RF noise, and can really interfere with receiving signals. The switching frequencies, or harmonics thereof, have an annoying tendency to crop up in ham bands. Many a new ham has torn their hair out trying to figure out why they're getting a ton of noise on their receiver, just to track the issue down to a faulty LED light ballast, cheap USB charger, or some other form of poorly-made switched-mode supply.
Linear power supplies avoid that problem entirely, but they trade it for a different one - heat. Linear regulators draw the same amount of current on their input that they source from their output, and output a lower voltage. Essentially, they deliberately drop away some of the incoming power, so they can provide a steady voltage on the output. Where does that power go? Heat, and *lots* of it. The reason those massive cans that you pointed out at 6:39 are mounted to the back of the chassis is so that the whole chassis can be used as a heatsink!
So why the weird voltage and the center tap? The best way to avoid dissipating a ton of heat in a linear regulator is to keep the input voltage somewhat close to the output voltage. You need to provide a voltage that's a little bit higher than the output voltage, to give the regulators some room to work. That difference is called the "dropout voltage", and for 78xx series regulators like you have there, it needs to be at least 2 volts. So in order to feed the 12V regulator, the lowest you can get away with is... 14V, exactly what's required here. And, as a lovely side effect, a center tap on a 14V transformer gives you 7V, which is exactly the bare minimum to feed the 5V regulator!
So, while "14VAC center tapped" sounds strange in isolation, in context, it's actually a very clever way of cutting down on heat and power dissipation, while avoiding the need for a noisy switched-mode supply.
Ohhhhhh, that makes sense!
Don't radio signal work better in cold weather anyway?
Heating elements are good in winter weather
This is an incredible response
😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮
FM radio in moms car didn't work for six months, - until I replaced her car charger with a proper brand one. So it makes sense
You missed an opportunity to chroma key the shirt and fade into the scene like you got phased in haha.
UGH YOU'RE RIGHT
Thats the first thing I thought too! 🤣
@Cathode Ray Dude did you use this MFJ titler to put on screen that list of names of your patreon subscribers?
Who do you think he is? Karl Smallwood 😄
Also might have chroma keyed into the MSN clock as well!
"I'm just a weird thing, nobody loves me..."
"He's just a weird thing from a weird company. Spare him his life from the recyclery!"
This comment is so underrated
EDIT TO ADD! Then of course I finished the video and YOU nailed it. Nicely done :D
Looks like lots of people got it in the chat. Since hams need to give their callsign during transmission and this existed largely before PCs could add the callsign, the tittler did it. Good for both Fast and Slow Scan Television over radio.
Both FSTV and SSTV are still in use today and its a lot of fun!
HRCC has joined the chat. lol
I ran to the comments just to say this. Of course Josh would have already enlightened everyone.
As a ham radio operator, the MFJ brand strikes fear into my heart.
"Mighty Fine Junk" or "Mother F'ing Junk" are two popular company names...
It's wild to me because this company is so prolific and goes back so far and I see so much of their stuff in everyone's ham shacks, but I don't actually hold a license myself so I have no idea - are they actually good??? are they cheap junk??? if you don't get your SWR meter from MFJ, who do you get it from?? i've never seen one from any other brand.
MFJ is fine. MFJ prices are the problem lol
MFJ has come a long way and is almost single handedly keeping the amateur radio accessory market alive.
@@CathodeRayDude In my experience, and I'm sure everyone's mileage varies, it seems to come down to when the equipment was made. Stuff from the 80s and 90s? Rock solid. They're built as if they are designed to fight in and win the Cold War. Some of their gear I bought in the late 2000s at a hamfest? Enh.
But you're right, they made one of absolutely everything. Back in college our ham radio club was probably 75% MFJ gear, half of which was broken in some way.
MFJ stuff, especially antenna tuner I see hams with theirs beat up like crazy, but still going. You get what you pay for.
As a 90s kid (coming from a middle eastern country where these titlers were not common), I was BEYOND FASCINATED by the concept of adding live text to a composite video signal, it was more like an obsession actually.
I wasn't THAT interested in video editing or computer-generated graphics in general, just the fact that television stations could superimpose text and graphics on a live signal - I can't stress how it totally and utterly fascinated me (and to a slightly lesser extent, transitions: fades, wipes, etc.) No idea why! I guess, it was in part because computers were slow back then and graphics-wise, and from a digital perspective, this seemed like quite a feat to accomplish on broadcast-quality picture, moreso since they've been doing this stuff since the 70s. (Now that I have a degree in Electrical Engineering, read quite a bit about how analog PAL/NTSC/Secam signals work, it no longer seems like black magic, but certainly still interesting).
I had absolutely no idea what device or equipment they used to "write text on the screen." I did LOADS of searching, but the Y2K internet wasn't much help back then, specially when you didn't have the terminology down. I asked technicians and visited multimedia fairs far from where I lived, but no one really understood what I was looking for. Some thought I was looking for an interactive whiteboard, others thought I was looking to add an OSD capability to an old television set. I asked a family friend who worked at the state television, and she had no idea either (all she knew was that "it's all computers now").
My first step towards realizing my dream of "writing on a television screen" was buying a TV tuner for my Pentium II computer. I would open MS Paint, paint the background with its key color (magenta), and add some text or basic graphics. The text would display over whatever the tuner app was displaying (much like a blue screen). I would then point an analog camera to the computer screen and connect the output to a VCR and occasionally to a rooftop antenna (through the VCR's modulator) and imagine that neighbors are watching my signal. It made me feel like I had my own TV station. Clearly, the picture was garbage and was curved, but the fact that I had my own "titler" gave me goosebumps. Later on, I wrote simple programs in Basic and HTA (basically HTML that runs in fullscreen) that gave me better control of my "titler."
My next step was buying a vga-to-composite video converter. I was very happy with it for a while since it drastically improved the quality of my "titler", but I knew inside me that this isn't really what they use to add text to video. I still had no idea what they used. Moreover, all the converters I had tried would intentionally underscan the image in order to display the computer screen in the usable area, but to me it meant that my titler was doomed to being surrounded by a black border that haunted me in my dreams.
Fast forward to 2002, where the dream hadn't yet died. I got a pinnacle DV500 non-linear editing suite which included a real-time titler (which you mostly controlled from a bundled Premiere 6.0) and also had a proper composite video output that didn't underscan things. I was jumping out of joy for the first 30 minutes - until I figured out that "real-time" doesn't mean "live". It only meant you didn't have to re-render video when you added simple titles. TOTAL BUMMER.
Later in 2002 - more people getting internet access, internet forums becoming common. I got to know someone who worked at a tv station, who actually knew things. He told me what I was looking for was a CHARACTER GENERATOR connected to a VIDEO MIXER (yes, I literally spent YEARS trying to know those four words). He referred me to where a company that imports professional/prosumer equipment that his employer deals with. I got my first mixer - a Panasonic WJ-MX20. Unfortunately, the character generator (probably the same you had in the video) wasn't available, so I was limited to adding titles through the chroma/luma key functions (the luma key generally produced a cleaner picture with the caveat that you couldn't use black in your on-screen graphics).
Shortly after - I got my parents to buy me a Panasonic AG-MX70 (which had just hit the market and cost a fortune back then). It was a serious step-up from the WJ-MX20, as it let you insert graphics via USB, with transparencies and all, so no external chargens needed. Words could not describe the feeling I had the first time I could superimpose high-quality titles on a full-scan picture, it was a "mission accomplished" on steroids. The only other time I had a similar feeling was when I flew a Cessna 172 for the first time as a student pilot - my other "thing" was always wanting to fly an airplane.
Have I done anything meaningful with the MX20 or the MX70? Not really, but this story certainly helped me land a nice job at a company that developed surveillance systems so it did pay off.
But more importantly, to think that I have spent years looking for information that today I could find in seconds -- I guess the younger generations just do not appreciate how much time sites like Wikipedia and youtube save them everyday.
I really like the MSN clock. Not sure why I'm nostalgic about MSN, never actually having it myself, but for some reason I like the butterfly logo a lot.
right?? i didn't have it either but boy howdy as soon as I saw that thing i NEEDED IT
@@CathodeRayDude it would be great if Microsoft released those for employees only and they counted backwarda/down for MSN launch, but that's just hoping
This content is fantastic keep it coming! It's very satisfying for those of us who remember the analog days of video to see some of this gear given some love and attention. Appreciate the obvious time, care and effort spent on making these videos!
Thank you so much! It's always good to know my effort is noticed, some people make stuff look easy heh
Love me some long format infotainment that will totally be useful knowledge for later in life
i almost refuse to cover anything practical
You and tech connections should do a collaboration on literally anything.
Totally practical knowledge. When the bombs drop, this stuff will be all that's left, in bunkers mothballed since 1991. You might need video titling to reach other survivors deafened when the EMP blast turned their AirPods into stereo stunguns that shredded their eardrums.
Low-key my favorite time of content on CZcams!
@@ThetaReactor THAT is a weirdly specific Armageddon-type fantasy. And, nukes would have to be held off, the war abbreviated. Else, creating fire will be the height of usable tech. C'mon bro, did you even do the 80s?
Although I sometimes wonder how the weather patterns in Oz and Kiwiland might be different,might remediate radiation and nuclear winter. Maybe that's the places to go to?
My dad used too put titles on our home videos using a genlock and an amiga in the late 80s/early 90s
you had that High End Dad
@@CathodeRayDude he had a s-video camcorder and s-video JVC VCR too
I knew a guy that was using "the kitchen sync" to do titles with an Amiga up until the early 2010s
@@ntsecrets You mean... the video toaster...
@@checksum00 no! VT was way to fancy for him! This thing literally was a box with 2 sliders on it. It plugged into the 23 pin amiga video port, and wound genlock the amiga to the incoming video signal. It would then run a program that put text on a blue background, and this box would key out the blue, so you can put it on video. The sliders let you dissolve either the key or fill from what I remember. It was super simple, which is why he used it for so many years. He would leave the amiga and monitor on 24x7 too!
a man after my own heart , "this is a really bad idea"
Gravis: "I'm not that much of a... nerd."
me: "Foone"
Gravis: "Maybe if I get a EEPROM programmer later, I'll dump it and put it online for someone else to mess with."
me: "FOONE"
This is totally something he should send to foone.
The only other reason I can think of for the AC connection would be to grab the locked 60hz for timing and synchronization.
Saying you ordered the shirt at the same time as the paint raises more questions than it answers! Haha.
"What they were doing in the video titler market is hard to say" - I suspect it was designed around the time Amateur Television (ATV) interest was at its peak. Because of the identification requirement, ham operators would have needed to hold up a card with their callsign every few minutes. To improve on that, they could patch a titler into the feed, and overlay "73 DE GM1AAA KEVIN" along the top or bottom of the picture. These days DATV (digital ATV) has mostly taken over, so the titles can be baked in via software compositing.
The weirdest title feature I've tried my hands on was on a 90's camcorder. You basically pointed the camera at a high contrast image, like a title written on paper, and it would save it in memory. White parts were saved as transparent, while dark parts were saved as opaque. You could then choose to superimpose this saved (low-resolution) image, or superimpose it in inverse, creating a mask.
"if you don't know what an EIAJ connector is"
*WE* know what an EIAJ connector is
I had to pause mid vid and watch the other one but now I know
You are absolutely right. Many hams broadcasting ATV would satisfy FCC regs for station ident by simply displaying their callsign across the screen. Some guys would just use an actual card / paper / sign, but this would absolutely be the bees knees at a ham club meeting in the late 80s. “Tom has that fancy mfj think for his fast scan TV stuff tonight to show off”.
Great content man. Been binging your vids all night.
Ham Radio operator used to run SSTV (Slow scan tv) and fast scan TV and would use this to overly messages and their call sign onto the video images being sent.
I'm going to agree with you and say this is the reason that MFJ made this.
@@triangleenjoyer Sounds logical
Was just going to post the same, a video character generator for fast-scan ATV & SSTV use. I remember seeing these in MFJ's ads in QST & 73 Magazine, and Amateur Electronic Supply's catalogs, when I first got my license in the early 90s.
I remember these from the Ham catalogs BITD so definitely used for things like SSTV.
Had me laughing around 9:40, as I do the same. "Absolutely never do this, as the wise people will tell you it will destroy everything. Knowing that, here I go...."
Watching so you'll likely get to this but I am 99% sure this is the TMS 9918 chip which supports overlay ... And I see what looks like the usual artifacting you see on the TI99. Continuing to watch to find out :-)
Edit: haha yep. TMS9928 knew it. The colors gave it away too. Thanks for showing this! Neat stuff.
Great call on the HAM use for amateur TV. I can totally see that
Yeah, I think for anyone like you or me, who've had their fingers in this stuff for a while, it was a pretty easy shot to call not just because of the tendencies of the era (it's the 80s? you want to make TV graphics? TI will be mailing you a brochure) but also because it just has That Look, you know? Both the 99/4A and Colecovision, to name a couple, have that distinct *TI Look*. Plus, there was no way MFJ, with zero experience with computers or video, just suddenly built their own genlock overlay system.
Thanks for watching btw! I like your channel and it's rad to hear from you.
@@CathodeRayDude Indeed! The chip was used in the MSX machines too (something we never got in the US for the most part.)
Thanks for the kind words, I love your channel as well! Some super fascinating content.
oh wow, i totally forgot the msx was using a TI as well - they went to a Yamaha chip in the msx2, which is where most well known msx games were released, and I always forget that the original design was much more in the early 80s bitty box vein. There are some cute games from the original msx! Now I feel like doing a video celebrating the TMS series, haha.
@@CathodeRayDude check out this video: czcams.com/video/AFRf87SqWrw/video.html He goes into what the MSX with the TI VDP can actually so. Impressive. I think the chip was under utilized but most programmers at least compared to what MSX developers were able to do.
Video titlers *are* a priority! They document through their existence the increasing complexity and capability of discrete digital electronics and later microprocessor/GPU developments. I can't wait to see you acquire a Panasonic MX10 and Quantel Paintbox now the bug has bitten!
Imagine if he managed to score a Datavision D-3000 lol
That looks like a split rail power supply. Maybe for the op amps. It would explain the center tap requirement. Virtual grounds are necessary for split supplies without a center tap and that drives up costs.
Yup, maybe needed a negative rail for cheap
I would agree, except that it is AC centre tapped, so polarity is somewhat irrelevant before the rectification stage. 14V centre tapped AC is probably chosen to simply get 7VAC and 14VAC, which can be rectified and then stepped down to 5V and 12V respectively with linear voltage regulators without too much loss (heat). There may also be -5/12v rails but I doubt that's the reason for the centre tap
@@geomore When you rectify AC without using the center tap, you get a positive and negative rail, but no 0v rail. You have to have an additional stage to generate a 0v rail (virtual ground) unless you are supplied the center tap.
Definitely a gem of a channel where you can both learn something about old tech and still stay hooked to the content.
I used one of these things back in the late 80's at a community tv station. Using it was a really painful experience. Not intuitive at all and like yourself, we had no manual for it. Although I can confirm it was built like a tank...
From what I’ve seen of amateur television, hams absolutely cannot resist cramming a video feed with every last overlay they could manage. Call sign for ident, of course, but everything else too. Makes sense that MFJ would want to make this thing, even if it wasn’t exclusively a ham radio thing. It’s cool tech!
HAM Radio operators do broadcast TV signals on specific HAM Bands. Displaying you Call Sign in that case is important.
Not just faith in your abilities Gravis, you’re really good at what you do! Your love of this weird shit and your accessible explanation of super technical things paired with just enough snark. Your videos are a joy.
Not gonna lie, that "new" studio fooled me at first into thinking that it was the one from The 8-Bit Guy, has a *somewhat* similar overall setup. Only took me couple seconds to realize it's not that :D
plot twist, 8-bit guy is getting the new studio and Cathode Ray Dude is the new 8-bit guy *gasp*
Whoa, the "new studio" is awesome! Production value kicked up a notch, I love it!
shoutout to the rhine valley at 4:13
Found this channel watching the 8-bit guy and absolutely love it. Know nothing about this stuff, but really enjoy your content. However, I would really think it might help to quickly explain more things that most people won't know about, like a center tap or alligator clips. It could be that you don't since most people who watch this stuff already know such things, so that might alienate your base, I don't know, but maybe a side video or notes in the description giving a quick explanation of things like that might help bring more people in, if adding such details to the main video doesn't work for you.
Enjoyed the video and the weird thing and the blue wall. Looking forward to future decoration updates.
very informative. My mom used to drag me along, in the 80's, to the video editing office at the Naval Academy...I can clearly remember her using something like this for the Navy vs Army football games.
Love your enthusiasm for old tech, your videos are excellent
My middle school's morning announcements used one of these, or at least one of the ones you showed at 3:58... must have been around 2006 or 2007. Every classroom had a TV with a funny little remote control box on the wall... I can still imagine them. Woodgrain on the sides, white on blue membrane buttons. You could switch inputs to the morning announcements, or one of maybe eight VCRs (located in the school library) for playing nature documentaries or other things in the class. If the teacher selected the wrong input you'd get a few seconds of a film some other class was watching. There were play/pause/rewind buttons that controlled the VCRs. But anyway, back to the titler. It looked very "VCR font" and the text often covered the faces of the kids who volunteered to read the announcements (which I did!). If the teacher hadn't arrived in the classroom 10 or so minutes before the bell rang, and you were feeling daring, you could dash up to the control box and press the power button, and you could watch the titles being typed and saved into memory live. As this happened, they played royalty free music, or 80s pop songs. I distinctly remember Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go being played quite a bit. They also were really fond of "Enthusiastic" by "The Music Bakery"... It was so catchy and it got stuck in my head, so I tried so so hard to find out what the song title was. The school library apparently owned the CD they were playing, but it was off-limits and students weren't allowed to check it out. I think the library lady must have been annoyed with how insistent I was.
Speaking of the school library... Does anyone remember Accelerated Reader? I feel like there'd be people being nostalgic about it on here but there's absolutely nothing. It was a quiz program for Mac OS 9 (and I assume Windows as well) that tested reading comprehension for a wide variety of children's books, and you got prizes (usually school supplies or candy).
In highschool, on the other hand (yes, I was also involved in the announcements show in highschool too!), we used a computer running PowerPoint, and the exact model of mixer you show at 5:05 to luma-key it in. We captured via Firewire and edited "news packages" (small student-produced interviews) in with Premiere CS4.
discovered your channel a couple months ago, love what youre doing my first video of yours was demonstrating how playing super mario wirelessly would work. i find analog RF stuff super fascinating.
Huge fan of your videos man.
Going through this stuff is wild!
BTW, that part with the alligator clips made me nervous
😬
Keep these videos up!!
You’re very knowledgeable about some very cool old tech stuff, I enjoy your videos very much, thank you!
What memories you brought back when you said “Panasonic WJ-MX...” I believe ours was a WJ-MX12? It was 1992.. long time ago. We had one of those video mixers in my high school video production class, and used it on air every morning for my high school news channel “RTV” Raider TV... along with an Amiga 500 for the graphics.. I thought that this was a magic box at the time!! Strobe, wipes, circle wipes you name it!
Dude, the engagement on this video is crazy! I don't think I've ever seen something like this on any channel, let alone this size. Major props!
I'm getting a nearly 1:10 watch/comment ratio on most of my videos which is completely ludicrous, there are youtube marketing experts who would be drooling and pounding on the table seeing this. I don't know how I stuck the landing this hard on getting people interested in my stuff. Thanks!
Was super confused at first cos I could swear CZcams was saying this was a year old. Like that “LGBT 420” on the shelf, tho.
In the amateur radio world we call MFJ, “Mighty Fine Junk”. They made this device for the brief ATV fad in the 80s where amateur operators would make contacts using regular ol 6mhz ntsc transmissions on the ham bands, 70cm and up. It was also used for slow scan TV back in the analog days. You needed to superimpose your call sign onscreen for station ID. Building this sort of thing out of old 8 bit compute chips was kind of like cranking out a product based on a raspberry pi today. Look at something like the mt32-pi as an example of what I’m talking about.
I love this. You're turning into a sorts of Techmoan Jr.
Production quality increasing! Very exciting. Great content as always my dude.
Also be careful with EEPROM. They are erased with UV light and that lil piece of tape covering the top of it is probably to keep it dark. Don't flip any bits before you dump it!
No danger of that. EPROM's need short wave UV to erase. Nothing short of a germicidal lamp will do the trick. As a test I once put one in direct sunlight for a week and it still verified.
Glad to hear you got a manual. I was just coming on to give some suggestions. Nice video
Your guess of Fast Scan TV is exactly what I was thinking when I stumbeled across this video. The Yaesu FT-736R had come out around that time and had optional modules to allow it to handle fast scan TV.
It's weird that the manual makes no mention of this use, but yeah, it seems really likely!
I just realized who can answer all questions regarding this...
We need 1987 Chicago Max Headroom that hijacked PBS Doctor Who.
Hey! :) I love your channel! I know of another 80s titler. It's called a CompuVid. We used one for video club back in High School. I graduated in 1988, and it was old then. It was a two-piece unit with the 'brain' being rack-mounted with a corded external keyboard, which seemed to be about the same quality as the one you demoed in this video. I found that if you pushed the keys directly down, they worked better. It was still very frustrating to type on.
I remember it having function keys that would allow you to change the font size, as well as foreground/background colors on the fly. Each line could have its own colors. Background included 'clear' that would allow the video to show through. It only had one font, but it had like four sizes.
It would be interesting if you could find one of those. Honestly, it was really flaky back then, so they may have all been trashed by now. I've done a quick search, and couldn't find any mention of it.
god, this is just fascinating to watch and very entertaining! love it
There was what appeared to be a blank label sticker on that eprom that basically flew away in the breeze the second I took this thing apart. Soon as I realized what I was looking at I covered it with the electrical tape. No idea if ambient uv light would mess with it but I don't know from eproms, so I am glad the thing still works.
With that serial input the thing's basically a hardware analog Death Generator, isn't it? Where u at, Foone?
I had to read this message like 9 times before it clicked "oh, this is the person who sent it to me!" haha. Thank you again. I wish the serial module was documented - even though I COULD get one on eBay, nobody has the manual it seems. Well, maybe I should call MFJ for that too. But there are more interesting character generators out there, many of which can be driven over serial but do much more interesting things, so I'm really just angling for one of those.
Background looks good, and I wouldn't be adverse to watching a two hour vid on anything you deem worthwhile. Not like I'm going anywhere anytime soon.
Yes, Part 97 requires hams ID every 10 minutes, but it doesn't specify the method (so long as it's any method the FCC can easily decode). It can be morse code, voice, or (relevant to this video) text on video.
man you've done it again (it being producing a well-made, informative video)
dang!!!!
The jittery overlay just screams retro.
The new studio looks great!
One thing to note, a TV station would probably never run the actual broadcast through the titler. Instead it would take just the output and use the chroma-key of the switcher to overlay the titles. That's why you can change the background color but it's fixed for all pages as you wouldn't want to change it. The video in was probably only used for smaller productions and editing.
Back in the mid 90s, I produced a nightly news broadcast at our collage cable TV station. We used mostly donated 80's era production equipment. For titles, we used an Amiga 500 with title software. The output would then go into one of the inputs of our Grass Valley switcher. The technical director that ran the switcher would run that signal through the effects component and fad the text overlay in/out. Once done, the titler operator could then either page to the next set of text or even exit out and make modifications with no need to worry about it somehow being broadcast. That Amiga 500 also did our weather graphics too (with the switcher now outputting the full video).
Is the follow up actually up on CZcams ,, I can't find it
the 9928 is related to the 9918, which was used in the ColecoVision, TI99/4A, and a handful of other systems, but it has two specific differences: it can output Y/C video, and it has a video input on it that it can mix its own content onto... so yeah. just add cpu, ram, glue logic, and bam... video titler!
Being into HAM radio, and seeing this, screamed ATV at me. MFJ seems to still make 3 different ATV transmitters for analog NTSC 70cm band use, the MFJ-8707, 8704 and 8708. I'm in Europe, so not sure about procedures in the US, but here, analog ATV would be transmitted without audio (that would go on a separate frequency), so including your callsign in the video is required. I have a few people doing ATV in my local club, and have seen ATV equipment from the days of analog (PAL) ATV, universally homebrew devices. They'd typically include a "callsign generator", essentially a video titler with the owners callsign hardcoded. I guess this might be the deluxe version, or evolved from such a callsign generator. Maybe worth noting: ATV was quite an exotic and expensive thing within the amateur radio hobby, think video cameras and components for >1GHz in the 70s/80s. A pricy piece of equipment would fit in there. The ATV folks over here moved to digital, and recently, the QO-100 satellite.
In the mid 90's (I was in high school) I picked up a really high end JVC VHS camcorder at a garage sale. The titler was interesting. Instead of doing character generation directly, you instead wrote with black marker on a white sheet and pointed the camera at it. Pressing the image button would frame grab that sheet, mask the text based on contrast, then it you could superimpose that over the video, even setting text color. I dont remember for sure, but I think it could hold five of these images in memory.
I did say it seemed pretty high end. Took NiMH batteries instead of lead acid, and even had time lapse features.
Really interesting video! I'd be interested in a dump of that EEPROM when you get a chance if anything just to extract the fonts from it.
MFJ Luxury Video Titler. i love seeing this thing demystified. remember when the old housemate brought it home and we were like "why the fuck is this"
Hell yeah. The new setup looks sweet so far.
Almost the right shade of paint and shirt to become Gerald from Gerald Undone lol
I had one! MFJ makes mostly cheesy ham radio gear. It's for amateur television to put your callsign etc on the screen(Yes ham radio includes UHF analog television).
Some probably used them for slow scan tv on shortwave too.
Some people call MFJ "Mighty Fine Junk"
A very fascinating category of equiptment
I love your channel, there used to be service where ewaste and other stuff not suitable for bins were collected from the front verge in my state. I would collect all the computers. I love seeing old tech bc it reminds me of my youth. I still try to visit skip bins next to universities bc they ahve some amzing stuff but never collect anymore. Once saw an Ultrasound machine, I couldn't drive at the time so I couldn't take it home :(
I love your DANGER-SEEKER style declared exactly like what it is!!! Depth of information is good too.
re: your new setup: blue wall, desk in front, stuff in the back, and an 80s nerd host? the 8-bit guy could sue you lol
Mfj did manufacturer multiple short wave radio devices, the reason for the titler was to help assist local tv stations with emergency broadcast notifications. I had many of their tv titles over the years working in local programming in Boston. The MFJ TITLER was not to be used in case of emergency notifications. These are the facts and to do you one better I may be able to dig up a manual, I'll look when I go into work in 3 days
Loving the cassette at the top left my friend!
feedback: that secondary view from 23:50? it should be the default.
honestly though, the new view is great and the msn clock is choice! you have a very natural cadence talking about this kind of stuff in all your videos and I could genuinely listen to you talk about just about anything you mentioned as something you'd want to make another vid about. Keep it up!
thank you so much
The subject of amateur radio TV broadcasting suddenly became more intriguing that I thought it would... Now I do want to know more!
I love this channel the style relates so hard
Maybe 14 is for the camera plug? And are you sure it doesn't have any timing linked to the AC cycle?
Ham radio guy here. Yes, we are legally required to transmit our call letters every 10 minutes. Seattle has an amateur television society that basically does a zoom meeting... The hard way. Call letters are plastered over the video signal and all audio is transmitted via 2 meter/70 cm radio. Kinda silly, but fun as hell.
Love your content so much. Glad I found this channel. Please keep it up!
thank you!!
All your videos are very informational about forgot tech that got us to where we are today . Keep the vids coming about the cameras !
The center tap is for reducing waste heat and increasing efficiency. The two voltage regulators (12V and 5V) are linear regulators, their waste heat equation is very simple. (Vin - Vout) * A= Heat in Watts. So you could easily power both off of 14V, but doing so would mean the 5V regulator at 3 amps would be generating (14-5)*3 = 27 Watts (which is insane). So by using a center tap, you can feed the 12 Volt reg with 14 v, (max 6 watts heat @ 3amps) and you can feed the 5 Volt reg with 7 volts (again, a max of 6 watts @ 3 amps). Now the rectified voltage will be slightly higher than that, but you get the point.
We used that kind of titler to compose and transmit a video-QSL, a static image with the nominative of the station- the QRT - and a short message. It usually was a video version of the printed QSL card we used to send to other ham operators who copied us. I want also say that the majority of the operators build the titler by themselves, mostly using the Z80 because it refreshed the RAM without additional circuitry; the schematic was widely available on the ham magazines. The company just made a commercial version of it for sale. It is not a titler for video studios, but a specific contraption for HAM use.
Some reasons for the 14v ac centre tapped supply. The 5v regulation has less work to do from 7v ac centre tap. It's easier to produce the negative 5 and 12 volts needed for some of the memory ICs used in it.
congrats! great to see your progress!
@1:51 - fun fact. That keyboard chassis was once an off the shelf hobby enclosure. I think even Radio Shack sold them.
@8:40 - 14 VCT. Doesn't scream that crazy to me. If there is video joo-joo going on about inside then the signal will be AC, requiring a voltage crossing zero and going negative. Sure the guts can be technically biased above ground - think cathode resistor on a common emitter amplifier, but this reminds me of an audio mixer I was playing with, with such a "dual" supply to properly feed the myriad of op-amps doing their things. If I were to guess, single ended good enough for a stand alone kit .. but ground loop nightmares in an analog "network" of devices. Not saying this is so, I don't pretend to be that smurt .. but it doesn't ring as either cost cutting or frivolous.
You'll make it big someday just dont forget us OG viewers!
Classic "this is unsafe but I've done unsafe things enough times to be okay taking the chance - don't be like me" - I once alligator clipped 120vAC. Plug->Bare wire->Alligator clips->AC adapter of a small water pump. A "temporary" arrangement that persisted for 6 months. (Nobody died, but I hated myself every time I looked at it)
Thats like a Datanetics keyboard in there. Same unit was used in the Apple II/II+.
The only titler I have used is the Knox Studio 40 from Knox Video. The original module is an all in one unit with a real keyboard, but its laggy. At least the instructions for use are printed on the case! The later Studio 40.ND is a metal box that uses a standard AT or PS/2 keyboard and shipped with keycap stickers to place over the various keys. The Studio 40.ND's MSRP in 1998 was $3295!
There is also something from Knox called the "Chromafont", likely another CG device.
The 6809 processor you mentioned was used in Tandy color computer consoles in the 80's. I heard some Mexican company bought over hundred of them by just calling some lucky Radio Shack store in the states and placing the order. Coincidentally, the employee, who was telling me this story, said they apparently needed some cheap way to generate characters on a video screen. By the way, the computers did generate an RF signal. You could have even been looking at a rom port later on in your video which would make sense, since there doesn't appear to be any other way to add additional software.
I have an MFJ antenna tuner that is known to murder the power stage of transmitters. Turns out who ever wrote the manual got the lettering for the inductor selector switch literally backwards on the chart for selecting the band. Talk about lack of quality control, and probably why i got it for so cheap. I just transposed the lettering on the chart and it works great.
Your videos are interesting, i subbed. Do You have some idea about what computer used for these old Cabletext TV billboard service?
Love the new setup! The stickers too!
I love the setup... and the shirt. Oh, and the content!
Finally, happy to see your video again
14v was quite typical in the dat as a lot of ham radio equipment ran at 13.8v so a 14v transformer gave the overnheat to allow for the voltage drop of the regulator.
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 You would use one half of the transformer to supply the 12V rail and the other for the 5V rail. It means you don't have to "daisy chain" your voltage regulators. Here's what I think is going on:
www.thompdale.com/simple_power_supply/simple_power_supply.html
New studio is looking great 👍🏻
When that video titler was sold Fast Scan Amateur TV was very popular for a time. There are Amateur Radio frequency bands designated for Fast Scan TV. You could connect a cable tv converter to an antenna and watch Amateur TV stations on some channels. In larger City's you could find ATV repeaters. An amateur radio operator could transmit his tv signal to the repeater and it would retransmit on a different channel. They were always on a tall building or mountain top so the range was greatly increased. ATV (Amateur TV) was expensive unless you built your own equipment and for a short time you could buy commercially built equipment just like that box you have but that aspect of Amateur Radio faded away due to the costs involved and the Internet was just dawning which pretty much killed it like it's done to lots of other things like wired AT&T telephones.
My middle school had a video titler, it looked a bit like a "breadbin" C64. I can't remember the make and model though. It didn't look like a complete cheapo one though, it had a proper full-travel keyboard with a bunch of meta keys...