[QuadList] OT: Chiron III (Was: Seconds to Play: 2" quadplayback and more.)

Mon Jun 11 16:59:45 CDT 2012

Nothing faster, slicker, or more convoluted to program than 2900 series
bit-slice processors!
At least back in those days!  I wrote an entire paint system for an Ikonas
framebuffer that ran on
its bit-slice processors like greased lightning!

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 3:02 PM, <rabruner at aol.com> wrote:

> The basic architecture of the run-length coded Chyrons depended on a
> series of alternating operations. There was a board to generate the first
> scan line of a character, then another board generated the second line, the
> first board generated the third line and so forth.  Then you had boards
> that assembled alternating fields, etc.  The RGU did all these operations
> in one board per layer, which made it slower.  A real sports operator could
> get ahead of the machine, and it would just hang up and need a power cycle
> to get it going again.  The RGU that we had at WGN suffered from
> connectoritis in the IC sockets as well. The cure sent out by Chyron was to
> shove an Augat machined pin socket into the original socket and then put
> the chip back into that.  It sorta helped, but wasn't a solid fix by any
> means.
> The CPU was based on running four 4-bit CPUs in tandem to make a 16 bit
> cpu.  I believe the instruction buss was something like 81 bits wide and
> did several operations on each machine cycle.  The bible of the CPU was a
> book called "Bit Slice Microprocessors" by Mick and Blick.  I still have a
> copy around the library somewhere.
>     Chyron had a kit to fit hard drives into several of the later
> machines, I think.
>
> Bob Bruner
> WTTW/Chicago
>
>    Attached Message
>   From: Scott Thomas <scottgfx at mac.com> To: Quad List <
> quadlist at quadvideotapegroup.com> Subject: Re: [QuadList] OT: Chiron III
> (Was: Seconds to Play: 2" quadplayback and more.) Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2012
> 00:38:30 -0400
>  Neat information about those earlier machines. Thank you Bob.
>
>  In reading that other information I found from Wikipedia, all those
> early machines were based on the same microcomputer.
> I searched and found this PDF:
> http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/datamate/DM70_RefMan.pdf
>
>  Very little info otherwise. I'm curious why they chose a architecture
> from a company in west Texas?
>
>  Did not know the RGU was based on the same architecture. A local
> production company in Fort Myers, FL had one. Never heard much positive
> about it.
>
>  The CBS affiliate WINK replaced a 3M D-8800 with a Chyron 4100-EXB
> around 1985. Any idea what EXB stood for? I know they had the MGM option.
> in the 1990's they kept it going with 5.25" drive conversions and even
> added a hard drive to it.
>
>  They finally replaced it with a 3 channel Infinit! around 1996. I have
> stories about that machine. The drawings for the Infinit! call it a
> multi-user Scribe.
> Motorola 680x0 based and on the VME bus. No more wire-wrap!
>
>  What made the Scribe and it's followers different wasn't the bitmap
> characters. It was the use of vector fonts. You could build the bitmaps
> (Machine Fonts) from a vector database at any size you wanted. I remember
> when CNN moved into the Omni in downtown Atlanta. They moved to the Scribe
> at the same time. I watched them the morning of the switch. It really made
> a difference.
>
>  I remember it taking a long time to render those fonts on the CPU's of
> that time. Now, all these modern personal computers do this in the blink of
> an eye. :)
>
>  I found a Chiron II and III ad in the Broadcast Engineering scans of
> David Gleason. What is his policy of posting clippings from the scans? I do
> not want to run afoul of the wonderful work he's done.
>
>  Scott Thomas
>
>
>
>  On Jun 10, 2012, at 11:36 PM, rabruner at aol.com wrote:
>
>  I believe the gray Chyron keyboards shown in the film are Chyron II
> keyboards.  The III, IV, 4000, 4100, 4200, and RGU all had similar ugly
> orange and beige keyboards. There is nothing magical about the keyboards
> and they could have used Chyron ii keyboards with Chyron III frames.
>
> The II keyboards were long and thin as shown, whereas the IIIs that I am
> familiar with are big and boxy. So there would have been some space
> advantage in using the gray keyboards building a truck.  I think the
> keystroke coding boards were all the same, it was the interface to the
> frame that changed a little.  The characters we see could be from Chyron
> IIIs.  The II through 4200 (and RGU) all used the same kind of run length
> coding to describe the characters.  Bit mapping presentations didn't come
> along until the Scribe.
>
> The III was a somewhat dumbed down version of the II and the 4 series were
> repackaged versions of the II.  The 4100 was similar to the 4000, but it
> could have an accessory called MGM (Multi Graphics Module, I believe),
> which was another box about the same size as the CG, which allowed still
> captures and animation and video import.  The 4200 was a 4100 with MGM in
> the same box.
>
> There was a chronic problem through several generations of Chyron
> keyboards with the internal 5 volt supply drifting low in voltage and
> needing to be tweaked back to 5 volts.  You would get erratic keyboard
> performance or nothing from the keyboard until you set the voltage back up
> and then all was well.
>
> Bob Bruner
> WTTW/Chicago
>
>
>
>
> Please trim posts to relevant info when replying.
>
> Change subject to reflect thread direction. Thanks.
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-- 
Dave Sieg
www.linkedin.com/in/davesieg
www.davesieg.com
www.scanimate. <http://www.scanimate.net>com
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