gloriouscowFor the first time in maybe - decades? Someone has a complete, high-resolution CGA light pen system for the original IBM PC.
(It's me. I'm the someone)
Kyle Davis@gloriouscow god. I have a long unfulfilled childhood need for a light pen.
I saw them on TV and in magazines and waaaaanted one but I never actually remember seeing one in the wild. I grew up in the 1980s cusp between the wild, vast, and weird home computer era and the boring PC compatible era, when things like light pens mostly disappeared.
Now I understand the ergonomics were dog shit and the mouse won for reasons, but I still want a light pen.
that is my legitimate interest in them. they feel like something that fell down between the stairs of my childhood memories. something known in the abstract but never seen or felt.
i gotta admit I got a little tingle the first time i touched a button with the pen and the software responded.
@linux_mclinuxface I think my first exposure to them was a demo of what was almost certainly a Fairlight CMI on the show "Reading Rainbow." In fact, hold on, I bet that shit's on youtube.
YUP
Vintage Synths on Reading Rainbow: Theme Song Composer Steve Horelick on the Fairlight CMI (1983)
@gloriouscow I don't recall that episode, but I would have dug it 100% as a kid.
@linux_mclinuxface I had totally forgotten about that onomatopoeia song. LOL
@gloriouscow "feel like something that fell down between the stairs of my childhood memories."
Great way of putting it. I feel like unearth stuff from that area all the time.