I had a hunch buying this floppy off eBay, and it paid off. The number rather dangerously scrawled on there with ball point is indeed a new driver version, previously unknown.
Version 3.5 Warp Speed light pen drivers and version 3.5 of their CONTROLLER shell.
The copyright date is also 1989, which is about when I figured they went kaput. Interestingly the driver does not say warp speed anymore, it says "Future Tech Software" and credits a Frank Taylor.
Clean flux dump.
In other news, an entire new light pen manufacturer has appeared!
A new challenger approaches!
I got the kick to go look and see who had registered lightpen.com.
And lo and behold, we find
Design Technology Inc.
https://web.archive.org/web/20010405003907/http://lightpen.com/
They must have been one of FTG's main competitors. They have ISA light pen interfaces I get to buy now too!
I was able to snarf all their drivers out of the wayback machine.
Their DT360 card seems to be the only thing that shows up on eBay, from anywhere from $35-$800. So clearly people have no idea wtf they are even selling.
Of course one has the original sync cable, and it's the $800 one.
I sent the seller a heartfelt message. I explained that I was currently obsessed with light pens, and how the technology was pretty dead, all the systems using them had most likely been retrofit by now, and pointed out that out of the dozens of these cards listed on ebay over the past three years, none had ever sold, regardless of price.
I explained I was just curious about it, and their listing was the only one with the VGA sync cable.
They responded with an offer at a 90% discount. I accepted.
and that's how you do light pen business
this cable isn't directly compatible with the FTG sync header, but considering it looks like your standard RJ45 ,another keystone jack to RS232 screw terminal adapter should do peachy.
DTI pens could have up to three buttons. Suck on that, FTG
I kept reading materials from FTG bragging that they had 85% of the light pen market
But I kept thinking "Who the hell has the other 15%?" I guess it was DTI.
wouldn't it be surreal working for a light pen company in the 90's?
...did you force your kids to use light pens? like you catch your son using a mouse and you're like NOT UNDER MY ROOF, YOU LITTLE SHIT
you start tossing his room every week looking for mousepads
gloriouscow
Thalia Archibald
nieuemma