Maplin Resurrection?

[charles]

and Henry's Radio. and Proops (a lunchtime excursion)

[charles]

not just the cost of the premises. The cost of stocking them. too

[spuorgelgoog]

And probably the amount of stock that went walkies ...

Owain

[Chris Green]

... and what has that got to do with my comment? It may well be that suppliers very in quality, that is to be expected, but there isn't such a thing as a 'genuine' Arduino, that's all I was saying.

[Andrew]

DISTEL ??

[Andrew]

if they can actually SEE what they are doing though ..

[Andrew]

[Adrian Caspersz]

Heh, I once saw the actual computer that ran that ..

Display Electronics has been subsumed into a prop hiring company, a roundabout way of getting some value from now very redundant electronic technology that today's purchasers were increasingly shying away from.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I was rather surprised, somewhere round about 2005, when working on a networked TV game show, to discover the on screen game graphics being provided by a quite old Acorn RPC - with home made interface to feed it into the system. Explanation was simple. It worked, and no security issues leaving the gear in a studio. Unlike, say, a laptop.

[The Other John]

Back in the late '90s my eldest son was an edit assistant on The Chart Show where the graphics were provided by an Commodore Amiga.

[John Rumm]

CASHTel (Computer Aided Shopping by Telephone) was an early Maplin BBS style service, that you could use to do mail order and other stuff. You used ASCII terminal software and a 2400bps modem or similar. It let you enter order codes and quantities.

I quite liked using it at times (even though I only lived a 10 min walk from the shop) since it let you assemble a long order while sat in front of all your notes and documentation etc.

[John Rumm]

Yeah I remember that, they just genlocked the main Workbench screen over the top of the video...

[Theo]

If that was Millionaire, AIUI the format was sold as a bundle that stipulated every clone of the show had to use the same graphics, so every country used the same Risc PC system to generate the graphics. (in the beginning, anyway - they probably upgraded at some point, maybe when HD came along).

Theo

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Never worked on Millionaire, but could well be the same company supplying the graphics for that game show I mentioned. And can't remember the name of. ;-)

Even an RPC can work in HD, though. They had more than one there.

This one has a digital output Viewfinder card, running above TV HD.

[Bob Eager]

Does anyone remember (back in the 60s/70s) a form called Techincal Trading? They had a few shops, mainly south coast, and one at the bottom of Tottenham Court Road.

They also did mail order (advertised on page 3 of Practical Wireless).

[Bob Eager]

ISTR there was an even earlier one that used the phone keypad.

[spuorgelgoog]

Yes, you had to change all the Maplin AB12Z order codes into numeric equivalents :-)

Especially fun for Rs and Cs.

Although that might have come *later* than CashTEL, as DTMF phones weren't widely used but Maplin customers could build their own modem.

Owain

[Bob Eager]

I had one of those DTMF boxes.

[spuorgelgoog]

So did I, but I discovered it didn't work on a 706 with carbon microphone very well.

Owain

[John Bryan]

Another reason was reboot time about 30 seconds.