I'm helping to clear out a storage unit that belonged to a deceased friend, and I've come across some CompuGraphic MCS hardware: Does anyone have any interest in this?
Kenneth, If I recall these are early 1980's or late 1970's technology. While these may not be of interest within "vintage personal computing", they are a part of a segment of microcomputing and computing of typeography and digital publishing. I'm writing the following from memory, so I may have some ideas and references mushed up. But I'm making a point: this CompuGraphic stuff isn't just ugly boxes of boards and clunky mechanical stuff. Details, you can look up. There was a prior revolution in typesetting by use of PHOTOtypesetting instead of physical blocks of type laid out by hand. Wheels of typefonts were projected by character, onto photosensitive paper, to produce text masters. A textbook would be a good application example. You needed a lot of wheels (master fonts) and they were proprietary (hard to replicate) and not cheap. Big business only, and in a world of PAPER information ONLY there were a lot of them. But the next revolution, was to use a CRT instead of optical projection. The CRT was driven digitally; just bits on a screen. Minicomputers (PDP-8s) were the initial digital technology, and later microprocessors made that digital technology cheaper. A company or service could now produce quality text copy, in a unit that took much less space, and which stored fonts on digital media not mechanical font-wheels. Since all the visual stuff was "in the machine", one could drive this technology with a text-based description language, on a computer without all this typeset technology. This is why old schemes like DEC's "runoff" were popular. A lot of these applications, drove mechanical text printers like daisy-wheel, IBM Selectrics, and other such printers. One made do with overprinting on simpler printers. Other steps followed later of course: laser printing for direct production of text; and computers with the power to compose pages visually. Note that TeX was early software means to compose type-set text and arbitrary graphics (math symbols, etc). But once personal laser printers could produce bit images, and microcomputers could run complete page-editing software; and once this stuff became "personally" priced; all these "phototypsetting" services went away except for massive printing services. And all the mechanical and optical printing technologies became "junk". So the CompuGraphic stuff is at the junction of these events. It's small enough to be manageable by a person or small institution. And it has some hope of working. There may be people or groups interested in just this segment - mostly post-60-year-olds from the era, I imagine. That's my "any interest" comments. Regards, Herb Johnson retrotechnology.com -- Herbert R. Johnson, New Jersey in the USA http://www.retrotechnology.com OR .net preserve, recover, restore 1970's computing email: hjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT com or try later herbjohnson AT retrotechnology DOT info