TV Typewriter - TV Typewriter Cookbook

TV Typewriter Cookbook

By 1975 Don Lancaster had authored over 100 articles in magazines such as Popular Electronics and Radio-Electronics. He had also written a digital design book titled the RTL Cookbook in 1968. Resistor-transistor logic (RTL) was an early IC technology that was replaced by TTL, so in 1974 he published the TTL Cookbook. This book was in print for 20 years and sold a million copies.

The original TV Typewriter was designed before low cost RAM was available and the design was soon obsolete. Don had made many design improvements and published them as the TV Typewriter Cookbook in 1976. Portions had been serialized in the first issues of Byte magazine. The book was a guide on how to design a video computer terminal.

1. Some Basics
2. Integrated Circuits for TVT use
3. Memory
4. System Timing - Calculation and Circuits
5. Cursor and Update Circuits
6. Keyboards and Encoders
7. Serial Interfaces
8. Television Interfaces
9. Hard Copy and Color Graphics

This book guided many hobbyist and professionals in designing video displays for home computer systems. The cassette interface design from chapter 7 was the basis for the Kansas City standard. The circuits in this book did not rely on a microprocessor, just TTL. The TV Cheap Video Cookbook (1978) showed the TVT 6 5/8 that would work with a 6502 or 6800 microprocessor. The design was targeted at the KIM-1 Microcomputer.

The original TV Typewriter book cover shows an ASCII keyboard designed by Don Lancaster and sold by Southwest Technical Products. An early computer store chain, the Byte Shop, had the publisher add their logo to the covers and sold the TTL Cookbook and the TV Typewriter Cookbook in their stores. A later edition cover was designed for Radio Shack stores. The ninth printing of the first edition was in 1983.