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  • Greetings and welcome to a particularly pointy LGR thing!

  • That being the VP-380 Video Pointer, which sold for $920 on release in the early 1980s.

  • And I’ll get straight to the point, this box does one thing and one thing only: it

  • superimposes pointers on top of composite video.

  • Yep! An expensive device dedicated to plopping arrows onto your screen [chuckles]

  • And that’s exactly why I had to grab one when I ran across it in a medical surplus auction a while back.

  • Vintage electronics that serve such a singular function amuse me to no end for whatever reason,

  • and the fact that this thing was purpose-built to essentially just generate a cursor on a

  • TV and sold for almost a thousand bucks just cracks me up, man.

  • And despite its admirable simplicity, it seems they were continually manufactured and sold

  • by FOR-A Company Limited out of Tokyo, Japan through at least the late 1990s.

  • What for, you may ask?

  • Well, being that I got this from a medical supplier should be one indication, but let’s

  • refer to FOR-A’s own marketing material.

  • The VP-380 was included in their display and measurement product category, among three

  • other devices that were quote, “beautifully simple and economical solutions to teleconferencing,

  • school or corporate training, medical briefings, or scientific analysis support.”

  • In other words, back before everyone just whipped out a computer or a tablet when they

  • needed to present some knowledge in video form, products like the Video Pointer and

  • its FOR-A siblings could perform the task instead.

  • So, say youre a putting together a project about birds, and you need a way to point out

  • which bird youre talking about.

  • You’d use the Video Pointer to put an arrow above Bird A, or a box around Bird B. Or whatever,

  • doesn’t have to be birds. Could be like, kumquats or something, I dunno.

  • And going further, the pointer could also be connected to the other FOR-A video measurement

  • devices, like the Video Micro Scaler, the Video Measuring Gauge,

  • and the Video Crossline Generator.

  • Combined, these four boxes provided a powerful set of tools to superimpose visual indicators

  • and measurements of distance and scale on top of your video projects, whatever they may be.

  • Of course, all this stuff combined would cost thousands upon thousands of dollars, so if

  • you ever used these back in the day chances are it was through a school, business, medical

  • facility, or some similar context outside of the mainstream market.

  • These weren’t made for home video use, is what I’m saying.

  • Not that anything was stopping you from spending a grand just to place arrows on top of your

  • VHS tapes and video games at home, but I can’t imagine that was done very often.

  • So let’s do it now, cuz I’m itching to draw arrows on things that don’t need arrows!

  • And to do that well be using this delightful Sony PVM-1271Q, an early 80s professional

  • CRT befitting the Video Pointer, especially being a light gray medical variant.

  • Of course, you can hook up the Video Pointer to just about any kind of composite display,

  • but being that the I/O uses BNC connectors youll either have to convert them to RCA

  • using separate adapters or skip that and use a professional video monitor as intended.

  • You also get BNC connectors that accept 75 Ohm terminators on both the output and the

  • input, with the related impedance switch on the latter.

  • All commonplace stuff on broadcast and medical video equipment like this.

  • Now it’s time to power everything on, though at first all you get is a blank screen.

  • You won’t actually get a video signal of any kind until you provide an input signal

  • to the Video Pointer, and for this first test I’m gonna use a Sega Genesis

  • and some daggone Sonic the Hedgehog.

  • [“Segastartup sound]

  • [Sonic the Hedgehog music plays]

  • Okay class, pay attention!

  • This! This is Sonic.

  • He’s a hedgehog. With attitude!

  • Notice his tapping foot and impatient expression.

  • [chuckles] Ahh, I don’t know I’m doing with this thing but it’s the best.

  • You just move around that little joystick on the front of the case and it moves around

  • the arrow with pleasing accuracy.

  • No dead zone, no edge acceleration, just a 1:1 representation on-screen.

  • I dunno why I’m so amused by it, but whatever!

  • Controlling a mouse cursor-like thing on top of whatever video signal you want, in real

  • time with no computer or software or anything?

  • Yeah that’s just my kinda hardware, inside and out.

  • Now that I’m thinking about it, let’s hop inside for a minute and see what it’s packing.

  • And well, not a whole lot but it’s still fun to look at.

  • All the requisite NTSC display hardware and video generation stuff, with a small FOR-A

  • mainboard holding most of the circuitry in one place.

  • Got some fresh pots here for adjusting the horizontal and vertical positioning of the

  • output, that’s nice to have.

  • And at the heart of it is a Mitsubishi M5L2764K, an 8-bit EPROM that’s been programmed with

  • all the video pointer goodness it needs, covered up by a sticker since there’s a little window

  • on top to erase the chip using ultraviolet light.

  • And on front you get those satisfying push button switches for the power, pointers, and

  • such, each activating with a nice sprung springiness.

  • And then there’s the joystick, with the shaft manipulating two potentiometers, sliding

  • around back and forth inside a neat little assembly.

  • Not quite what I expected but it works superbly well.

  • Anyway yeah, got distracted there, were still not done testing out the pointers.

  • After all it isn’t limited to producing only white arrows.

  • Under theMattlabel there’s a switch that allows you change the pointer color from

  • white to black, so that’s a thing in case the video background is clashing with the cursor.

  • You can also adjust theSuperswitch to turn the pointer on or off, or make it

  • flash between the two for a steady strobing effect.

  • And over on the left there are four buttons to change between arrow directions, as well

  • as a switch for enabling pattern mode.

  • This provides four more pointers to utilize: a large circle, a smaller circle, a plus sign

  • or cross, and a square.

  • So hooray for options!

  • I mean, it still only does the one thing: placing pointers on-screen.

  • But at least you have alternative cursors that might make more sense for certain situations,

  • like surrounding an object of interest or maybe testing display geometry to make sure

  • circles appear nice and circular on various parts of the screen or whatever.

  • Or hey, why not add a crosshair to shooters lacking them?

  • Not that Doom needs a crosshair due to its generous auto-aiming system, but ya know.

  • I’m trying to come up with reasons to use this thing, cut me some slack.

  • Besides, adding your own crosshair isn’t unheard of even nowadays.

  • It’s still a hotly-contested topic for certain competitive FPS games, with purpose-built

  • software performing the same task of adding crosshairs to online shooters.

  • Even my main monitor has an overlay function built-in to add various crosshairs to your

  • FPS game of choice.

  • I know this is not the intended usage of the VP-380 Video Pointer and it’s considered

  • pretty cheaty to a lot of folks, I just find it kind of amusing.

  • And yeah, slightly amusing is about what it comes down to with the Video Pointer.

  • It’s pointless, but there’s still very clearly a point to it.

  • Heh, pointer puns.

  • But seriously, I don’t have any grand revelations to make or mind-blowing facts to reveal.

  • It’s just a thing that I found that I wanted to share, because thousand dollar video devices

  • from the early 80s are weirdly fascinating to me.

  • And hopefully some of you found it at least a little fascinating as well.

  • Now if youll excuse me I’m off to place pointers of top of LGR episodes for this LGR

  • episode, in-between working on future LGR episodes.

  • Hm, much like one of the pointers on here, my time is a flat circle it seems.

  • [downbeat outro music plays]

  • And if you got the point of this LGR thing then cool.

  • Perhaps you’d enjoy my other stuff on more substantial things and more frivolous things

  • alike, with new videos every week on this very channel.

  • And as always thank you very much for watching!

Greetings and welcome to a particularly pointy LGR thing!

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1980年代VP-380視頻指針:920元電視箭頭髮生器 (1980s VP-380 Video Pointer: $920 TV Arrow Generator)

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    林宜悉 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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