I was around Tektronix then and vaguely remember seeing the prototype in action one day in bldg 50.
On Tue, May 27, 2025 at 5:39 PM Keith Lofstrom <[email protected]> wrote: > > Atari ... > Totally irrelevant perhaps, but in the late 1970s, when I was advising > Tektronix Explorer Scouts Post 876, the scouts and I hacked an Atari 2600 > game console to be a breath-switch-operated message display and device > controller for quadraplegics at the VA hospital. This replaced an earlier > design that quad vets used to create serial ASCII characters for a > teletype, also control codes to turn on lights, summon a nurse's aide, > etc. Replacing an earlier design that emitted 5 bit BAUDOT characters. > The quads got very good at this; they could "blow 10 bits per second" after > months of "not-much-else-to-do". > > There are vastly better small computers for such tasks now, and much > cleverer engineers and clients to deploy and to use them. Perhaps someone > can create something amazing with King's ancient machine.
