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The Vectrex Computer

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Re: The Vectrex Computer

#12

Post by banana_dick_5 »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #8

I really enjoyed my Vectrex, I had every cartridge and every peripheral AFAICT. I ended up selling it to offset the cost of a fancy monitor for my Amiga :-). Related Steve Ciarcia did a vector display which was a lot of fun back in the day. You can find it in the back issues of BYTE but here is a scan https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y6SfEN8idhdZ7Y_rNh0zD9uzHEC...

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Re: The Vectrex Computer

#15

Post by banana_dick_7 »

gcanyon wrote: post #2

I got to play on a Vectrex back in the day, it was super-fun -- especially because I had worked at Cinematronix before that. I really wish Vectrex was more successful, but vector displays were just super-limited. The positive of being pseudo-high-res wasn't enough to overcome the fact that you literally couldn't draw more than about 40-80 lines (depending on how long the lines were and how far apart they were).

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Re: The Vectrex Computer

#16

Post by gedy »

Had a Vectrex bought on clearance from Toys R Us, sold it long ago unfortunately. I randomly though still have its Lightpen in my drawer here, any retro hardware aficionados need it?

Re: The Vectrex Computer

#17

Post by classichasclass »

NikkiA wrote: post #5

The storage device being 'wafer tapes' of 128k would suggest it was to be based on the Exatron Stringy Floppy. Although exatron only sold 75'/64k tapes, Rotronics/BSR sold a 128kB (presumably ~160') format version of it for the ZX Spectrum (Wafadrive) and Vic-20/C-64 (QDD).

Also the Texas Instruments CC-40. It was so unreliable that TI cancelled it, leaving no official way of saving files. Hope your batteries didn't run out ...

Re: The Vectrex Computer

#18

Post by PaulHoule »

gcanyon wrote: post #2

I got to play on a Vectrex back in the day, it was super-fun -- especially because I had worked at Cinematronix before that. I really wish Vectrex was more successful, but vector displays were just super-limited. The positive of being pseudo-high-res wasn't enough to overcome the fact that you literally couldn't draw more than about 40-80 lines (depending on how long the lines were and how far apart they were).

It’s hard to believe it would work as a word processor, if you wanted 80x25 you’d have up to 2000 characters on the screen maybe with a few curves or move lines. No matter how you slice it it’s a lot of data and the electronics strike me as crazier than a raster text display and it’s still crazy for a home computer which is more like 40x20 — do you have a huge display list of lines and curves or a character array which indexes display lists for each character?
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