Date   : Wed, 20 Dec 2006 16:39:33 -0600
From   : julesrichardsonuk@... (Jules Richardson)
Subject: Curse of the long TUBE cable

Alex Taylor wrote:
> Jules Richardson wrote:
> 
>> I think I'd be tempted to find a basket-case wedge from somewhere [snip]
> 
> What will happen to all the Teletext adapters when the analogue TV 
> system gets switched off?

I'd pondered that before, too. I'm thinking we'll need something at the museum 
which can 'play back' teletext at RF frequencies, but via a direct cable 
connection into the back of a Teletext cheese wedge in order to demo it. Quite 
what will do it, I'm not sure (yes, a good quality video recorder will work, 
but I'd like something that'll last longer-term than a video tape!)

> I had one that I sold, then I picked up another one with the stuff I got 
> from Wales. IMO the least useful cheese-wedge, unless anyone can tell me 
> otherwise...

I don't know, the Prestel adapter was pretty dire. And the IEEE488 wedge is of 
questionable interest to collectors (or even the average BBC enthusiast back 
in the day). Heck, how 'useful' is or was a 32016 or ARM1 copro to most people 
unless they're a really hard-core programmer? The subset of people who 
actually own (or owned) one but made any kind of serious use of it is probably 
very small indeed.

Personally the first time I saw a Teletext adapter (which wasn't until the 
early 90s) I thought it was a pretty cool bit of kit. We had an official 
teletext-over-the-network service at my uni back then (you could connect to it 
with any terminal or terminal emulator that supported teletext mode, such as a 
BBC micro) and it was amazingly popular - lots of students used it for news, 
TV listings etc. I seem to recall that it only supported the BBC channels, not 
ITV or Channel 4 (and there wasn't a C5 back then)

Unfortunately it was 'official' in that it was uni-sanctioned and supported. 
It wasn't 'official' in the eyes of the BBC because no kind of broadcast / 
distribution licence was being paid; I gather they got rather upset :-) 
Subsequently the whole service was shut down.

Coincidentally, my teletext wedge came from that uni in one of the computing 
department's regular clear-outs, after the campus teletext service had died a 
death. Given how many bodges and replaced parts it contained, it had obviously 
seen a lot of use - I strongly suspect that it was the unit responsible for 
receiving the pages for the campus network.

cheers

Jules