Anyone familiar with these vintage touchscreens?

[Wayne S]

As an FYI, the YouTube comments description of the system is:
"Published on Oct 19, 2019
10/9/1985: Farm Fresh grocery stores unveil new cutting-edge technology: store kiosks that help shoppers map out where to find items in their stores. The kiosks appear to be running Apple II software."


Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 20, 2019, at 12:10, Brent Hilpert via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org<mailto:cctalk at classiccmp.org>> wrote:

On 2019-Oct-20, at 9:14 AM, Nigel Johnson via cctalk wrote:
On 20/10/2019 06:43, Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote:
On Sat, Oct 19, 2019 at 02:23:46PM -0400, Nigel Johnson via cctalk wrote:
Judging by the year, it was probably a teletext terminal. [...]
It's not Teletext, unless that word means something different on the other side
of the Pond. Teletext was basically a text system (the hint's in the name) with
graphics (and indeed colour) being a weird hack that gave it a particular
appearance, especially in typical implementations which used the SAA5050
character generator chip.

The palette and colour fringing suggest Apple II to me.

It was called teletext despite the implications, at least here in Canada.  People just couldn't get their tongue around NAPLPS!

It looks just like the teletext systems I worked on, maybe ours was better than yours?


For elucidation, here's an example of a Canadian Telidon terminal with display examples:
   http://madrona.ca/e/telidon/index.html

(The processor is indeed a 6809, as Diane was mentioning.)

Graphics was very much a part of the Telidon/NAPLPS protocol.
(Note: Colour capabilities may differ between terminals, the protocol was such as to permit a range of compatible implementations.)

While the store directory terminal of the OP 'could' have been a Telidon/NAPLPS terminal, I'd be placing my bets more on the Apple-II (or similar) as others mentioned. Strikes me more as a standalone unit. I think using a videotex/teletext/Telidon/NAPLPS terminal would have been awkward and the economics poor, there'd either have to be a rented comm line to a remote server, an additional local server, or storage hacked onto the terminal.

The touch-screen is another issue, while it could have been supported in a proprietary manner I'm not aware of explicit support for touch-screens in the protocol.

I believe the NAPLPS designation (designation as an industry standard) came rather late in the game, an attempt to gain some recognition for a dying project. As "Telidon", it had begun years earlier.