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They're done on a Brother PT-2420PC

It's a Sony BVM1415P. Not sure on the vector monitor, one of the smaller ones out of an arcade cab I would presume. I've tested a few commercial XY monitors for computers and displays etc., and none have been fast enough, and none had RGB.

@@RetroClinic Thank you, I really appreciate the advice. Excellent work!

Yes, it's XY mode, also using the Z input via an interface circuit. Digital scopes don't render the picture anywhere near as clear unfortunately.

> Does that work on a digital scope? Sure, as it will likely have a x,y mode as well. But the display is using pixels and that makes it not anywhere as close to a vector display compared to an analog scope. (I believe it is "analogue" in case you're a Brit ;-) ).

Thanks. These vids are really just tests for customer repairs, so they can see their boards running. I hope to do more full rundowns on the supergun kit and games at some point.

It’s done using the Z input on the scope.

@@RetroClinic Is in the back of the scope?

It's a bit like those childrens books where you draw lines between numbered dots to form an image. Just with an extra dimension (Z axis coordinate) added. Notice how there is zero occlusion happening. All the objects are see trough. So the lines being drawn to display the graphics are all bouncing around between points until one object is drawn, then onto the next. Do it fast enough and it seems like a 3D world. You can learn to program this. Ofc start with getting a cube to move around and morphing by changing the 8 corners of it. So there is 8x3=24 numbers to keep track of a cube in 3D space. Maybe add a designator to so the code knows these coordinates are part of the same object. The huge card is a bunch of memory chips and various processing chips to remember and keep track off all these numbers. And change them according to certain programmed rules. All in all this complicated but organised mathematical mess makes up the illusion of driving a tank trough a 3D world and shooting at other tanks. The oscilloscope is due to way back radar screens were available displays. Which is the same electron beam point being moved around on a phospor surface that lights up as you would find in an oscilloscope. So if you can define two points you can have the display swipe the beam between them, forming a line. You can draw lines now. There are other variables you can change to. To draw an even more detailed image. So a lot of circuitry was made to make this electron point draw stuff, so we could see some form of output. If you want to understand this old timey display tech better then look into oscilloscope art on TH-cam. th-cam.com/video/ytnt9l_WKxk/w-d-xo.htmlsi=9X3UTdFkKxTQp2pW It's actually pretty neat once you start to understand it. You can come up with all sorts of tricks here. Going back to basics and making something crudely simple gives a much deeper understanding of computers. Because at the end of the day a computer is just that, something that computes. It's a machine that does math. Just really really quickly and in wast incomprehensible amounts.

Most oscilloscopes have an XY mode that works the same as the vector monitor used by this game. The two inputs on the scope move the electron beam left/right and up/down. There’s also a “Z” input that turns the beam on and off; without this, you’d see extra lines everywhere as the beam moves between drawing of objects. It also looks really cool, and is a great excuse to keep an old analog scope around.

Yes, it's what is most easily available. The original CRT display would be truer and larger. Looking good in an arcade cabinet. But it works on the same principle. A focused electron beam is moved around on a phosphor screen, forming a glowing dot that wizzes around. Move it in lines using clever circuitry and code and you can display stuff. These sort of games just did it in a really direct way. Which gives them that cool look. Later we used that glowing point to make a line, scanning it across the screen, then moving one down, etc etc, to form a video image. Ofc then the display output was based on an array of pixels rather than coordinate points being drawn directly. The drawback being that the image looks fainter and more washed out. Directly drawing the graphics by moving the electron beam directly makes for a more vibrant display. The drawback being that it's a really cumbersome way of doing it and rather inflexible. In the end arrays of pixels won out due to that being way more flexible. Today we can display pixels pretty much directly, giving a crisp image. Rather than converting it into an analog signal forming scan lines on a CRT display. But we lost that certain look.

Vector displays don't function as raster displays. At least not easily.

Not directly. But there are circuits to do this.

This is how the first arcade cames did it, back whenthe concept of video-ram was expensive as heck.

Running an oscilloscope in X-Y mode is a pretty practical way of testing the system without requiring the original CRT. By the way, you can mod an oscilloscope into a TV set. My grandfather used to do that for fun!

Lmao what.. You REALLY need to visit some museums in your life.

@@xcruell I would but museums cost money and I don't have any,

Because this game has a vector output, which is XYZ. The X and Y go to the two channels of the scope, and the RGB Z signal via a home made combiner and fed to the scope's Z input.