[rec.ham-radio] VIC LARGE characters

mac@harris.cis.ksu.edu (Myron A. Calhoun) (03/20/90)

A visually-impaired ham in this area wants to get on packet radio.
He owns a minimal-memory VIC-20 computer, but has trouble reading
even its already-large letters.  Is there a relatively easy way
to make even bigger letters?

I've used a VIC-20 on packet, so the interfacing and terminal-emulation
stuff I can do; but I've never designed my own character set or done
other "exotic" stuff (and my cbm-guru son is off at college!)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
--Myron.
--
# Myron A. Calhoun, Ph.D. E.E.; Associate Professor   (913) 539-4448 home
# INTERNET: mac@harris.cis.ksu.edu   (129.130.10.2)         532-6350 work
# UUCP: ...{rutgers, texbell}!ksuvax1!harry!mac             532-7004 fax
# AT&T Mail:  attmail!ksuvax1!mac

jgreco@archimedes.math.uwm.edu (Joe Greco) (03/20/90)

In article <26050E84.D0E@deimos.cis.ksu.edu> mac@harris.cis.ksu.edu (Myron A. Calhoun) writes:
>A visually-impaired ham in this area wants to get on packet radio.
>He owns a minimal-memory VIC-20 computer, but has trouble reading
>even its already-large letters.  Is there a relatively easy way
>to make even bigger letters?

Yes, the VIC-II chip has a mode where it generates double high characters; we
found this sufficient at the local high school (doubling the width results in
an almost useless 11x12 display... 22x12 is almost usable).

I do not have the code for this.  It eats RAM to define the new character set.
I don't recall details, but if you really want I could probably write it in
an hour or so.  Send mail...

... Joe