Compucolor character set - Revision history

Jsummers at 22:03, 4 March 2016

2016-03-04T22:03:40Z

Dan Tobias at 15:34, 25 December 2012

2012-12-25T15:34:23Z

Dan Tobias: /* Documentation */

2012-12-25T15:17:01Z

‎Documentation

Dan Tobias at 15:11, 25 December 2012

2012-12-25T15:11:18Z

Dan Tobias at 15:08, 25 December 2012

2012-12-25T15:08:57Z

Dan Tobias at 14:50, 25 December 2012

2012-12-25T14:50:10Z

Dan Tobias at 14:50, 25 December 2012

2012-12-25T14:50:00Z

Dan Tobias: Created page with "{{FormatInfo |formattype=electronic |subcat=Character Encodings |released=1976 }} '''Compucolor''' was a late-1970s computer manufacturer whose most popular model was the Com..."

2012-12-25T14:20:29Z

Created page with "{{FormatInfo |formattype=electronic |subcat=Character Encodings |released=1976 }} '''Compucolor''' was a late-1970s computer manufacturer whose most popular model was the Com..."

New page

{{FormatInfo
|formattype=electronic
|subcat=Character Encodings
|released=1976
}}

'''Compucolor''' was a late-1970s computer manufacturer whose most popular model was the Compucolor II, released in 1978. They had an earlier model, variously known as the Compucolor 8001 or Compucolor I, in 1976, and before that the Intecolor 8001 intelligent terminal.

The Compucolor computers and terminals used a slightly quirky character set based on [[ASCII]], which contained only uppercase letters and most of the punctuation and mathematical characters, but replaced the lowercase letters with graphic characters. The control characters also had graphical renditions, though you probably had to poke them directly into screen memory to see them, since those characters, when typed or sent in an input/output stream, were used as control codes. The control-code meanings differed considerably from the standard ASCII [[C0 controls]], with a few having more-or-less standard meanings (e.g., TAB, CR, LF, and BEL), but most having platform-specific meanings such as changing the color of text. Still more control functions were accessed by escape sequences consisting of the ESC character followed by another character.

Due to the way CR and LF were defined on the Compucolor, you needed both CR and LF to break a line. The way it's worded in the manual, it appears they expect those characters to be output in the order LF+CR, which is backward from the more common CR+LF line break.

== Documentation ==
* [http://oldcomputers.net/Compucolor-II-Instruction-Manual.pdf Compucolor II manual]; has character set chart and description of control and escape codes
* [http://oldcomputers.net/compucolor-ii.html More Compucolor info]

@@ Line 11: / Line 11: @@
 Due to the way CR and LF were defined on the Compucolor, you needed both CR and LF to break a line. The way it's worded in the manual, it appears they expect those characters to be output in the order LF+CR, which is backward from the more common CR+LF line break.
-Some of the Compucolor manuals, in contrast to the main instruction manual, do mention lowercase letters in the standard ASCII positions, so perhaps there are modes which use them.
+Some of the Compucolor manuals, in contrast to the main instruction manual, do mention lowercase letters in the standard ASCII positions, so perhaps there are modes which use them; in fact, the Compucolor newsletters referred to a dealer-installable option to add lowercase support, where a switch was added to switch between graphic characters and lowercase.
 == Documentation ==
@@ Line 18: / Line 18: @@
 * [http://oldcomputers.net/Compucolor-II-Prog-Ref-Manual-rev-2.pdf Compucolor II Programming manual rev 2]
 * [http://oldcomputers.net/compucolor-ii.html More Compucolor info]
 [[Category:Compucolor computers]]

@@ Line 15: / Line 15: @@
 == Documentation ==
 * [http://oldcomputers.net/Compucolor-II-Instruction-Manual.pdf Compucolor II manual]; has character set chart and description of control and escape codes
-* [http://oldcomputers.net/Compucolor-II-Prog-Ref-Manual-rev-1.pdf Compucolor II programming manual]
+* [http://oldcomputers.net/Compucolor-II-Prog-Ref-Manual-rev-1.pdf Compucolor II programming manual rev 1]
 * [http://oldcomputers.net/compucolor-ii.html More Compucolor info]
 [[Category:Compucolor computers]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 14:50, 25 December 2012
Line 15:		Line 15:
	* [http://oldcomputers.net/compucolor-ii.html More Compucolor info]		* [http://oldcomputers.net/compucolor-ii.html More Compucolor info]

−	[[Compucolor computers]]	+	[[Category:Compucolor computers]]

← Older revision		Revision as of 14:50, 25 December 2012
Line 14:		Line 14:
	* [http://oldcomputers.net/Compucolor-II-Instruction-Manual.pdf Compucolor II manual]; has character set chart and description of control and escape codes		* [http://oldcomputers.net/Compucolor-II-Instruction-Manual.pdf Compucolor II manual]; has character set chart and description of control and escape codes
	* [http://oldcomputers.net/compucolor-ii.html More Compucolor info]		* [http://oldcomputers.net/compucolor-ii.html More Compucolor info]
		+
		+	[[Compucolor computers]]

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 {{FormatInfo
 |formattype=electronic
-|subcat=Character Encodings
+|subcat=Character encoding
 |released=1976
 }}
 '''Compucolor''' was a late-1970s computer manufacturer whose most popular model was the Compucolor II, released in 1978. They had an earlier model, variously known as the Compucolor 8001 or Compucolor I, in 1976, and before that the Intecolor 8001 intelligent terminal.

@@ Line 7: / Line 7: @@
 '''Compucolor''' was a late-1970s computer manufacturer whose most popular model was the Compucolor II, released in 1978. They had an earlier model, variously known as the Compucolor 8001 or Compucolor I, in 1976, and before that the Intecolor 8001 intelligent terminal.
-The Compucolor computers and terminals used a slightly quirky character set based on [[ASCII]], which contained only uppercase letters and most of the punctuation and mathematical characters, but replaced the lowercase letters with graphic characters. The control characters also had graphical renditions, though you probably had to poke them directly into screen memory to see them, since those characters, when typed or sent in an input/output stream, were used as control codes. The control-code meanings differed considerably from the standard ASCII [[C0 controls]], with a few having more-or-less standard meanings (e.g., TAB, CR, LF, and BEL), but most having platform-specific meanings such as changing the color of text. Still more control functions were accessed by escape sequences consisting of the ESC character followed by another character.
+The Compucolor computers and terminals used a slightly quirky character set based on [[ASCII]], which contained only uppercase letters and most of the punctuation and mathematical characters, but replaced the lowercase letters with graphic characters. The control characters also had graphical renditions, though you probably had to poke them directly into screen memory to see them, since those characters, when typed or sent in an input/output stream, were used as control codes. The control-code meanings differed considerably from the standard ASCII [[C0 controls]], with a few having more-or-less standard meanings (e.g., TAB, CR, LF, and BEL; though some of the references say that BEL, Ctrl-G, is not used even though it's noted on the "G" key on the keyboard), but most having platform-specific meanings such as changing the color of text. Still more control functions were accessed by escape sequences consisting of the ESC character followed by another character.
 Due to the way CR and LF were defined on the Compucolor, you needed both CR and LF to break a line. The way it's worded in the manual, it appears they expect those characters to be output in the order LF+CR, which is backward from the more common CR+LF line break.