I think I sold about 400 kits Fritz, which wasn't too bad for pre-internet days.
Most of my input was software, as the hardware for me, was fairly straight forward Z80 micro technology for 22 years ago. Article was spread over 4 monthly issues, as it covered a lot of ground.
XT keyboards were cheap, and the most common type used at that time, so I went with that. However I had concerns that some types were a little temperamental, as they lacked some of the critical timing, that an XT motherboard required.
Leo Simpson tried half a dozen different XT types he was running in the SC office, and all worked, so he figured it wasn't of any real concern.
If I was doing the same thing today, I would simply squirt a serial USB stream from any old PC at it, for editing messages.
It was one of my first electronics projects, where I could say to my wife, look at this, and she understood what it was I was working on. I made up the first one for my youngest daughters 21st birday party, just for a bit of fun.
Best part was doing the software to produce not only the scrolling, rolling, etc., text, but graphics such as jumping phones, crocodiles, space creatures, I had sheets of graph paper mapped out, with what seemed to be hundreds of different critters jumping about.
Eventually, I revamped it from a single colour moving message board, to a tri-colour unit, however we never printed an article about the changes. Basically, we had to change the displays from one to two colour LEDs, movement produced the tri-colour, and the rest was done in software.
I must have made all of about 5 cents an hour for the amount of time I put into this one, but as I say, it was great fun producing something that you could actually show ***anyone***, and they understood what it was you were working on.
Cheers Don...
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