Cromemco Dazzler

Cromemco's Dazzler (or TV DAZZLER) was a graphics card for S-100 bus computers. Released in 1976, it is the first commercial color bit-mapped graphics card available for microcomputers. Multiple Dazzler cards could be installed in a single machine and synced together, a feature which could, with minor modification, be used to genlock. Genlocked Dazzler cards drove ColorGraphics Weather Systems displays that generated most of the weather imagery seen on US television in the early 1980s. Excerpted from Wikipedia.

The Cromemco TV Dazzler introductory advertisement, April 1976.

Popular Electronics February 1976 with the Cromemco TV Dazzler introduction.(in collection)

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Cromemco Dazzler Rev. C S-100 board images

Here is a working Cromemco Dazzler in an Altair 8800b running cp/m 2.2 from my platform agnostic .cs port of deRamp's FDC+ serial server.

Resources

• Wikipedia article.
• Dazzler article at S100 computer
• Popular Electronics construction article February 1976 Build the "TV DAZZLER" American Radio History archive
• z80pack emulation including Cromemco Dazzler graphics

Testing

Software

daztest.asm

.prn file from assembley

                ; daztest.asm
                ; From Cromemco Dazzler manual November 1978 page 6
                ; "When sense switch A12 is raised the DAZZLER goes into color mode..."
                ; see also Cromemco Dazzler wiki page at RetroWagon
                ; http://retrowagon.org/wiki/index.php/

 0000                   org     0
 0000 3E80      test:   mvi     a,080h
 0002 D30E              out     0eh
 0004 DBFF              in      0ffh
 0006 D30F              out     0fh
 0008 C30000            jmp     test

Downloads

The daztest.zip file contains DAZTEST.ASM, .HEX and .PRN

History

• 6 May 2016 purchased board. (It's going to be a long week waiting for it.)