Imagesource: https://www.engineersneedart.com/

Many 8-bit homebrews come with the problem, that the connection of an appropriately large display is not necessarily easy, if you don't want to use a separate video chip or build a VGA circuit yourself.

UART is certainly an alternative, but the self-built machine only becomes really cool, when you don't need a fully fledged first-world machine, to do something useful with the box.

That's what John Calhoun must have thought as well. Consequently he provided a remedy with one of his projects.

ADAM74 is an ASCII display, which is based on the FIFO buffer principle, and therefore behaves similar to the video output of the Apple I.

The project may seem not quite pure to some, because it uses a modern microcontroller for the display control. To be honest though, it has to be said, that this is made up for by the coolness factor of the stand, that is part of the project.

Great stuff! 🖥