1980s

RCA CED VideoDisc interactive (1983 – 1986)

In 1983, RCA launched a version of their CED VideoDisc system that offered random access to enable interactive features for educational and entertainment titles. The discs were ‘banded’ to allow the user to skip to a different segment.

Two models of VideoDisc player offered the ability to play the interactive disks – the SJT400 and the SKT400 – and these could be used with their own 30-button remote control, or RCA’s Digital Command Centre which could also operate certain RCA televisions and VCRs.

Just a handful of VideoDiscs were produced that made use of the interactive features, including initially ‘A Week at the Races’ (with races arranged so that participants didn’t know which horse would win) and ‘Many Roads to Murder’ (with 16 different murder mystery scenarios). The interactive titles were housed in black caddies to distinguish them.

RCA ceased production of CED VideoDisc players in April 1984. Although CED VideoDiscs continued to be sold into 1986, there were only ever a handful of interactive titles produced and these are now rare.

A couple of titles, NFL Football CED-1 (San Diego Chargers vs. Oakland Raiders) and NFL Football CED-2 (Dallas Cowboys vs. Washington Redskins), were designed for use in the Bally Midway NFL Football arcade console. This console offered live action footage via the CED VideoDisc played in an RCA SJT400 player inside the machine.

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IBM 5440 (1969 – 1990s)

The IBM 5440 removable disk pack was introduced in 1969 for use with the IBM 5444 disk drive that was an optional component of the new IBM System/3 mid-range computer system.

The IBM 5440 contained a single 14-inch double-sided platter in a cartridge, with a removable base that kept dust from getting inside. The maximum formatted capacity in the IBM 5444 disk drive was 2.46 MB. The IBM System/3 was marketed by IBM until 1985.

The IBM 5440 disk pack design was also used in at least three other systems.

The first was the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) RL01 and RL02 drives. The RL01 drive was introduced in 1976 and could store 5 MB on the disk pack, while the RL02 was introduced in 1978 and could store 10 MB by using twice as many tracks. These drives were used with the DEC PDP-8 and PDP-11 minicomputers.

The second was Control Data Corporation’s Cartridge Disk Drive 9427H. This used the CDC 847 or CDC 848 disk packs. The CDC 848 offered twice as many tracks per inch. The manual specifies that any approved equivalent IBM 5440 cartridge could also be used.

Lastly, it was used in the Diablo Series 40 disk drive; the Diablo 43 offering 6.25 MB, or the Diablo 44 with twice the track density offering 12.5 MB. The manual specifies a ‘Type 5440’ top loading disk cartridge.

There may well have been other cartridge disk drives using the IBM 5440 disk pack design, including systems by NCR.

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ISI 525 WC Optical Storage System (1985 – late 1980s)

Around 1985, ISI (Information Storage Inc.) introduced their 525 WC Optical Storage System. This was one of a number of magneto-optical disc storage formats introduced in the mid-1980s, and allowed users to record data to an optical disc in the days before CD-R and CD-RW.

The 525 WC used the 5.25-inch disc format, allowing the drive to be installed internally in a PC with a full-height 5.25-inch floppy disk drive bay, or alternatively it could be purchased as an external drive.

Single-sided and double-sided discs were available, with a capacity of 115 or 230 MB respectively. The discs were pre-formatted, and were WORM (write-one, read many) capable.

In 1988, ISI introduced the 525-GB, an incompatible system that offered 600 MB per disc side (for 1.2 GB capacity on a double-sided disc).

Figures

Dimensions: 150 mm × 137.5 mm × 10.5 mm

Capacity: 115 MB to 230 MB

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Prinztronic Tournament VC6000 (1979 – early 1980s)

The Prinztronic Tournament VC6000 was a second-generation video game console introduced in the UK in 1979. Prinztronic was a brand name used by Dixons in the UK from 1972 to 1983, for electronic products such as calculators and video game consoles.

The console is a member of the 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System family, all of which are software compatible, but some of which use different shape or size cartridges. Cartridges for the Prinztronic system would also work in the Acetronic MPU-1000 and Radofin 1292 consoles in the family.

There were two controllers composed of a 12 keys keypad, two red fire buttons and an analogue joystick. The control panel had the same buttons found on all systems of the 1292 Advanced Programmable Video System family: Start, Load Programme, Game Select and on/off switch.

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Worlds of Wonder Action Max Game Video (1987 – 1988)

The Action Max was a game console that used VHS video cassettes (called ‘Game Videos’) for live action footage. It was introduced to the US market in 1987 by World of Wonder, a company that had distributed the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the US when it was first introduced.

To play Action Max, you needed a VHS video player to which the console was attached. The console also provided headphones, a light gun and a sensor to attach to the television screen.

The VHS cassettes contained no game data, just analogue live action game footage with special effects, music, and of course the targets to hit. The games were simple shooter games for one or two players, where the player needed to hit targets with the light gun. However, the footage didn’t change even if a target was hit, so for example in the bundled Sonic Fury game, planes might explode whether hit by the player or not. Scoring was by a simple LED counter on the console, and you could lose points by hitting a friendly target. A small built-in speaker played gunshot sounds, and the hit and miss signals – stereo music came from the VHS Game Video cassette and was normally played through the TV’s speaker.

Just five titles were released for the system, all of them being shooter type games due to the limitations of the Action Max system.

Worlds of Wonder filed for bankrupcy in 1988.

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110 film slides (1972 – 1982)

Kodak 110 film was a cartridge-based film format for still photography, introduced by Kodak in 1972 for use in its Pocket Instamatic cameras. Both Kodachrome-X and Ektachrome-X colour reversal films were initially available for colour slides.

110 films slides could be mounted in a standard 2 × 2 inch mount, like 35 mm slides and used in a standrard projector, but a 1 × 1 inch mount was available for Kodak Pocket Carousel projectors or the Leica 110 projector. The smaller mount size is much less common.

Kodachrome 110 slide film was available from Kodak until 1982 (it’s unclear if other brands of 110 slide film were available later) and Kodak stopped making 110 cameras around 1994. Lomography re-introduced 110 slide film in 2013, and also produces some 110 cameras for film enthusiasts.

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LaserDisc with teletext (1981 – late 1990s)

Teletext was a means of displaying text and basic graphics on a television that had the ability to decode the information. Invented in the early 1970s, the first major broadcaster to offer a broadcast teletext system was the BBC with its CEEFAX system formally launched in 1976.

In 1981, BBC Video released a LaserDisc called ‘The BBC Videobook of British Garden Birds’. Labelled as the ‘World’s first videobook’, as well as video of birds in flight and birdsong, the CEEFAX element allowed viewers to read additional information contained on the disc about each of the 70 birds covered.

The use of data on a home video format was said to have been significant in the development of the BBC Domesday project on LV-ROM disc.

After the British Garden Birds disc, teletext mainly appears to have been used in the 1990s to offer subtitles (sometimes in a choice of languages) on LaserDisc titles though there were some titles that had extra information on, such as Pioneer Cinema series that had background notes about the film.

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60-pin memory card (mid-1980s – early 1990s)

This design of card appears to have been a proprietary format introduced by Mitsubishi around the mid-1980s, and was possibly used by the NEC Ultralite and the Texas Instruments Travelmate, though it seems that despite using the same form factor, 60-pin cards were not interchangeable.

Mitsubishi appeared to have sold the design under the name Melcard (not to be confused with later PCMCIA cards under the same brand) and also used the card for internal use in various devices. These internal cards seem to have had a shutter covering the pins, rather then the pin holes of the removable cards.

The 60-pin design was also used for Hammond organ ROM cards, introduced in 1989.

The 60-pin memory card design is unrelated to the 68-pin JEIDA and PCMICA (PC Card) standards, which were unified in 1990 to avoid problems of incompatible memory card formats for sub-notebooks. Mitsubishi were part of the PC Memory Card International Association that defined the PC Card standard and went on to replace the 60-pin memory card.

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RCA TCR-100 (1969 – early 1980s)

The TCR-100 was a video playback and recording machine that used multiple cartridges of 2-inch Quadruplex video tape. Introduced in 1969 by RCA, it was designed for broadcasters to manage the playback of television commercials, or short pieces such as news items. The tape cartridges held anything from 10 seconds to 3 minutes worth of tape, and the machine held 22 cartridges.

As well as playback, the machine could record onto the cartridges, and create duplicate cartridges.

The TCR-100 used two tape transports, so as one cartridge was playing, the next tape could be loaded and cued up. Due to the time needed to cue up the next tape (about 12-13 seconds), 10 second tapes couldn’t be played back to back. The use of cartridges avoided the need to thread reels, and metal covers with a locking mechanism protected the tape surface.

Some models of RCA video recorders such as the TR60 and TR70 could interface directly with the TCR-100 in a master-slave configuration (other video recorders needed the SPU-100 signal processing unit to interface with the TCR-100).

TCR-100 cartridges were made by RCA themselves, along with 3M and Calico Video.

Although Quad video was superseded in the early 1980s, some TCR-100 machines were in use until the early 1990s.

A competitor system was the Ampex ACR-25, released in 1972.

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Olympia Micro-Disk (1977 – late 1980s)

The Micro-Disk (also labelled as Mikro-Disk or Micro-Disc) was a small floppy disk design used by Olympia for some of its electronic typewriters such as some models in the Supertype, Startype and Disque ranges.

Essentially it is a version of the single-sided 2.5-inch mylar Olivetti minidisc but instead of just a bare disk, the Olympia version houses it in a holder that helps protect the magnetic surface from fingerprints and also allows for a label to be inserted. It appears that the Olympia version held 8 KB of data.

It seems to have been introduced in 1977, the same year as the Olivetti minidisc, and the Olympia Micro-Disk was used in a standalone drive that had one slot for the disk being read and four more that appear to have been just to store disks in. Later, it appears that some Olivetti typewriter models such as the Supertype 240 and Disque had built-in drives.

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