Re: VECTOR: Laser Hack?

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 18:57:59 -0600, Mark Shostak <[email protected]> wrote:

>uP controlled? They all look like sine based images.
>The micro may only be controlling the speed and possibly the Z-axis.
>
>On the other hand, I have a clock that produces beautiful numbers IMHO,
>using a uP controlling a sine wave on a vector display, so you never know...
>
>-Mark
>
>On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 05:01:17PM -0700, Kurt Mahan wrote:
>> As I was paging through the daily pile of spam the postman delivers
>> (in preparation for dumping in the recycle bin) I glanced through 
>> the X-Treme Geek catalog.
>> 
>> There's an item called "Laser Launch" which projects patterns onto a 
>> surface via a laser and a processor controlled mirror.  Item: 250 0438
>> ($29.95US -- wonder if it's available cheaper elsewhere..)
>> 
>>     http://www.x-tremegeek.com/templates/searchdetail.asp?T1=250+0438
>> 
>> Has anybody hacked one of these?  I'm assuming the slew rate is a little
>> slow to run games on.  Maybe a vectrex hack?

I've seen this thing before. At one time I looked really hard into laser
projection, looking for ways of reprogramming the ZVG to be used for a laser.  

CRTs (including the Vectrex) are at *least* an order of magnitude faster than
even the fastest mirrors used to project laser patterns (at least they were a
couple of years ago).

The laser projectors were so slow I could easily reprogram the ZVG to work at
laser speeds, in fact they are much easier to control and much of the
electronics and firmware needed to create nice vectors on a CRT are lost on
laser projectors.

Anyone who saw LaserMAME could tell you that laser projected games are not
"smooth", very flickery, and that was a very expensive projector.

But I'm ready when a reasonably fast projector comes available, I'll throw some
ZVG firmware at it for some cheap laser vector games.

And yes, that vector clock is very cool!  It uses *curved* vectors, cooooooool!

-Zonn