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From: JOHN@SRI-CSL.ARPA (John McLean)
Newsgroups: net.micro.atari
Subject: Re: 80-column boards for 800 series
Message-ID: <8511162150.AA25285@ucbvax.berkeley.edu>
Date: Sat, 16-Nov-85 16:45:19 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.8511162150.AA25285
Posted: Sat Nov 16 16:45:19 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 18-Nov-85 06:50:38 EST
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I was one of the purchasers of the Austin Franklin 80-column boards (about
2 years ago, as I recall.  I had ordered and received one board but was
sucessfull at getting it working only for about 1 hour.  (The board "died"
shortly after.)  As I recall, the images were very clear and readable on
my monitor.  I don't have the documentation at hand, but I think that the
characters were somehing like 6 or 7 pixels wide.

Austin Franklin Associates went belly-up shortly after I received my card
and therefore, I was unable to secure repair or refund of my purchase price
(approx $300) from the company.  And AF Associates wasn't willing to provide
schematics so that I could troubleshoot my board.  So I sent the board back
and went through the legal procedures for getting my credit card company
to refund my purchase price and go after AF Associates.  (I did eventually
receive a refund thru my credit card company.)

The board had a direct video output (to the monitor) and (I assume) used some
kind of FET switch to change from standard Atari video to 80 column video.

I have been a user of the Omniview for about 1 year now and find it to be
a very good product.  Yes, the characters are a bit difficult to read and
I'd rather use a terminal if its available.  But the Omniview is a very clever
modification to a machine that was never intended (by its designers) to
be an 80 column text machine.

John McLean
Convergent Technologies              408-945-6776

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