The Character Generator Tester in action 👾
Discover how an Apple-1 or Apple ][ generates a single character for display.
Inspired by Don Lancaster's famous article about a tiny self-made display, attached to an ASCII Keyboard (Popular Electronics, issue April 1974).
The character is shown on a 5x7 dot matrix display. The binary row addressis indicated by LEDs and you can see how the display is being built up by stepping through the 7 horizontal scan lines. The clock speed can be adjusted from 0.6 Hz to 800 Hz.
Connect an Apple 1 or Apple II keyboard directly using the DIP-16 connectors, or use the ASCII data in pins. Verify the ASCII input to the character generator using the character address LEDs.
A power supply with +5V and -12V is needed as a minimum. The -5V is regulated on the board itself.
Provide +12V when this voltage is needed by the attached keyboard. Supported character generators: Signetics 2513, 2316B, 2716 EPROMs and 2816 EEPROMs.