MidTerm Associates -- Merlin Video Board This was a relatively early
entry to the S100 board market. It appeared around 1978 and was well
advertized. It was a fairly advanced video board at the time utilizing
mostly TTL logic chips and thus requiring a two board set configuration.
The MERLIN board was designed as a software
programmable display and was, therefore, dependent on software for control.
In the most common usage of MERLIN, the "MERLIN BASIC INTELLIGENCE (MEl)
ROM" was used and had to be purchased to provide this software control. The
MEl software was programmed to accept command input from a modified ASCII
keyboard via MERLIN's on-board keyboard port. Neither the MBI ROM nor
keyboard input through the on-board port was required however for operation
of the MERLIN Video Interface. The keyboard and ROM were simply the most
direct and easiest approach to a fully get a fully operational video
terminal. The manual and quite detailed construction notes
for this board can be obtained
here.
The software manual can be obtained
here.
