I like it, thanks for sharing! 😁

Very cool!

It's nice to see some "proof of life" that light pens were actually a thing...

Note that some EGA cards also have a light pen header.

kdr wrote on 2021-03-25, 21:19:

Very cool!

It's nice to see some "proof of life" that light pens were actually a thing...

Note that some EGA cards also have a light pen header.

I do happen to have an EGA card with a header, but I am unsure if it would be compatible. It should, unless this light pen is very picky.

Good morning, everyone! 🙂
Can't we just make our own light pen?

I imagine, at the heart, all we need is a card board tube/tunnel and a photodiode/phototransistor mounted inside.

Or to be very oldschool, a selenium cell. 😉

Edit: Just noticed there's also a little blackbox.. What's its purpose?
Does it contain some sort of amplifier circuit, by chance?
It's just a wild guess. Maybe the manuals provide some hints.

Edit: How rude. I forgot.. Thank you very much for sharing! 👍

I'm a little confused. Light pens existed for IBM and Tandy, among others...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pen

I remember seeing some on eBay within the last few years, and they weren't that expensive, and there were several available. There isn't much info out there, but I've seen the cards and the pens with matching connectors.

I'm guessing I should have bought them at the time since now they are things of legend? 😀

EDIT: Wow, yeah, now I can't find a single thing that looks like what I saw back then. I had no idea they were unobtainium. Too bad... I was actually interested in grabbing one to use it on my old IBM, because why not? I wish I'd at least kept the pictures.

Someone did adapt one of the more common (but fairly expensive) ones that uses an RJ11 type jack to work on a CGA card, and even wrote a simple paint program to use it:
https://twitter.com/tubetimeus/status/1226320610009026563

Anyway, sorry for taking this lightly at first... the fact that you have a complete set is apparently pretty remarkable. It's possible that whatever I saw wasn't what it was advertised as and wasn't PC compatible after all.

Would it be possible to get some pictures of the little black adapter box? I've seen cards and boxes with no pen and I'm wondering if the box just accepts one of the basic RJ11 type pens.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2021-03-27, 03:02:

I'm a little confused. Light pens existed for IBM and Tandy, among others... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pen […]
Show full quote

I'm a little confused. Light pens existed for IBM and Tandy, among others...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pen

I remember seeing some on eBay within the last few years, and they weren't that expensive, and there were several available. There isn't much info out there, but I've seen the cards and the pens with matching connectors.

I'm guessing I should have bought them at the time since now they are things of legend? 😀

EDIT: Wow, yeah, now I can't find a single thing that looks like what I saw back then. I had no idea they were unobtainium. Too bad... I was actually interested in grabbing one to use it on my old IBM, because why not? I wish I'd at least kept the pictures.

Someone did adapt one of the more common (but fairly expensive) ones that uses an RJ11 type jack to work on a CGA card, and even wrote a simple paint program to use it:
https://twitter.com/tubetimeus/status/1226320610009026563

Anyway, sorry for taking this lightly at first... the fact that you have a complete set is apparently pretty remarkable. It's possible that whatever I saw wasn't what it was advertised as and wasn't PC compatible after all.

Would it be possible to get some pictures of the little black adapter box? I've seen cards and boxes with no pen and I'm wondering if the box just accepts one of the basic RJ11 type pens.

The black box appears to convert the RJ11 connector that the light pen uses to an internal header for the CGA card.

Also, would anybody be interested in manual scans?