at least from today’s point of view. This is the Kodak DisplayMaker Video Graphics System,

sold for $1,995 in 1988 by the Eastman Kodak Company. And it is, effectively, a PC-like

computer system that doesn’t run DOS, but instead is 100% committed to producing and

displaying graphical slide show presentations. Yeah, kinda like PowerPoint but in dedicated

hardware form, that’s all this thing does. It was recently donated to me by an LGR viewer

named Paul, who found it at a Goodwill thrift store for ten bucks, seemingly unused. Ya

gotta wonder how a device like this ends up not being used for over thirty years and eventually

ends up on my table, because this thing wasn’t exactly a cheap consumer device. As described

on the packaging, the main sector Kodak was aiming to please was the business, sales,

engineering, and educational markets. The whole idea was that the DisplayMaker could

act as a digital alternative to otherwise analog presentations, augmenting or replacing

the old methods of overhead projector transparencies or making 35mm slides for use in a carousel

slide projector. And seeing as it was meant to be used with TVs, computer monitors, and

projectors, it could even be used as digital signage, something to be set up in a store

window or wherever your business needed an automated display. So why didn’t it take

off? After all, I know I’d never heard of it, and information online is scarce at best.

Well, being that this is a digital Kodak device it’s no surprise that their timing and execution

were both a bit off. By 1988, the DisplayMaker was just one device among several computerized

presentation options on the market. As one employee of Audio Visual Systems put it,

the DisplayMaker was known to them as “the poor man’s VideoShow,” he doesn’t recall

them ever actually selling one, and potential clients who weren’t comfortable with computers

didn’t want anything to do with it. So what was the VideoShow, you may ask? Well that

was the premiere automated graphical slide show presentation system of its day, having

been introduced by General Parametrics in 1984. The VideoShow 160 was on the market

by 1988 competing directly against the DisplayMaker and it outperformed it in nearly every way.

More features, higher resolution, greater support, and an advertising campaign featuring

the praises of companies like Reader’s Digest, Pfizer, and Charles Schwab. Granted, it cost

over twice as much at $4,595, but either way the Kodak DisplayMaker seemed like a real

compromise by comparison. Kodak didn’t even really seem to advertise it directly, beyond

a press release or two when it first launched. Mostly they just mentioned it in passing alongside

other devices, like the LC500 video projector system. Combine all of that with PowerPoint

having hit the market in 1987 and ballooning in popularity, alongside a multitude of desktop

presentation graphics programs and compact in-office film printers, and Kodak’s DisplayMaker

hardware never had a great chance at success.

[Computer Chronicles narrator] -To make his presentations more interesting,

he starts out drawing his ideas by hand. Then he uses presentation graphics software like

PowerPoint to create the graphics and text on his computer. Then instead of going out

to a service bureau to prepare slides, Dr. Markison prints his computer graphics directly

onto film with a Mirus film printer.

[LGR] -However, that makes this thing all the more fascinating

to me, because now that I know it exists and barely anyone’s heard of it, ahh I can’t

wait to dive in and see what it can do! As mentioned earlier, this particular example

does not appear to have been used before, although it’s definitely been opened and

rifled through over the years. The main way you can tell is because of the way it is,

with many of the key components like floppy disks and cables still being sealed and even

stuck to the packaging. But yeah, you get a beefy spiral-bound manual with a quartet

of high density 5.25” floppy disks, an infrared remote control for controlling the system

remotely using a wavelength just greater than that of the red end of the visible light spectrum,

the system itself which we’ll get to momentarily, a composite video cable and a standard IEC

power cable, and a light blue Kodak registration card that rewards you with a free FLING camera,

ooh a value of $6.95. It even comes with a set of four AAA batteries, tucked away inside

the styrofoam inserts here. Surprise surprise, they’ve all started leaking, but oh well.

Still neat to see these late 80s Kodak Xtralife batteries. Anyone else kinda like old batteries?

I dunno, I just think they’re neat. Finally we’ve got the DisplayMaker itself, a tidy-looking

system weighing in at 8 pounds and measuring 11¼ x 10¼ x 3¼ inches. It’s got a colorful

64-key QWERTY keyboard on top and a 1.2 megabyte 5.25” floppy disk drive on the front beside

the infrared receiver. The personal computer similarities continue around back. Starting

on the bottom right there’s the power connector, a satisfying red power switch, an RF video

output port, composite video out, RGB-TTL video out for connecting it to a CGA-compatible

monitor, an RGB analog output for connecting to displays using SCART or BNC sockets, and

two ports that aren’t used normally. The RS-232 serial port is for connecting an optional

serial printer or the Kodak DisplayMaker Graphics Tablet, and the video/audio in port is for

using with the DisplayMaker Video Capture Interface, allowing you to digitize still

video frames. Along the bottom there’s not much to see, though you do get this little

pull-out stand to prop the machine up at an angle. Feels ridiculously flimsy though, can’t

say I’ll be using that. Speaking of flimsy, this keyboard is absolutely awful. [laughs]

I mean, that should be no surprise, just look at the thing. It reminds me of the keys on

a Mattel Aquarius or a Timex Sinclair 2068. Tiny little plasticky things that barely move,

squishing down against a stiff rubber membrane that feels like garbage. Yeeaaaah, it’s

no wonder Kodak also sold an additional wireless keyboard accessory with better keys, because

this is not ideal. Going through the manual it looks like the setup process is super simple,

it really does seem similar to a mid-80s PC-compatible. But man, I am really glad this thing came

with all the documentation too, because after the initial setup there’s a whole crapload

of commands and settings that I don’t know how long it would’ve taken me to figure

out otherwise. But yeah, the video cable it comes with is for composite output, with RCA

on one end and a BNC connection on the other. They also included a handy little F-type adapter

for using the same cable with a TV’s RF connection, so that’s nice. We’re not

gonna be using any of that though, because this is LGR and I have far too many awesome

monitors to stick with composite video. For this I’m going with the classic IBM 5154

Enhanced Color Display, which is an EGA compatible screen that’ll work nicely with the DisplayMaker’s

digital TTL output. So the monitor cable goes in right there, power cable goes next to that,

and using this handy monitor stand the whole thing slides neatly underneath the CRT leaving

the keyboard and disk drive exposed. Ahh, I love it! All right, it’s finally time

to get it all powered on and start presenting some presentations.

[power switches on, fan and disk drive whirs to life]

Aw yeah, we got an error message! A good one though, this

is simply asking for a boot disk. Yep, just like earlier DOS PCs, the DisplayMaker does

not have a hard drive or any kind of ROM to boot from, and instead relies completely on

floppy disks to function. And with that in place, awww haha, just look at it!

Introducing DISPLAYMAKER! I love that gaudy intro screen, it’s the perfect blend of retro appeal

and 80s cheese. “Welcome to the DisplayMaker Introductory Disk!” So yeah we’re running

the demonstration disk right here, which takes you through a variety of sample slides showing

off what the system can do and the basics of presentation. Things like how to use the

remote control to navigate slide shows and enabling the on-screen pointer. Anyway, the

rest of the demo disk is just a bunch of slides demoing what the thing can do, and dang it

this stuff makes me happier than it should. I know it’s only a bunch of 16-color static

imagery, mostly line drawings and low-res artwork. But ahh, look how cool it looks!

Razor-sharp pixels and vibrant colors and graphs! So many graphs! It even has a slide

demonstrating the capabilities of the optional capture device, which I mean, that’s pretty

sweet for 1988. I’ve got a ComputerEyes device that produces similar results I need

to show off sometime. Anyway, moving onto the master disk now, which is where all the

actual productivity happens. And the first order of business is to format a work disk

so you’re not overwriting the master disk. What this does is blanks out a floppy and

writes back the entire master disk to it, so that way you have the actual software and

the storage for your projects all in one spot. This was the main appeal of the DisplayMaker,

the fact that you’d get a complete package of hardware and software that could both generate

and display slideshows without requiring a separate personal computer. As opposed to

say, the VideoShow where you needed a PC to run software that could generate slides to

be loaded onto a floppy disk and transferred to the VideoShow afterward. But the DisplayMaker,

that does it all in one spot, both to its advantage and to its detriment. Heh, you see,

creating absolutely anything at all on this dreadful keyboard with this clunky software

is an experience I do not wish upon anyone. An IBM Model M, this is not. I assume this

would be improved using the Kodak drawing pad and external keyboard, but as it is by

default it’s not great. And yes I also tried a serial mouse to see if it supported that,

but nope, no such luck. And that’s only the hardware side of things, there’s also

the software itself. I’ve got plenty of experience with 80s productivity packages,

from Lotus 1-2-3 to Print Shop Deluxe and whatever else. But this DisplayMaker suite

is a nightmare by comparison. Sure, you’re given a ton of freedom to create most anything

you want, from filled shapes, to line drawings, to text boxes, all with 16 colors to choose

from. But placing any of it is slow and cumbersome, not to mention unintuitive as nuts. The manual

includes tutorials, but there’s still a steep learning curve in understanding which

keyboard keys perform what function, the context of each key doing what it’s supposed to,

and the menus and screens that allow for specific functions. Much of that is not stated on-screen

at all, so it’s a matter of constantly referencing the manual until you learn the routines by

repetition. And it’s not always consistent in the keys used either. Sometimes the return

key enables a tool or menu, sometimes it’s the select key, then it’s the spacebar,

other times it’s none of the above and it’s the menu key. Then there’s the chart creation

tools, and ooh boy. Once again, it’s not clear at all what you have to press in order

to get the next menu, and even reading the manual I still found myself brute forcing

my way through in order to get some variables it actually knew what to do with. Ah well,

eventually I got the hang of everything. Between the finicky menu system, the lack of on-screen

button context prompts, and the keyboard itself feeling like a rejected Playskool toy, it

ended up taking about an hour to create two slides. [gleeful chuckling] Once you do get

some slides made though, referred to as displays, they have to be written to a projection disk

in order to be shown off with the remote and stuff. It then slowly renders your display

files as static slides and writes them to the projection disk. Boot up that disk and

there ya go, you’ve got a display that you can manually flip through or set it to automatically

play on repeat. Fun! Was it worth it?

[chuckles] Apparently not since pretty much no one bought

these things it seems. Still though, I find the DisplayMaker immensely fascinating, with

its colorful low-res graphics and PC-like operation. Speaking of which, let’s open

‘er up and see what’s going on inside! With a handful of rather long bolts outta

the way it’s easy to access the internals. The bottom half contains the power supply

and the disk drive, the latter of which is a standard Chinon FZ-506 commonly found on

clone PCs. The mainboard is clamped to the top half of the case underneath the keyboard,

packing a bunch of familiar stuff if you’re into 80s PCs. For one thing, the CPU is an

Intel 8088-2. I’m not sure of the speed here, but when Tandy used them in the 1000

SX and HX computers they were 7.16 MHz. There’s also a Western Digital WD2793A-PL disk controller

chip, again commonplace on PCs past the XT era. Then there’s this lovely-looking gold

and ceramic chip, an NEC D7220. This is the system’s graphics display controller and

is the same chip used in computers like the NEC PC-9801 and the Epson QX-10, among others.

As far as the amount of RAM in here it’s obviously enough to keep the DisplayMaker

software loaded, at least 512K judging by the number of DRAM chips. And in case you’re

wondering, no, it does not run DOS. I tried both PC-DOS 3.3 and MS-DOS 5 with no luck,

meaning that despite appearances it is not actually a PC clone or even MS-DOS compatible

out of the box. Likewise, the disks themselves aren’t readable on a PC, only showing disk

formatting prompts whether looked at on DOS or Windows environments. Bit of a shame but

alas. That’s about it for the DisplayMaker! It’s just like a PC but it’s not, it was

super useful except when it was a pain to use, and it’s yet another Kodak device that

was too little too late to make much of an impact because other products were already

doing it better by the time it hit the market. At the same time though, I think this thing

is kind of awesome in a nostalgically blind way, and despite the keyboard being painful

to use it certainly gives it a unique aesthetic. I do wonder if with modifications it could

run PC software but yeah, that’s it for this video and I hope you enjoyed this look

back at a bit of retro computing tech. If you did then LGR’s the place for you! I’ve

got a buncha related stuff I’ve covered already and have plenty more to come in the

future with new videos every week. And as always, thank you very much for watching!