The SHARP VP-ES1 Video Printer
Added 2020-01-26 14:05:16 +0000 UTC
Working on another tutorial, this time on a very obsolete piece of hardware, the Sharp VP-ES1 Video Printer (also known as the (GZ-P15 in the US)
The reason I say very obsolete is due to the fact this printer used a proprietary ink and paper, both of witch are obviously not produced anymore. I have managed to track down a couple of Sharp VP-ES1 printers online that include the ink and paper, but the prices are very high.
I bought my VP-ES1 on eBay for £3, it had no documentation or accessories and it was listed as spares since the person could not test it. I got it because it was so cheap and though "maybe i could find ink for this one day" I quickly realised the chances of that happening were very slim. So I had a pretty useless piece of tech laying around, I wanted to try and circuit bend this so it could be artistically useful or at least produce something that is cool to look at. Video printers take one frame of the composite video signal and store it in memory so it can be printed. I figured that whatever memory chip it had in it was a good place to start looking for bends.
I took it apart and noted down most of the IC part numbers on the circuit boards and found datasheets for most of them apart from the proprietary SHARP chips. The two notable chips I found on the board are a M514260A CMOS dynamic RAM chip and a CXA1645M RBG decoder.
These two chips are where we will solder in mods. the RAM chip makes a lot of great digital glitches and the RGB decoder makes some more analog style glitches. Due to the way this printer processes the video signal, you can not glitch real time video, instead you capture a frame and can glitch that out instead. I'm currently noting down and creating diagrams of the mods on each chip, and the guide should be done in a week or so.
Stay tuned!
