PRESERVING THE HISTORY OF THE RADIO SHACK VIDEOTEX & ALL THINGS RELATED
Project Green Thumb was an "experimental videotext project" by the Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service and the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture" in 1980.
Motorola Semiconductor of Austin, Texas, won the contract for the user terminals and Tandy's Computer Division joined later to manufacture the terminals.
The initial goal of this project was to create a low cost Videotex terminal for farmers, ranchers, and others in the agricultural industry. This terminal would connect to a phone line and an ordinary color television and allow the user access to near-real-time information useful to their day-to-day operations on the farm.
Motorola's MC6847 Video Display Generator (VDG) chip was released about the time the joint venture started. The 1978 prototype "Green Thumb" terminal used the MC6847 and the Motorola 6809 microprocessor.
NEW!
Recently, Jerry Heep donated many of his Tandy Engineering technical documents, samples and other items.
During our audit of the items, we realized that included was the original schematic (Revision 0.0) of the "Motorola Information Terminal" - which would become the Green Thumb Box.