Lets Start the Family UD???

[milkeyway1000]

On some website a seen a funny pic from the Ray Combs FF that Ray and the contestant were staring up at the board and it said "FAMILY UD" the "FE" was missing. Here it is:

[barneyg]

milkeyway1000 said:

On some website a seen a funny pic from the Ray Combs FF that Ray and the contestant were staring up at the board and it said "FAMILY UD" the "FE" was missing. i couldnt find the pic again, but there is and example of a screen shot i took that i edited:

The website was either Kyle's or Jerry's FAMILY FEUD web site.

[TV Favorites]

I'm pretty sure that it was on Jerry's Website. I have that episode on tape; unfortunately, it's boxed up right now so I can't get it.

[vegitoth]

To be honest with you I cant see a thing

[milkeyway1000]

TV said:

I'm pretty sure that it was on Jerry's Website. I have that episode on tape; unfortunately, it's boxed up right now so I can't get it.

What part of the show did it say "Family UD"? What do you think caused it to say that? and would there be anyway of getting it out and getting a clip on the pc?

[Todd Robinson]

milkeyway1000 said:

What part of the show did it say "Family UD"? What do you think caused it to say that? and would there be anyway of getting it out and getting a clip on the pc?

I'm not an expert in the kind of electronics it takes to run a display board such as the one used for the first two versions of Family Feud but I may can offer a bit of insight.

The program that's run by the display's driver (the driver being the computer that updates/refreshes the board) that animates the Family Feud logo inverts the logo from yellow on black to black on yellow. Each time it changes over, it divides the whole board into four quadrants and starts changing the first character in each quadrant at the same time. The word FEUD takes up the two lower quadrants of the board. It would be logical to assume that there was a program glitch on the driver that caused all quadrants to update properly except for the lower-left quadrant, leaving the F and the E blank. What caused the glitch, I really can't say.

I have an episode I recorded to DVD of an even worse glitch than this one. It was sometime during 1980 on the syndicated show. Back in 1980, of course, the driver was programmed to update the board as one complete board instead of the four quadrant method used in 1988. As it started updating the first line of characters, it appeared to start writing the first line of the F and A in FAMILY...when it's actually supposed to do this on the second line. It did the same thing on the fourth line; it tried to write the F and E on the fourth line instead of the fifth where it belonged. When the board was finished being updated by the driver, it looked pretty bad. I'll post a pic of this sometime.

I should point out that these driver glitches are not the same kind of problems the board has when it leaves some of the individual dots on. If you watch the show even on a casual basis, you know exactly what I'm talking about. During Fast Money, the board isometimes littered with little dots that shouldn't be on. What's happening there is the flip-dots get stuck and can't turn over. (Those aren't light blubs; each individual cell that makes up a single character is a magnetic disk that turns when the electromagnetic poles switch polarity.) The fix for the stuck dots is a little bit of oil.

That's probably too much information...next time this comes up I'll explain why the characters can't all be updated at the same time with the flip of a switch.

[TV Favorites]

Todd said:

I have an episode I recorded to DVD of an even worse glitch than this one. It was sometime during 1980 on the syndicated show. Back in 1980, of course, the driver was programmed to update the board as one complete board instead of the four quadrant method used in 1988. As it started updating the first line of characters, it appeared to start writing the first line of the F and A in FAMILY...when it's actually supposed to do this on the second line. It did the same thing on the fourth line; it tried to write the F and E on the fourth line instead of the fifth where it belonged. When the board was finished being updated by the driver, it looked pretty bad. I'll post a pic of this sometime.

Do you know the names of the families from this episode?

In case anyone wants to see if they have the original episode in question, the game is Lang vs. Carcioppolo, CBS Daytime episode from 1990.

[Todd Robinson]

It was the Okerblom family VS the Scarpetta family. Give me a few minutes and I think I'll have a pic up for you.

[Todd Robinson]

Here we go. When the show first opened and the board spun around to the computer display board, here's what it looked like after it finished updating the board image very skiddishly...



Notice the letter "C" in the first position of the fourth line. Interesting. Also, look at the first line a little bit closer. Part of it looks like the top-right edge of an F and part of the upper line of "AMI" of "FAMILY." The fouth line exibits the same kind of behavior. It looks like the top portion of the "EUD" in "FEUD."

Before they started the first round, they evidently tried to run the logo inverting program again because some of the characters look like they've been changed. Here's a shot of what it looked like when they went to commercial:



Notice the letter "I" in the second position on the first line. Very interesting.

When they returned from their first commercial break, the board looked perfect as it displayed the usual yellow-on-black FAMILY FEUD logo we're so used to. Everything seemed to be going fine until the bank wouldn't display a score. After one of the families won the bank, their score wouldn't update either. Until the end of the game, neither the bank or family scores worked. They stayed frozen in the state they were left in when the cut to the first commercial. This provides pretty good evidence that there is one driver running the big board as well as the bank and family score displays as they all seemed to have problems at the same time.

Because it looks like some strings of characters were simply misplaced, it wouldn't be too far fetched to believe there was some kind of memory addressing issue. That would be my PC-tech experience talking.

By the way, by the time they got to Fast Money, everything computerized seemed to work 100%. So whatever the problem was, they must have had it fixed.

Hope you've enjoyed the info!

[milkeyway1000]

all i can say about those pics..yuk....what did Richard think of it?

[Todd Robinson]

milkeyway1000 said:

all i can say about those pics..yuk....what did Richard think of it?

He didn't mention anything about the distorted display board. When the score didn't update, he did say to a family member, "your bank has been stolen but don't let that bother you," and kept on going. He appeared a little frustrated when the score didn't update when the families captured thei banks but he just read the scores from cue cards and kept on going.

It's funny that a few episodes before this one, the sound effects sounded too high-pitched. Maybe I can make a short video.

[milkeyway1000]

yeah do that!!! Thank You!!! ;D ;D it would be neat....

[TV Favorites]

Todd, I think you are correct about one computer controlling both the fast money display board and the score displays. During 1984 and 1985, there seemed to be many problems with both the FM board & the scoreboards and they would often display garbled messages during the intro. I guess the equipment was starting to wear out and by that time, they knew the show was on its way out so they didn't want to replace.

[Grey]

TV said:

I'm pretty sure that it was on Jerry's Website. I have that episode on tape; unfortunately, it's boxed up right now so I can't get it.

And where, pray tell, would that website be?

[TV Favorites]

It's no longer on the web (at least at the last address I have for it).