Development of classic Maracana Stadium's electronic scoreboard on MSX 1 and screen 0.
1. Introduction   Once I was born and live in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the soccer games were very present in my life in the 1980's and 1990's. In that age, the Maracana Stadium host great games and players such as Zico, Bebeto, Roberto Dinamite, Romario etc.
  Beyond the game passion, another thing called me attention: the electronic scoreboard. The nice scoreboard was composed by incandescent light bulbs which could generate shapes, pictures and animations such as the 8-bit machines from that years. This remind me another passion of mine - the MSX. So, each time a goal was scored, the scoreboard animation reminded me the Konami's Soccer game, most of the goalkeeper sat on the floor.
  Since those years, I tried to recreate that scoreboard on my MSX to make me feel inside the stadium. Thus, only today after my programming skills and MSX knowledge improvements, I was able to create animations and could add the stadium's narrator speaking "Suderj informa", which means "Suderj informs". Suderj was the stadium's governmental administer.
  In the section Basic MarMSX, you can find a simpler version of this scoreboard. But now, animations and digitized voice were added to a screen 0 scoreboard.
  I hope you like this new version of the Maracana's scoreboard.
2. The Maracana scoreboard   The first electronic scoreboard installed in the legendary Brazilian soccer stadium Maracana was in 1979. That score board had about 23 x 2,86 meters, having three distinct areas. Today, a modified version of this score board is located at America-RJ stadium [1].
Maracana scoreboard layout - by Marcelo Silveira.

  On the left side is the general information area, which had 120 x 32 light bulbs. On the center we have the clock and the game time. On the right side, the game score. Each number is represented by 4 x 7 light bulbs, whereas the place used to hold the teams' name had 60 x 7 light bulbs.
  This layout was created by me from a high resolution photo found in the Internet.

Source:
1. http://www.suderj.rj.gov.br/detalhe_noticia.asp?ident=185 3. How the scoreboard was made   This scoreboard was developed in Basic and uses the MSX 1 screen 0. The pictures and animations shown by the scoreboard are 6x8 character mosaics, switched by an Assembly routine.

  The user starts by giving the name of the two teams. If one or both teams correspond to one of the four famous Rio de Janeiro's soccer teams Flamengo, Fluminense, Vasco or Botafogo, the badge of this team is shown at the presentation time. The instructions for operating the scoreboard are shown at the starting screen.

  By clicking here you can read more details about the program's development.
4. Requirements   The "placar" program needs a MSX 1 with 16 KB of VRAM.

  The developed tool called gif2dump, which converts gif images to MSX screen, needs an operating system with Java installed.
  To compile the file "gif2dump.java", type in the PC command line:

javac gif2dump.java

  After that, type the following to convert your art to MSX screen:

java gif2dump telas.gif telas.grp

  This will generate a MSX screen 0 file from the model called "gabarito.gif" that you have drawn the screens.

java gif2dump -gabarito

  This option generates a new empty model "gabarito.gif". 5. Downloads   The program to convert pictures to screen 0 was developed in Java. A Java program needs an operating system with Java installed on it.


  Author: Marcelo Silveira
  License: GNU-GPL v. 3.x - http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt.