Mullard SAA5050

[1] The SAA5050 was used in teletext-equipped television sets, viewdata terminals, and microcomputers, most notably on computers like the Philips P2000 (1980), Acorn System 2 (1980), BBC Micro (1982), Malzak and the Poly-1,[2] and Prestel adapters like the AlphaTantel.

Compared to other alternative chips, the SAA5050 implemented the original World System Teletext teletext standard (Level 1), which had no provision to set black for the foreground text colour.

Some alternative chips at the time did allow this, as became formalized in the 1981 CEPT videotex standard.

In addition to the UK version, several variants of the chip existed with slightly different character sets for particular localizations and/or languages.

These had part numbers SAA5051 (German),[6] SAA5052 (Swedish),[7] SAA5053 (Italian), SAA5054 (Belgian), SAA5055 (U.S. ASCII), SAA5056 (Hebrew) and SAA5057 (Cyrillic).

A 1979 SAA5050 in a VDU card for Acorn Eurocard systems
Printed circuit board used in a Philips Viewdata unit, featuring a SAA5050 character generator.
Level 1 teletext block characters and colours