Cable Forum - General Building an analogue cable TV network at home

Hi folks,

Last year I randomly bought an old Scientific Atlanta 8602 box from eBay as it reminded me of the box I had from Nynex back in the mid-late 90s and I thought it'd look cool with the few CRTs and retro consoles I've got setup. I'd completely forgotten about it until tidying up a few weekends ago, so I unboxed it, hooked it up, one thing led to another, and (for reasons anyone is still yet to comprehend), I've decided to build a mini analogue 90s cable TV network in my house.

(warning: super geeky technical stuff ahead)

Obviously it's a bit of a longshot asking if anyone happens to have the Scientific Atlanta System Manager, 8658 series headend controller, or an 8656 scrambler in their shed, but if you happened to be working at one of the cable co's around the late 90s, I'd love to hear your memories, war stories, and any tech info you remember.

Sadly, manuals and documentation are a bit thin on the ground, and no doubt most of it got lost over the years or was never scanned. However, I do have a few interesting PDFs which have helped me understand how it all worked, the channels/frequencies used, etc.

I think I've got my head around the basics of the in-band signalling for the 8602s, and have an understanding of the different command streams - just no real clue as to how to send that information (I understand it's AM modulated on the FM sound carriers). The box I have is somewhat locked out to three channels, so I'm planning to try and dump the EEPROM and have a play when I get a chance so I can manually manipulate the channel table.

(end of super technical geeky stuff)

I'm planning on documenting my project - and maybe even a YouTube video or two - I'll share details soon.

In the meantime, I'd love to hear your memories of analogue cable TV - if you've got an old box, or some old channel guides, VHS captures, or anything - please let me know.