VAX graphics

[Johnny Billquist]

Pontus Pihlgren <pontus at Update.UU.SE> wrote:

> Hi All.
> 
> I just stumbled upon this video of a computer tablet:
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPC_w9yYe5M
> 
> They show a VAX-11/780 with RP06 and TU70 (I think) and claim its doing 
> the graphics. But I'm curious, what terminal and software is used? Does 
> anyone have a clue?

Nice stuff.
Interesting to see the speculations of people around here.

The tape drive is a TU77 or TU78, which you should know Pontus... ;-)
My guess would be a TU77 though.

Anyway, no, the graphics is not DEC. And no, it's not a serial 
connection. If you ever tried doing bitmap graphics over a serial line 
you should all realize that a high resolution picture like that would 
take a very long time to download over a serial line, even at 19200. And 
by 1986 you didn't have any faster serial ports on a Unibus-machine.

Also, DEC didn't have any high-resolution hardware for Unibus. The 
closes was the VS11, VS60 and that kind of stuff. And those don't get 
close to the type of resolution, number of colors, or speed of this 
thing. DEC did play with a few tablets for the VAX stations by this 
time, but hadn't come that far.

So, yes, this is a third party thing.

The two companies that springs to my mind here are Intergraph, who did 
CAD systems based on VAXen. They usually based their systems on the 
VAX-11/750, but I don't think there was any technical reason that an 
11/780 shouldn't be possible as well.

The other is Evans and Sutherland, who specialized in high performance 
graphic subsystems. My guess would be that this was some E&S graphic 
system, but it's hard to tell, since I never actually saw any of their 
stuff in real life. But I think it was/is a whole bunch of cards on the 
Unibus, and video cables to a color monitor. And of course input ports 
for keyboard and tablet.

There might have been other players around as well.

But I know of no DEC hardware that could produce better than aboout 
256x256 on Unibus machines, and only with a very limited palette.

And it's definitely not a VT-whatever. The "best" VT-terminal, in terms 
of graphic is the VT340, which have a fair resolution of about 240x800 
(roughly from memory), but at most 16 colors, out of a palette of 4096. 
But it's also newer than 1986, and don't look like that at all.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol