From bh@abbenay.cs.berkeley.edu Wed Jan 3 19:11:34 PST 2001 Article: 2928 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news2.best.com!news-hog.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!agate.berkeley.edu!agate!abbenay.CS.Berkeley.EDU!not-for-mail From: bh@abbenay.cs.berkeley.edu (Brian Harvey) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Demise and alt futures of the PDP-10 Date: 29 Dec 2000 09:15:06 -0800 Organization: University of California, Berkeley, Computer Science Division Lines: 24 Message-ID: <92igqq$fmp$1@abbenay.CS.Berkeley.EDU> References: <3a43c9e5.3140062@news.m.iinet.net.au> <3A4AA216.C972A990@bellatlantic.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: abbenay.cs.berkeley.edu X-Trace: agate.berkeley.edu 978110107 29461 128.32.35.58 (29 Dec 2000 17:15:07 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@berkeley.edu NNTP-Posting-Date: 29 Dec 2000 17:15:07 GMT Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:2928 Mark Crispin writes: >It's amazing how closely they pay attention to what the customers are >saying. It's almost as if they had a corporate policy of "if you hear >someone making a comment about a missing feature in our software, make >sure that feature is in the next release." No wonder Evil Empireware >bloats. Well, not quite all the customers. They actually sent an official Education Representative to my office (not just me, making the rounds at Berkeley CS), and I told him to make the Help feature work even if you have your colors set to white on black, and that was many years ago, and it still doesn't work. (You might think that given the helpfuless of MS help messages it would be an improvement to see them in black-on-black, but the trouble is that third party software developers use MS Help too.) > The GIGI, which the Atari 800 ran circles around. This gave me a smile. At my high school computer lab we had both GIGIs and Atari 800s as graphics terminals for our Unix machine (because we got them both free -- graphics terminals cost way too much back then). The Ataris were definitely easier to program, but the GIGIs had better resolution, so you could edit text on them, too; the Ataris were useless for text with only 40 columns. And the GIGIs came with that cool screen print feature. From rpw3@rigden.engr.sgi.com Wed Jan 3 19:16:02 PST 2001 Article: 2953 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!newsfeed.mathworks.com!news.sgi.com!fido.engr.sgi.com!rigden.engr.sgi.com!rpw3 From: rpw3@rigden.engr.sgi.com (Rob Warnock) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Demise and alt futures of the PDP-10 Date: 30 Dec 2000 09:20:10 GMT Organization: Silicon Graphics Inc., Mountain View, CA Lines: 30 Message-ID: <92k9ca$j9bln$1@fido.engr.sgi.com> References: <3a43c9e5.3140062@news.m.iinet.net.au> <92igqq$fmp$1@abbenay.CS.Berkeley.EDU> NNTP-Posting-Host: rigden.engr.sgi.com X-Trace: fido.engr.sgi.com 978168010 20229815 163.154.34.115 (30 Dec 2000 09:20:10 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@fido.engr.sgi.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 30 Dec 2000 09:20:10 GMT Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:2953 Mark Crispin wrote: +--------------- | On 29 Dec 2000, Brian Harvey wrote: | > the GIGIs had better resolution, so you could edit text on them, too | | Ah yes, but what if you tried to do any *color* graphics? Your GIGI | resolution quickly went south because they didn't have enough memory to do | resolution *and* color. +--------------- Actually, the luminance resolution (foreground/background switches per distance) stayed the same, but the GIGI could only change foreground colors every 12 pixels, since the frame buffer used some cute intermingled encoding of luminance & colors[*]. That worked reasonably well if you used only fixed-width fonts that were 12 pixels wide (including inter-character spacing), but was useless for colored proportional fonts or arbitrary pictures/graphics. -Rob [*] IIRC, a flag bit, a 3-bit foreground color, and 12 foreground/background pixels per 16-bit word, or something like that, with the flag bit saying whether a 12-pixel time was video data or H/V sync. Or some such... ----- Rob Warnock, 31-2-510 rpw3@sgi.com SGI Network Engineering http://reality.sgi.com/rpw3/ 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy. Phone: 650-933-1673 Mountain View, CA 94043 PP-ASEL-IA From rpw3@rigden.engr.sgi.com Wed Jan 3 19:17:01 PST 2001 Article: 2953 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!news1.best.com!newsfeed.mathworks.com!news.sgi.com!fido.engr.sgi.com!rigden.engr.sgi.com!rpw3 From: rpw3@rigden.engr.sgi.com (Rob Warnock) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Demise and alt futures of the PDP-10 Date: 30 Dec 2000 09:20:10 GMT Organization: Silicon Graphics Inc., Mountain View, CA Lines: 30 Message-ID: <92k9ca$j9bln$1@fido.engr.sgi.com> References: <3a43c9e5.3140062@news.m.iinet.net.au> <92igqq$fmp$1@abbenay.CS.Berkeley.EDU> NNTP-Posting-Host: rigden.engr.sgi.com X-Trace: fido.engr.sgi.com 978168010 20229815 163.154.34.115 (30 Dec 2000 09:20:10 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@fido.engr.sgi.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 30 Dec 2000 09:20:10 GMT Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:2953 Mark Crispin wrote: +--------------- | On 29 Dec 2000, Brian Harvey wrote: | > the GIGIs had better resolution, so you could edit text on them, too | | Ah yes, but what if you tried to do any *color* graphics? Your GIGI | resolution quickly went south because they didn't have enough memory to do | resolution *and* color. +--------------- Actually, the luminance resolution (foreground/background switches per distance) stayed the same, but the GIGI could only change foreground colors every 12 pixels, since the frame buffer used some cute intermingled encoding of luminance & colors[*]. That worked reasonably well if you used only fixed-width fonts that were 12 pixels wide (including inter-character spacing), but was useless for colored proportional fonts or arbitrary pictures/graphics. -Rob [*] IIRC, a flag bit, a 3-bit foreground color, and 12 foreground/background pixels per 16-bit word, or something like that, with the flag bit saying whether a 12-pixel time was video data or H/V sync. Or some such... ----- Rob Warnock, 31-2-510 rpw3@sgi.com SGI Network Engineering http://reality.sgi.com/rpw3/ 1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy. Phone: 650-933-1673 Mountain View, CA 94043 PP-ASEL-IA From inwap@best.com Wed Jan 3 19:17:07 PST 2001 Article: 3037 of alt.sys.pdp10 Path: nntp1.ba.best.com!inwap From: inwap@best.com (Joe Smith) Newsgroups: alt.sys.pdp10 Subject: Re: Demise and alt futures of the PDP-10 Date: 4 Jan 2001 03:15:59 GMT Organization: Chez Inwap Lines: 28 Message-ID: <930ptf$j3s$1@nntp1.ba.best.com> References: <3a43c9e5.3140062@news.m.iinet.net.au> <92igqq$fmp$1@abbenay.CS.Berkeley.EDU> <92k9ca$j9bln$1@fido.engr.sgi.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: shell3.ba.best.com X-Trace: nntp1.ba.best.com 978578159 19580 206.184.139.134 (4 Jan 2001 03:15:59 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@best.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 4 Jan 2001 03:15:59 GMT Xref: nntp1.ba.best.com alt.sys.pdp10:3037 In article <92k9ca$j9bln$1@fido.engr.sgi.com>, Rob Warnock wrote: >Mark Crispin wrote: >+--------------- >| On 29 Dec 2000, Brian Harvey wrote: >| > the GIGIs had better resolution, so you could edit text on them, too >| >| Ah yes, but what if you tried to do any *color* graphics? Your GIGI >| resolution quickly went south because they didn't have enough memory to do >| resolution *and* color. >+--------------- > >Actually, the luminance resolution (foreground/background switches per >distance) stayed the same, but the GIGI could only change foreground >colors every 12 pixels, since the frame buffer used some cute intermingled >encoding of luminance & colors[*]. That worked reasonably well if you used >only fixed-width fonts that were 12 pixels wide (including inter-character >spacing), but was useless for colored proportional fonts or arbitrary >pictures/graphics. I had a Pacman file that drew a yellow circle with a narrow black wedge, and then redrew a larger wedge that blinked between yellow and black. The stair-step effect every 12 pixels worked out good for this. It also included code that scrolled the whole thing horizontally, flashed all the LEDs on the keyboard, and made wacka-wacka sounds. -Joe -- See http://www.inwap.com/ for PDP-10 and "ReBoot" pages.