From: "Paul Hardy" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Tek 4010 (was Where did text file line ending characters begin?) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 09:35:05 +0100 Organization: Laser-Scan Ltd. Lines: 37 Message-ID: <0ke*GBBrp@relay.lsl.co.uk> References: <3D0FF4C4.B8830E5B@bell-labs.com> <3D1177DA.3F189534@trailing-edge.com> <3D136A5E.75258F5D@trailing-edge.com> <3D13E37C.89C71B9C@bell-labs.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: relay.lsl.co.uk X-Trace: relay.lsl.co.uk 1024908163 4335 195.153.69.194 (24 Jun 2002 08:42:43 GMT) X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2919.6600 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6600 Originator: @lsnb18.int.lsl.co.uk ([192.168.150.4]) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!fr.clara.net!heighliner.fr.clara.net!proxad.net!isdnet!btnet-peer1!btnet-peer0!btnet!psiuk-p2!psiuk-p3!uknet!psiuk-n!relay.lsl.co.uk!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:110480 "Dennis Ritchie" wrote in message news:3D13E37C.89C71B9C@bell-labs.com... > Tim Shoppa wrote: > > The Tek4014 and its near-relative the Tek4010 are amazing > > pieces of engineering. Electronics consists of a handful (as > > opposed to a bucketful or wheelbarrowfull) of early 70's TTL, yet > > thanks to the storage tube you get a really nice high-resolution > > graphics terminal. > > Yes. I should have mentioned them in remarking on typical > lack of modern support for "abc\r___" at the lower level > of graphics--of course, the storage-tube design is rather different > from a bit-mapped screen. We had several of them. Pretty > nice for the time, though quite pricy. We still have a 4010 wired up to the rump of our VMS cluster, that we fire up occasionally (e.g. to test any new releases of some legacy software that has Tek40xx support built in). We used 4010s, 4014s etc as the primary graphics device for our mapping software for several years until the first GKS workstations (like the Sigmex 6000) came along. I take issue with the 'quite pricy' though. Various people have said that the Tek4010 put back the progress of computer graphics by several years. It was so much cheaper than the display list based vector devices that preceded it that it became the default purchase for graphical work, but lacked their versatility. Having played spacewar on a PDP7 some years previously, you couldn't do that on a 4010. Anybody remember the 4016s that had two-colour refresh? -- Paul Hardy (Paul@lsl.co.uk) ###### From: "George R. Gonzalez" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Tek 4010 (was Where did text file line ending characters begin?) Date: Mon, 24 Jun 2002 14:07:09 -0500 Organization: University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus Lines: 59 Message-ID: References: <3D0FF4C4.B8830E5B@bell-labs.com> <3D1177DA.3F189534@trailing-edge.com> <3D136A5E.75258F5D@trailing-edge.com> <3D13E37C.89C71B9C@bell-labs.com> <0ke*GBBrp@relay.lsl.co.uk> Reply-To: "George R. Gonzalez" X-Trace: laurel.tc.umn.edu 1024945982 11057 160.94.124.25 (24 Jun 2002 19:13:02 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@laurel.tc.umn.edu X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.imp.ch!news.imp.ch!snoopy.risq.qc.ca!msc1.onvoy!onvoy.com!hardy.tc.umn.edu!laurel.tc.umn.edu!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch alt.folklore.computers:110508 "Paul Hardy" wrote in message news:0ke*GBBrp@relay.lsl.co.uk... > I take issue with the 'quite pricy' though. Various people have said that > the Tek4010 put back the progress of computer graphics by several years. The 401* series had plenty of interesting "quirks": The hard-copy unit ($10,000 !) used this very expensive silver-compound paper. It had a one-dimensional CRT ( obviously very specially made by Tek ) that projected an analog image of what was on the screen onto the paper, which was then somehow "developed" by running thru some hot rollers. The printed images were in effect, a two-generation-old copy of the original screen data, with a lot of random noise added at each copy step. Horrible printouts IIRC. The terminal's logic design was rather unusual. They went all-out in implementing the "bell" (^G), devoting several 7400 TTL chips to counting out exactly 1024 cycles of some internal tone. Nice crisp "beep". Also, they spared no expense, all the boards were gold-plated, not just on the connector edges, but the whole dang board. But in important areas, like having a data bus with actual working handshaking, or having a stable serial clock source, they completely dropped the ball. Their bus had no arbitration, so it worked by pure luck most of the time. If you hit a key just as a character was coming in, both data bytes would get mangled. The serial-line pass-thru clock was a shaky unijunction-transistor R-C oscillator, completely unable to hold the required 1% stability. If we left the 4010 on for a few hours, it would start garbling the data it passed thru to the TTY-33. Then you'd have to get out the frequency counter and adjust the trimpot. Really frustrating on a $5,000 device! Argggh!!! And oh yes, on the early ones, the image was really dim. We had to turn off the room lights and draw the curtains to see it at all. The brightness did get better on the later models, altho most of the hardware glitches remained, even on the $14,000 big-screen model. And now I grumble when having to pay $79 for a 3D accellerated video card! Regards, George