Timeline for When did smart terminals arrive?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
6 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 13, 2021 at 7:59 | comment | added | hughk | Memory was extremely expensive back in the day. Text was normally drawn dynamically and refreshed from a block of characters rather than storing them as points which could then be displayed. This made graphics hard. Hence the use of storage tube displays which Tektronix was also using for oscilloscopes. Graphics and text could be drawn on the display which would hold the image until erased. Some displays such as the 4014 allowed both stored data and normal rapid refresh text at the same time. | |
| May 15, 2018 at 2:01 | comment | added | KJ Seefried | @MauryMarkowitz - That's a fair assessment. Shows how tough it can be to define such things. | |
| May 14, 2018 at 13:32 | comment | added | Maury Markowitz | I suspect that was true, especially for the remote radar-head readers (which were freaking cool, they scanned a normal analog display) but I'm not sure one could clearly point to where the CPU ends and the TS begins in the actual direction centers. | |
| May 12, 2018 at 14:54 | comment | added | KJ Seefried | @MauryMarkowitz - I thought the displays were driven by a separate PP attached to the main CPU. But you're probably right and thanks for the correction. | |
| May 11, 2018 at 17:55 | comment | added | Maury Markowitz | "the SAGE early warning system, is a smart-terminal ancestor based on vector displays in the late 50s/early 60s" - No, SAGE was driven directly by the controllers on the main CPU. The only smarts in the terminal was the light gun, which counted up from some set value (refresh start?) and returned that value when the photocell triggered. There was a controller, but it was part of the mainframes and shared among terminals. | |
| May 11, 2018 at 3:28 | history | answered | KJ Seefried | CC BY-SA 4.0 |