Which computers used the Intel 82786 graphics chips, and what sort of commercial success did that chip attain?

Question

In the late 1980's, Intel offered the 82786 graphics chip, with specific support for windowed environments. I remember it being covered in Byte magazine, but don't remember seeing any applications of the chip. The chip datasheet covered a range of applications, ranging from low end 80186/82786 shared-memory machines through high end workstations that used multiple 82786 chips each with dedicated VRAM to get to higher resolutions and color depths. (The datasheet also discussed how the chip could be used as a rasterizer for a printer.)

What sorts of machines used this chip in reality, and what type of commercial performance did Intel achieve with this chip?

Datasheet here: https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_inteldataBcsCoprocessorUsersManual_13669379/mode/2up

Answer 1

The August 10, 1987 issue of InfoWorld lists a number of boards which were announced at that year’s SIGGRAPH:

• Univision Technologies’ UDC-803
• Bell Technologies’ Blit Express
• Vermont Microsystems’ Page Manager 100

The first two were workstation-style cards, supporting respectively 1600×1280 and 1664×1200, designed to work on the ISA bus; the latter was more publishing-oriented, supporting monochrome 1024×1024. At least the Blit Express and Page Manager 100 required specific monitors.

The Blit Express made an appearance in Bell Technologies’ MPE workstations, supporting 1664×1200 monochrome graphics or 640×480 with 8-bit colour, on specific Bell monitors. It was supported by Interactive Unix 2.2 and later and various other Unix implementations, using the Xwge X server, at least in monochrome. Drivers were available for Microsoft Windows and NeWS as well.

This system makes an appearance in Micro Cornucopia issue 50, running Intel Unix (after Intel bought Bell Technologies), but I haven’t found any benchmarks of its graphical capabilities.

I get the impression these graphics adapters didn’t fare too well against the TI 34010-based competition. (Intriguingly, Number Nine produced one adapter in their Pepper range which used both 34010 and 82786 chips, but all their other TIGA adapters used TI chips only.)

(Bell Technologies shouldn’t be confused with Bell Labs of course.)