[cctalk] Re: VCF Southwest 2023 some highlights

[Curious Marc via cctalk]

Very nice writeup!
Marc

> On Jun 26, 2023, at 5:06 AM, Steve Lewis via cctalk  
> wrote:
> 
> VCF SW was this past weekend near Dallas, Texas.
> 
> Here are some highlights from my perspective.
> 
> https://voidstar.blog/vcf-southwest-2023/
> 
> 
> Most photos you can click to enlarge (Edge has bugs with WordPress, you may
> need to scroll up/down a little bit to get the click thing working)
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Steve

[cctalk] Re: VCF Southwest 2023 some highlights

[Mark Huffstutter via cctalk]

Wow..!!

Very nice collection there, Christian!

Mark

-Original Message-
From: Christian Corti via cctalk  
Sent: Thursday, June 29, 2023 12:52 AM
To: Mark Huffstutter via cctalk 
Cc: Christian Corti 
Subject: [cctalk] Re: VCF Southwest 2023 some highlights

On Mon, 26 Jun 2023, Mark Huffstutter wrote:
>   I've never seen an HP-9830A that gorgeous, and with the Companion 
> HP-9866A printer no less, wow!

That setup was quite usual I think. We also have the 8" disk station from 
Infotek (alas, the interface module has been lost, I can't find it). It is 
stacked on top of the 9830 and below the printer.
We also have several peripherals, like HP the papertape reader, plotter, serial 
I/O and external cassette unit.

Christian

[cctalk] Re: VCF Southwest 2023 some highlights

[Christian Corti via cctalk]

On Mon, 26 Jun 2023, Mark Huffstutter wrote:

I've never seen an HP-9830A that gorgeous, and with the
Companion HP-9866A printer no less, wow!


That setup was quite usual I think. We also have the 8" disk station from 
Infotek (alas, the interface module has been lost, I can't find it). It 
is stacked on top of the 9830 and below the printer.
We also have several peripherals, like HP the papertape reader, plotter, 
serial I/O and external cassette unit.


Christian

[cctalk] Re: VCF Southwest 2023 some highlights

[Tony Duell via cctalk]

On Tue, Jun 27, 2023 at 12:35 AM Mark Huffstutter via cctalk
 wrote:

> I've never seen an HP-9830A that gorgeous, and with the
> Companion HP-9866A printer no less, wow!

What I'd like to see is an HP9830 with the HP9880 disk system (an
HP7900A drive with a special controller). Any still working?

-tony

[cctalk] Re: VCF Southwest 2023 some highlights

[Mark Huffstutter via cctalk]

Steve,
Thank You very much for taking the time to post your
Mini-tour! I agree with the earlier poster, sure looks like a lot
Of Cool stuff there at Southwest. Would have loved to have
Seen that ADS-B "Radar" setup in person!

I've never seen an HP-9830A that gorgeous, and with the
Companion HP-9866A printer no less, wow!

I had forgotten "END OF LINE" from Cylons in the Galactica
Second series, but I always pretty much considered that they'd
Copped it. The "END OF LINE" quote I remember best was issued
By the Evil MCP Master Control Program in the original TRON, in
1982. My best memory is seeing it in a big theater, now gone, with
A big crowd of fellow Nerds. The first time got quite a humorous 
Response from the crowd...

Thank You!
Mark

-Original Message-
From: Steve Lewis via cctalk  
Sent: Monday, June 26, 2023 5:05 AM
To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts 
Cc: Steve Lewis 
Subject: [cctalk] VCF Southwest 2023 some highlights

VCF SW was this past weekend near Dallas, Texas.

Here are some highlights from my perspective.

https://voidstar.blog/vcf-southwest-2023/


Most photos you can click to enlarge (Edge has bugs with WordPress, you may 
need to scroll up/down a little bit to get the click thing working)


Cheers,
Steve

[cctalk] Re: VCF Southwest 2023 some highlights

[Richard via cctalk]

[private reply]

In article  
you write:
>On Mon, Jun 26, 2023 at 1:06 PM Steve Lewis via cctalk
> wrote:
>>
>> VCF SW was this past weekend near Dallas, Texas.
>>
>> Here are some highlights from my perspective.
>>
>> https://voidstar.blog/vcf-southwest-2023/
>>
>>
>> Most photos you can click to enlarge (Edge has bugs with WordPress, you
>may
>> need to scroll up/down a little bit to get the click thing working)
>
>I may be talking nonsense, but you describe the Tektronix 4054 as a
>6800-based system. I thought the 4051 used that processor, but the
>4052 and 4054 used a board of AM2900-series bitslice chips that
>implement a processor with an instruction set similar to the 6800 but
>with no BCD operations and some 16 bit extensions.

My understanding is that it was a strict superset of 6800 with some unused
opcodes implemented fo faster math instructions.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book 
The Terminals Wiki 
 The Computer Graphics Museum 
  Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) 

[cctalk] Re: VCF Southwest 2023 some highlights

[Rick Bensene via cctalk]

Tony D. wrote:


> I may be talking nonsense, but you describe the Tektronix 4054 as a 
> 6800-based system. I 
> thought the 4051 used that processor, but the 4052 and 4054 used a board of 
> AM2900-series
> bitslice chips that implement a processor with an instruction set similar to 
> the 6800
> but with no BCD operations and some 16 bit extensions.

No nonsense at all, Tony.  You are correct.  The architecture of the 4052 and 
4054 were definitely bitslice microcoded implementations of the 6800 CPU, with 
the omissions and additions as you mentioned.

The memory architecture of these computers was also heavily modified to allow 
bank switching of RAM and ROM programmatically to create an address space that 
provided more memory capacity than the 64K address space of the 6800 used in 
the 4051.   

The display subsystem was also modified to allow additions of graphics 
co-processors for doing things like display list processing and refresh vector 
graphics which were drawn at a lower intensity so that the vectors would not be 
stored on the screen.Later, a special CRT was made for the 4054 that had a 
unique storage CRT that had two layers, a green layer and a yellow/orange layer 
of phosphor that could be triggered by different beam intensities, both in 
storage and "write-through" mode that allowed three-color (yellow/orange, 
green, and a mix of the two IIRC), refreshed vector graphics at up to 1000 
vectors per second.Still, it was just fast enough for simple animated 
graphics for things like games and graphical editors that would use refresh 
graphics for placing an object, then writing it in storage mode once it was 
placed.

The special three-color tube was not available in the 4052, only the 4054, but 
the add-on boards for providing the vector write-thru display were compatible 
with the 4052.

The microcoded CPU and improved memory architecture of the 4052/4054 made the 
machines significantly faster at compute-bound tasks.  I/O and display were not 
sped up much by the new architecture, as the speed at which vectors and text 
could be written to the storage tube display was limited by the tube itself, so 
graphics intensive stuff wasn't all that much faster than the 4051.   If the 
graphics involved computing the vectors in real-time, that type of graphics 
would be faster on the 4052/4054 due to the significantly faster computing 
speed of the 2901-based 6800 "clone/extension".   Things like GPIB I/O were 
more limited by the peripheral devices than the CPU itself, so things like I/O 
to the GPIB 4907 8" floppy disc drives, wasn't all that much faster.

I have a 4051 and a 4052A, both working.   Comparing them side-to-side doing 
compute bound things (like finding prime numbers) clearly shows the speed 
advantage of the bit-slice architecture in the 4052.   Drawing "canned" 
graphics is slightly faster on the 4052 simply because the interpretation of 
the BASIC code that does the drawing runs significantly faster, which does make 
a small, but noticeable difference in the time it takes to render an image, 
with the 4052A finishing any given drawing a bit sooner than the 4051.   Floppy 
disc access on the 4907 doesn't seem to be much faster other than the faster 
speed of interpretation of the BASIC program, with the actual speed of 
reading/writing being about the same due mostly to the speed of GPIB 
transactions, and the fixed rate that data is read/written to the floppy.

The 4050-series computers were quite amazing for their time.  Nothing else 
except hugely expensive graphics systems that ran on minicomputers, such as 
those made by Evans & Sutherland and others, could exceed the capabilities of 
the 4050-series machines (especially the 4052 and 4054), and the 4050-series 
machines fit on a desktop and were (other than being rather heavy) relatively 
portable, very easy to use/program, and cost dramatically less than anything 
else.

DVST was a great technology at a time when large amounts of high-speed random 
access memory was very expensive.   Magnetic core that was fast enough was 
quite expensive and complex, and IC-based RAM was just beginning to have 
reasonable capacity, but still ran somewhat slowly, and was also initially 
quite expensive.As the price of fast, high-capacity IC-based RAM came down, 
raster type display systems with bitmapped display memory, and even dedicated 
blitter hardware for shifting bits around in display memory, made 
cost-effective machines with at least equivalent (monochrome) display 
capability in terms of resolution, along with everything (including characters) 
being refreshed graphics straight out of the framebuffer RAM.   Once that 
occurred, the market for DVST shrunk quite dramatically.  Desktop workstations 
(like Sun, Apollo, Perq, etc.) with graphics capabilities that met or exceeded 
those of the 4050-series quickly took the place of these watershed machines.

-Rick
--
Rick Bensene, Curator
The Old Calculator (and some 

[cctalk] Re: VCF Southwest 2023 some highlights

[Ali via cctalk]

> VCF SW was this past weekend near Dallas, Texas.
> 
> Here are some highlights from my perspective.
> 
> https://voidstar.blog/vcf-southwest-2023/
> 

Man there is always cooler stuff at the other VCFs the n VCFW. Just looking at 
those pictures the Compaq 468 Portable is nice and the NEC Multisync XL 
immediately caught my eye. I've had my eye out for one of those for a lng 
time. Nice pictures and thanks for sharing!

-Ali

[cctalk] Re: VCF Southwest 2023 some highlights

[Steve Lewis via cctalk]

I think you're right - I hadn't realized such a shift from the 4051, but
makes sense.  Demos of the original 4051 that I've seen, the system seemed
"painfully slow." Updated to try to clarify, thanks!


On Mon, Jun 26, 2023 at 7:12 AM Tony Duell  wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 26, 2023 at 1:06 PM Steve Lewis via cctalk
>  wrote:
> >
> > VCF SW was this past weekend near Dallas, Texas.
> >
> > Here are some highlights from my perspective.
> >
> > https://voidstar.blog/vcf-southwest-2023/
> >
> >
> > Most photos you can click to enlarge (Edge has bugs with WordPress, you
> may
> > need to scroll up/down a little bit to get the click thing working)
>
> I may be talking nonsense, but you describe the Tektronix 4054 as a
> 6800-based system. I thought the 4051 used that processor, but the
> 4052 and 4054 used a board of AM2900-series bitslice chips that
> implement a processor with an instruction set similar to the 6800 but
> with no BCD operations and some 16 bit extensions.
>
> -tony
>

[cctalk] Re: VCF Southwest 2023 some highlights

[Tony Duell via cctalk]

On Mon, Jun 26, 2023 at 1:06 PM Steve Lewis via cctalk
 wrote:
>
> VCF SW was this past weekend near Dallas, Texas.
>
> Here are some highlights from my perspective.
>
> https://voidstar.blog/vcf-southwest-2023/
>
>
> Most photos you can click to enlarge (Edge has bugs with WordPress, you may
> need to scroll up/down a little bit to get the click thing working)

I may be talking nonsense, but you describe the Tektronix 4054 as a
6800-based system. I thought the 4051 used that processor, but the
4052 and 4054 used a board of AM2900-series bitslice chips that
implement a processor with an instruction set similar to the 6800 but
with no BCD operations and some 16 bit extensions.

-tony