[Info-vax] Graphics cards and monitors, was: Re: VSI Software and Stark Gaming

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2015-08-12 01:34, already5chosen at yahoo.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, August 11, 2015 at 9:55:37 PM UTC+3, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> On 2015-08-11, Paul Hardy <p.g.hardy at btinternet.com> wrote:
>>> JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> wrote:
>>>> Did CAD software also drive video card development ? Or did CAD just
>>>> ride on the wave created by Hollywood which enables near real-time
>>>> rendering of structures being designed ?
>>>
>>> If by Cards you include ones that were full height boards for VAXen (780 &
>>> 750), then the CAD industry certainly pushed the boundaries of graphics
>>> hardware. In particular, Intergraph in the 70s produced boards and the then
>>> leading CAD software to go with it.
>>>
>>
>> Don't forget also that things like the Video Toaster helped to show people
>> what was possible at a certain price point.
>>
>>> We at Laser-Scan also in the 1970s did very high resolution displays
>>> (driven by PDP-11 and VAXen) - 140,000 by 100,000 addressable points, but
>>> mainly into the two industries of security printing (banknote design), and
>>> digital mapping.
>>>
>>
>> What physical screen sizes were these displays ?
>>
>> I wonder how they compare to the screens used in hospitals for looking
>> at (for example) scans ?
>>
>> I know they are higher resolution than normal monitors (at least
>> according to consultants I've mentioned the subject to in the past) but
>> I don't think they even begin to go anywhere near the above resolutions.
>>
>
>
> Has to be a mistake.
> 140,000 by 100,000 = 14 Gpixels. Assuming very modest 1B/pixel you will need  1750 fully loaded VAX 11/780 machines to load a single screen in to RAM.

I agree about the mistake, even if your math is off.
At 14Gpixel, and 1B/pixel, you'll need 1.75Gbyte of memory. A VAX-11/780 
could take (I think) theoretically 512 MByte of memory, so you would 
have had to have 4 machines for it.
Your math would be right if the machine held just 1Mbyte of memory, but 
I would not have called that a fully loaded VAX-11/780, not even in 1977.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
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