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

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2015-08-12 10:07, already5chosen at yahoo.com wrote:
> On Wednesday, August 12, 2015 at 2:59:58 AM UTC+3, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> 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.
>
> My math is good. 'B'=byte.

Ah. I misinterpreted you since you said "very modest". One byte per 
pixel was once considered rather a lot...

> When I, and majority of the world together with me, want to refer to bits we use 'b'.

True.

>> A VAX-11/780
>> could take (I think) theoretically 512 MByte of memory, so you would
>> have had to have 4 machines for it.
>
> That's wrong.
> 11/780 started with 2MB. Over time it gained up to 8 MB. I don't know if this happened still in the 70s or in the beginning of 80s, but assumed the former.

What the machine started out with is not really that relevant. You said 
"fully loaded".
I was talking about theoretical limits here.

> 512 MB is too much not only for 11/780, but even for much later 8000. May be, 9000 can do it.

No. I know absolutely for sure that the VAX-8600 have a hard limit at 
512 MB. Practical limit today is 260 MB, since larger memory cards were 
not made. You have all the address pins on the memory backplane to go to 
512 MB however.

And I think the same is true in the 11/780, but I would have to check to 
be really sure, which is why I said "I think".

And I have a VAX 7000 here, which have 1.25 GB of memory. And it's even 
up and running as I write this.

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol