This one might be interesting to you: https://youtu.be/l7rce6IQDWs https://youtu.be/l7rce6IQDWs “The world’s worst video card?” Ben builds a framebuffer display

This one might be interesting to you: https://youtu.be/l7rce6IQDWs https://youtu.be/l7rce6IQDWs “The world’s worst video card?” Ben builds a framebuffer display device on a bread board from scratch, you’ll understand what every transistor does at a high level in an hour (don’t miss part 2). That is abstractly what first principles graphics looked like some time ago - pixels were represented by a block of main memory, and the video system simply scanned that memory at the same frequency as the CRT monitor’s beam. I’d say it’s pretty important to remember that what counts as “first principles” graphics has changed over time, and there was a time before frame buffers (the first Pong game was displayed on an oscilloscope) and the way we use framebuffers today is completely different - there is no more direct access to pixels in the same way old terminals used to work. The article here is detailing how we use a higher level API to draw higher level primitives, and the hardware takes care of the pixels. I’d love to hear a little more about your goal... what’s driving you to study the old terminals?