4 ms·
The manual for the DEC 340 Display (c1964) is online: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/graphics/7-13_340_Display_Programming_Manual.pdf http://www.bitsavers.org
by kens 5y ago
The manual for the DEC 340 Display (c1964) is online: http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/graphics/7-13_340_Display_Programming_Manual.pdf http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/graphics/7-13_340_Display_P...
The display is a refrigerator-sized unit with a big circular CRT in the middle. You give it vectors and characters, and it draws them with 1024x1024 resolution. It also had a light pen that you could use for interaction with the display.
- sitkack 5y agoIt is much more programmable than I expected. Even for the slow speeds of the day, it looks like animations and display updates could happen locally and that the systems could be made to be fairly responsive. Joining displays together, scaling modes, pixel, line and text drawing and conditional subroutines, and all in 30 ish pages. When did any PC display get hardware line drawing? It would be fun to implement Logo that interacted with the light pen for creating generative L-systems. *edit I found a video linked by Don Hopkins of Conway's Game of Life running on a 340 display https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB78NXH77s4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB78NXH77s4
- est31 5y agoYeah the manual is why I, a millenial who is way too young to see such technology, could make such a comment in the first place.
- sitkack 5y agoFrom your original comment it sounded like you may have had first hand experience. There are a handful of 70+ year old folks on hn. Good to hear that folks are looking at all periods of computing.