8 ms·

The headline is probably wrong, the article text just says "capable of" 16 kilobyte. I also think it's unlikely it had 16 installed. On the other hand, doesn't

The headline is probably wrong, the article text just says "capable of" 16 kilobyte. I also think it's unlikely it had 16 installed. On the other hand, doesn't the screen look like a flatscreen, not a CRT? So the screen itself was probably very expensive in itself. (Probably plasma screen?) Edit: Look at the image and the bank of 3 * 8 socketed chips: https://www.peel.dk/Q1/img/SN615-03.jpg https://www.peel.dk/Q1/img/SN615-03.jpg If these are the Intel 2102 [1] or something similar, then it would have 3 kilobytes of SRAM. 1: https://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/Intel_2102 https://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/Intel_2102 Edit 2: the computer in the picture is another model, ignore me.

Tor3 3y ago
That picture appears to be from a Q1/Lite, which is a different beast (and used 4116 DRAM according to the schematics)
- Tor3 3y ago
  And.. the original article's picture is also a Q1 Lite, as far as I can tell. Introduced 1977. That one used NEC 4116 dynamic RAM. And did not use the 8008. It's very difficult to find anything about the original Q1. Even the "First Q1 Brochure" from TheByteAttic is actually a Q1 LMC, which was the second model.
troupe 3y ago
Probably not a plasma screen in the 70s. It looks like a bunch of individual characters. They are probably vacuum fluorescent like what was on calculators and the Speak & Spell educational toy from that period.
- balazer 3y ago
  It appears to be a Burroughs Self-Scan plasma display. The display in action on a Q1: https://www.1000bit.it/lista/q/q1europe/q1microlite.png https://www.1000bit.it/lista/q/q1europe/q1microlite.png Close-up shot in a Q1: https://www.peel.dk/Q1/img/SN615-05.jpg https://www.peel.dk/Q1/img/SN615-05.jpg Brochure: https://archive.org/details/TNM_Self-Scan_II_panels_for_data_terminals_-_Burr_20170922_0484/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/TNM_Self-Scan_II_panels_for_data... There are videos of the display being demonstrated on YouTube. Search for Burroughs Self-Scan.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  https://www.thebyteattic.com/p/q1.html https://www.thebyteattic.com/p/q1.html Looks like it is plasma but with characters, not a pure bitmap display.
  - adrian_b 3y ago
    Yes, it is pretty certain that no bitmap plasma displays existed at that time, because the drivers for them would have been more expensive than an entire desktop computer (due to the high number of rows and columns). It is said that the display was an unusual plasma display and not a vacuum fluorescent display, which were much more frequent in the desktop calculators of that time, but it must have been an alphanumeric display with segments, perhaps with 16 segments per character.
    - Turing_Machine 3y ago
      What we think of as "plasma screens" were invented at UIUC for the PLATO project in (checks) 1964, by Donald Bitzer, H. Gene Slottow, and Robert Willson. They had a resolution of 512x512. They started cranking them out in bulk in 1972. These were monochrome orange vector displays. They didn't use segments.
      - adrian_b 3y ago
        Wikipedia says that the 512x512 PLATO plasma display had a cost of $2500 at a time when that was a much greater value than today. Moreover, I doubt that the cost includes the one thousand high voltage transistors that would have been needed to drive the display. As I have already written, such a display would have been too expensive for a desktop computer with an 8-bit CPU. In the early seventies, as an alternative to the red LED displays and green or blue vacuum fluorescent displays, there were the orange Panaplex plasma displays with segments for numeric (7 segments) or alphanumeric (14 or 16 segments) characters. I believe that the Q1 computer must have had such a Panaplex display, which was cheap enough. Vector displays are possible only where there is a drawing spot that can be moved in any programmable direction, i.e. only on CRTs or mechanical plotters. They are not possible with plasma displays.

Tor3 3y ago

That picture appears to be from a Q1/Lite, which is a different beast (and used 4116 DRAM according to the schematics)

Tor3 3y ago
And.. the original article's picture is also a Q1 Lite, as far as I can tell. Introduced 1977. That one used NEC 4116 dynamic RAM. And did not use the 8008. It's very difficult to find anything about the original Q1. Even the "First Q1 Brochure" from TheByteAttic is actually a Q1 LMC, which was the second model.

troupe 3y ago

Probably not a plasma screen in the 70s. It looks like a bunch of individual characters. They are probably vacuum fluorescent like what was on calculators and the Speak & Spell educational toy from that period.

balazer 3y ago
It appears to be a Burroughs Self-Scan plasma display. The display in action on a Q1: https://www.1000bit.it/lista/q/q1europe/q1microlite.png https://www.1000bit.it/lista/q/q1europe/q1microlite.png Close-up shot in a Q1: https://www.peel.dk/Q1/img/SN615-05.jpg https://www.peel.dk/Q1/img/SN615-05.jpg Brochure: https://archive.org/details/TNM_Self-Scan_II_panels_for_data_terminals_-_Burr_20170922_0484/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/TNM_Self-Scan_II_panels_for_data... There are videos of the display being demonstrated on YouTube. Search for Burroughs Self-Scan.
actionfromafar 3y ago
https://www.thebyteattic.com/p/q1.html https://www.thebyteattic.com/p/q1.html Looks like it is plasma but with characters, not a pure bitmap display.
- adrian_b 3y ago
  Yes, it is pretty certain that no bitmap plasma displays existed at that time, because the drivers for them would have been more expensive than an entire desktop computer (due to the high number of rows and columns). It is said that the display was an unusual plasma display and not a vacuum fluorescent display, which were much more frequent in the desktop calculators of that time, but it must have been an alphanumeric display with segments, perhaps with 16 segments per character.
  - Turing_Machine 3y ago
    What we think of as "plasma screens" were invented at UIUC for the PLATO project in (checks) 1964, by Donald Bitzer, H. Gene Slottow, and Robert Willson. They had a resolution of 512x512. They started cranking them out in bulk in 1972. These were monochrome orange vector displays. They didn't use segments.
    - adrian_b 3y ago
      Wikipedia says that the 512x512 PLATO plasma display had a cost of $2500 at a time when that was a much greater value than today. Moreover, I doubt that the cost includes the one thousand high voltage transistors that would have been needed to drive the display. As I have already written, such a display would have been too expensive for a desktop computer with an 8-bit CPU. In the early seventies, as an alternative to the red LED displays and green or blue vacuum fluorescent displays, there were the orange Panaplex plasma displays with segments for numeric (7 segments) or alphanumeric (14 or 16 segments) characters. I believe that the Q1 computer must have had such a Panaplex display, which was cheap enough. Vector displays are possible only where there is a drawing spot that can be moved in any programmable direction, i.e. only on CRTs or mechanical plotters. They are not possible with plasma displays.