Comments on: Macintosh at Twenty Five http://www.soabloke.com/2009/01/04/macintosh-at-twenty-five/ pushing soa up the slope (with a pointy stick) Tue, 30 Nov 2010 19:23:34 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: steve smith http://www.soabloke.com/2009/01/04/macintosh-at-twenty-five/comment-page-1/#comment-273 steve smith Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:53:06 +0000 http://www.soabloke.com/2009/01/04/macintosh-at-twenty-five/#comment-273 I did my "senior project" on a Tektronix 4013 which had the "APL" keyboard. I blew the CS faculty and fellow students away by implementing a full 3D-perspective geometric modeling package. It was like 100 lines of APL, it was nigh on to trivial, but nobody (else) really seemed to understand computing and geometry... go figure. The "Print" feature on the Tektronix was based on a very simple bit of circuitry which actually used the screen itself as a storage tube. The deflection circuitry would scan a beam over the screen at low (below write) intensity and detect whether that point on the screen was already "energized" or not. The printers were simple thermal devices that were addressed linearly (scan line at a time) themselves. I'm sure there were some small line-buffers in the Tektronix. When I took my first job at LANL, they had the new BIG SCREEN Tektronix tubes... like 17" diagonal. I was in heaven! As we were developing a "real time" graphics system that generated 512x512 1 bit images on the CRAY 1 and moved it up to 12 miles to a frame buffer/monitor at 5 frames per second, we were really impressed when we got an Evans and Sutherland stroke refresh (instead of storage like the Teks) system with a 20+ inch screen! We were cooking then! - Steve PS. Welcome to FRIAM I did my “senior project” on a Tektronix 4013 which had the “APL” keyboard. I blew the CS faculty and fellow students away by implementing a full 3D-perspective geometric modeling package. It was like 100 lines of APL, it was nigh on to trivial, but nobody (else) really seemed to understand computing and geometry… go figure.

The “Print” feature on the Tektronix was based on a very simple bit of circuitry which actually used the screen itself as a storage tube. The deflection circuitry would scan a beam over the screen at low (below write) intensity and detect whether that point on the screen was already “energized” or not. The printers were simple thermal devices that were addressed linearly (scan line at a time) themselves. I’m sure there were some small line-buffers in the Tektronix.

When I took my first job at LANL, they had the new BIG SCREEN Tektronix tubes… like 17″ diagonal. I was in heaven! As we were developing a “real time” graphics system that generated 512×512 1 bit images on the CRAY 1 and moved it up to 12 miles to a frame buffer/monitor at 5 frames per second, we were really impressed when we got an Evans and Sutherland stroke refresh (instead of storage like the Teks) system with a 20+ inch screen! We were cooking then!

- Steve

PS. Welcome to FRIAM

]]> By: Saul http://www.soabloke.com/2009/01/04/macintosh-at-twenty-five/comment-page-1/#comment-272 Saul Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:43:49 +0000 http://www.soabloke.com/2009/01/04/macintosh-at-twenty-five/#comment-272 @Andy, actually I'm hanging out for <a href="http://www.theonion.com/content/video/apple_introduces_revolutionary" rel="nofollow">one of these</a> @Andy, actually I’m hanging out for one of these

]]> By: Saul http://www.soabloke.com/2009/01/04/macintosh-at-twenty-five/comment-page-1/#comment-270 Saul Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:37:55 +0000 http://www.soabloke.com/2009/01/04/macintosh-at-twenty-five/#comment-270 @Mic, I kind of agree...TeX has no peer for the beauty and elegance of its output, and if you know HTML then TeX is pretty easy as it has much the same semantics. It is effectively a markup language. But the lack of WYSIWYG capability adds too much latency to the author/review/correct cycle. I haven't used TeX in such a long time it is hard to make proper comparisons. The thing that Word has done is turn us all from authors into typesetters. Agonising over fonts and styles and graphics layouts is a real spoiler for content, but I think TeX would have that problem as well. @Mic, I kind of agree…TeX has no peer for the beauty and elegance of its output, and if you know HTML then TeX is pretty easy as it has much the same semantics. It is effectively a markup language. But the lack of WYSIWYG capability adds too much latency to the author/review/correct cycle. I haven’t used TeX in such a long time it is hard to make proper comparisons.

The thing that Word has done is turn us all from authors into typesetters. Agonising over fonts and styles and graphics layouts is a real spoiler for content, but I think TeX would have that problem as well.

]]> By: Andy http://www.soabloke.com/2009/01/04/macintosh-at-twenty-five/comment-page-1/#comment-269 Andy Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:15:34 +0000 http://www.soabloke.com/2009/01/04/macintosh-at-twenty-five/#comment-269 This is all the more reason for you to go out today and purchase a spanking new one. Come on, you have an iPhone already and Jobs needs your cash to help with his hormones. This is all the more reason for you to go out today and purchase a spanking new one. Come on, you have an iPhone already and Jobs needs your cash to help with his hormones.

]]> By: Mic http://www.soabloke.com/2009/01/04/macintosh-at-twenty-five/comment-page-1/#comment-268 Mic Mon, 05 Jan 2009 10:36:20 +0000 http://www.soabloke.com/2009/01/04/macintosh-at-twenty-five/#comment-268 And still with all the progress nothing better than TeX/LaTeX has come along for real DTP. Every time I have to deal with a damn RFP in Word I miss it. And still with all the progress nothing better than TeX/LaTeX has come along for real DTP. Every time I have to deal with a damn RFP in Word I miss it.

]]> By: Saul http://www.soabloke.com/2009/01/04/macintosh-at-twenty-five/comment-page-1/#comment-267 Saul Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:36:55 +0000 http://www.soabloke.com/2009/01/04/macintosh-at-twenty-five/#comment-267 Yes it did have a perspex shield, but not to much effect. Yes it did have a perspex shield, but not to much effect.

]]> By: Lyndon http://www.soabloke.com/2009/01/04/macintosh-at-twenty-five/comment-page-1/#comment-266 Lyndon Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:32:20 +0000 http://www.soabloke.com/2009/01/04/macintosh-at-twenty-five/#comment-266 Ahh the Techtronix, I think they had some sort of CPU in them because the printer hooked in directly to the terminal and simply drew what was on the screen at the time. Didn't your dotmatrix printer have a perspex shield to lessen the noise :-) Ahh the Techtronix, I think they had some sort of CPU in them because the printer hooked in directly to the terminal and simply drew what was on the screen at the time.

Didn’t your dotmatrix printer have a perspex shield to lessen the noise :-)

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