10 Mar
2023
10 Mar
'23
7:44 a.m.
Noel Chiappa wrote:
>>> The first frame buffers from Evans and
Sutherland were at University
>>> of Utah, DOD SITES and NYIT CGL as I recall. Circa 1974 to 1978.
>>
Other historical datapoints:
I was at MIT ’72-’76 in the Architecture Machine Group (mostly because I was intimidated
by the reception desk at LCS).
There were a series of frame buffers during that time, including an 8-bit color mapped one
I built in early 1976 for a senior thesis (a color printer).
I don’t think anyone used them for programming or a GUI. Instead they were image output
devices. Programming was mostly Imlacs or Tek or ASR33s or IBM 2741s.
The weirdest display was somehow we had a wacky prototype 24-bit machine with a vector
display. One of the scientists loaded a series of short vectors to turn it into a 128x128
raster display. The thing filled 3 or 4 racks.
-L