The NYIT setup had multiple Barcovision color CRT monitors connected to the frame buffers via multiple coax video cables

I presume through some sort of video switch hardware.

8 bits per pixel. (Unsigned char)

The numbers stored in the pixel frame buffer memory were used to index a color map that held the actual RGB or HSV values for the actual color.

Cycling the color map array values was a cheap animation trick that Alex Schure had a particular fondness for.

On Sun, Mar 5, 2023, 10:02 AM Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:

I am confused on the history of the frame buffer device.

On Linux, it seems that /dev/fbdev originated in 1999 from work done by Martin Schaller and Geert Uytterhoeven (and some input from Fabrice Bellard?).

However, it would seem at first glance that early SunOS also had a frame buffer device (/dev/cgoneX. /dev/bwoneX, etc.) which was similar in nature (a character device that could be mmap’ed to give access to the hardware frame buffer, and ioctl’s to probe and configure the hardware). Is that correct, or were these entirely different in nature?

Paul