24 Jun
2006
24 Jun
'06
5:20 a.m.
Grinnel framestore. This seems to be a digitiser as
well (there's
what looks like an ADC on one of the boards), and is mostly
hand-wired, not PCB. The Unibus interface is a DR11-B. I know noting
about this unit
Oh, that takes me back.
Back in the '80s, the lab I worked at had a Grinnell display (I'm
pretty sure that's how it was spelled). I don't recall the hardware of
its interface, despite having written a BSD driver for it. It was
connected to a VAX-11/780 (and I think later to a 750).
Ours didn't have a digitizer, as far as I can recall. It was 256x256
(framebuffer memory) or 256x240 (displayed), with a joystick-and-button
input interface (which might be what your ADCish stuff is all about).
It had capabilities I've yet to see anywhere else. The closest X term
for its display capabilities is DirectColor, but it could do things X
has no way to describe. In particular, if you describe the three major
pieces as three (6-bit-deep) memory planes, three (6 bits in and I
think 8 bits out) lookup tables, and three DACs to drive the three
primaries on the monitor, there was a way to control which memory plane
fed each lookup table and which lookup table fed each DAC, and for each
switching layer, each switch was independent of the others, meaning
that all 27 setting combinations were achievable.
I don't remember any model numbers.
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