21 Oct
2008
21 Oct
'08
10:54 a.m.
[Raster-scan characters on a vector display]
The Tektronix 4052 and 4006 (and presumaby 4051 and
4012) do this.
These machines all have storage-tube vector displays, but when you want
to display text, scan a little dot matrix of the character. The 4052 at
least can put this little dot matrix at any addressable point on the
screen, not limited by the character block spacing or even (AFAIK) the
dot matrix spacing.
I believe that's true of the VT11 too. You can put a character wherever
you want it .
(The 4014 and 4054, iirc, drew the characters in a line draw font, which
meant they could be scrolled or rotated. I don't have either... yet)
Interesting. I knew the main differnce between the 4051 and 4052
(processor goes from a 6800 to a oard of 2900-series chips implementing
most of the 6800 instruction set). But I assumed the 4054 was just a
4052 with a larger CRT. I didn't realise there were design differences too.
Not that it matters to me. I don't have any of them, and I don;t think
I'm likely to find them
-tony