On Monday 25 June 2007, Tony Duell wrote:
The built-in display was a 1-line 32 character
alphanumeric unit.
Hardly a 'calculator display'. In general you linked up the 9866
printer if you wanted a larger 'display' for things like program
listings. If you wanted graphives 9and were rich!), you eitehr linked
up a plotter -- there was a pltoter ROM add-on to BASIC that added
useful statements to drive the plotter -- or you got the HPIB
interface, an HP1350 'graphics translator' (vector display generator)
and an HP1311 monitor. I am wondering why you consider the dispaly to
be an important part of the machine, though. This thing was not
designed for games, after all. It was designed for scientific data
processing, data logging, control, and the like. For which yuo
probably don't need more than a 1-line display.
I'd say that if it can't play games (graphical or at least a multi-line
text display), then it's not what I'd call a *home* computer.
You could do that on an Apple 2, TRS-80, C64/VIC20/PET, IBM PC, etc.
Pat
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