4 Feb
2011
4 Feb
'11
9:47 a.m.
Tim, quoting me:
On a 4006/4010/4012/4014, you have a point. On a 4051/4052/4054, there
_isn't_ a serial stream to sniff!
In addition,
while I could easily afford a modern printer to transplant
into the 4631 case, why should I when I have a perfectly good printer
already, plugged into my PC?
I'd prefer to take the raster image and save it in a suitable file
format (TIFF?) for putting on a PC and printing on any old printer.
This would make it much more flexible, and I think it would be of
benefit to do so.
If a graphics file is the end format, it seems to me the easy way out
Is to use a modern PC running Tek 4010/4014 emulation software (anything
From MS-Kermit to xterm) sniffing the serial traffic and just do
screen dumps from there. For the vector purists (e.g. me) making SVG or
Postscript or PDF or some
True vector format, would be a desirable goal. But with endpoint resolution
Only 1024x768 probably overkill. I still hate seeing what I know are
True vector lines, get rasterized.
Isn't it 4096*4096 on the 4014? It is on the 4054.
More to the point, though, rasterising the vector screen is exactly what
those old Tek printers did! They scanned the surface of the tube in a
raster fashion, and read out what they found there. I don't know how
well the analogue circuitry preserved the grey scale - my 4631 hasn't
worked since I got it - but done well, this could do pretty good
staircase elimination.
I wonder. How about a PC that sits on the GPIB and emulates a 4662?
That could indeed preserve true vectors!
Just a thought,
Philip.