Help resurrect my Xerox Alto

On 9/22/2010 8:27 PM, Nick Allen wrote: Nick, and others with Alto experience, I wonder if the system has control over the video, and it may not fire until the firmware is running, and ready for the display. I had an experience with one in El Segundo at the XDS facility there years ago, and played with a graphics program. One thing we did was turn on one bit with the screen black (all 0, I assume) and then turn off one bit with the screen white, just to see if it was noticeable. I don't know if the program, whatever it was had control over the scan or not, but it is possible that was firmware controlled. If the monitor schematics exist, you might need to see if there is a control that turned on the video, which may fire the high voltage on demand. Jim