In article <4FCDA873.1030407 at mail.msu.edu>, Josh Dersch <derschjo at mail.msu.edu> writes: There's a continuum between classic "glass tty" terminals on one end and full blown personal computers on the other. Tektronix wasn't the only manufacturer to recognize this. Add local storage and some sort of operating system (BASIC in ROM will do) to a terminal and you have a personal computer. On the terminals wiki I have a category for terminals like this: <http://terminals.classiccmp.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Local_Processing> There is also that middle ground where the terminal has local storage, but no local programming environment: <http://terminals.classiccmp.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Local_Storage> Most terminals that had local processing had local storage, but not always. Some were intended to be locally programmable by downloading a program from the host. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline> The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org> The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org> Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

The Tektronix 4051 proper name appears to be a Graphic Computing System. I updated the Wikimedia description. I also added a press release from the October 30, 1975 issue of Electronics to my web site. "Terminal Talks Basic". Electronics (New York: McGraw-Hill) 42 (22): p. 120. October 30, 1975. http://www.swtpc.com/mholley/Microprocessors/Microprocessor_History.htm A few weeks ago I was at a small gathering of former Data I/O employees. I sat next to Larry Mayhew who was the CEO in the 1980s. When I mentioned my Motorola 6800 interest (Data I/O programmers used them) he recalled the Tektronix 4051. His previous job was the Tektronix VP in charge of that product line. He knew the details of the product and thought it was a good design. He had a different view of the 4052. To improve performance, the designers use an AMD bit-slice processor. It had to emulate the 6800 so the existing software base could be used. Larry said this product was a disaster, it didn't run much faster. Sales were poor so he had to cancel the product. Here is a web site that has information on the Tektronix 4050 series. http://www.electronixandmore.com/articles/teksystem.html Michael Holley -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Josh Dersch Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2012 12:45 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: 1970s microprocessor magazine articles On 6/5/2012 12:29 AM, Richard wrote: Sure, but the 4051 doesn't really sit in the "slightly modified terminal" mold -- it didn't come with RS-232 connectivity built in (it had GPIB and a pointer input, IIRC). RS-232 was an optional add-on, as was the software that allowed it to behave as a terminal. The 4051 was a built to be a computer first, and was sold as a "Graphic Computing System." (http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Tektronix/Tektronix.4051. 1976.102646254.pdf) It may possibly have started at Tek as a "hey, let's take a 401x terminal and make a computer out of it" but I don't really understand why that means the end result is considered a Terminal in any way (or why it's useful to categorize it in such a way). (And in this case, did any other Tek terminals prior to (or after?) the 4051 use a 6800? Wouldn't the lack of any such beast point to the 4051 as being purpose-built as a computer, and not the evolution of a terminal design?) - Josh

the done any more 6800. The 4052 was in fact significantly faster than the 4051. I have both a 4051 and a 4052, and the 4052 is much faster than the 4051 in more ways than just raw CPU power. I argue what Mayhew stated as to his reasons for cancelling the series of machines. Perhaps he was speaking from a sales revenue "performance" perspective (typical of many upper-management types). Revenues for the 4051 and the later 4052/4054 fell consistently after the 4052/4054 were introduced more because of the outdated display technology used. The death of the 405x series came from its use of DVST (Direct View Storage Tube) display technology rather than performance. Raster graphics systems were gaining ground very quickly in the latter part of the 1970's, rendering DVST rather pointless in all but some very fringe environments where very high resolution was required. Even stodgy Tektronix realized this, and began designing a series of raster graphics terminals to replace its DVST terminals. Unfortunately, no such effort was made to take the 4051/4052/4054 concept and implement it using a nice raster display subsystem. Such a product could have been a major hit. The 4052/4054 used a bit-slice (AMD 2901) 16-bit implementation of the Motorola 6800 instruction set, and added microcoded floating point math instructions (utilizing unimplemented opcodes in the 6800 instruction set), along with major improvements in the code that implemented the BASIC programming environment on the machine to improve performance with math, graphics, and I/O. The 4054 added another graphics processor and a 19" DVST tube to allow even faster graphics, as well as some limited refreshed vector graphic capability (though the refreshed vectors were rather dim to prevent the storage tube from storing the image). Tek made quite a number of blunders in numerous attempts to get into the computer marketplace, all mostly a result of rather clueless management that didn't know how to market anything by Test & Measurement equipment...and when they did have good computer products, they tried to shoehorn them into the T&M business by turning them into instrumentation controllers, eliminating any chance of them succeeding in the computer marketplace. No bitterness here...all companies make mistakes. Working for Tek was one of the best employment experiences of my lifetime. I worked for Tek between 1977 and 1990, and saw many really great computer products come and go, ranging from the amazing Magnolia Smalltalk Workstation from 1976-ish, to the 405x "personal computers", to some pretty powerful desktop Unix graphic workstations in the mid-to-late 1980's. Rick Bensene

Rick Bensene wrote about Tektronix stuff: Really? That date is extremely hard to believe. Adele Goldberg wrote in "The Smalltalk-80 System Release Process" (in _Smalltalk-80: Bits of History, Words of Advice_, June 1983) that the first release of Smalltalk to licensees (Apple, DEC, HP, and Tektronix) did not occur until February 17, 1981, with updated releases on July 24, 1981 and November 18, 1981. "Implementing the Smalltalk-80 System: The Tektronix Experience" by Paul L. McCullough, copyright 1982 and printed in the same book, describes the initial bringup at Tektronix. It doesn't give a date for the start of the effort, but after describing the initial bringup, states "About this time, we received the second virtual image from Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)." This suggests that they received the first and second images at times consistent with the release dates in the Goldberg paper. Didn't Magnolia use the Motorola MC68000 microprocessor? Motorola didn't announce that until September 1979, and while it's certainly possible that Motorola provided Tektronix with preliminary data on it prior to that, Motorola didn't have working silicon until late 1979. Allen Wirfs-Brock's resume describes how he was involved in the Tektronix review of the draft Smalltalk-80 books in 1980-1981, and that review occurred before Xerox released the image.

On Jun 5, 2012, at 12:44 AM, Josh Dersch wrote: ... Perhaps a common aspiration back then :) According to Wirt Atmar (of AICS, and now passed away), HP came to him about when the Apple 1 was introduced, asking him if the HP2640A could be converted into a personal computer. (see: http://www.aics-research.com/history6.html ) The analysis at the time was: yes, but it would be so expensive it wouldn't succeed. (The HP 2640A was already a very expensive terminal!) (Of course, later TinyBASIC was ported to the HP2645A) Stan

In article <CAM2UOwKFNxK5fAoo=XudEz1-ump9c4p1TadsOGH+WrgZ9G6E9w at mail.gmail.com>, Glen Slick <glen.slick at gmail.com> writes: Interesting; so the floppy drive fits where the tape drives would have gone? I didn't think there was quite enough room in the cabinet for that. I'd love to see some pictures of it for the terminals wiki. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline> The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org> The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org> Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

In article <CAM2UOw+vzA+Cg9JxcmbxsTnBCTbG2o-D3qKsRC6b2ohjFxvbmw at mail.gmail.com>, Glen Slick <glen.slick at gmail.com> writes: Ah, that makes sense. Even for the other models of 264x, you could get the external floppy drive as an option. Very possible; I have seen docs for 8008, 8080 and 8085A CPU modules. -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline> The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org> The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org> Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

In article <29891C54-D49F-40A5-9C5A-1764B40AD620 at allegro.com>, Stan Sieler <ss at allegro.com> writes: I'd like to hear more about this; is there a link online somewhere? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline> The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org> The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org> Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

On Tue, 19 Jun 2012, Stan Sieler wrote: .... We have working copies of these games: Keep on Drivin', Pong, Hacman and Space Invaders run on our hp 2648 with a 8080 processor, and we also have a version of Pong for hp 2644 with 8008 processor. Naturally we saved them on our ftp-server. I never tried to load them via the serial line, but would be interested to do that, because the cassettes degrade more and more. Until now we didn't find a solution for the dissolving drivebelts inside the small DCs. You can find the files on our ftp-server: ftp://ftp.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pub/cm/ in the subdirectories 2644 and 2648. Pong is named by the german word "tennis". Klemens -- klemens krause Stuttgarter KompetenzZentrum fyr Minimal- & Retrocomputing. http://computermuseum.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de