AlphaWindows - Protocol Information?

Al Kossow aek at bitsavers.org
Wed Sep 5 09:39:06 CDT 2018



On 9/5/18 5:17 AM, Martin Hepperle via cctalk wrote:
> In the 1990s a computer terminal standard "AlphaWindows" was proposed by the
> Display Industry Association (DIA).
> Sort of X-Windows for the poor.

Very poor... only text in the windows.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.terminals/ielBYV-mNLM

This is kind of interesting to me, because I helped get TVI 990/995 working in MAME.
We obviously never had the windowing protocol information either.

I wondered why a terminal needed a 68000 inside it.

I'm obviously interested in anything you come up with.

I guess a place to start is getting a copy of Multiview Mascot and watching the
serial protocol between it and a terminal.


--

Related.. I worked on a similar product in the mid-80's, except it could do Tek 4015
graphics in terminal windows. A friend just revived one of the board sets over the weekend.

http://bitsavers.org/pdf/aed/colorware_cards/pictures/screen.jpg

This was a board-level VME or Qbus product you talked to directly through a shared memory
queue of virtual terminal connections.




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