MaxSpeed VGA MaxStation

[John Ames]

Hah, wow.

On 3/25/21, Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 25, 2021 at 1:01 AM John Ames via cctech
> <cctech at classiccmp.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Huh - wacky. Still pretty curious how it works just on a basic "how
>> the hey does the framebuffer even function" level, but that's
>> certainly interesting. Does make me feel less guilty about planning to
>> cannibalize it for a homebrew project later, though!
>>
>
> It's a text mode, which generates the screen image using rasterized fonts
> from the text + attributes stored in video memory.
>
> There is no frame buffer. With that little RAM it can support the text
> modes easily enough, but none of the graphics modes.
>
> Warner
>
>
>> On 3/24/21, Camiel Vanderhoeven <camiel.vanderhoeven at vmssoftware.com>
>> wrote:
>> > It's neither X nor ethernet. These worked with a special controller
>> > card
>> > that had 4 RJ45 connectors. That allowed four users to share a single
>> > Windows NT system.
>> > ________________________________
>> > From: cctech <cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org> on behalf of John Ames via
>> > cctech <cctech at classiccmp.org>
>> > Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2021 4:41 AM
>> > To: cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org>; cctech <cctech at classiccmp.org>
>> > Subject: MaxSpeed VGA MaxStation
>> >
>> > So, some months ago, I was in an electronics surplus store and picked
>> > up what was obviously an X terminal - tiny metal slab with a VGA
>> > connector, serial & parallel, AT keyboard, and RJ45 "communication"
>> > port. I got it bare, without the external PSU that would've gone with
>> > it, and I've since been unable to determine just what the heck I'm
>> > supposed to feed this thing. It's a standard barrel jack, but there's
>> > no markings on the case or the PCB to give any clue as to what
>> > voltage/amperage or polarity it expects, and Google has been no help
>> > at all. Does anyone have any recollection of these things? Any idea
>> > what they want for juice?
>> >
>> > To throw an extra mysterious wrinkle into this, when I popped open the
>> > case to get a look at the PCB, I found that, apart from the CPU, DART,
>> > and ROM, the only non-glue ICs on the board were an 8K SRAM and a
>> > W82C476 RAMDAC - but 8K isn't even remotely enough for a VGA screen,
>> > not even a monochrome one at VGA resolution! Am I missing something on
>> > how these things operated? Given this, my only guess would be some
>> > kind of insane networked-framebuffer scheme where the host would blast
>> > video data in on the fly, but there's no way this was even 100Mbps
>> > Ethernet, and 10Mbps isn't nearly fast enough to transfer 150KB at
>> > 60FPS, and there's no memory to buffer it for a slower refresh. What
>> > in the heck is going on here?
>> >
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