CDC 6600 display character generation

[Jim Manley]

When you have "Defense Products Division" in your organization's name,
"high price" comes with the products, ala $10,000 hammers and toilet
seats  (and
"Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation" doesn't exactly evoke
thoughts of Walmart pricing, either).

I grew up a few stones' throws from Clifton - if I'd known when I was a kid
that you would need this info, I could have dumpster-dived a king's
fortune's worth to give to you now, probably along with some samples.
Unfortunately, I would have had to incur the cost of storage for nearly six
decades for that and all of the other "must-have" artifacts that I would
have also scarfed up along with them ...

I'm one of the early senior docents at the Computer History Museum in
SillyCon Valley and yammered on endlessly about the 6600 and its neighbor,
the 7600, but I never thought about character generation on the displays
beyond it being vector-based drawing.  I'm pretty sure it was done via
look-up tables that directed the beams along vectors on the displays for
the operating PDP-1 we play Spacewar! on as often as we like ... usually
against its principal creator, fellow Señor Docent, Steve Russell.

All the Best,
Jim


On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 2:37 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:

>
>
> > On Jun 6, 2018, at 3:40 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk <
> cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> >
> > One of the more interesting things about the DD60 display was the use of
> > 2C43 "Lighthouse" UHF triode tubes to drive the CRT electrostatic
> > deflection.
>
> UHF, yes, but not those.  The final state uses 3CX100A5 UHF transmitter
> tubes.  The 2C43 would not appreciate the 2000 volt plate voltage used in
> that stage.  The driver stages are fairly ordinary looking receiver style
> dual-triode tubes.
>
> > Only being around briefly for the 170 system, I don't know how the
> > magnetic deflection was driven there.
> >
> > I imagine that the cost of the DD60 was due in no small port by the use
> > of the CRTs--I believe they were produced in Germany.
>
> Really?  It is shown as a K2263-P31, manufacturer Fairchild Camera and
> Instrument Corporation, Defense Products Div., Clifton NJ.  I sure would
> like to get my hands on specs for that tube.
>
> In any case, they were sometimes referred to as "radar tubes" which sounds
> somewhat reasonable.  Certainly very different from TV CRTs, and bigger
> than what's used in oscilloscopes, so they were most likely low volume
> which would explain a high price.
>
>         paul
>
>