Unidentified peripheral in Tektronix PDP-11/20 system

[Jon Elson]

On 01/26/2020 04:43 AM, jim stephens via cctalk wrote:
> They demoed a system with an exotic sampling system 
> similar to that in that time frame at the university I 
> went to.
>
> Jon Elson may recall it.  Might have been as late as 73.
>
> It had a dual ended CRT with what was essentially a high 
> speed scope shooting a silicon charged target from one side.
>
Tek sold several storage oscilloscopes that used an image 
conversion scheme.  One type had a microchannel plate
with the traditional scope electronics on one side and an 
NTSC video scanning tube on the other side.  So, you could
take a single-shot event, store on the microchannel, and 
then display on a black and white TV monitor for an amazingly
long time.  It took like 10+ minutes for the image to degrade.

I think it was later they made an electron beam digitizer 
storage scope.  The scope tube created a fan beam that was
deflected by single-axis deflection plates.  The target had 
patterns of stripes that decoded the beam into a binary code 
that was then recorded in a digital memory.  So, the fan 
beam of electrons and the target formed the ADC!

Jon