PDP-11 Framebuffers (Re: Unix on old-ish machines)

[Zane H. Healy]

At 2:24 AM -0400 4/8/05, Ethan Dicks wrote:
>On Apr 8, 2005 1:39 AM, Zane H. Healy <healyzh at aracnet.com> wrote:
>>  No kidding!  I've got a 3rd party framebuffer for my PDP-11/73, but
>>  have never gotten it working, in part because I'm not sure what it
>>  would take to hook up a monitor or even what type monitor would be
>>  needed.  In my case I've got drivers for RSX-11M, but they existed
>>  for RT-11, and maybe other OS's.
>
>Interesting... I have a Qbus framebuffer, too.  I got it from my old
>boss from a project where we built a QA training station for an
>ultrasonic inspector.  My (MACRO-11) code would slice a portion of a
>large (multi-megabyte) data file and display just the desired
>component (out of a tray of dozens) on the screen at
>1000-pixels-per-inch resolution on a 512x512 screen.  It happened that
>we were manupulating grey scale data, but the framebuffer would do
>color.  The card has three odd LIMO-like connectors for
>RGB-sync-on-green and that's it.  I have one cable (for the green
>channel, naturally).

Is what you have the DEC board?  It looks like the board I have is 
either 768x574 or 512x384 depending on the number of colours.  I 
don't have any sort of a cable for it, BUT I have the manuals.  The 
board in question came from a computer that was hooked up to an 
Electron Microscope.

>I have *no* idea if there are drivers for anything aside from RT-11,
>since that's what I was given for the project.  I still have a few
>listings, and I _may_ have an RL01 and/or RL02 pack with source code.

I'm guessing there is support for RSX-11M/M+ no matter what the 
board, mine supports RT-11, RSX-11M/M+, VMS, and Unix.

>I'd be interestded to see pictures of your framebuffer.  Mine is
>accessible, but not here, so if desired, I could do the same.

Now that you mention it, I realize I'm really not sure where it is. 
The odds are it's somewhere in one of the boxes of Q-Bus boards 
around here, rather than up in storage.  I do know where the manuals 
are and it appears that it is called a "Supervisor Single Board 
Display (SBD)", and the board is based on the 68k.

			Zane


-- 
--
| Zane H. Healy                    | UNIX Systems Administrator |
| healyzh at aracnet.com (primary)    | OpenVMS Enthusiast         |
|                                  | Classic Computer Collector |
+----------------------------------+----------------------------+
|     Empire of the Petal Throne and Traveller Role Playing,    |
|          PDP-10 Emulation and Zane's Computer Museum.         |
|                http://www.aracnet.com/~healyzh/               |