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From: colwell@omews35.intel.com (Robert Colwell)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Perq
Message-ID: <6135@omepd.UUCP>
Date: 25 Oct 90 18:21:05 GMT
References: <1990Oct22.163604.178@mdbs.uucp>
Sender: news@omepd.UUCP
Reply-To: colwell@omews35.UUCP (Robert Colwell)
Organization: Intel Corp., Hillsboro, Oregon
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In article <1990Oct22.163604.178@mdbs.uucp> zed@mdbs.uucp (Bill Smith) writes:
>Cruftyness aside, was there a product in the same price/performance
>range as a Perq with a landscape high-resolution screen?

Assuming you mean circa 1982 or so, there were none on the market that I
knew of, although Apollo's and Sun's came out at about the same that Perq's
was ready.  Perq had to add a phase-locked-loop to derive the video timing
from the CPU timing to make their landscape display, since the bit rates
are entirely different for that format (and number of pixels & lines), and
the frame buffer was in main memory.  That may have been (in retrospect) a
bad architectural decision, but it sure was fun being able to watch the OS
swap things into memory -- you could actually see the bits on the screen if
you mapped your display just right. 

Getting that PLL to work properly was no picnic.  (At the time, I was
watching the goings-on from across the lab, since I had an analogous PLL
designed into the color system I was designing for them at the time.)  In
the end, we had to physically isolate a tiny daughter-card from the board
so that ground-plane noise from the big board wouldn't introduce noticeable
jitter into the displayed pixels.

Speaking of high-res, has everyone seen the monitors that MegaScan (a Perq
followon) produces?  3K x 4K displays at 70 Hz non-interlaced?  Yes, we're
talking God's Own BitRates here; the cursor alone has several hundred
pixels in it.  So moving the cursor involves moving a whole lot more bits
than mere workstations ever dreamed of.  And imagine the fun of doing
bitblts on frame buffers this big.

Bob Colwell  mipon2!colwell@intel.com  503-696-4550
Intel Corp.  JF1-19
5200 NE Elam Young Parkway
Hillsboro, Oregon 97124