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From: s_betz@iravcl.ira.uka.de
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.sys.dec
Subject: unknown VT100 graphics-board
Message-ID: <90.312.12:25:40@ira.uka.de>
Date: 8 Nov 90 20:18:40 GMT
Sender: news@ira.uka.de (USENET News System)
Reply-To: s_betz@iravcl.ira.uka.de
Organization: University of Karlsruhe, FRG
Lines: 25

Some time ago I bought an old DEC VT100 Terminal and when I opened
it I saw, that there was some graphic card inside. It is both
connected to the backplane of the terminal and to the VT100-
motherboard. This graphic-card has been made by Digital Engineering.
It has 5 Z80A processors on it: one CPU, three PIOs (?) and one
DART (??). Further there is some RAM (I think) on it: 20 ICs
named MM5290 and lots of other standart ICs.
On the board there are 2 EPROMS with a label on it saying:
"Retro-Graphics Software, Digital Engineering."
The only thing this magic card is doing (so far I noticed) is
that it prints out the following message, when I turn the
terminal on:
FIRMWARE 017 VERSION 1.1
COPYRIGHT (C) 1981 BY DIGITAL ENGINEERING, INC.
Besides this the terminal behaves just as if no card has been plugged
in.
Now my question is: what can I do with this card (and how) or where
can I get information about it or is it even worth to get information
about???

Hope someone has help....

Martin Betz
s_betz@iravcl.ira.uka.de