Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ames!oliveb!sun!rfm@sun.com
From: rfm@sun.com (Rich McAllister)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc
Subject: Re: Wireless keyboard, wall screen, etc.
Summary: Slowness probably not inherent in plasma displays
Keywords: gasplasma screens, computing environments
Message-ID: <83072@sun.uucp>
Date: 27 Dec 88 17:51:13 GMT
References: <4362@pitt.UUCP> <257@gloom.UUCP> <82702@sun.uucp> <8939@ut-emx.UUCP> <17924@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> <8506@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <526@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu>
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Reply-To: rfm@sun.com (Rich McAllister)
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Lines: 21
In-reply-to: hyc@math.lsa.umich.edu (Howard Chu)

In article <8506@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> kenchin@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Ken H. Chin) writes:
>The IBM terminals with gas plasma screens were large..

In article <526@stag.math.lsa.umich.edu>, hyc@math (Howard Chu) writes: 
>We have one of these..  It's in a device IBM calls a 3290, sort of a
>glorified 3270.  ...it seems to have an incredibly slow draw/refresh rate,
>which can get you into trouble when a lot of text starts scrolling in...

I suspect the slow drawing rate is due to the drawing being done by the
anemic, shared "display controller" (3274?) IBM used for 3278/3279/3290
style displays, rather than any inherent slowness of plasma displays.  The
CRT-based "big screen" (43 x 80 character!) 3278s took a noticeable interval
to redraw, too.

It occurs to me that plasma screens might have an *advantage* in
performance.  Plasma-panel pixels have "memory": once set or reset, they
stay on or off, and don't need refreshing.  This means they don't eat memory
bandwidth like CRT displays do.

--
Rich McAllister (rfm@sun.com)