Gas plasma displays

From: William Donzelli <william_at_ans.net>
Date: Thu May 15 20:36:23 1997

> Anyway, I'm wondering why this technology was so little used. What were
> the major disadvantages? And do these displays still survive today? (Does
> anyone have one?)

They are quite expensive to manufacture and suck power like crazy,
compared to LCDs. I do not know of any general purpose machines that
still use them, but they are quite common in military and industrial
equipment.

IBM once made some awesome terminals, mostly for the 30xx mainframes.
They were quite large and had a fantastic resolution - I seem to remember
them being able to display four _nice_ looking terminal windows without
overlap. I think this was in the early 1980s timeframe.

I once saw a few at a hamfest a year or so back, but they still had hefty
price tags - $200. I am sure that was a small fraction of their original
cost.

Incidently, glass plasma displays show that electron tubes can be made
_very_ small, using traditional semiconductor etching processes.

William Donzelli
william_at_ans.net
Received on Thu May 15 1997 - 20:36:23 BST