Starting from Scratch (was Re: OT: Modern college education

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Fri Oct 23 15:26:46 1998

On Fri, 23 Oct 1998, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> Not on a PDP-8. There was a vector graphics board set. It used an
> oscilloscope for a display tube. As was proven in a patent lawsuit
> filed against Nintendo, video games did exist before Pong, just not
> in the living rooms of America.

Sam replied:
> Oooh, this sounds cool. Do you have any more details behind this or a
> URL?

The board set was the VC8-E (M869), and it was typically used with a VR14
monitor (same as used in the PDP-11-based GT40).

I have a not-yet-fully-functional Lab-8/e, which is a PDP-8/e configured with
the VT8-E, A/D and D/A converters, and a rack-mount VR14. There was a special
version of FOCAL with support for these devices.

There is a version of Space War that will run on an 8/e with the VC8-E.

There is also a raster display interface, the VT8-E (M8335, M8336, M8337)
that can even do bit-mapped graphics, DMA'd from the core memory. I'd like
to get my hands on one of these.

Eric
Received on Fri Oct 23 1998 - 15:26:46 BST