Corvus Concept (was Re: Y2K stuff)

From: Frank McConnell <fmc_at_reanimators.org>
Date: Tue Apr 13 11:01:09 1999

Derek Peschel <dpeschel_at_u.washington.edu> wrote (after something
I wrote a while ago):
> > What do you think a Corvus Concept would bring to Blockout? I don't know,
> > and it's been years since I played Tetris.
>
> Mostly the high-resolution graphics and possibly a tall aspect ratio of
> the monitor. Radius Pivot monitors are very rectangular (they're either
> very tall or very wide) -- does the Concept screen look the same way?

Hmm, sort of -- it's a 15" monitor, but the bezel around the screen is
such that it encompasses an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper with a little bit
of border all the way around. Then again, so does the 17" Dell
monitor that I'm using now...well, no, I think it has a bit more
border to the left and right than the Concept monitor would (in
landscape mode).

> I just saw a picutre of a Concept, and it seemed to be running a decent-
> looking GUI. Is that realistic?

I think it's realistic (the hardware does bit-mapped 720x560
monochrome graphics), but I'm not sure it was typically done. Reading
the manuals, I get a picture of a character- and screen-oriented UI
that just happens to be done by drawing characters on a bit-mapped
display. Navigation through applications seems to be done largely with
character commands and function keys (w/on-screen labels).

And there's no standard pointing device beyond the keyboard. Though I
guess you could add something -- there are serial ports and the bus
slots are close enough to Apple ][ slots that you might be able to
plug an Apple-compatible interface in and write some code to make it
work. Or you could do without, I can certainly work the GUI on my HP
Integral PC without a rodent, and when I used to do stuff in HPDRAW
using an HP graphics terminal with an HP3000 mini, there were a lot of
things for which I preferred the keyboard cursor positioning over what
I'd be able to do with a Mac and its mouse.
Received on Tue Apr 13 1999 - 11:01:09 BST