19 Dec
2019
19 Dec
'19
12:16 a.m.
I sense a hint of confusion in some of the messages
here. To lay that to rest if necessary (and maybe
others are interested in the history anyway):
As I understand it, the Blit was the original terminal,
hardware done by Bart Locanthi (et al?), software by
Rob Pike (et al?). It used an MC68000 CPU. Western
Electric made a small production run of these terminals
for use within AT&T. I don't think it was sold to the
general public.
By the time I arrived at Bell Labs in late 1984, the
Standard Terminal of 1127 was the AT&T 5620, locally
called the Jerq. This was a makeover with hardware
redesigned by a product group to use a Bellmac 32 CPU,
and software heavily reworked by a product group.
This is the terminal that was manufactured for general
sale.
I'm not sure, but I think the Blit's ROM was very basic,
just enough to be some sort of simple glass-tty or
perhaps smartass-terminal* plus an escape sequence to
let you load in new code. The Jerq had a fancier ROM,
which was a somewhat-flaky ANSI-ish terminal by default,
but an escape sequence put it into graphics-window-manager
mode, more or less like what had run a few years earlier
on the Blit.
By then the code used in Research had evolved considerably,
in particular allowing the tty driver to be exported to
the terminal (those familiar with 9term should know what
I mean). In 1127 we used a different escape sequence to
download a standalone program into the terminal and
replace the ROM window manager entirely, so we could run
our newer and (to my taste anyway) appreciably better code.
The downloaded code lived in RAM; you had to reload it
whenever the terminal was power-cycled or lost its connection
or whatnot. (It took a minute or so at 9600bps, rather
longer at 1200. This is not the only reason we jumped at
the chance to upgrade our home-computing scheme to use
9600bps over leased lines, but it was an important one.)
The V8 tape was made in late 1984 (I know that for sure
because I helped make it). It is unlikely to have anything
for the MC68000 Blit, only stuff for the Mac-32 Jerq.
Likewise for the not-really-a-release snapshots from the
9/e and 10/e eras. The 5620 ROM code is very unlikely to
be there anywhere, but the replacement stuff we used should
be somewhere.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
19 Dec
19 Dec
12:26 a.m.
New subject: Blit source
Your naming isn't right, although the story otherwise is accurate.
The Jerq was the original name for the 68K machines hand-made by Bart. The
name, originally coined for a fun demo of the Three Rivers Perq by folks at
Lucasfilm, was borrowed with permission by us but was considered unsuitable
by Sam Morgan as we reached out to make some industrially, by a company
(something Atlantic) on Long Island. So "Blit" was coined. The Blit name
later stuck unofficially to the DMD-5620, which was made by Teletype and,
after some upheavals, had a Western Electric BellMac 32000 CPU.
If 5620s were called Jerqs, it was an accident. All the software with that
name would be for the original, Locanthi-built and -designed 68K machines.
The sequence is thus Jerq, Blit, DMD-5620. DMD stood for dot-mapped rather
than bit-mapped, but I never understood why. It seemed a category error to
me.
-rob
3:47 a.m.
New subject: Blit source
Norman wrote:
The V8 tape was made in late 1984 (I know that for
sure
because I helped make it). It is unlikely to have anything
for the MC68000 Blit, only stuff for the Mac-32 Jerq.
The V8 tape has the Blit stuff in /usr/blit, and the 5620 stuff
in /usr/jerq. The Blit stuff looks somewhat older, and doesn't
have exactly the same graphics library functions as the 5620.
It would be interesting to see a chronology of the evolution of
these window systems.
Rob wrote:
If 5620s were called Jerqs, it was an accident. All
the software with that
name would be for the original, Locanthi-built and -designed 68K machines.
That's amusing, considering that the 5620 stuff was in /usr/jerq on
Research systems! Apparently the accident became institutionalized.
Mike
6:49 a.m.
New subject: Blit source
On 18/12/19, Mike Haertel wrote:
The V8 tape has the Blit stuff in /usr/blit, and the
5620 stuff
in /usr/jerq. The Blit stuff looks somewhat older, and doesn't
have exactly the same graphics library functions as the 5620.
My theory on that is that the up-to-date version of the code was kept in
/usr/jerq. When the 68k implementation became legacy, the code was
copied to /usr/blit and /usr/jerq became the directory for the new
development. And just to make it more interesting V10 has a 630
directory presumably for the 68k based 630 MTG.
Anyway, both the 68k and 32000 blit stuff is on the v8 tape (at least
binaries) and both work. 68k is running fine under emulation, 32000 is
running fine on real hardware (if you have the right ROM).
aap
5:12 a.m.
New subject: Blit source
On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 7:27 PM Rob Pike <robpike(a)gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
The sequence is thus Jerq, Blit, DMD-5620. DMD stood for dot-mapped rather
than bit-mapped, but I never understood why. It seemed
a category error to
me.
The first time I saw a terminal of that lineage, it was a gnot (Gnot?
GNOT?) running Plan 9; this would likely have been 1993 or 1994; I was in
high school and visited a college-student friend of mine who was interning
at the labs and Dennis Ritchie had one on his desk. As an aside, he kindly
spared me a few minutes; I confess I was too star-struck and embarrassed to
ask him to autograph my copy of K&R that I had brought along. Dennis was a
kind, humble person and I was always quite struck by that in comparison to
some other academic and industry super-stars I've met.
Anyway, my question is what was the evolutionary story of the gnot? I
recall being told that it had a 68020, a datakit interface, and some amount
of RAM that was small but non-trivial; perhaps 4MB? It seemed clearly
evolved from the series of earlier terminals presently under discussion.
And the next step in the evolution was a MIPS-based terminal; I can't
recall the name, though.
- Dan C.
6:54 a.m.
New subject: Blit source
The Gnot had a 68040 (which had an MMU that paged properly) and an INCON
interface, which was a kind of Datakit for the home. Twisted pair. Half a
megabit if I remember right, but I probably don't.
Two bits per pixel. The "render extension" in X Windows originated there,
after an epiphany I had while watching Hoop Dreams. True story.
The MIPS machine you refer to was called a Magnum, made by somebody for
Microsoft as a porting engine for Windows to non-Intel.
-rob
On Thu, Dec 19, 2019 at 4:13 PM Dan Cross <crossd(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Dec 18, 2019 at 7:27 PM Rob Pike
<robpike(a)gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
The sequence is thus Jerq, Blit, DMD-5620. DMD stood for dot-mapped rather
than bit-mapped, but I never understood why. It
seemed a category error to
me.
The first time I saw a terminal of that lineage, it was a gnot (Gnot?
GNOT?) running Plan 9; this would likely have been 1993 or 1994; I was in
high school and visited a college-student friend of mine who was interning
at the labs and Dennis Ritchie had one on his desk. As an aside, he kindly
spared me a few minutes; I confess I was too star-struck and embarrassed to
ask him to autograph my copy of K&R that I had brought along. Dennis was a
kind, humble person and I was always quite struck by that in comparison to
some other academic and industry super-stars I've met.
Anyway, my question is what was the evolutionary story of the gnot? I
recall being told that it had a 68020, a datakit interface, and some amount
of RAM that was small but non-trivial; perhaps 4MB? It seemed clearly
evolved from the series of earlier terminals presently under discussion.
And the next step in the evolution was a MIPS-based terminal; I can't
recall the name, though.
- Dan C.
8:03 a.m.
New subject: Blit source
Rob Pike <robpike(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The Gnot had a 68040 (which had an MMU that paged
properly) and an INCON
interface, which was a kind of Datakit for the home. Twisted pair. Half a
megabit if I remember right, but I probably don't.
Two bits per pixel. The "render extension" in X Windows originated there,
after an epiphany I had while watching Hoop Dreams. True story.
I'd like to hear this story in full, please.
Thanks!
Arnold
3:32 p.m.
New subject: Blit source
On 12/19/19 1:54 AM, Rob Pike wrote:
Two bits per pixel. The "render extension"
in X Windows originated there,
after an epiphany I had while watching Hoop Dreams. True story.
That's a great movie. I would be very interested in hearing the story of
how it sparked that epiphany.
(And if you liked Hoop Dreams, you might be interested in "Benji", an ESPN
30 for 30 documentary about another Chicago high school basketball player
but from a very different angle. Unless, of course, you've already seen
it.)
Chet
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU chet(a)case.edu http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/
1584
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1584
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7 comments
7 participants
participants (7)
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Angelo Papenhoff -
arnold＠skeeve.com -
Chet Ramey -
Dan Cross -
Mike Haertel -
Norman Wilson -
Rob Pike