[TUHS] Jerq menuhit/mhit

[arnold at skeeve.com]

I had a DMD 5620 for a few (too short) years at Georgia Tech; AT&T
gifted a number of them as well as two 3B20s to us. We used the DMDs
on a vax running 4.2 BSD. They were heavy suckers! I think close to
50 pounds!

It was wonderful to use.  Extremely productive as compared to a regular
terminal with just one session.

Unfortunately, there were enough of the things in use that it drove
the poor vax to its knees.

Nonetheless, I have fond memories of it to this day.

Arnold

Rob Pike <robpike at gmail.com> wrote:

> The original name was Jerq, which was first the name given by friends at
> Lucasfilm to the Three Rivers PERQ workstations they had, for which the
> Pascal-written software and operating system were unsatisfactory. Bart
> Locanthi and I (with Greg Chesson and Dave Ditzel?) visited Lucasfilm in
> 1981 and we saw all the potential there with none of the realization. My
> personal aha was that, as on the Alto, only one thing could be running at a
> time and that was a profound limitation. When we began to design our answer
> to these problems a few weeks later, we called Lucasfilm to ask if they
> minded us borrowing their excellent rude name, and they readily agreed.
>
> Our slogan: A jerq at every desk.
>
> This was cool, we had good shirts, and Bart even made license plates that
> read JERQ. But when the thing started to get interesting, Sam Morgan, 127's
> director, got very nervous. He didn't want to talk to his colleagues about
> how good our jerqs were. So he proposed "RX" (research experimental) and
> Bart and I immediately huddled down and came up with blit, from bitblt, and
> that was accepted. So it was Sam who forced the issue. A shame really, but
> BTL management wasn't famous for its sense of humor.
>
> This is all with the 68000 original, which had been hand-built by us using
> wire wrap and then in larger but still modest numbers by a company on Long
> Island whose name was Northern Atlantic if I remember right. Wing Moy did
> most of the work there.
>
> Teletype came and measured and analyzed and proposed building some with
> metal cases and more mass producible board technology, and that became what
> people around the company, and later elsewhere, called the Blit.
>
> The DMD-5620 was the WE32000 version, which resulted from a decision by
> Scanlon to ram up WE32000 production by selling this product with the chip
> in it, at a loss because the chip alone cost something like $2000, compared
> to something like $25 for the 68000. Also, the WE32000 was far less
> suitable a chip, being buggy and also slower at the specific tasks like bit
> shifting that you needed for fast graphics.
>
> I still have the license plate. Here's a picture I made today.
>
> [image: IMG_4673.jpg]
>
> For those perhaps too young to understand what a revolution the merging of
> graphics and multitasking was back then, some testimonials from the time:
>
> From dmr Tue Apr  7 02:01 EST 1981 remote from research
>
>
> Don't lose interest in the jerq terminal stuff, no matter what
>
> momentary problems you have with the device or the system.
>
> I think the approach and the progress so far are very exciting.
>
>
>
> From wild!scj Sun Nov 21 09:52 EST 1982
>
> Well, after an afternoon with the bilt, seeing asteroids, crabs, maxwell,
>
> etc. etc, I asked Sarah what she liked best.
>
>
> "I liked mpx best"
>
>
> "What did you like about it?"
>
>
> "I liked making all the different boxes, and making all the different things
>
> happen in them, and making them go away."
>
>
> I think "universal appeal" is not too strong a term...
>
>
>
> From alice!vax135!tbl Sat May 14 12:07:42 1983
>
> To: alice!rob
>
> Subject: you've spoiled me
>
>
> I can't believe it.  I'm sitting here at home in front of my
>
> 2621, and I can't work.
>
>
> Damn it.  I've got to get a blit at home.
>
> [Turner and I are really pleased with the software.  Good job!]
>
>
>
> -rob
>
>
> On Sat, Jul 1, 2023 at 1:35 AM Seth Morabito <web at loomcom.com> wrote:
>
> > Speaking of the Jerq...
> >
> > Is there a definitive history anywhere of the progression from Jerq up
> > through the AT&T 730MTG? When I wrote my DMD5620 emulator I tried to find a
> > complete history, but wasn't able to. I just found various (possibly
> > apocryphal) bits and pieces here and there about AT&T objecting to various
> > names until "DMD" was settled on by marketing at some point, and forcing
> > the use of a WE32K in the 5620 for make-corporate-happy reasons.
> >
> > -Seth
> > --
> >   Seth Morabito * Poulsbo, WA * https://loomcom.com/
> >