[TUHS] Jerq menuhit/mhit

[Dave Brown]

Was there a connection between MGR and Blit?  Just from a programming standpoint there is similarities in that they both transport agnostic; using escape sequences for graphical/UI functions.  I know MGR code does little more than provide a bitblit interface and it’s upto whoever ports it to implement the interface to the hardware.

 I took the MGR code, and extended the distribution for the Atari ST (added new demos, fonts and libraries); many years ago.  

Might be worth porting it to SDL for a giggle.


Sent from my iPhone

> On Jul 2, 2023, at 3:11 AM, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
> 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/