[TUHS] Origins of the frame buffer device

[Dan Cross]

On Wed, Mar 8, 2023 at 7:53 AM Paul Ruizendaal <pnr at planet.nl> wrote:
> This also has a relation to the point about what constitutes a "workstation" and one of the comments was that it needs to have "integrated graphics". What is integrated in this historical context -- is it a shared memory frame buffer, is it a shared CPU, is it physically in the same box or just an integrated user experience? It seems to me that it is not easy to delineate. Consider a Vax connected to a Tek raster scan display, a Vax connected to a Blit, Clem’s Magnolia and a networked Sun-1. Which ones are workstations? If shared memory is the key only Clem’s Magnolia and the Sun-1 qualify. If it is a shared CPU only a standalone Sun-1 qualifies, but its CPU would be heavily taxed when doing graphics, so standalone graphics was maybe not a normal use case. For now my rule of thumb is that it means (in a 1980’s-1990’s context) a high-bandwidth path between the compute side and display side, with enough total combined power to drive both the workload and the display.

I wouldn't try to be too rigid in your terms here. The term
"workstation" was probably never well-defined; it had more of an
intuitive connotation of a machine that was more powerful than
something you could get on the consumer market (like a PC or 8-bit
microcomputer), but wasn't a minicomputer or mainframe/supercomputer.

By the early 90s this was understood to mean a single-user machine in
a desktop or deskside form factor with a graphics display, and a more
advanced operating system than something you'd get on a consumer-grade
machine.  But the term probably predated that. Generally, workstations
were machines marketed towards science/engineering/technology
applications, and so intended for a person doing "work", as opposed to
home computing or large scale business data-processing.

Would a Tek 4014 connected to a VAX count? Maybe? I mean, bicycles
have saddles, but we also put saddles on horses, so sure, in the late
70s or early 80s, why not. By the 1990s, maybe not so much.

        - Dan C.