[TUHS] Origins of the frame buffer device

Dan Cross crossd at gmail.com
Thu Mar 9 05:35:49 AEST 2023


On Wed, Mar 8, 2023 at 10:06 AM Paul Ruizendaal <pnr at planet.nl> wrote:
> > On 8 Mar 2023, at 15:23, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Yes, I got a bit carried away there. The point I was trying to make was in context of the wheel of reincarnation, though: if the system is a Vax and a Blit, we could conceptually think of the Blit as an accelerated graphics card for the Vax, having made one full revolution. If this is nonsense, why is the Magnolia different?

I don't think it's nonsense. I do think it is reaching a bit to draw
an analogy that was probably unconsidered at the time, but that's ok.
I think the study of history turns up such things all the time.

        - Dan C.


More information about the TUHS mailing list