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Non-Symbolics Color Systems
- To: amsler%mouton.arpa@CSNET-RELAY
- Subject: Non-Symbolics Color Systems
- From: Jim Hollan <hollan%nprdc.arpa@CSNET-RELAY>
- Date: Sat, 27 Sep 86 08:26:02 PDT
- Cc: slug%r20.utexas.edu@CSNET-RELAY, andreas%mouton.arpa@CSNET-RELAY, collier%mouton.arpa@CSNET-RELAY, lesk%mouton.arpa@CSNET-RELAY, sse%mouton.arpa@CSNET-RELAY, walker%mouton.arpa@CSNET-RELAY, hollan%nprdc.arpa@CSNET-RELAY
- In-reply-to: amsler@mouton.bellcore.com's message of Tue, 23 Sep 86 19:54:07 edt
- Resent-date: Sat 27 Sep 86 13:50:18-CDT
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- Resent-message-id: <12242330564.51.CMP.SLUG@R20.UTEXAS.EDU>
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We used Advanced Electronic Design frame buffers (AED-512s)
for a number of years with our 36xx's. Now we have switched all but
one of our machines to Symbolics color boards. The AEDs were quite
cheap (around 5K) for 8bit color. We wrote a driver and talked to
them over a serial line. We still support them as well as Symbolics
color boards for our object-based graphical editor. The main
advantages of the color board are, of course, a window system,
Symbolics software, higher resolution, and speed. Still for some
applications a cheaper color system may suffice. In fact, for color
table animation, the AEDs do a nicer job since we download some code
into the 6502 in the aed and it takes care of the animation. This
results in much smoother animation than having to run a separate
process on the lispm. One problem we did experience talking over the
serial line was that with each new Symbolics software release the
serial line code slowed down more and more. The main disadvantage of
the color board is, of course, price. The price you quote in your
note I assume is for the Pixar-3675 combination rather than just a
system with a color board.