jay@npois.UUCP (Anton Winteroak) (02/12/85)
I have read that there is an expensive graphics option for the IBM AT. (about 4000 dollars). Most of what I have read indicates that it is pretty nice. But nothing I have seen has told me any hard core details like ... 1. Is it bit mapped. 2. How many total pixils horizontal and verticle. 3. Is it available now ? 4. Where can I get it ? 5. How many bits per pixil ? Please respond on the net if you can answer questions 1,2, & 5. questions 3 & 4 are extra credit.
german@uiucuxc.UUCP (02/14/85)
I have one in my office so here goes:
1. Bit-mapped? They don't claim it as such.
2. Resolution? 640H x 480v.
3. Available? Yes.
4. Where? I got mine from IBM directly.
5. Bits/pixil? Hmm... 8 bit planes available.
Here is a blurb from their product announcement(184-112):
IBM PC Pro. Graphics Controller(1501)
640x480 pel definition
256 colors from a palette of 4096
hardware support for 2D and 3D drawing, rotating, translating, scaling
graphics boards (2 adjacent slots) include an Intel 8088
move and draw with absolute or relative coordinates
user-redefinable color selection
built-in or user-programable character set
variable character size
vector and polygon drawing and polygon fill
IBM 5175 PC Professional Graphics Display
640x480
67 pels per inch both horizontally and vertically
.31mm shadow mask for clarity and detail
Tech. Info.(grahics board)
60 frames/sec. non-interlaced
16x8 char. box in emulation mode
8MHz 8088
25MHz video pel rate
screen clear/color flood feature
320Kb memory (20Kb display lists and internal variables, 300Kb display data)
64Kb on-board graphics microcode
8 bit planes available for read/write
power 5V dc. plus/minus 5%, 5.0 amps max.
Price:
IBM 5175 PC Pro. Graphics Display 1295
IBM PC Professional Graphics Controller 2995
Comments:
The Professional Graphics Monitor and Controller are capable of giving life-like
displays with the 650x480 resolution and the ability to display 256 colors at
a time. It looks to be very useful with the translation and rotation of 2D and
3D objects and the other hardware features.
But at this time there is little (none?) software developed to use the full
features of the monitor/board. Old software will run in compatability mode,
but in this emulation mode async communications is drastically slowed down,
1200buad max on an AT and 300baud max on a PC or PC/XT. This is a bug not
a feature, and a fix was promised.
You can use the all the features of this hardware with IBM's GKS package,
the Graphics Devlopment Toolkit and get metafile storage with the Graphical
File System.
Greg German
{pur-ee,ihnp4}!uiucdcs!uiucuxc!german