rtb@ihlpm.UUCP (Todd) (04/17/86)
I just read on att.blit that the University of Toronto has developed and is currently using a 5620(blit) terminal emulator in a ROM cartridge for the 520ST (mono). Does anyone know if this is true? If this is cartridge exists I would like to buy one and I'm sure a lot of other people would too. Can anybody out there confirm or deny this??? I think a product like this would be a great boost to ST sales, I hope it makes it to the market place. R.T. Bradstrum
gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) (04/22/86)
In article <787@ihlpm.UUCP>, rtb@ihlpm.UUCP (Todd) writes: > I just read on att.blit that the University of Toronto has developed > and is currently using a 5620(blit) terminal emulator in a ROM > cartridge for the 520ST (mono). Does anyone know if this is true? Unfortunately AT&T does not sell the BLIT. They sell the 5620. The BLIT had a 68000, the 5620 for political reasons has an AT&T custom processor chip. (It's probably more expensive for them to build it than to buy the 68000 from Motorola for $10.) The ST cartridge in question makes the ST emulate a BLIT. In fact, once a few changes have been made to the BLIT sources, it can run the same binaries that a BLIT runs. (The changes make things like the screen size a parameter rather than hardwired in.) All the BLITs in the world are inside Bell Labs and a few universities. I guess this might benefit people inside Bell but it's useless to the rest of us, unless AT&T releases BLIT (not 5620) software to everybody. Hmm, AT&T could probably sell the 520ST cartridge and the BLIT source code as a package deal... -- John Gilmore {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu jgilmore@lll-crg.arpa
drb@utcsri.UUCP (David R. Blythe) (04/23/86)
> > > I just read on att.blit that the University of Toronto has developed > and is currently using a 5620(blit) terminal emulator in a ROM > cartridge for the 520ST (mono). Does anyone know if this is true? > If this is cartridge exists I would like to buy one and I'm sure a > lot of other people would too. Can anybody out there confirm or deny > this??? I think a product like this would be a great boost to ST > sales, I hope it makes it to the market place. > > R.T. Bradstrum Subject: Re: 5620 (blit) cartridge for the ST Yes, Dave Galloway and myself have ported the original 68000 Blit software to the 520st. The software, for the most part, is the same as that in the Blit's commercial successor, the 5620. For those of you unfamiliar with the Blit software, this gives you a multi-tasking multi-window smart terminal interface to Unix similar to the facilities offered on the Sun workstation (plus and minus some features). [For those interested in more details about the Blit, see Rob Pike's article in the April 1983 issue of the ACM Transactions on Graphics, or the SIGGRAPH 83 conference proceedings]. It was our hope to be able to use these converted atari's as cheap terminals at the university. While the software was quite successfully ported*, the project was somewhat of a failure for two reasons. The most important is that the st keyboard is terrible (ATARI ARE YOU LISTENING?). The second reason is that the screen is a bit small, particularly for multi-window use (although it still beats the hell out of a dumb ascii terminal). On the other hand, I must give credit to atari for the 70hz non-interlaced b/w screen, it is beautiful compared to the 30hz interlaced green screen on the Blit and 5620! Anyway, we have a half dozen of these terminals in use by people at the university (mostly me) under BSD 4.2 (impatiently waiting for 4.3 and its accompanying OS window support) and we will live with them until somebody comes out with some better hardware (or we build it ourselves). Unfortunately, all of the software was derived from proprietary Bell software so we are not allowed to distribute it to anybody unless you are appropriately licensed :-(. * In conclusion, for those of you already possessing Blit or 5620 software interested in trying to get our software, I must also point out that it is not just a matter of getting the ROMs. We have modified most of the Blit terminal programs to remove the machine dependencies making them binary compatible across both the atari and Blit (except for the main terminal multiplexor). Therefore a complete 10 Meg (or so) distribution would be necessary. :-( ... :-( David Blythe Computer Systems Research Institute University of Toronto Usenet: {linus, ihnp4, allegra, decvax, floyd, utzoo}!utcsri!drb CSNET: drb@Toronto ARPA: drb%Toronto@CSNet-Relay