steve@thelake.UUCP (Steve Yelvington) (12/07/89)
I saw a demo tonight of a Mega ST card that drives any multisynch monitor
capable of 50 Khz horizontal scan. Here is the information from a product
data sheet:
Image Systems Ultra-High-res Display Adaptor
1024 x 768 non-interlaced, 16 colors from a palette of 4096
1024 x 768 "Duocromatic" mode -- monochrome monitor or two colors on a
color monitor.
Optional 68881 math coprocessor
BLiTTER supported
Introductory dealer price $500
Image Systems Corporation
11543 K-Tel Drive
Hopkins, MN 55343
voice (612) 935-1171
FAX (612) 935-1386
WATS 1-800-IMAGES0
The setup was demonstrated on a 16-inch Nanao FlexScan 16-inch color
monitor. It happened to be sitting next to a Mega equipped with an 18-inch
Viking Moniterm I. The image quality was quite comparable. The Nanao
monitor was said to cost around $1,000, making the whole 16-color setup
roughly equal in price to the monochrome Viking. Image systems has its own
line of larger and more expensive monitors, too.
The screen driver software apparently is still in development. A couple of
guys were trying to demo a program they've written to create digital
embroidery masters for a computer-controlled stitching machine, but they
weren't able to get the color system working with it (I did see the
software work on the Moniterm). However, they were running a GEM-based
assembler on the Image Systems color machine, and it worked fine.
I didn't have a chance to test the big color screen with much software.
However, well-written GEM programs seem to work. LakeTerm, a very basic
GEM communications program that I wrote with Sozobon C, looked fine. I
would expect that the same programs that die on the Viking (such as
Tempus) also would die on the Image Systems display.
MicroEMACS 2.19, jShell, UUVIEW and UUREADER all looked good. I didn't
count how many lines were displayed, but the field of view was huge.
I noticed a problem on both the Image Systems setup and the Viking
Moniterm when the built-in VT52 emulation routines were called upon to
scroll the display. That's a LOT of pixels to move, and the rewriting of
the screen was quite apparent. On the other hand, with a display that big,
you don't *need* to scroll so often.
-- Steve Yelvington at the (almost frozen enough to skate) lake in Minnesota
UUCP: ... pwcs.StPaul.GOV!stag!thelake!steve