Spacelab vector graphic drawings on my 4054A

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I wanted to display these early 1980s European Space Agency Spacelab drawings on my 4054A vector graphics computer using my GPIB Flash Drive to supply the data in Tektronix R12 Graphics Enhancement format instead of their original PLOT10 format.
I converted the files with a BASIC program I wrote on the 4054A - now all the files on the Flash drive can be displayed on any Tektronix 4051 / 4052 / 4054 computer without needing a PC and Tektronix RS-232 serial interface.
The graphics are being displayed at approximately1000 vectors per second!
Credits:
rricharz Tek4010 project:
github.com/rri...
Nick Glazzard's Spacelab 4014 ICEMD plot files with his file comments:
ASSY (assy.plt) (9/17/82 - US date order) - A 3D view of some single part with rear facing surfaces removed.
ASSYSIDE (assyside.plt) (3/29/83) - Another view of ASSY.
GROWTH KEEL (growth_keel.plt) (8/14/84) - Plan and side view of the space station.
IOC SOLAR DYNAMIC (icemddn_spacelab.plt) (7/20/84) - Spacelab

Опубликовано:

30 сен 2024

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Комментарии : 46

@marcos.oliveira 9 месяцев назад

Its so beautiful

@ahbushnell1 Год назад

That takes me back. Tektronix could have invented the PC. I did optical ray tracing in grad school on this.

@garymartin6987 Год назад

I used to work as a Field Service Specialist for Tektronix back in the 80's and haven't seen one of these in decades. My only question is, where did you manage to get a storage tube in such good condition this many years after they've gone out of production? Normally the flood guns cause the phosphors to glow with a constant low level green glow. When the background gets as dark as in this video they're about to fail, although the persistence of the drawn lines also begins to break down as well.

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

I purchased my 4052 in 2000 from an Arkansas Medical School auction. It came with a mint condition steel cabinet which had a 4631 Hard Copy unit on a roll-out tray. I purchased my 4054 in the same year in an EBAY auction and drove to Oklahoma to pick it up in my classic Mini Cooper! Both the 4052 and 4054 had bad Mostek DRAMs, but I replaced them and got both working in 2000 and began retyping my programs from hard copies made on a 4051 I used in the late 1970's. I have now recovered programs from over 100 40-year old DC300 tape cartridges and posted them on my github repository. Here is a photo in my github repository README of my Tektronix 4054, 4052 and 4631 in the steel medical cabinet- both running a Hidden Line program from BYTE Magazine: github.com/mmcgraw74/Tektronix-4051-4052-4054-Program-Files

@pratikchaudri6404 11 месяцев назад

Bro has The Blade runner computer.

@honkhonk8009 11 месяцев назад

I think I just realized why Gnomes default Terminal is that ugly ass purpleish color. This makes so much sense

@Nomadnetic 11 месяцев назад

Wow, the display is gorgeous.

@KanalFrump Год назад

Very remarkable. Thanks for sharing this glimpse of what was once state of the art, a huge aid to CAD and science visualization in the early days. It wasn't only used for serious work though, engineers were nerds then as now. I recall playing a game on a storage tube display Tektronix unit like this; the game was a simple artillery simulation thing where two players took turns dialing in their artillery unit to destroy the enemy position. The ballistic trails remained visible on the screen after each turn. I think you used a second console to actually input the firing angle and velocity.

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

Yes, I actually did a second video on Super Artillery on my 19-inch 4054A vector graphics computer: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mVj3xL5sNG4.html&t I loved playing the artillery game on the 4051 in the late 1970's - which may be the reason I like to play the original Angry Birds games on my iPhone 😁

@strategicfooyouagencyfirst8197 Год назад

how people draw this on computer? something in that days like CAD?

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

Yes, the early CAD programs ran on mainframes and mini-computers and Tektronix vector graphics terminals like the 4010 series were connected to those computers to create the drawings. Then the drawings were sent to plotters for hard copies. My Tektronix 4052 and 4054 computers were self-contained computers with vector graphics displays and were programmed in BASIC. They also included emulation ROMs to emulate the 4010 series terminals. In this video, my BASIC program is simply drawing the vectors that were sent from the mainframe or minicomputer to the terminals. I do have CAD software programs written in BASIC for my 4052 and 4054 computers for creating engineering drawings without needing a mainframe or minicomputer to run the CAD software.

@EricTViking Год назад

Reminds me how lucky we are today to have applications like Fusion 360 that we can run for free on a home PC.

@matiasfpm Год назад

Hi-tech futuristic space from the 70s. I like that toaster, but im no that old to know how to use it 😅

@kreeger2010 Год назад

I could watch this for hours great video.

@phonotical 11 месяцев назад

Have you checked your Filament voltage

@TEK-Vectors 11 месяцев назад

Very good question! I don't think I have run the calibration on my 4054A since I got it working in August 2022. This computer had been in storage for more than a decade and it had bad DRAM when I powered it up. Using a clone of the 4052 Diagnostic ROM Pack I was able to pinpoint multiple bad DRAMs and replaced them. Then the Diagnostic ROM Pack reported bad DRAM on my Option 30 board - and I replaced a couple of DRAMs on that board and everything worked! I took my 4054A to The Computer Museum in Mountain View California for VCF West 2022 in August and had a lot of fun displaying what it can do. Looking at the service manuals - the filament is powered off the high-voltage power supply transformer - I see a high voltage test is first in the calibration procedure, but I need to check that I have a working high voltage probe.

@soviet9922 Год назад

Amazing system, is so cool how it draws the screen.

@CZghost 2 года назад

I can't help but think of the old sci-fi movies of 80's, where similar drawings can be seen on a computer screen. I guess those sci-fi computers screens used Tektronix drawing graphics computers to do the job.

@TEK-Vectors 2 года назад

I believe you are correct. Tektronix even introduced color graphics terminals in the 1980's but found the sales of their storage terminals including the 19" 4114 were still preferred over the much lower resolution (max of 1024x768 16-color in the 4111) color raster-scan terminals.

@williambrasky3891 10 месяцев назад

They absolutely did. Another reason they used these Tektronics? No flicker on camera.

@geoffgunn9673 11 месяцев назад

So this thing is an electronic etch a sketch in real life? So how long does the screen stay persistent? Call seen a vector tube you could store vectors on. So many questions.

@TEK-Vectors 11 месяцев назад

With no keyboard activity the screen will persist the image for 15 minutes and then automatically erase to prevent burn-in. Two minutes after no keyboard activity the screen will automatically dim and any key pressed will bring it back to full intensity - like a screen saver.

@geoffgunn9673 11 месяцев назад

@@TEK-Vectors and the ability to erase as well. Learnt something interesting about tech I have never heard of before today . Never seen myself in half a century of computer usage

@skylinefever1658 11 месяцев назад

These oldschool vector graphics make me think of the interior of my mom's 1985 Nissan Maxima. Even though it had an analog display (Digital was optional), the background looked like it was right off the CAD model. Many other 1980s cars had that sort of styling on the interior.

@EleonorRaze 11 месяцев назад

C'est dingue à quel point cette machine est superbe. Eh dire que l'on se plaint quand c'est trop lent, que l'image n'est pas belle. Ça a prit 70 ans pour en arrivé là où on en est aujourd'hui. Merci de nous avoir partagé ça, de mon petit 25 ans, j'admire ces miracles technologiques comme cet ordinateur.

@davechatting Год назад

beautiful

@musikSkool 11 месяцев назад

Back when a sheet of paper could hold more data than the screen buffer of a computer.

@GeorgesChannel 2 года назад

Great video, Monty! Very interesting video! Keep up the fantastic work!

@orion31410 Год назад

So roots

@jakubkrcma Год назад

❤

@nickglazzard2385 Год назад

Very nice demonstration of a great graphics terminal. Thanks for the credit in the comments, but all I did was pass on a tape image from the ICEM DDN packages to Rene Richarz (who has created a superb Tektronix 4014 emulator). The tape images are at the Controlfreaks site, but a previous comment was deleted for including a link (even obfuscated) so people will have to search to find it, I’m afraid. Thanks again for the great demo and sorry to hear about the burn in.

@grossteilfahrer 2 года назад

Wow, it's fast! I would love to have those files to show on my 4006 !

@TEK-Vectors 2 года назад

Ronny, do you have any way to display PLOT10 files on your 4006? If so, you should be able to directly display the .plt files in this folder: github.com/rricharz/Tek4010/tree/master/pltfiles/ICEMD_pltfiles Looking at the 4006 user manual on www.bitsavers.org/pdf/tektronix/4006/ I believe the graphics command set is the same as the 4010 and 4014 terminals, so you should be able to send the files from your PC at 4800 baud to the 4006 without changing the file format!

@grossteilfahrer 2 года назад

@@TEK-Vectors yes, i can convert plot10. The 4006 actually needs pudding for long vectors at 4800, but works nicely. I just might dig it out on Sunday...

@federicosalvarredi4431 Год назад

sublime...

@TeslaTales59 Год назад

very cool

@MichaelKingsfordGray Год назад

Remarkably quick! How does this beasty acquire such "persistence"?

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

The complete answer to both your question on persistence and my 4054A Color Enhanced Graphics display is the first article in this Tektronix Tekniques newsletter starting on page 2! www.bitsavers.org/pdf/tektronix/tekniques/vol5/Tekniques_Vol_5_No_03.pdf

@MichaelKingsfordGray Год назад

@@TEK-Vectors Thank you.

@AppliedCryogenics Год назад

Spectacular vectors aside, I love the plum colored (antireflective?) coating on that CRT. It's a perfect complement to phosphor green.

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

Actually the plum color is due to Red phosphor added with Green phosphor at about 50/50 ratio to the CRT. The Red phosphor used has very short persistence - and the Green phosphor is long persistence. Both Red and Green phosphor illuminate at beam energy below the persistence level to create the 'orange' vector color for refreshed vectors. For beam energy high enough for persistent storage - the 'orange' color is seen for a very short period as the vector is drawn, but then the Red phosphor turns off and leaves only the Green phosphor vector.

@AppliedCryogenics Год назад

@@TEK-Vectors I did notice the pink color on the currently updating vectors, followed by the super-long-lived green. Are they somehow using the green as a bistable element? It seems like it is somehow kept in an excited state. It's brilliant in any case.

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

@@AppliedCryogenics - yes the display is called a Direct View Storage Tube and is designed to store the vector images until the screen is erased. This computer will dim the screen in about two minutes if there is no program or keyboard activity. The screen will be erased after 15 minutes of no activity. Both these actions are to prevent the stored image from being burned into the green phosphor.

@BobbyCharlz 2 года назад

So good, such a great aesthetic!

@wizardofboz76 Год назад

That is very neat.. but how did it maintain persistence? Ah, you said at the end.. So does that imply that the image would eventually fade?

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

No, the image persists due to the voltage applied to the faceplate. Bad news is I now have some burn-in from that image, since my program to convert the PLOT10 terminal data format of the Spacelab images to 4050R12 binary format took over an hour, and I kept the display on continuously by pressing the SHIFT key every couple of minutes 🙁 The result of the burn-in is that vectors displayed on top of that area are a bit dimmer - but that effect is barely noticeable. My new programs for image conversion will leave the screen blank to prevent additional burn-in issues. I had prevented the two Tektronix 4050 firmware features that prevent burn-in by keeping the screen active with no keyboard input more than two minutes which also resets the inactivity timer used to clear the screen after 15 minutes of inactivity.