Tektronix 4052 Fast Graphics demo

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Tektronix 4052 vector graphics workstation introduced in 1979, running Fast Graphics using 4052R12 Graphics Enhancement ROM Pack and my 4050 GPIB Flash Drive for program and image file storage (plugged into GPIB cable in front of computer for fast access to the micro SD flash card and Arduino).

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16 ноя 2021

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Комментарии : 160

@cvalenx Год назад

It’s crazy that this was 50 years old and now we can crash cars into other cars at full simulation on a computer we run at home

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

See my friends video of the Tektronix 4054 computer with Option 30 ICE Car Race game. I have the same computer and Option 30 Graphics coprocessor and Color Dynamics display. I recovered this game from a 40 year old Tektronix sales demo tape last June. I need to post running this set of games on my channel. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mpRw03dRhto.html

@homeopathicfossil-fuels4789 8 месяцев назад

and yet we mostly waste the same amount of resources on displaying fancy web pages that are built of layers upon layers of garbage solutions that were never meant to scale up to the level of content we got, it is sad, we are wasting all the potential of our technology and are now too lazy to not take up an entire vector math accelerator unit on getting a janky faux nerve system to perform basic intellectual tasks for us that could be done with actual programming with much less resources.

@rubyvolt Год назад

We had a Tektronix terminal on the PDP-11/34 in high school. Some student wrote a program to draw TransAm cars with different wheels and t-tops. So cool in 1980.

@chrismofer 8 месяцев назад

that's so badass haha

@Nomadnetic 8 месяцев назад

Such a beautiful display. What a phenomenal piece of history.

@scottfranco1962 Год назад

If I recall, tek had a technology where they could write arbitrary x-y with a CRT beam on the screen, then retain the image drawn. It was the same as the old analog storage scopes used. We worked on a vector draw engine in the early 1980s, it worked by repeatedly drawing the image to refresh it. Vector draw terminals like that were faster than raster draw terminals at the time, and they were used to draw wire frame drawings at actual speed. An example of that was the original "tank" arcade game which was vector drawn. We supplied terminals to Maji, who made the tank animations for the original Tron movie by Disney. They would use our terminals to script the basic actions of the tanks, then a raster draw machine would form each frame of the image, which took days or even weeks to make parts of the film. But the tanks could be moved in real time using a vector draw terminal.

@bermlee 8 месяцев назад

So it essentially worked like e-ink displays work today! It needs a refresh operation to clear the screen!

@xcoder1122 7 месяцев назад

In case anyone wonders how this display works in more detail: There are two electronic guns inside the tube. One gun is the one drawing to the screen. It fires a high energy, very focused electron beam, which makes part of the screen passable for electrons when getting hit. The second gun constantly shoots a low energy electron beam to the screen that is intentionally not focused but rather hits the entire screen at the same time (flood gun). At the locations that have previously been hit by the high energy beam, those electrons can pass through an isolation layer on the screen and reach a phosphor layer, where they cause the phosphor to emit light when passing through it. That's how the image stays stable for as long as the flood gun is powered, yet it will somewhat faint over time as the isolation layer will slowly lose it's conductivity (we are talking about a time spawn in the range of multiple minutes before this effect starts to set in). Alternatively, you can put some voltage to the screen isolation layer and the entire layer immediately becomes isolating again, that's how you clear the screen. As this voltage also lights up all the phosphor, the entire screen goes bright for the fraction of a second. There exist variations of that tube that cannot only display black and "white" (actually green) but also different shades of grey (shades of green) but the downside is that those will retain the image way shorter before it will start to fade to black again (this probably has to do with the fact that the insulating layer is different and allows different levels of permeability, but also becomes insulating again more quickly).

@TEK-Vectors 7 месяцев назад

Thanks for your explanation! I thought that the flood guns were involved in clearing the screen - but your explanation is very helpful. On my 4054A with Option 31 Dynamic Color - I have to wait at least five minutes after turning the 4054A on before I page the screen. Even then - there are areas around the edges that have a faint glow. If I wait 15 minutes after power on - the screen is completely cleared with the PAGE key. Maybe I need to run through the 4054A service manual calibration steps - but I don't know if my high voltage probe is working.

@xcoder1122 7 месяцев назад

@@TEK-Vectors I'm not sure how the display of the 4054A works in particular, I was just referring to direct view storage tubes in general. Of course, there are different variations of tubes. A Williams tube in fact uses the electron beam in low power mode to write data and in high power mode to erase data again, but that tube is not for displaying anything, it's in just a data storage storage (a very early form of RAM). I just know that the basic way how the display tubes works is that there is an isolation layer saturated with electrons and when you shoot a low energy electron beam from the flood gun onto it, they cannot pass through that layer as the electrons in the layer repel the beam. The high energy main gun shoots electrons onto the isolation layer with very high energy and by doing that, it pushes the existing electrons out of isolation layer (like shooting a billiard ball pushes the other balls away on a billiard table), leaving holes of positive charge in the layer. These holes now allow the electrons from the flood gun to pass through the layer and hit the layer right behind it. To reset the screen, you somehow need to fill up the positive holes with electrons again. I'm not sure if this could also be done by modifying the beam of the flood gun somehow, I just know tubes where this is done by simply applying voltage to the isolation layer that will then fill up with electrons like a capacitor.

@huntabadday2663 6 месяцев назад

I just absolutely LOVE the drawing effect!

@TEK-Vectors 6 месяцев назад

I agree. The drawing effect of the green vectors - and my newer videos of the 19-inch 'color' display with 'orange' vectors is entrancing.

@josephcote6120 Год назад

We had a Tek graphics terminal (this one or very similar) at our high school starting in 1977. As I recall it took four ASCII characters to define a point on the screen. Pretty simple commands like draw-on, draw off, move-to by two character codes. We didn't have the mathematical tools to do hidden lines, so we had a lot of wire-frame kind of pictures. But the most popular thing to do on it was a game we wrote called CANNON. Drew a cannon and a power pole at random places on the screen, pole bigger or smaller based on difficulty setting. You had to input angle to fire and grams of gunpower. It would draw the projectile path. Object was to shoot down the power pole as close to the base as possible. You had a limited amount of gunpowder (also based on difficulty level) so take a number of shots. Written mostly by Garth Dollahite who went on to write some popular games for the TI-99.

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

Joseph, this is video is on Tektronix 4052 computer which has the same display as a Tektronix 4012 terminal and adds a 16-bit custom bit-slice CPU with 64KB of ROM and 64KB of DRAM - that can also act as a terminal. If your high school had a terminal - then the CANNON program was running on a separate computer? Do you remember what kind? Your description of four ASCII characters to define a point sounds like the Tektronix 4012/4014 Terminal Graph Mode, which starts with a GS character followed by Hi Y, Lo Y, Hi X and Lo X characters to define an XY endpoint from 0,0 to as much as 1024x1024 (although Y values are limited to 779 max). The 4052 computer has the same vector resolution as the 4012/4014 terminal Graph Mode. The 4052 ROMs provided Tektronix 4050 BASIC which had MOVE and DRAW commands with WINDOW and VIEWPORT capability to scale the graphics to the desired size.

@fjs1111 Год назад

I like your avatar, is that a CRT or a vacuum tube really cool

@josephcote6120 Год назад

@@fjs1111 Yes, a triode tube. I like working on old tube gear, audio stuff or old test equipment.

@TomKappeln Год назад

@@josephcote6120 : Same here in Poland (German guy, living in PL now) Tons of good old amps over here.

@pjcnet Год назад

Very impressive, vector displays were a great way to get much more out of less processing power and memory in the days when it was miniscule and unbelievably expensive compared to today.

@mleise8292 Год назад

I noticed how there's only lines added to the screen, never removed, so suspected there's some trickery going on, but just watching the images I'd have no idea how it works. Thankfully he explained that the tube or material of the screen itself retains the image. Next step up I think were computers like the Atari 2600 that refreshed the screen rapidly like today, but had such tiny memory that they could only hold a line of image at a time, so most processing power was "wasted" setting up the upcoming pixels before the cathode ray reached them. Then suddenly memory became super cheap, problems solved. :o)

@joecan Год назад

we are standing on the shoulders of giants

@PutItAway101 8 месяцев назад

Since a lot of maps leave New Zealand off, I had a chuckle that they left our neighbours across the pond in Tasmania off instead.

@nezbrun872 Год назад

This brings back memories! I used these as an undergraduate EE & computer nerd around 1983 when the Fortran programming classes were just too basic for me. The resolution was its wow factor at the time.

@MargaretLeber 7 месяцев назад

I used to program one of these at UniCol Corporation, using APL workspaces on a huge IBM mainframe.

@TEK-Vectors 7 месяцев назад

My first personal computer experience was with a Tektronix 4051 in the USAF in the late 70's. I was the operator and the programmer 😁

@ClausB252 Год назад

I had the pleasure of programming a 4051 in college. It had BASIC, a large format cassette tape, and a xerox-like screen printer, IIRC.

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

I used a Tektronix 4051 at my first job after college. It was my first experience with a personal computer, and I loved it!

@KendallAuel Год назад

That printer was quite useful. It used a light sensitive coating on the paper, and some sophisticated electronics to transfer the image stored on the screen's phosphors to a scan bar that the paper passed over. The resulting print turned dark over time but could be Xerox'ed to get a nice, constrasty and stable image. I used those prints to make illustrations in technical docs. At the Tektronix factory in Wilsonville, the graphics displays dwindled away to nothing and the printer department took over the entire campus. That operation was then purchased by Xerox, who eventually sold off much of it to 3D Systems. The 3D Systems MJP 2500 3D printer uses the same basic technology as the original Tektronix "solid ink" color printers. So I guess we are still drawing 3D images, but you can hold those in your hand now.

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

@@KendallAuel that is a sad tale. I enjoyed programming and using a Tektronix 4051 computer in 1977-1979 at my first job after college. That is why I collected a 4052, then 4054 in 2000 - when I first retired (yes I've been back to work since 2001 :) Tektronix tried shifting emphasis from the 4050 computers to the terminals and then to unix computers and gave up on computers as far as I can tell. They had the lead on vector graphics but HP passed them on color bitmapped terminals, and both of them gave up as the PC zoomed to the top in the 1980's (I joined Compaq Computer in 1985 and helped drive PCs to the multi-billion dollar business with Deskpro 386, Deskpro 486 followed by the multiprocessor SystemPro server with two Intel 486 in 1989.

@fjs1111 Год назад

Monty, that is a really cool demo. Funny thing as I understand the CRT "persistence" was a unwanted side effect in most early displays because of refreshing images, but Tektronix being oscilloscopes really did take advantage of that for tracing. now it's accomplished of course with memory. thanks for sharing this

@pizzablender Год назад

This is not normal persistance, it is actually a memory tube. A graphics "printer" came with these that had a line CRT that printed onto silver gelatin paper.

@LeObsidianCraft Год назад

@@pizzablender how is this tube different from a standard b&w vector monitor? Are they using a drastically different phosphor on the tube that retains its energized state? I also noticed how the whole monitor is lit up during the clear state, how is that then removing the charge on the displays. Would be interesting to know more about this technology as it is not very intuitive compared to most other display types (lcd, oled, raster, raster color, vector, vector color, etc.)

@Gabriel_Alves_ Год назад

This is what I call hardware acceleration.

@lawrencedoliveiro9104 Год назад

The “storage tube” was designed so that, once a line was drawn on it, the refresh system would keep that line visible indefinitely. In fact, there was no way to selectively remove things from the display: you had to do a full reset, which wiped the screen and made the whole thing flash. Then you had to wait about one second for things to settle down, before you could start drawing again. Back when graphics terminals were expensive, these were the cheapest and least fun way to get one.

@georgrenelt1948 Год назад

Englisch: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_tube Deutsch: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct-View_Storage_Tube

@wadwadwadwadwadwadw 3 месяца назад

that cooling tower was so nuclear

@TEK-Vectors 3 месяца назад

Yes - I agree. If you check one of the first comments on this video a year ago - @trotskiftw clarified this cooling tower is used for more applications than just nuclear power plants.

@bobriemersma Год назад

We did a lot with a 4051 back in the day. One of the first things I wrote when we got disk for it was a hypertext retrieval system patterned on Ted Nelson's writings... way before the "Web" or even "Gopher."

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

Cool!

@doctordapp Год назад

Mesmerizing to watch, I guess it's more hypnotic in real life. Brilliant tech!

@NuGanjaTron Год назад

It is! No video can do these displays justice. They just have to be seen in person. Amazing tech, ditto the 16-bit architecture Tek came up with to run all this. Basically a 16-bit extension to the 6800 before Motorola released the 68k!

@brorianszk 9 месяцев назад

Great demo! What a show! Still looks like the future to me and no one can change my mind.

@RISCGames 8 месяцев назад

Really fascinating to see, thanks for sharing!

@mmadmic Год назад

It reminds me Autocad on 386 Ms-DOS computer drawing the spaces shuttle or the Valve from the examples files.

@LeonDerczynski Год назад

So beautiful. Thanks for sharing!

@wdavem Год назад

Great setup and video!

@e_fission 2 года назад

This is so interesting! Thank you for sharing

@ojonasar Год назад

That takes me back to polytechnic days - around 35 years ago.

@mortarmopp3919 Год назад

I used a 4051 back in college. Loved that thing. BTW, you need to get closer to the mic, or the mic closer to you; the 4052's motor pretty much drowned you out.

@TomKappeln Год назад

Same how we made first pictures with lasers back in the late 70s. Nice to see again. THX !

@Centar1964 Год назад

In 1985 during my work term from a programming course I converted a BASIC program from the Tektronix 4052 to an Apple Lisa, loved that Tektronix image storage screen, coolest screen ever!

@mikehughesdesigns Год назад

In college during the 80's, i got to play with the 4010 series. Memories...

@soviet9922 Год назад

truly amazing

@cmmmmmmmw 8 месяцев назад

This is so cool.

@A3Kr0n Год назад

It's amazing what computers can do now. It's like a fancy Etch-A-Sketch.

@roystonlodge Год назад

You want a fancy Etch-A-Sketch… ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-LD4D09EVcDY.html ;-)

@WolfmanDude Год назад

Oh it uses a memory crt! Thats genius for a computer monitor! I have one of those in my HP spectrum analyser but I never thought about the advantages of using it for a computer display.

@rossknowles5608 7 месяцев назад

gorgeous

@TEK-Vectors 7 месяцев назад

Have you watched my latest video? Fast Graphics on my 19-inch 4054A is about 3x faster than Fast Graphics on my 4052 in this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NfknQU36eO8.html

@Ohlukei Год назад

amazing how fast this old machine was able to draw. for comparison the Atari ST in 1985 had a screen using 32 K of memory. 🙂

@FPivodaII Год назад

cool video! thank you!

@MassiveJetGrind Год назад

This blows my mind today. How did they create these back then? It's just nuts. All the microscopic silicon manufacturing and whatnot today... Like, what?!!! Science is nuts as balls.

@rinner2801 Год назад

Absolutely gorgeous! Take good care of it.

@Derpy1969 Год назад

This computer (one like it) was used for the scanner graphics on Battlestar Galactica 1978. It was shot frame by frame and used to create smooth video for the show. I’ve been looking for someone who has the code to create the images but, alas, no luck.

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

I created a mockup of targeting a Cylon fighter from a Battlestar Colonial Viper a couple of years ago. At this point I've written several more Tektronix 4050 BASIC programs for drawing graphics and think I can now complete the demo. See my mockup here: github.com/mmcgraw74/Tektronix-4051-4052-4054-Program-Files/tree/master/Battlestar_Galactica-and_Tektronix_4051

@Strike_Raid Год назад

I remember these using FORTRAN with the IMSL; the screens got really hot. I still have some SDI work printouts from the day when that was a thing.

@costasaroniadis3376 Год назад

My friend perfect machine i wish i can find someone to buy!!

@KennethSorling Год назад

This is amazing! But as of your statement "It doesn't have memory", I find that impossible to believe. You must have meant something akin to "it doesn't have VIDEO memory". Otherwise, where the hell did the instructions come from to make all this coolness? All the same, this is an incredibly impressive demo.

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

You are correct - there is no graphics memory. The CRT is a storage tube - so the computer draws a vector line and the CRT persists that line in phosphor with a high voltage applied to the inside of the faceplate of the CRT. The 4052 has 64KB of DRAM for programs and data and another 64KB of BASIC ROMs. This Picture Menu program is only 2326 bytes of RAM. The Billiards file is 26KB.

@dc-vw4qm Год назад

Reminds me of the Nostromo

@ar_xiv 4 месяца назад

I never knew they held the image like that. I thought they would have to continually retrace.

@TEK-Vectors 4 месяца назад

Tektronix developed their own storage tube technology in the late 1960's - see this article: vintagetek.org/dvst-graphic-terminals/ First as a monitor - then as a series of storage tube terminals and finally as a series of desktop micro-computers running BASIC programs starting in 1975 with the 4051 followed by the second generation 4052 and 19-inch 4054! Solid-state Memory was incredibly expensive in the 1970's - so the Tektronix 4010 terminals and 4050 computers took full advantage of the storage tube to lead the industry with high resolution computer vector graphics - 1024x780 for the 4051 in 1975 followed by the 4052 in 1979, and then an incredible 4096x3072 for the 19-inch 4054 in 1979!

@fredsalter1915 Год назад

o scopes have always fascinated me! EDIT to add: after the image is drawn, how do the phosphors in the image persist without continuously visible scans? Thanks!!

@pizzablender Год назад

It works by secondary emission. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct-view_bistable_storage_tube

@BaccarWozat Год назад

2:52 Your drawing program left out Tazmania. Now, usually they forget about New Zealand, leading us to the meme, "New Zealand Does Not Exist", but this time it is far worse than originally suspected.

@PutItAway101 8 месяцев назад

I guess collision detection on the balls hitting each other would have been too much to expect!

@TEK-Vectors 8 месяцев назад

I am working on collision detect logic in my work-in-progress Asteroids game in Tek 4050 BASIC! See my WIP Asteroids video here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9yvnffajpjc.html

@grossteilfahrer Год назад

Lovely artwork. I'd love to have the star wars plots to demo on my 4006, as well.

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

Wow! I didn't expect to have any interest in back-porting my Tektronix 4050 vector graphics pictures to the earlier Tektronix 4000 series vector graphics terminals! I don't have the image source files for any of the pictures in this Fast Graphics video. These pictures were developed in the late 1970's by the author of the 4051 Fast Graphics ROM Pack. I would have to create a Tek 4050 BASIC program to try to extract particular picture files from Fast Graphics format to Tek 4000 series terminal format. Please check out my later video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-L4cYHIgkCkM.html which covers "Tektronix 4050 R12 Enhanced Graphics Demo" which starts with these same Fast Graphics demo files and adds the new vector picture files I created starting with files 28-35 including Star Wars C3-PO, R2-D2, BB-8, B2EMO, Utah Teapot, Columbia Space Shuttle, 007 Submarine Car, and Sutherlands' VW Bug! I used Inkscape to create these new files and the ASCII source files are in my Tektronix 4050 Flash Drive zip file in my github repository located here: github.com/mmcgraw74/Tektronix-4050-GPIB-Flash-Drive/blob/master/FlashDrive27Feb2023.zip Download and unzip this version and in the ROOT directory you will find files numbered 13, 15 and 19 are ASCII text files containing M (MOVE) and L (DRAW) X,Y vectors for BB-8, R2-D2 and C3-PO respectively. You would have to create a program to convert each file into the Tek 4006 vector graphics file format. I don't have a Tek 4000 series terminal so I have never created such a program.

@grossteilfahrer Год назад

@@TEK-Vectors cool, i will have a look when I get home, ASCII to .PLT is probably possible using gnuplot or with a python script. I have functions for taking coordinates and drawing vectors already so it should be possible. Also older cups has a tek output filter but those"prints" tend to be huge and overly detailed. The 4006 maxes out at 4800 bps.

@JustWasted3HoursHere Год назад

I can imagine that using these for a final rendering of an engineering part must have been great at the time because of its very high resolution for the time, but much too slow, it seems, for real-time interaction with that data. I may be imaging this, but I seem to remember seeing a documentary once on how they did the CG for the death star trench run in the original Star Wars and I think they used one of these terminals. Very advanced for the time.

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

Yes, I used the original 4051 vector graphics computer in the late 1970's and developed BASIC programs to automate data collection and analysis to speed up the time to decisions for the USAF. The process I replaced with the 4051 had taken over one month from data collection to plots generated by Calcomp plotters connected to a mini or mainframe computer to an hour on the 4051 with 4631 screen hard copy printer. The 4052 and 19-inch display 4054 computers were introduced in 1979 with Tektronix custom bit-slice 16-bit CPUs which emulated the Motorola 6800 instruction set and extended it to support twice the memory capacity and hardware floating point in microcode - which sped up the BASIC programs an average of 10x. The R12 Graphics Enhancement ROM Pack which I am demonstrating in this video gave the original 4051 a 10x boost in displaying graphics that had been pre-computed, like this vector graphics pictures. The 4054 improved vector graphics performance about 10x over the 4051 and 4052 and increased the vector resolution from 1024x780 to 4096x3072! Super advanced for 1979 and even today!

@JustWasted3HoursHere Год назад

@@TEK-Vectors Whatever became of the company? Are they still around in some form?

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

@@JustWasted3HoursHere - Tektronix was acquired by Danaher in 2007 and some of the businesses were spun off. Tektronix is still making digital oscilloscopes and some other test equipment (tek.com)

@JustWasted3HoursHere Год назад

@@TEK-Vectors Cool. I'm glad they were able to adapt to the changing times. Sooooo many tech companies from the sixties and seventies are no more because they couldn't adapt fast enough (or in the right direction!)

@Captain_Char Год назад

this machine looks like it would draw some impressive fractal art if a program exists for that

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

Very interesting. Can you post a link to an example of fractal art? Right now I’m working on grayscale pictures using small arrays of random dots.

@Captain_Char Год назад

@@TEK-Vectors a fern fractal cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2015/11/05/08/27/fractals-1023853_1280.jpg if I had to guess it looks like a fern,

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

@@Captain_Char - very cool picture, I will put this on my Tektronix application investigation backlog.

@sergioandradefigueroa6248 Год назад

I always wonder how they drew on those computers? The simulation I guess are mathematical equations. But the other drawings? How were they made

@MichaelKingsfordGray Год назад

Impressive! A bit faster than the HP9845 vector graphics at the time, but that used CPD NMOS RAM rather than phosphor persistence. (Oh: it is not GPIB, it is HPIB, as evidenced by the logo on the cable.)

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

Yes, HP invented the HPIB in the late 1960's, but the Tektronix 4051 introduced in 1975 documentation calls the connector GPIB and references the IEEE standard #488-1975 (also introduced in 1975) which named the interface GPIB 😃 See this article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE-488. Yes the cables that I have are from HP. The biggest difference between the 9845 and 4051 was the graphics - the 4051 BASIC included graphics commands for the storage tube display at 1024x780 vector resolution. Any Tektronix 4050 BASIC supported graphics on the CRT display or Tektronix 4662 GPIB Plotter by simply changing the GPIB address on the MOVE and DRAW commands to the GPIB address of the plotter - see my 4662 plotter video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hGmodCc9Hh4.html The Tektronix 4054 computer introduced in 1979 included a 19" storage tube display with 4096x3072 12-bit vector resolution as demonstrated in several of my other videos like this one: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-W2VXdR9rbgU.html

@MichaelKingsfordGray Год назад

@@TEK-Vectors Thank you for the comprehensive reply. HPIB was renamed to GPIB purely to avoid royalties.

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

@@MichaelKingsfordGray maybe one of the first instances of a proprietary computer technology going opensource?

@leyasep5919 Год назад

6:23 yeah i remember this wizzard 😀

@GregoryTheGr8ster 8 месяцев назад

What did Disney use for the opening of "The Black Hole"? That green grid scene was *incredible* for its time.

@TEK-Vectors 8 месяцев назад

Academy award winner John Hughes did the CGI for the opening. He was using Evans and Sutherland computers at that time (much more powerful than my Tektronix microcomputer). Here is a link to a fan remake of that movie intro: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-hQbHJ2iwDmM.html

@vyr-mk1dz 8 месяцев назад

The good old nostromo mainframe lol

@TEK-Vectors 8 месяцев назад

Like this vector picture I created from the Alien movie? github.com/mmcgraw74/Tektronix-4051-4052-4054-Program-Files/blob/master/Pictures/Screenshots/MUTHUR%206000.png

@vyr-mk1dz 8 месяцев назад

@@TEK-Vectors as a huge Alien fan, i just love the efford done to make the graphics identical

@Trusteft Год назад

The various "simulations" as mentioned in this video, for example the billiards table/balls, or the bouncing ball. Is it an actual simulation, or just drawn to appear like it? Curious. Regardless, this is such a cool video. I am particularly impressed with the high resolution. Thank you for sharing.

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

Each of these Fast Graphics files are simply vectors which can be displayed as lines or dots. The 'simulation programs' would have been run on another computer - likely a DEC mini-computer (heavily used at Tektronix to design both their 4010 series vector graphics terminals and the 4050 series vector graphics computers) and the output vector data converted to the Fast Graphics vector format with three 7-bit ASCII characters encoding each 10-bit X and Y vector endpoint including 1-bit MOVE/DRAW. These Fast Graphics/R12 Graphics Enhancement files work on all Tektronix 4050 computers and match the 10-bit X and Y vector resolution of the 4051 and 4052 computers. The 4052R12 Graphics Enhancement ROM Pack also supports the 4054 4096x3120 vector resolution by multiplying the 10-bit X and Y by 4x to preserve the original image size on the larger 19-inch storage tube of the 4054.

@Trusteft Год назад

@@TEK-Vectors So basically, "it's a trap!" :) Very cool info. Thank you very much for the details. My first experience with computers, as a kid, was in the early 80s and I completely missed these machines. Got to love tech.

@sayochikun3288 Год назад

Coolest shit ever

@philbob9638 9 месяцев назад

That's impressive. How long does the image persist on something like that?

@TEK-Vectors 9 месяцев назад

The image persists for up to 15 minutes - if there is no keyboard activity and then the system automatically PAGEs (erases) the screen to prevent burn-in of the image.

@jakubkrcma Год назад

Anyway, ❤❤❤👍👍👍

@jakubkrcma Год назад

The Solar System is a BIT confusing. I understand it is highly simplified and schematic (distances, speeds, angles, everything is wrong - even Halley's comet moves the wrong way...) but still, I want to see Mercury! 🤣

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

Yes, I don't think the solar system demo is to scale, likely the demo was developed very quickly to demonstrate the 4050R12 Graphics Enhancement ROM cartridge more than accurately show the planets.

@jakubkrcma Год назад

@@TEK-Vectors 🙂

@Stabby666 Год назад

So you can't really do any animation on this type of display I guess, aside from adding new vectors or clearing the entire display. I guess you could keep redrawing over the same area so you have a few bright dots animating, but you can't actually move the vector shapes from frame to frame. Still, very interesting and I've never seen this type of tech before (I've owned and repaired some old vector arcade machines in the past - Star Wars and Tempest - but they just constantly refreshed). This is like a combination of vector and e-paper!

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

Actually - my 'new' (as of August 2022) 4054A vector computer has Option 30 - Dynamic Refresh Graphics coprocessor board which can draw thousands of refresh (non-stored or write-thru) vectors that are refreshed at over 30 frames a second! This Refresh Coprocessor contains a separate 8x300 16-bit CPU with an additional 32KB of DRAM for the storage of thousands of refresh vector objects. This board was introduced as a 4054 option in 1979 along with the introduction of the 4054. My 4054A also has Option 31 - Color Dynamics Graphics CRT. See this video for my 4054A demo of refresh graphics: studio.ru-vid.comM98VOoGFLL8/edit

@Stabby666 Год назад

@@TEK-Vectors That's interesting. It's the same idea as the Atari vector co-processor in their games. It just constantly cycled through a vector instruction list. It was very efficient with memory though - it mostly worked with relative coordinates, and could jump to subroutines, so the character set and game graphics could all be in ROM, and instructions to scale, change colour etc could be used before drawing them, so the vector RAM only needed to contain the jumps, color/scaling etc changes, and drawing instructions for non-repeated graphics. Only around 2K-4K of RAM for that but it means it's very game-specific, and couldn't be used to draw arbitrarily complex shapes very well!

@MaxFleye 2 года назад

Did they use that World map in Wargames?

@TEK-Vectors 2 года назад

An internet search turned up this site which indicates Wargames graphics was created on HP equipment: hp9845.net/9845/software/screenart/wargames/. Tektronix 4051 and Tektronix 4081 graphics computers were used in the original Battlestar Galactica TV series in the late 1970's: vintagetek.org/tektronix-in-movies-shows/

@MichaelKingsfordGray Год назад

That was a Hewlett-Packard 9845A.

@BenInSeattle 2 года назад

Do you have the files for this available somewhere? That Solar System demo looks great.

@TEK-Vectors 2 года назад

Ben, yes I have been posting Tektronix 4050 BASIC program files on my github repository since 2018. Here is the link to the main repository, I have posted files from different tapes in different folders. Tek BASIC used file numbers for each of the files on a tape - so many folders show only the tape file numbers for each program or data file. Some of the folders include the name of the program as a comment in the file 'header'. github.com/mmcgraw74/Tektronix-4051-4052-4054-Program-Files The folder for the files in this demo are here: github.com/mmcgraw74/Tektronix-4051-4052-4054-Program-Files/tree/master/4050R12%20Graphics%20Enhancement%20Demo and file 21 is the Fast Graphics DATA file for the Solar System demo. File 8 is the Picture Drawing menu program - you select file 12 to run the Solar System demo manually - or in my demo you just press the RETURN key to run all 12 of the demo Fast Graphics files.

@BenInSeattle 2 года назад

@@TEK-Vectors Thanks! Very cool. Is there documentation for the .DAT data format? Is it related to the 4014 format at all?

@TEK-Vectors 2 года назад

@@BenInSeattle No, the Fast Graphics format is different - three bytes per vector, described in the comments of my BASIC program that emulates the Fast Graphics/R12 ROM Pack to draw Snoopy: github.com/mmcgraw74/Tektronix-4051-4052-4054-Program-Files/blob/master/FastGraphics4051/BASIC/Snoopy.bas The documentation for the R12 graphics image format is in Appendix C of the 4050R12 ROM instruction manual here: github.com/mmcgraw74/Tektronix-4051-4052-4054-Program-Files/blob/master/4050R12-Graphics-Enhancement-ROM/070-4639-00_4052R12-manual-OCR.pdf

@incandescentconker6193 2 года назад

Thanks for uploading, these are *wonderful* machines. Have you had to do much maintenance to keep it going?

@TEK-Vectors 2 года назад

Not too much. I purchased my 4052 and 4054 around 2000. I think the 4054 had a couple of bad DRAMs, which I replaced. I have also had to replace bad capacitors in the power supplies on both computers. Just last week I replaced a power resistor on my 4052 that kept the display from working. But repairs are pretty easy - and Tektronix service manuals for the 4050 computers are on the web, plus manuals for the options including ROM Packs. I think the repairs are similar to repairing other 40 year old computers. I used a 4051 in my first job in the 1970's and loved how easy it was to use and program.

@MrCuddlyable3 Год назад

@@TEK-Vectors As the only computer in a 1970's RF development lab my 4051 had some great features (easy to program BASIC interpreter with error checking line entry and matrix commands, GPIB for data collection and control of instruments) and severe limitations (only vector graphics in green, no digital video RAM so unable to selectively update or read pixels) that ruled out interactive mouse, drag-and-drop or GUI operations. It had a well-developed network design program that we used to plot a circuit's RF S-parameters on a Smith chart. However when we unpacked our first brand new IBM PC-AT with its impressive CGA ( gasp! ) raster graphics, the faithful 4051 was pushed away into a corner and neglected. But I remember it as reliable and it needed only one repair: that was to turn around the storage CRT whose phosphor became worn at top left where code was most displayed.

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

@@MrCuddlyable3 I agree with you. I was shocked at how pitiful the graphics were when I worked at Compaq Computer on the Deskpro 286, 386 and 486 design team. I also found Microsoft BASIC at the time could not run many of the Tektronix 4050 BASIC programs I had written without a lot of rework.

@MrCuddlyable3 Год назад

@@TEK-Vectors Another memory to share is of the enormous companion 4630 hard copy unit that disgorged still-hot thermal copy sheets that curled and yellowed, and needed periodic refilling with a supply drum. I believe this monster received a scan of the 4051 display through an RS232 port. Anyone interested in a retro project might try generating frame-by-frame animations from that RS232 port.

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

@@MrCuddlyable3 I have a working 4631 hard copy unit. Yes the sheets do yellow over time, but I still have program listings on my printouts from 40 years ago that are readable enough to recreate those programs. The secret was - put the prints in a dark place. The UV from fluorescent lights or the sun would quickly 'brown' the paper if the pages were left out on a desk. The prints were a complete screen print of text and graphics in a video scan format. The printer had a one line CRT that displayed the video scan as the drum turned to reproduce the entire screen with text and graphics at full resolution in a couple of seconds! Check out the photo of the hard copy unit single line CRT on this page: vintagetek.org/4051-graphic-desktop-system/

@buncho888 Год назад

Do you have the uncompiled code for this demo? I’m interested in how those complex illustrations, like the dragon were created. Did someone work out the each of the complex curves mathematically or was there a shortcut from some CAD program where the drawing was made?

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

All of the pictures in this demo were created in the late 1970's by Tektronix engineers. Tektronix had digitizing tablets and software for the 4050 series graphics computers that may have been used to trace photos to create each file. Michael D. Cranford (listed in credits) created some of the images to demonstrate his Fast Graphics ROM Pack for the Tektronix 4051. I have created 8 new images that can be seen in my updated video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-L4cYHIgkCkM.html&t I used Inkscape to trace black and white pictures and export the result as an HPGL plot file. I wrote a BASIC program to convert the output to the Tektronix 4050R12 Enhanced Graphics format - which is the same format Michael designed. All these images are being displayed by a short BASIC program which reads each image from a BINARY data file where three bytes contain the 10-bit X and Y vector with one bit for MOVE or DRAW. All my images are posted on my github repository: github.com/mmcgraw74/Tektronix-4051-4052-4054-Program-Files with the latest files in the Flash Drive folder.

@buncho888 Год назад

@@TEK-Vectors thanks for your comprehensive answer! I’ll have a look at your images

@RetroJack 9 месяцев назад

Ok, so for the first time since I got my Vectrex, I feel sad.

@TEK-Vectors 9 месяцев назад

Don't feel sad - the Vectrex has some amazing capabilities that the Tektronix 4050 computers cannot do. And since the Tektronix 4050 computers targeted commercial market there are very few still running today - compared to Vectrex.

@RetroJack 9 месяцев назад

@@TEK-Vectors Hehe - all good

@neil4306 Год назад

I have a 4051 with the Tektronix movable stand

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

Neil - is your 4051 working? If not you can post symptoms on vcfed.org Other forum and get good help fixing it. I had to repair both my 4052 and 4054A - which had bad DRAM. If its working, you should try some of the programs I've posted on my github repository of many dozens of Tektronix tape programs I have recovered: github.com/mmcgraw74/Tektronix-4051-4052-4054-Program-Files

@cjdaylight3407 9 месяцев назад

it is carrayz

@Filthylosopher 8 месяцев назад

I don't understand what this is and I can't understand why I love it so much pls help :(

@TEK-Vectors 8 месяцев назад

This is a personal computer introduced in 1979 by Tektronix. This computer has a built-in display, but it works completely different than the PCs that came after it - the display is called a storage CRT - the computer draws lines and text like a plotter on the storage tube and there is a voltage applied inside the tube to persist the lines or text until the screen is cleared.

@robertnussberger2028 Год назад

I'd like to see it word process.

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

I actually recovered a text editor named TECO, ported from the DEC PDP-11 minicomputer to Tek 4050 BASIC that I need to run and post a video! All three Tektronix 4050 vector graphics computers had built-in single line editor in their BASIC ROMs that could be used to enter and edit the BASIC program in memory and the top of the keyboard included LINE EDITOR keys as shown in this picture of my 4052: github.com/mmcgraw74/Tektronix-4051-4052-4054-Program-Files/blob/master/4052%20keyboard%20editing%20keys%20and%20user%20definable%20keys.jpg

@MrGencyExit64 Год назад

Wow that's "fast" :)

@roystonlodge Год назад

Ok, now do a Bad Apple video. ;-)

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

Already requested 😀 I now have a Vectrex with PiTrex cartridge and have been looking at the vectrex port of the Bad Apple video. The simultaneous music track will be an issue for Tektronix BASIC - but it might be possible with an assembly language program bit-banging the Tektronix speaker in between drawing vectors like the vectrex is doing in that video.

@roystonlodge Год назад

@@TEK-Vectors I mean, I was only kidding, but wow!

@patty1991 Год назад

How many ic4017 😁

@DABUNGINATOR Год назад

I wonder how far vector graphics could've gone if people kept developing it.

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

I believe the high cost of the cathode ray tube compared to a liquid crystal display was a factor in the demise of storage tubes as CRTs were replaced by LCDs. Wikipedia article on "Liquid-crystal displays" notes that in 2007 the image quality of LCDs surpassed that of CRTs for television corresponding with LCD TV worldwide sales volume surpassing that of CRT TVs. Storage tube technology was advantageous while the cost of computer memory was high, but the continuous advancement of integrated circuit technology resulted in incredible cost reduction for memory and the incorporation of memory into LCDs for TFT displays.

@KendallAuel Год назад

When it comes to vectors versus pixels, the deciding factors are cost and quality. Through the 1980s, memory was very expensive and pixel displays require memory. That meant that vectors were cheaper (for storage tube technology). Also, there were 1024 addressable vector locations horizontally, which was much higher quality than the 640 horizontal pixels in most early graphics displays. But it didn't take long for memory to get cheap and pixelated displays to acquire high resolutions and color. That allowed for much richer user interfaces and also 3D solids (the precursor to today's graphics cards). During this time, the Evans and Sutherland company continued to advance the technology of vector displays, including high image resolution and some limited color capability. They also developed a vector system for planetarium shows called DigiStar. However, they eventually had to go to pixelated displays as the cost and quality for pixel based systems became so much cheaper. Now with OLED and 8K displays, there simply is no way a vector based system could hope to compete. One place you still find vector based systems are laser light shows, and some types of 3D printers that use lasers to harden plastics or melt powdered metal. Modern laser systems are extremely high resolution and very fast. Laser vectors are based on moving mirrors and the speed is only limited by how fast the motors which drive the mirrors can move.

@TEK-Vectors Год назад

Three other current day uses for vector graphics are commercial and consumer 3D printers, vinyl cutters, and CNC machines. All of these operate similar to plotters and storage tube vector graphics displays like the Tektronix 4050 series computers. The command set for them is G-code (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-code) which includes linear Move and Draw commands plus Circles and more complex curves.

@Stabby666 Год назад

@@KendallAuel Technically even raster displays don't need more than a few bytes of video memory as long as the graphics can be created as the display is scanned - like the old Atari 2600 which had none. A lot of the hobby microcontroller VGA projects use this method, usually just generating the graphics for a single scanline in a reusable buffer. It means it's also easy to add sprites, and scroll the display smoothly, along with generating audio during the horizontal retrace periods. Vector was definitely a way to efficiently produce nice crisp hi res displays with less memory though. The fact it couldn't really produce filled polygons limited its appeal though, as memory prices fell and bitmapped raster displays were more feasible.

@did3d523 8 месяцев назад

in alien movie

@TEK-Vectors 8 месяцев назад

like this vector graphics image I did of the Alien's computer screen? github.com/mmcgraw74/Tektronix-4051-4052-4054-Program-Files/blob/master/Pictures/Screenshots/MUTHUR%206000.png

@HongKong-tg5lh Месяц назад

sounds like my microwave

@JoaoPaulo-fw3zg Год назад

Now, we have hardware to play God of War Ragnarok. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

@garygrove6643 Год назад

Audio is too low. Bring it up 6db!! GLX

@trotskiftw 2 года назад

fwiw thats just a cooling tower, not a nuclear cooling tower. Its used in significantly more applications than just nuclear plants, basically anything that needs large amounts of cooling can use a cooling tower. Not at all relevant to the video really, lol

@TEK-Vectors 2 года назад

Thank you for the clarification. Yes, the Tektronix demo tape filename for that image was just "Cooling Tower". I see that I also had an issue with my picture menu program in this video and the Cooling Tower was displayed with the wrong title "Dish Antenna". I have fixed my picture menu program and will remember your comment when I show this as one of my Tektronix 4054A exhibit demonstrations at Vintage Computer Federation West 2022 - August 6,7 in The Computer Museum in Mountain View California.