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MicroAngelo
SCION's MicroAngelo was an early graphics card for S-100 bus computers. Each MicroAngelo board produced a 512 by 480 pixel monochrome image, high resolution for the era.Most home computers of the era displayed 256 to 320 by 192 to 240, while the Cromemco Dazzler for S-100 machines produced only 128 by 128. The MicroAngelo Palette (or Colour Mixing) Card used the output of multiple MicroAngelo's as individual bit-planes to produce images with up to 256 colors (using 8 cards). Early versions of AutoCAD supported the MicroAngelo system. The original MA512 board included 32 kB of RAM for the frame buffer, a Z80 processor operating as a controller and memory refresh driver, and 4 kB of ROM containing one of two optional sets of subroutines. Users programmed the MicroAngelo in assembly language using the Z80's input/output parallel ports, which sent data over the internal S-100 bus at relatively high speeds. The data sent over the bus was examined by the Z80 on the card, wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cromemco Dazzler
The Cromemco Dazzler was a graphics card for S-100 bus computers introduced in a ''Popular Electronics'' cover story in 1976.Les Solomon"Solomon's Memory", in ''Digital Deli'', Workman Publications, 1984, It was the first color graphics card available for microcomputers.Harry Garland"Ten years and counting" ''Creative Computing'', Volume 10, Number 11 (November 1984), pg. 104 The Dazzler was the first of a succession of increasingly capable graphics products from Cromemco which, by 1984, were in use at 80% of all television stations in the U.S. for the display of weather, news, and sports graphics. History The Dazzler came about in a roundabout fashion after Les Solomon, Technical Editor for ''Popular Electronics'' magazine, demonstrated the original Altair 8800 to Roger Melen of Stanford University. After seeing it, Melen purchased Altair #2 for his friend Harry Garland to work with. The two built a number of add-ons for the machine, collaborating with Terry Walker on the design o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graphics Card
A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or mistakenly GPU) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display device, such as a computer monitor. Graphics cards are sometimes called discrete or dedicated graphics cards to emphasize their distinction to Graphics processing unit#Integrated graphics, integrated graphics. A graphics processing unit that performs the necessary computations is the main component of a graphics card, but the acronym "GPU" is sometimes also used to refer to the graphics card as a whole. Most graphics cards are not limited to simple display output. The graphics processing unit can be used for additional processing, which reduces the load from the central processing unit. Additionally, computing platforms such as OpenCL and CUDA allow using graphics cards for General-purpose computing on graphics processing units, general-purpose computing. Applications o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
S-100 Bus
The S-100 bus or Altair bus, IEEE 696-1983 ''(withdrawn)'', is an early computer bus designed in 1974 as a part of the Altair 8800. The bus was the first industry standard expansion bus for the microcomputer industry. computers, consisting of processor and peripheral cards, were produced by a number of manufacturers. The bus formed the basis for homebrew computers whose builders (e.g., the Homebrew Computer Club) implemented drivers for CP/M and MP/M. These microcomputers ran the gamut from hobbyist toy to small business workstation and were common in early home computers until the advent of the IBM PC. Architecture The bus is a passive backplane of 100-pin printed circuit board edge connectors wired in parallel. Circuit cards measuring 5 × 10-inches serving the functions of CPU, memory, or I/O interface plugged into these connectors. The bus signal definitions closely follow those of an 8080 microprocessor system, since the Intel 8080 microprocessor was the first ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
AutoCAD
AutoCAD is a commercial computer-aided design (CAD) and drafting software application. Developed and marketed by Autodesk, AutoCAD was first released in December 1982 as a desktop app running on microcomputers with internal graphics controllers. Before AutoCAD was introduced, most commercial CAD programs ran on mainframe computers or minicomputers, with each CAD operator (user) working at a separate graphics terminal. AutoCAD is also available as mobile and web apps. AutoCAD is used in industry, by architects, project managers, engineers, graphic designers, city planners and other professionals. It was supported by 750 training centers worldwide in 1994. Introduction AutoCAD was derived from a program that began in 1977, and then released in 1979 called Interact CAD, also referred to in early Autodesk documents as MicroCAD, which was written prior to Autodesk's (then Marinchip Software Partners) formation by Autodesk cofounder Michael Riddle. The first version by Autodesk wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Read-only Memory
Read-only memory (ROM) is a type of non-volatile memory used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be electronically modified after the manufacture of the memory device. Read-only memory is useful for storing software that is rarely changed during the life of the system, also known as firmware. Software applications (like video games) for programmable devices can be distributed as plug-in cartridges containing ROM. Strictly speaking, ''read-only memory'' refers to memory that is hard-wired, such as diode matrix or a mask ROM integrated circuit (IC), which cannot be electronically changed after manufacture. Although discrete circuits can be altered in principle, through the addition of bodge wires and/or the removal or replacement of components, ICs cannot. Correction of errors, or updates to the software, require new devices to be manufactured and to replace the installed device. Floating-gate ROM semiconductor memory in the form of erasab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Assembly Language
In computer programming, assembly language (or assembler language, or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as Assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence between the instructions in the language and the architecture's machine code instructions. Assembly language usually has one statement per machine instruction (1:1), but constants, comments, assembler directives, symbolic labels of, e.g., memory locations, registers, and macros are generally also supported. The first assembly code in which a language is used to represent machine code instructions is found in Kathleen and Andrew Donald Booth's 1947 work, ''Coding for A.R.C.''. Assembly code is converted into executable machine code by a utility program referred to as an ''assembler''. The term "assembler" is generally attributed to Wilkes, Wheeler and Gill in their 1951 book ''The Preparation of Programs for an Electronic Digital Com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bitmap Graphics
upright=1, The Smiley, smiley face in the top left corner is a raster image. When enlarged, individual pixels appear as squares. Enlarging further, each pixel can be analyzed, with their colors constructed through combination of the values for red, green and blue. In computer graphics and digital photography, a raster graphic represents a two-dimensional picture as a rectangular matrix or grid of square pixels, viewable via a computer display, paper, or other display medium. A raster is technically characterized by the width and height of the image in pixels and by the number of bits per pixel. Raster images are stored in image files with varying dissemination, production, generation, and acquisition formats. The printing and prepress industries know raster graphics as contones (from ''continuous tones''). In contrast, line art is usually implemented as vector graphics in digital systems. Many raster manipulations map directly onto the mathematical formalisms of linear a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Light Pen
A light pen is a computer input device in the form of a light-sensitive wand used in conjunction with a computer's cathode-ray tube (CRT) display. It allows the user to point to displayed objects or draw on the screen in a similar way to a touchscreen but with greater positional accuracy. A light pen can work with any CRT-based display, but its ability to be used with LCDs was unclear (though Toshiba and Hitachi displayed a similar idea at the "Display 2006" show in Japan). A light pen detects changes in brightness of nearby screen pixels when scanned by cathode-ray tube electron beam and communicates the timing of this event to the computer. Since a CRT scans the entire screen one pixel at a time, the computer can keep track of the expected time of scanning various locations on screen by the beam and infer the pen's position from the latest time stamps. History The first light pen, at this time still called "light gun", was created around 1945–1955 as part of the Whirl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bit Blit
Bit blit (also written BITBLT, BIT BLT, BitBLT, Bit BLT, Bit Blt etc., which stands for ''bit block transfer'') is a data operation commonly used in computer graphics in which several bitmaps are combined into one using a ''boolean function''. The operation involves at least two bitmaps: a "source" (or "foreground") and a "destination" (or "background"), and possibly a third that is often called the "mask". The result may be written to a fourth bitmap, though often it replaces the destination. The pixels of each are combined bitwise according to the specified raster operation (ROP) and the result is then written to the destination. The ROP is essentially a boolean formula. The most obvious ROP overwrites the destination with the source. Other ROPs may involve AND, OR, XOR, and NOT operations. The Commodore Amiga's graphics chipset (and others) could combine three source bitmaps using any of the 256 possible boolean functions with three inputs. Modern graphics software has almost ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zilog Z80
The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The first working samples were delivered in March 1976, and it was officially introduced on the market in July 1976. With the revenue from the Z80, the company built its own chip factories and grew to over a thousand employees over the following two years. The Zilog Z80 is a software-compatible extension and enhancement of the Intel 8080 and, like it, was mainly aimed at embedded systems. Although used in that role, the Z80 also became one of the most widely used CPUs in desktop computers and home computers from the 1970s to the mid-1980s. It was also common in military applications, musical equipment such as synthesizers (like the Roland Jupiter-8), and coin-operated arcade games of the late 1970s and early 1980s, including '' Pac-Man''. Zilog licensed the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CP/M
CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initially confined to single-tasking on 8-bit processors and no more than 64 kilobytes of memory, later versions of CP/M added multi-user variations and were migrated to 16-bit processors. The combination of CP/M and S-100 bus computers became an early standard in the microcomputer industry. This computer platform was widely used in business through the late 1970s and into the mid-1980s. CP/M increased the market size for both hardware and software by greatly reducing the amount of programming required to install an application on a new manufacturer's computer. An important driver of software innovation was the advent of (comparatively) low-cost microcomputers running CP/M, as independent programmers and hackers bought them and shared their crea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Serial Port
In computing, a serial port is a serial communication interface through which information transfers in or out sequentially one bit at a time. This is in contrast to a parallel port, which communicates multiple bits simultaneously in parallel. Throughout most of the history of personal computers, data has been transferred through serial ports to devices such as modems, terminals, various peripherals, and directly between computers. While interfaces such as Ethernet, FireWire, and USB also send data as a serial stream, the term ''serial port'' usually denotes hardware compliant with RS-232 or a related standard, such as RS-485 or RS-422. Modern consumer personal computers (PCs) have largely replaced serial ports with higher-speed standards, primarily USB. However, serial ports are still frequently used in applications demanding simple, low-speed interfaces, such as industrial automation systems, scientific instruments, point of sale systems and some industrial and consumer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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