VT1000
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The VT1000 was a monochrome
X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at ...
computer terminal A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that can be used for entering data into, and transcribing data from, a computer or a computing system. Most early computers only had a front panel to input or display ...
introduced by
Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president until ...
(DEC) in April 1990. The VT1200 replaced the VT1000 later that year, consisting of a code update and a bump in the RAM from 1 to 2 MB. All of the VT1000 series communicated with their host computers over
Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...
, supporting
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as well as DEC's terminal-oriented Local Area Transport (LAT) protocol. They also included standard
serial port A serial port is a serial communication Interface (computing), 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 Pa ...
s to allow basic terminal emulation, built into the
ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...
. Apparently unhappy with these VT1000s, DEC released the VT1300 at the same time as the 1200. This was essentially a cut-down diskless version of the VAXstation 3100 Model 30, allowing the X Window System code to be downloaded from the host system. An upgraded version of the VT1300 that allowed the host to download programs to the terminal to run them locally was the VTX2000, a concept DEC called an "X workstation".


History


Concept

The VT1000 family developed out of a 1987 study carried out by DEC's VIPS group. They studied the use of existing graphics-capable workstations, and found that the vast majority of their users were simply using the workstation to maintain several terminal sessions to a host computer. This was wasting the majority of the power of the workstation, which cost tens of thousands of dollars. This led to a 1987 project to design a system more suitable to the tasks the users were actually doing, bringing standardized graphics to the users that might actually be used, and lowering the hardware complexity so a basic terminal user might consider buying one.


Development

The team rejected using one of their single-chip VAX processors due to high cost of implementation. The
Motorola 68000 The Motorola 68000 (sometimes shortened to Motorola 68k or m68k and usually pronounced "sixty-eight-thousand") is a 16/32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, introduced in 1979 by Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector ...
was both inexpensive and powerful, but they did not have support for cross-compilers and other development support systems on VMS, so those would have to be written. Considering this, the team ultimately chose the
Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog ...
TMS34010, a design that combines a
32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in a maximum of 32- bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform la ...
CPU with additional instructions for handling common 2D graphics tasks and bit handling. The TMS34010 blends the roles of CPU and GPU, lowering the cost of implementing a complete graphical terminal. Having experimented with an X Server on the VAXstation 2000, the team concluded that serial links would not be fast enough to support X Windows, and made the decision to equip the design with Ethernet as its primary communications system. Studying the system throughput as a whole, they estimated that the resulting system would not be terribly fast, but would be faster than an X Server running on the VAXstation 2000, which was considered barely usable. Some consideration was given to equipping it with both the TMS34010 to handle graphics and a 68000 for other tasks, but the team was unable to find a way to balance the loads so that one or the other processor didn't end up underutilized. A potential upgrade to the upcoming TMS34020 seemed more promising. The team decided early on to use a custom
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developed for another project, and debated whether to include that in
ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...
or have the code be downloaded from the host through a boot mechanism. Using ROM would eliminate the long network boot process, but also mean that minor fixes and upgrades would be difficult. For performance reasons, they chose to include the OS on ROM, using a small plug-in card that could be swapped out. Other parts of the system, like the
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s, are downloaded from the host to save room in the ROM. This uses a custom networking mechanism and required a host machine running a server. This decision had a number of spin-off effects. It was desirable to have the system be able to do local setup and terminal emulation even when not connected to a host computer, which led to the requirement for a basic
user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine fro ...
similar to
BIOS In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is a type of firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization d ...
that allowed it to be set up and handle connections to hosts using X windows. In X windows, this requires the machine to have both the X Server, the software that draws the display, as well as the X Client, an application calling the Xlib code to send drawing commands to the server. DEC had such a system as part of their DECwindows system, but this was tightly tied to VMS, requiring a port of MIT's Xlib to the TMS34020 platform. A
terminal emulator A terminal emulator, or terminal application, is a computer program that emulates a video terminal within some other display architecture. Though typically synonymous with a shell or text terminal, the term ''terminal'' covers all remote term ...
providing support for
VT52 The VT50 is a CRT-based computer terminal that was introduced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in July 1974. It provided a display with 12 rows and 80 columns of upper-case text, and used an expanded set of control characters and forwar ...
, VT100, VT220 and VT320 terminals was included in the ROM, using the local window manager for display.


VT1300

While the original design was being worked on, the team had to constantly tune the software for maximum performance. This led to continual ROM updates, causing considerable problems. This led to increasing interest in a RAM-based machine that booted from the network, reversing their earlier decision. In 1989 development along these lines started using the VAXstation 3100 with the
hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...
and other components removed, running the VAXELN operating system and EWS ( X11 for VAXELN). As the system could only be used with a host computer, there was no local user interface. Implementing this version of the system required considerably more hardware and expense, so the decision was made to make this a color-only model, in comparison to the earlier models which were monochrome.


Description

The VT1000 and VT1200 was packaged in a pizza box case with the monitor normally sitting on top and an LK400 series keyboard connected to it using a coiled cord and 4-pin modular connector. The three-button mouse was roughly puck-shaped, not unlike the original
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mouse, and used a custom 7-pin round connector. The back panel included a coax connector for the monitor, mouse and keyboard ports, a Modified Modular Jack (MMJ) serial port for a printer, another MMJ serial port for host connections, and a thinwire Ethernet connector. It also included AC in and out connectors, the latter used to connect the monitor, allowing it to be turned on and off with the terminal using a single switch located on the side of the case beside the power connectors. The system supported a number of monochrome monitors, selected using a rotary switch beside the monitor port. In addition to X Window support, the VT1000 and VT1200 could also emulate DEC's previous text terminals in individual windows, including support for the
VT52 The VT50 is a CRT-based computer terminal that was introduced by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in July 1974. It provided a display with 12 rows and 80 columns of upper-case text, and used an expanded set of control characters and forwar ...
, VT100, VT220 and VT320. The basic model shipped with a 15-inch CRT monitor and cost $2,895, but could be upgraded to a 19-inch display for an additional $700, or a 19-inch flat-screen
electroluminescent display Electroluminescent displays (ELDs) are a type of flat panel display created by sandwiching a layer of electroluminescent material such as gallium arsenide between two layers of conductors. When current flows, the layer of material emits radiatio ...
for an additional $11,100. All of the displays were 1024x864 resolution. They shipped with 1 MB of RAM, but could be upgraded to 4 MB for $600 per megabyte. The VT1000 was replaced by the VT1200 in the fall of 1991. This was essentially the same machine with a code upgrade. The VT1300 was packaged into a much larger case, about the size of a contemporary full-sized
IBM PC The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150, commonly known as the IBM PC) is the first microcomputer released in the List of IBM Personal Computer models, IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible ''de facto'' standard. Released on ...
although somewhat shorter vertically. It was released at $7,495 with 9 MB of RAM and a 19-inch color monitor.


Notes


References


Citations


Bibliography

* * {{video terminals DEC computer terminals Computer terminals X Window System Digital Equipment Corporation