Iโd like to switch to Menlo Park,
and get a view from the camera there and actually looking at the hardware. So these are the units, it developed the displays,
the computer constructs it right on a small high resolution CRT which youโre focusing on
right now, and in fact thatโs the CRT whose camera on the right looking at it, is generating the text
view thatโs being piped down here on my console. So as those are faded in and out between the
two, you can just sort of compare them. So thatโs very
nice.Thereโs my mouse moving
around in Menlo Park, my tracking spot. So our displays work with those being watched
by commercial cameras. Look at my black bug. Commercial TV cameras 875 lines scanning
rates with a fairly high resolution; look at that, from now on to the display station a
standard video microwave system.Now if you back up the camera shot little bit,
weโll see that we have a whole rack full of equipment here serving 12 of them, but you'll
notice quite a lack of cameras mounted on.
We seem to have stolen them all for this show. So
weโre going to have several consoles at work right now because the cameras are mounted to
give you these different special views. I thought quite a few advantages; we use this
particular display system, hard work technique, pretty much as an expediency for an
experimental system we had to build. We originally were going to build storage
to displays under here but we couldnโt get them delivered a year and a half ago when
we really had to firm up
our design so we, as expediency wanted this. Ran has been developing
some very nice video stuff. They were kind enough to show us how these, these controllers now
would work with videos. So we went ahead with this very simple brute force way of having
the video signal generated by looking at a small CRT. Well, it turns out that that
little CRT, its incremental cost, the video camera, the controller and a monitor
total about $5500 which is cheaper than most fairly good resolution random defection
display
monitors would be, so we come out well on the price of the hardware. It turns out that
also that the cathode of the camera tube and in just black and white, you see it like
this. You can back off the scanning current, so that it's a sticky cathode, so it's actually,
it doesnโt erase the image on it by each sweep, it may take three or four scans and so itโs something
like a 15 cycle per second refresh rate on those CRTs, the camera, the one thatโs generating
this as well as the one that
we looked at a few minutes ago have short-term storage in there.
Itโs quite different from long persistence but gives us the flicker-free display here, for quite
a flickery display there. Thereโs lots of uses on display generation hardware for 3 to 4 times
as many display stations as otherwise. Youโll notice if we just get the text alone that
there's a small effect by that bug smearing, but itโs not that bad. And that comes from the
memory and the silicon tube. Okay, so much for that
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