[Tig] More memories please

[Rob Lingelbach]

On Dec 17, 2007, at 11:02 PM, Richard Jackson wrote:

> Thanks to Greg Fisher for supporting the TIG.
> ====
>
> Neal's right: if "programmable" means "controllable by an external
> computer" then no. (Remember that the Altair PC is circa 1975 - the
> same time period as this product!).

but there were DECs (the PDP 8 and 11) at this time... as Bob Lund
points out in a subsequent post.

My first editing system was a CMX (pre 360, forget the model #) that
used a PDP-11, where bootstrapping (the word "booting" is a shortening
of that word) the computer involved entering a series of octal numbers
via toggle switches at the frame. Paper tape would load data. There
was also a teletype keyboard and printer for readable list output.
There was also a game, was it an early Space Invaders (non graphic)
that ran on the PDP machines. the 11 was a 16-bit version of the 8 and
the early versions had no I/O bus, rather a Unibus for memory access-
devices were directly mapped into memory.

The culmination of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) was their
AlphaServer, the first powerful 64-bit computer with a highly
integrated OS, ahead of its time in 1994.

that early PDP-11 CMX system was remarkably similar to the early TLCs
which are incorporated into (and redesigned somewhat thereby) DaVinci
desks. Gary Adams is the current dean of the TLC for DaVinci but the
designer of the original one was Jim Lindelien, who I believe now
lives in Costa Rica, and is doing some interesting experiments with
bandwidth last I heard.

Teletronics was one of the facilities, along with Unitel, Charlex,
and National Video in New York City, and with Action Video, Editel,
and Vidtronics in Los Angeles, that seeded these cities and others
with enterprising engineers and mercurial colorists. It was my
sister's fault that I got my start in the business at 23 years old
with Unitel; she was Operations Manager at Teletronics, where she
worked with Bill Topazio and Lundo.

-- Whenever people agree with me I sense I must be wrong. [Oscar Wilde]

Rob Lingelbach rob at colorist.org
http://www.colorist.org