From: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!CAD:tektronix!zehntel!sytek!menlo70!hao!seismo!rlgvax!guy Newsgroups: net.micro Title: Re: BLIT workstation Article-I.D.: rlgvax.1175 Posted: Fri Mar 11 18:01:07 1983 Received: Mon Mar 14 03:21:07 1983 I noticed that the workstation mentioned has a BLIT (with 68000) AND a 2B (Bellmac-32? Rumor has it that Bell will release its 3B-5 Bellmac-32 based UNIX box) CPU. I have noticed that several small systems - including single- user workstations - have a separate processor to control the display AND do NOT have the video memory directly accessible to the CPU. If you have the processor doing the text editing/formatting or the graphics or whatever able to directly access video memory, you can update your screen a LOT faster. The Alto, the Star, and the Lisa all have the driven directly from CPU memory, and they all have sexy text and graphics software. Is there any reason why a lot of systems being put out now have a "thin wire" connection between the processor and the display? Almost all (if not all) of those systems have a shared-memory connection between SOME processor and the CRT controller - but a lot of them have something like a Z80 or so to control the display, and force the 8086 or 68000 or whatever to shove the characters or bits through a relatively slow pipeline to the memory. Is there a reason why this is done? Is it the extra cost of the dual-ported memory? Guy Harris RLG Corporation ...!decvax!mcnc!rlgvax!guy