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Conference atlant::terminals

Title:Traditional Video Terminals and Monitors
Notice:See 3230 for Sun River information
Moderator:REGENT::LASKO
Created:Tue Mar 18 1986
Last Modified:Thu May 22 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:3256
Total number of notes:14159

3256.0. "Followon Regis and sixel graphics terminal to vt340" by CPEEDY::wells.lkg.dec.com::wells (Phil Wells) Wed May 14 1997 10:45

My brother is working for a company that packages VT340s into one of 
their products and is looking to update the terminal component.  
Recently he brought in a VT525 to test it but it didn't work because 
it doesn't support sixel graphics.

As I understand it now, sixel graphics is a component of Regis which 
we no longer support in any terminal product after the vt340.

Can someone from Terminals Engineering confirm this and do you have 
any further suggestions?

Thanks and Regards
T.RTitleUserPersonal
Name
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3256.1PCBUOA::BAYJJim, PortablesWed May 14 1997 15:1126
    Well, technically the VT LAN40 terminal featured ReGIS and Sixel
    graphics, but it was EOL'd sometime back, and I'm not sure if they are
    available anywhere now (only 4,000 were made).  Also, X-terminals
    supported ReGIS and Sixel by way of the DECterm terminal emulator
    (although the local firmware emulator did not).
    
    Alternatives are terminal emulators on PCs like KEA340 and its
    competitors, Excursion (still produced by Digital, but requires an X
    environment), or DECterm on an Alpha workstation.  I don't think
    Digital produces X-terminals anymore, but other companies do.
    
    Also, Sun River owns all of Digital's terminal rights now, so it
    conceivable that they still make color graphics terminals.  
    
    Actually, thats a real good idea to check out.  The VT LAN40 was
    supposed to replace the VT340 so it could be EOL'd, since we lost our
    source for video tubes for it.  However, we later found a new source
    for VT340 tubes, and I don't ever remember hearing about it being EOL'd
    before being sold to Sun River (whatever they are called now).  
    
    Even in its final days, we still sold several hundred units a year of
    the VT340 (the product that wouldn't die) at way over $1,000 a piece,
    so Sun River might have kept that line alive.
    
    jeb
    
3256.2JAMIN::OSMANEric Osman, dtn 226-7122Fri May 16 1997 18:1313
As you investigate, please keep in mind that sixel
graphics and regis graphics are independent.

Regis graphics includes standard graphics directives such
as set color, draw line, draw circle etc.  Sixel graphics
includes not much more than just the ability to write
a tiny slice of 6 vertical contigious dots of your choice
(and hence the name sixels), but of course with proper
sets of dots you can draw "anything" since every dot on
the screen is addressable.

/Eric