Knight TV origins

[larsbrinkhoff]

Notes about the origin of the Knight TV system.

[larsbrinkhoff]

TK, private communiation:

Prof. John McCarthy was visiting faculty at MIT, probably in 1972. He was instrumental in pushing us to do a TV system. The availability of cheap semiconductor memory (from the available Intel 1103 1Kx1 DRAM) was also an essential idea. We were (justifiably) concerned about reliability issues. Using them as a bitmap allowed us to test them out in a non-critical application. Sprinkles of bits on a bitmap are not a fatal issue, and we encountered problems of that kind.

The keyboard was definitely inspired by the Earnest Stanford keyboard. We added some additional control keys, hyper and super. We kept lower case parans for Lisp. We kept rubout to the left of A. We replaced their key switch with the Microswitch hall-effect high reliability switch.

A major motivation for all of this was to bring up the SUDS system of hardware design. It was first brought up on the 340 display, but it was important to expand the ability of it to other displays.

All of this was also dependent on the 10/11 interface. This key hardware was essential for the XGP, the TVs, and for the debugging of the lisp machine. It allowed a PDP-10 program to read and write PDP-11 memory, including with user-level programs.

[larsbrinkhoff]

From TK; TERM 18 on ToTS tape 3100015, timestamp 1972-11-07:

Displays for the Masses

        The goal was to prepare a plan for Project MAC and the AI
Lab to acquire a system of keyboard and display terminals large enough
and cheap enough to put one in every office in 545 Tech Square -
about 130 terminals.  The system is to be connected to three PDP-10's
on the ninth floor, and to MULTICS in building 39.
Desirability of a direct connection with the ARPA net was
proposed later.  The performance goal was 20 or more  80
character lines of arbitrary characters plus graphics.
        The committee to prepare this plan consisted of Tom Knight,
John McCarthy(chairman), and Jerry Saltzer.  It
was assisted by others from MAC and AI.  In addition,
we believe we have consulted all interested groups in MAC/AI.
[...]
        After the RFP's were sent, we learned
about the approach taken by Peter Weiner of Yale.  We visited them, and
now recommend a slightly modified version of their approach.
Their approach is based on the fact that complete TTL interfaced semiconductor
memories of better than 450 ns. cycle, organized into blocks
of 4x4k x 16 words can be obtained for .86
cents per bit from at least two suppliers, AMS and Intel.
Since our purchase will be four times as large, we may get a better
price.

[larsbrinkhoff]

From https://www.saildart.org/ART.PUB[D,LES] dated 1973-01-28:

If the group there has some engineering capabilities, there is a plausible
"do-it-yourself" display system similar to ours, but using core or MOS
memories.  Such systems are still slightly more expensive than a disc
system in large configuations, but they are not subject to disc crashes
and can be assembled economically for just a few terminals.

Peter Weiner at Yale has put together such a system using memories
from Intel (3065 Coffin Road, Santa Clara, Calif.) that were designed
for PDP-11 memory expansion.  These memories cost about .8 cents/bit,
which works out to about $2200 per display (memories only) for 512 x 512
resolution.  I believe that he is also using replicas of our keyboards.

[larsbrinkhoff]

Papers about the Yale Gem system:

https://cpsc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/technical-reports/TR18%20An%20Overview%20of%20the%20Yale%20GEM%20System.pdf

https://cpsc.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/tr68.pdf

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/larsbrinkhoff/its-archives/master/yale/An_Overview_of_the_Yale_Gem_System.pdf

Many details are very much like the Knight TV.

[larsbrinkhoff]

Since Jerry Saltzer was mentioned in TK's document above, I'm guessing this is one of the proposals received:

http://people.csail.mit.edu/saltzer/Multics/MHP-Saltzer-060508/filedrawers/141.graphics-system/Scan%203.PDF