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My research about graphics of the Pro

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vol.litwr

Experienced Member
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Mar 22, 2016
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I did a little digging into graphics of the Pro. I have impressed very much. The Pro's graphics is really fascinating. It is sad that information about the magnificent graphic capabilities of the Pro has still missed Wikipedia. :(
I took the liberty of compiling a table summarizing almost all video modes of the Pro.

Code: 
columns   rows     colors  palette  VRAM   
1024      240/256  2       2        32 KB  2 intensity levels
512       240/256  4       4        32 KB  4 intensity levels
256       240/256  16      16       32 KB  16 intensity levels
1024      240/256  8       256      96 KB  mapped, Pro 350
1024      240/256  8       4096     96 KB  mapped, Pro 380
1024      240/256  8       8        96 KB
512       240/256  64      64       96 KB
256       240/256  4096    4096     96 KB
1024      480/512  2       2        64 KB  2 intesity levels, interlaced, Pro 380
512       480/512  4       4        64 KB  4 intesity levels, interlaced, Pro 380
256       480/512  16      16       64 KB  16 intesity levels, interlaced, Pro 380
1024      480/512  8       4096     192 KB  mapped, interlaced, Pro 380 + EBO

There are also hybrid modes when three graphical planes have different number of columns. However I seem that only two modes were used by official software for the Pro: 2 intensity level and mapped. The documentation doesn't clearly show information about several cases. For instance, I am not sure about number of palette colors for unmapped mode. Any additions and corrections are welcome.

So it is likely that the most interesting mode that can show 4096 colors was never used by any known program. :( The xhomer emulator doesn't support it. :( It is not completely clear for me how this mode may be programmed so I have written two small demo programs. One of them should supposedly write 4096 color palette on the screen. It would be great if someone could run this programs on a real Pro. These programs are for RT-11 and they should work on any Pro system with at least 96 KB of VRAM and a color monitor. Many thanks in advance. If everything works well, I'll probably convert several nice pictures for the Pro.

My programs assume that the Pro 350 video card is at one of addresses from 174000 to 175400, they check the Pro 380 video card at 175400.

Finally, I dare to ask several questions about the Pro. Please help me. I've not been able to find anything relevant on the net. :(

1) When was the 380 launched? It seems it appeared after the 325/350 but before 1985.
2) The documentation says that the Pro is capable to show 1024 pixels in a row but people say that only 960 are visible. My experience with xhomer shows that the right edge of the screen is not used by official programs but my programs can show all 1024 pixels. So I seem that the 960 limit is caused by a specific monitor limitations and is not general. Is it true?
3) May any monitor for the Pro work in 50 Hz mode (256 raster lines)?
4) I can't understand why they put 128 KB VRAM into the built-in video system of the 380 while 96 KB is enough. It seems we can use the last 32 KB (or even 64 KB) only for something like RAM-disks. The EBO module (256 KB of additional VRAM) wastes 64 KB (128 KB) the same way. Is it correct? And, BTW, is it possible to use the non-interlaced mapped mode without the EBO on the 380?

I apologize for this post getting too wordy. But maybe it will help to get some rare information about the Pro.
 

Attachments

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If I can find a way to get these onto my Pro-350 I will run them for you. Yes, I have the color monitor and associated hardware.
 
tradde said:
If I can find a way to get these onto my Pro-350 I will run them for you. Yes, I have the color monitor and associated hardware.
Click to expand...
It would be excellent if your equipment could show us an image in 4096 colors. So I am praying to the computer god to help your hardware.
 
My Pro-350 has RT-11 XM on it, and not the POS that most seem to have. I have never used RT-11 nor do I know what devices it has. The only way I see possible is via a file transfer by the serial port? Maybe device XC? Which is not currently resident when I do a SHOW command. The 4 things resident are TT, DW, MQ, and PI. So it's not going to be likely that I can get this onto this machine.
 
Learning just a bit more. From browsing some Pro docs I see it mentions the serial printer as port TT2. So it's possible the main serial port is TT1. I hooked up my laptop with CoolTerm but it did not show as connected. So configuring this port correctly will be one goal. If this is indeed the port. I had hoped to find Kermit or something similar on the HD. But I don't see it. PIP is there. And I can do copies, but don't know how to copy from the serial port just yet.
 
Tried using my Rainbow-100 which does have Kermit. But I could not get a connection from my laptop. I know I did this in the past to upload a ROM dump. But not today. Kermit works fine, but I don't think my laptop makes a connection. Not sure why at this time.
 
To use the printer port as a temrinal port on a PRO, you have to jumper pins 8 and 9 together on the cable.
 
I am not using the printer port. I am using the other port. I have never worked much with Rainbows nor Pro's. So most of this is new to me. I am sure I did this before but it was likely using my older laptop that this one replaced. It doesn't seem to allow for direct serial ports. It only allows me to configure it (on the laptop) using IP. So it's likely I will not be able to make this work.
 
Well, the two ports on this Mac are Thunderbolt ports. They can connect to USB devices, but I do not see a way to initialize them to anything that is not IP based. Maybe the old Macbook allowed this. I can't say. The only settings are asking for a manual or automatic IP address. I will have to see what happens when I plug in a
USB cable to another machine. Maybe it adds a port.
 
Even when I connect the proper cable I do not see a new USB port on my laptop. I tried both the Pro-350 and the Rainbow. It's likely this can be done, but so far I have not found the correct way to do this. Hopefully someone else can help you out.
 
It seems that an evil magician has put a spell on the Pro and no one can look at the beautiful full color pictures on it. :(
 
vol.litwr said:
If everything works well, I'll probably convert several nice pictures for the Pro.
Click to expand...
Well, you got my intrigue up and I'm nearly finished throwing together a converter for 256-column 4096-color mode and 512-column 64-color mode as a bonus. All that remains is to actually write the result in a suitable dump format; I gather that the Pro has separate color planes, but I can't spot a specification of the pixel format in the relevant section of the Pro-300 series technical manual. I vaguely recall that the planes themselves are chunky format? The manual indicates that it's word-oriented, but is the leftmost pixel the most significant?
 
I tried a few more times to send files from my laptop and my Linux box to the Rainbow. I was not successful. I figured if I can get the file there I can put it on a floppy
that the Pro can read.
 
Interesting. I didn't realize the 380 had color graphics built in, so you don't need the AVO option card to display color?

Need to dig out the old color composite video cable with rj11 jack for the keyboard then. Tradde, why not load POS on the system, then you can do a bunch of stuff. What kind of drive do you have?

Note: I managed to get the Goteks with the DEC firmware on them working with the Pro/350 and 380 so loading stuff is easier with Xhomer.
 
commodorejohn said:
Well, you got my intrigue up and I'm nearly finished throwing together a converter for 256-column 4096-color mode and 512-column 64-color mode as a bonus. All that remains is to actually write the result in a suitable dump format; I gather that the Pro has separate color planes, but I can't spot a specification of the pixel format in the relevant section of the Pro-300 series technical manual. I vaguely recall that the planes themselves are chunky format? The manual indicates that it's word-oriented, but is the leftmost pixel the most significant?
Click to expand...
Sorry, I am not aware of standard picture formats for the Pro graphics. However IMHO the manual gives us information about the hardware representation of pixels. Every plane uses the chunky format and this only controls the intensity. Each plain may have the different chunk size! I am not 100% sure but I seem you are correct that the leftmost pixel is the most significant. I don't think that this is very important.
IMHO any format that we can invent for the unmapped multicolor mode will be suitable. I am ready to code the picture viewer.
czunit said:
Interesting. I didn't realize the 380 had color graphics built in, so you don't need the AVO option card to display color?

Need to dig out the old color composite video cable with rj11 jack for the keyboard then. Tradde, why not load POS on the system, then you can do a bunch of stuff. What kind of drive do you have?

Note: I managed to get the Goteks with the DEC firmware on them working with the Pro/350 and 380 so loading stuff is easier with Xhomer.
Click to expand...
I am not sure that the 380 without the EBO can show color graphics. However the 380 can show upto 512 lines in its interlaced mode. And you know xhomer can't handle unmapped modes or just intensities. :(
 
Why would I install POS? I've never seen anything written that says much good about it. My 350 has these boards: HD control, Floppy control, Bus video Bitmap control and 2 RAM boards (expansion). From what I wrote down I don't have the extended bitmap option. But this is a list I wrote down months ago. So I may be misinterpreting it. The hard drive is a ST-251.
 
P/OS using its menus is pretty terrible. P/OS using the Tool Kit is a lot like normal RSX11m+.
 
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