The Aster CT-80, an early (1982) home/personal computer developed by the small Dutch company MCP, was sold in its first incarnation as a kit for hobbyists. Later it was sold ready to use. It consisted of several Eurocard PCB's with DIN 41612 connectors, and a backplane all based on a 19-inch rack configuration. It was the first commercially available Dutch personal/home computer. The Aster computer could use the software written for the popular Tandy TRS-80 computer while fixing many of the problems of that computer, but it could also run CP/M software, with a large amount of free memory Transient Program Area, (TPA) and a full 80×25 display, and it could be used as a Videotext terminal. Although the Aster was a clone of the TRS-80 Model I it was in fact more compatible with the TRS-80 Model III, and ran all the software of these systems including games. It also had a built in speaker which was compatible with such games software.
The Original Chip Set (OCS) is a chipset used in the earliest Commodore Amiga computers and defined the Amiga's graphics and sound capabilities. It was succeeded by the slightly improved Enhanced Chip Set (ECS) and greatly improved Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA).
Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, which became ubiquitous in the PC industry within three years. The term can now refer to the computer display standard, the 15-pin D-subminiature VGA connector, or the 640×480 resolution characteristic of the VGA hardware.
A framebuffer is a portion of random-access memory (RAM) containing a bitmap that drives a video display. It is a memory buffer containing data representing all the pixels in a complete video frame. Modern video cards contain framebuffer circuitry in their cores. This circuitry converts an in-memory bitmap into a video signal that can be displayed on a computer monitor.
The Macintosh II is a personal computer designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer from March 1987 to January 1990. Based on the Motorola 68020 32-bit CPU, it is the first Macintosh supporting color graphics. When introduced, a basic system with monitor and 20 MB hard drive cost US$5,498. With a 13-inch color monitor and 8-bit display card the price was around US$7,145. This placed it in competition with workstations from Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, and Hewlett-Packard.
The computer art scene, or simply artscene, is the community interested and active in the creation of computer-based artwork.
Color depth or colour depth, also known as bit depth, is either the number of bits used to indicate the color of a single pixel, or the number of bits used for each color component of a single pixel. When referring to a pixel, the concept can be defined as bits per pixel (bpp). When referring to a color component, the concept can be defined as bits per component, bits per channel, bits per color, and also bits per pixel component, bits per color channel or bits per sample (bps). Modern standards tend to use bits per component, but historical lower-depth systems used bits per pixel more often.
A random-access memory digital-to-analog converter (RAMDAC) is a combination of three fast digital-to-analog converters (DACs) with a small static random-access memory (SRAM) used in computer graphics display controllers or video cards to store the color palette and to generate the analog signals to drive a color monitor. The logical color number from the display memory is fed into the address inputs of the SRAM to select a palette entry to appear on the data output of the SRAM. This entry is composed of three separate values corresponding to the three components of the desired physical color. Each component value is fed to a separate DAC, whose analog output goes to the monitor, and ultimately to one of its three electron guns.
The Atari Falcon030, released in 1992, was the final personal computer product from Atari Corporation. A high-end model of the Atari ST line, the machine is based on a Motorola 68030 CPU and a Motorola 56001 digital signal processor, a feature which distinguishes it from most other microcomputers of the era. It includes a new VIDEL programmable graphics system which greatly improves graphics capabilities.
The X68000 is a home computer created by Sharp Corporation. It was first released in 1987 and sold only in Japan.
Hold-And-Modify, usually abbreviated as HAM, is a display mode of the Commodore Amiga computer. It uses a highly unusual technique to express the color of pixels, allowing many more colors to appear on screen than would otherwise be possible. HAM mode was commonly used to display digitized photographs or video frames, bitmap art and occasionally animation. At the time of the Amiga's launch in 1985, this near-photorealistic display was unprecedented for a home computer and it was widely used to demonstrate the Amiga's graphical capability. However, HAM has significant technical limitations which prevent it from being used as a general purpose display mode.
8-bit color graphics are a method of storing image information in a computer's memory or in an image file, so that each pixel is represented by 8 bits (1 byte). The maximum number of colors that can be displayed at any one time is 256 or 28.
In computing, indexed color is a technique to manage digital images' colors in a limited fashion, in order to save computer memory and file storage, while speeding up display refresh and file transfers. It is a form of vector quantization compression.
The Contura was a line of notebook computers produced by Compaq. Released in 1992, the Contura was Compaq's first attempt at making an affordable, entry-level laptop computer.
The SMC-70 is a microcomputer that was produced by Sony and released in September 1982. The system was initially released for general office use in the United States, with the SMC-70G and SMC-70GP designed for professional video generation, for example in cable television applications, and digital video effect generation. It was the first computer that used the recently invented 3.5" micro floppy disk drive that was modified to become the industry standard. Like many home and office computers of the era, it had its own specially developed version of BASIC. Sony BASIC was designed to take advantage of a color Sony Trinitron display. The SMC-70 was not sold with Microsoft BASIC, despite the system being designed to compete in the US market. With optional expansion ROMs the system could display kanji characters.
The Orion-128 is a DIY computer designed in Soviet Union. It was featured in the Radio magazine in 1990, other materials for the computer were published until 1996. It was the last Intel 8080-based DIY computer in Russia.
The Packard Bell Statesman was an economy line of notebook computers introduced in 1993 by Packard Bell. They were slower in performance and lacked features compared to most competitor products, but they were lower in price. It was created in a collaboration between Packard Bell and Zenith Data Systems. The Statesman series was essentially a rebrand of Zenith Data Systems Z-Star 433 series, with the only notable difference of the logo in the middle and text on the front bezel.
