When you have "Defense Products Division" in your organization's name, "high price" comes with the products, ala $10,000 hammers and toilet seats (and "Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation" doesn't exactly evoke thoughts of Walmart pricing, either).
I grew up a few stones' throws from Clifton - if I'd known when I was a kid that you would need this info, I could have dumpster-dived a king's fortune's worth to give to you now, probably along with some samples. Unfortunately, I would have had to incur the cost of storage for nearly six decades for that and all of the other "must-have" artifacts that I would have also scarfed up along with them ... I'm one of the early senior docents at the Computer History Museum in SillyCon Valley and yammered on endlessly about the 6600 and its neighbor, the 7600, but I never thought about character generation on the displays beyond it being vector-based drawing. I'm pretty sure it was done via look-up tables that directed the beams along vectors on the displays for the operating PDP-1 we play Spacewar! on as often as we like ... usually against its principal creator, fellow Señor Docent, Steve Russell. All the Best, Jim On Wed, Jun 6, 2018 at 2:37 PM, Paul Koning via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > > On Jun 6, 2018, at 3:40 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk < > cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > > One of the more interesting things about the DD60 display was the use of > > 2C43 "Lighthouse" UHF triode tubes to drive the CRT electrostatic > > deflection. > > UHF, yes, but not those. The final state uses 3CX100A5 UHF transmitter > tubes. The 2C43 would not appreciate the 2000 volt plate voltage used in > that stage. The driver stages are fairly ordinary looking receiver style > dual-triode tubes. > > > Only being around briefly for the 170 system, I don't know how the > > magnetic deflection was driven there. > > > > I imagine that the cost of the DD60 was due in no small port by the use > > of the CRTs--I believe they were produced in Germany. > > Really? It is shown as a K2263-P31, manufacturer Fairchild Camera and > Instrument Corporation, Defense Products Div., Clifton NJ. I sure would > like to get my hands on specs for that tube. > > In any case, they were sometimes referred to as "radar tubes" which sounds > somewhat reasonable. Certainly very different from TV CRTs, and bigger > than what's used in oscilloscopes, so they were most likely low volume > which would explain a high price. > > paul > >
