Vectrix Corporation
Open-knowledge reference entry
Vectrix Corporation was a manufacturer of high-resolution color computer graphics products. Formed in 1980 by Richard Katz, the company's first products were the VX family of graphics terminals, followed by the Pepe graphics cards for the IBM XT and AT.
VX series
The VX Graphics Processor series of terminals, launched in 1983, were available in two models, the VX128 and VX384. Both produced a display of 672×480 pixels. The primary difference between the two was the size of the framebuffer; the VX128 contained 128 kB of RAM which held 3 bitplanes to allow a total of 8 colors in a single image, selected from a fixed palette, while the VX384's 384 kB held 9 bitplanes for a total of 512 colors per image selected from a user-defined palette selected from 24-bit values for 16.8 million possible colors.
The VX machines were driven by an Intel 8086, making it more powerful than most of the computers it would connect to. Connections to the host were made over a Centronics port, or alternately a RS-232 port with a maximum speed of 19,200 bit/s. The terminal connected to a color monitor using two sets of BNC connectors, one each for Red, Green and Blue, and then one each for horizontal sync, vertical sync and a combined sync. Another Centronix port was provided for printer output. The terminals could be equipped with two sets of ROM systems; one contained 2D drawing routines, while the second provided 3D.
Images were displayed by sending the system short text commands, typically one or two letters followed by numeric values. For instance, D 250 350 would draw a single pixel ('D'ot) at location (250,350).
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This entry incorporates text from “Vectrix Corporation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.