Amazing 3-D graphics in 1981

At the low, low cost of $20 million, this could have been yours.

And they were also awesome for this:

“An Evans & Sutherland computer was used in the creation of the Project Genesis simulation sequence in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, which was one of the first computer graphic sequences ever used in a movie.” (Wikipedia)

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Yes, Star Trek 2 was released a month earlier on June 4, 1982 vs Tron’s 9 July 1982. Tron was the first to use computer graphics extensively through out the movie and was the bulk user for the Evans & Sutherland Picture System (PS2).

Hard to believe that it was all achieved on something no powerful than a TI-80 and took up a corner of the room:

To put things in perspective, the best selling computer in the summer of 1982 was the original IBM PC.

4.77 MHz Intel 8088 processor
256 KBytes of RAM
2 360 Kbyte floppy disk drives
640x200 display resolution

Edit: that system cost around $4000!

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Didn’t even have a turbo button :pensive:

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Could have sworn that it was the C64 but your right that the IBM PC 5150 did get release in Sept. of '81 so it already had a head start so I can’t argue with you there though by the end of the year the C64 did beat out as the most popular.

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I was fortunate to get to go to NCC in Houston that summer. I drooled over the advance C64 information; I do not think it was available for purchase until late that summer.

Another drool-worthy development was printers below $1000. Anybody remember the Paper Tiger?

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Oh you mean…

Hell yes!! that was one of the more fun files that got uploaded to my board.

Then there was a whole set of them http://artscene.textfiles.com/ansimusic/songs/

Over $10,500 in today’s dollars … that’ll buy a nice Engineering desktop work station.
image

This is a great link to bookmark.: US Inflation Calculator

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just think, if one can build a GPU rig for data mining that can handle Teraflops of data for around $800. We could posibly break the petraflops barrier with that kind of money.

I am tempted to get one of these if he goes back into production:

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I remember that. Walter lent us one years ago and Earlier in the year Art said he’s willing to donate it to the museum.

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Now either or not that it gets donated we could still hold a class on how to build one. Maybe even get it to play nethack and wumpus.

The PiDP-11 is available again.

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