[HN Gopher] IBM, sonic delay lines, and the history of the 80x24...
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IBM, sonic delay lines, and the history of the 80x24 display (2019)
Author : rbanffy
Score : 77 points
Date : 2026-03-15 11:06 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.righto.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.righto.com)
| lysace wrote:
| No idea if this was a factor, but 80x25 on the IBM PC allows for
| showing 80x24 plus that extra line of function key labels:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_BASIC#/media/File%3AIBM_Ca...
| (IBM BASIC screenshot)
| bluedino wrote:
| Imagine when edit.com came out and QBASIC used it for the
| editor. You lost two more lines of valuable code space!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS_Editor#/media/File%3AMS...
| jtarrio wrote:
| You know, this is funny because QBasic did not use EDIT.COM.
| Instead, QBasic was the editor and EDIT.COM was a simple
| program that called "QBASIC /EDIT" :-)
| bluedino wrote:
| It was basically the same thing. That's my point.
| lysace wrote:
| I recently went back to my 1993 Turbo Pascal code (mostly 2D
| VGA and Sound Blaster game engine experiments) on period
| correct hardware.
|
| I was surprised by how claustrophobic it felt to only see 21
| lines of code in e.g. Turbo Pascal 7.0. Still didn't like the
| squashed 80x43 mode.
|
| https://winworldpc.com/screenshot/c38a28c3-84c3-ba28-1011-c3.
| ..
|
| Then I remembered how larger displays and xterm felt like
| such a liberation a few years later.
| rasz wrote:
| Power users had superEGA with 132 column 40/43/44/60/66 row
| modes.
| lysace wrote:
| I think mostly just Lotus 1-2-3 (the standard textmode
| spreadsheet application of the time) supported that?
| hanfoo wrote:
| Deeply fascinated by these historical threads. It is precisely
| the various design choices made throughout history that have
| shaped the computer systems we use today.
| II2II wrote:
| Tangentially related: is there a history covering IBM's
| development of microcomputers? It is clear that the traditional
| story of the development of the IBM PC leaves out many important
| details. There the 5100/5110/5120, which goes back to the
| mid-1970's and reflects the stereotype of IBM. There is also the
| System/23 DataMaster, where the hardware seems to be the basis of
| the IBM PC. This seems to go against the traditional story that
| the IBM PC was some sort of renegade project. (If anything, they
| appear to be companion projects. The main difference being the
| DataMaster's focus upon IBM firmware/software.)
| kens wrote:
| Like I need another big project :-)
|
| The IBM Datamaster is an interesting system, but it was doomed.
| It had an 8-bit Intel 8085 processor, cost $9000, and came out
| in July 1981. The IBM PC had a 16-bit 8088 processor, cost
| $1565, and came out a month later. So there was no reason to
| buy a Datamaster
|
| There's a good description of Datamaster in "A Personal History
| of the IBM PC" by Dave Bradley (one of the PC's designers).
| Unfortunately, it's paywalled.[1]
|
| [1] https://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MC.2011.163
| II2II wrote:
| That sounds like a great starting point. There's a university
| library 500 meters from where I work, so bypassing the
| paywall ought to be easy.
|
| And thank you for all of your articles over the years. They
| border so close to applied physics they are fascinating
| reads.
| veltas wrote:
| From a linked article on shift registers:
|
| > To avoid these astronomical prices, some computers used the
| cheaper alternative of shift register memory.
|
| Might be a direction for 2026 too?
| thakoppno wrote:
| One theory I saw argued the punch card size was the reason for
| 80x24. But why were punch cards that size? They were designed off
| of the cards used for the census. Why were the census cards that
| size? Because they were modeled after the dollar bill size.
|
| I do love thought experiments like this but do believe they're
| insatiably unresolvable.
| ronsor wrote:
| In the end, all reasons resolve to either "it's what we had at
| the time" or "someone thought it looked good."
| theamk wrote:
| Not always, for example original CD disks had capacity of 74
| minutes to accommodate Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
| rasz wrote:
| That one also turned out a myth :) CD size was determined
| by Cassette tape dimensions (diagonal, human can still hold
| one in one hand) and that combined with conservative
| pits/lands/track pitch choice drove the play time.
|
| thus CD runtime was derived from something "what we had at
| the time".
| antiterra wrote:
| The story as told may be inaccurate but it wasn't simply
| 'what we had at the time' either.
|
| The 74 minute length resulted from Sony rejecting the
| Philips 60 minute 11.5cm diameter "Pinkeltje" disc size
| in favor of a 12cm diameter.
|
| It's quite possible that Sony's Norio Ohga simply argued
| that the 9th symphony or various operas fitting would be
| enough of an advantage for the slight size increase
| without meaningfully decreasing portability.
| rzzzt wrote:
| "Everybody just liked it that way and it costs too much to
| change it now": https://www.exocomics.com/743/
| staplung wrote:
| And the reason they were modeled after the dollar bill size is
| because there were already many types of systems for storing
| and organizing them. That came in handy for the census.
|
| The old BBC Connections series has a segment with James Burke
| using the old census tabulators.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6yL0_sDnX0&t=2640s
| BirAdam wrote:
| Man. I love the design of old terminals, computers, and such.
|
| I am, also, extremely glad that these form factors were
| abandoned. Having an old terminal, it is possibly the least
| ergonomic machine I have ever used.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Same. And you may like this one:
|
| https://design.tel/olivetti-tvc-250/
| Animats wrote:
| The PARC crowd thought displays should have the form factor of a
| sheet of paper. Hence the Alto display.[1] That never caught on.
|
| [1] https://www.righto.com/2018/01/xerox-alto-zero-day-
| cracking-...
| locallost wrote:
| I see people doing that today.
| thangalin wrote:
| The linage can be traced back to Basile Bouchon's paper tape
| invention in 1725. The article doesn't mention the role of
| punched cards in The Holocaust, though, which my blog post goes
| into:
|
| https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/06/web-of-knowledge/
| pezezin wrote:
| Fascinating article, I really like knowing where the old
| standards came from.
|
| But I am extremely curious the first picture in the "The IBM 2260
| video display terminal" section. All the other pictures show the
| typical extremely round CRT of the era, but that one is the
| characteristic cylindrical tube of Trinitrons, a technology
| released several years later. I am trying to find some
| information about it to no avail.
| kens wrote:
| The manual for the IBM 2260 describes the CRT in detail but I
| don't think it has the information you want. My guess is that
| if you're IBM, you can get the CRT in whatever shape you want.
|
| [1]
| https://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/2260/Y27-2046-3_2260_2848_...
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