"Retro-Graphics Terminal Enhancement" on TVI-950

[Lorne]

I got a rebadged Televideo 950 (a Stratus V101) in the ACCRC auction last year, and it has some real bad screen burn in.

I was offered (for the cost of shipping) a non-working Televideo 950 from someone in Washington state, and I thought I’d use the CRT from the 950 in the Stratus.

Now that I’ve opened up the non-working 950, I see it’s “enhanced”.
It’s got a plate on the front stating “Retro-Graphics Terminal Enhancement”, and some additional boards inside.



There’s this full size board at the side




And this half size board at the rear





There’s also some additional chips on the logic board that are sort of piggy backed.



I’ve never heard of Retro-Graphics, couldn’t find anything of use about them on the web, and am wondering what sort of enhancements these would be.
Maybe something that would store a couple of pages of screen info?

The big board on the side is labeled “Digital Engineering Inc Retro-Graphics Gen II”.

I’m now thinking maybe I should be using the Stratus as the parts terminal, to get this enhanced TV950 terminal working.

Does anyone know anything about Retro-Graphics, or have any idea what the enhancements could have been?

 

[Dave_K.]

I've got the ADM 3/5 version of the Retro-Graphics II boards, and posted about it here

https://twitter.com/x/status/1648194074867015680

Here is the manual for the televideo version you have (apparently this is the only manual on the internet for these boards): http://bitsavers.org/pdf/digitalEng...o-Graphics_Ref_and_Install_Manual_Dec1982.pdf

If anyone else knows about these, how to configure them, and has dumped the eproms, I'd love to know as I can't seem to get my ADM version working.

 

[Martin Hepperle]

These boards are, for example, supported by Digital Researchs CP/M GSX graphics extensions.
There is a driver for the VT100 + Retrographics board (DDVRET.PRL).
They support Tektronix escape sequences for graphics.

Martin

 

[GanjaTron]

You can get neat plots with gnuplot on these in Tek 401x mode.

https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?attachments/dsci3321a-jpg.1044408/

--Roland