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Starlink from 1984

nemanjatrifunovic.substack.com

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Re: Starlink from 1984

#31

Post by parl_match »

numpad0 wrote: post #16
jeroenhd wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have enough USB ports, you should be able to get away with using DisplayLink dongles for the video part. DisplayLink doesn't require any additional video processing hardware (unlike DisplayPort) or even USB-C ports, you can run the old DisplayLink standard over plain old USB 2! Not great for playing video, but a terminal app should run just fine. I think the current driver restricts you to 4 displays but I'm n…

DisplayLink creates virtual displays on CPU and stream compressed feed over USB. That takes non-negligible amount of CPU time and RAM bandwidth, and it makes sense to give it a max concurrent stream count(set aside which of 4 or 6 are more reasonable).

While true, modern implementations use hardware blocks for acceleration AND for just terminals, with spare displays, you'll likely be using lower resolutions at lower refresh rates.

We've used a series of n150 based mini PCs (priced at $200 each) to power three dashboard displays at the same time. I guess it's a matter of calculating power usage and figuring out how that translates over 4 years

Re: Starlink from 1984

#32

Post by [deleted] »

healthworker wrote: post #8

Along these lines, it would be neat to use Raspberry Pi or something to make a "terminal to HDMI adapter", allowing me to have an unlimited number (tens or even hundreds) of external monitors for my laptop, each running a separate terminal-mode program such as a text editor, htop, Bloomberg, etc. I often find fully working LCD monitors discarded by people who have no use for them, and could easily collect five or mor…

[deleted]

Re: Starlink from 1984

#33

Post by BobbyTables2 »

healthworker wrote: post #8

Along these lines, it would be neat to use Raspberry Pi or something to make a "terminal to HDMI adapter", allowing me to have an unlimited number (tens or even hundreds) of external monitors for my laptop, each running a separate terminal-mode program such as a text editor, htop, Bloomberg, etc. I often find fully working LCD monitors discarded by people who have no use for them, and could easily collect five or mor…

Forget the terminal - do it with an FPGA!

Re: Starlink from 1984

#34

Post by BobbyTables2 »

brk wrote: post #26
aa-jv wrote: post #14

In that era (87/88'ish) I used Quarterdeck Desqview to provide multi-user capabilities on my (then) super-charged 486: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview It was possible to wire things up so that multiple users could connect to a separate Desqview instance and have their own local user context, albeit an MSDOS one .. it was quite functional as a multi-user system for a few years until I got on minix-list and hear…

There used to be a card you could plug into a PC ISA Bus that gave you a second workstation/interface. The main selling point was to allow 2 users to share a single PC for cost savings. IIRC, it only supported text displays, but for 99% of the use cases at the time that was plenty.

Nowadays it’s even easier.

Add a pair of video cards and USB cards, pass one of each to a VM.

Will feel like having 2-3 native PCs!

Re: Starlink from 1984

#35

Post by BobbyTables2 »

aa-jv wrote: post #15
healthworker wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't read the article. This has nothing to do with satellite-delivered Internet.

True, they probably didn't read the article - but their claim is still relevant. We really don't have an easy way in the modern era to share our PC's in such a way that multiple users have their own keyboard/mouse/video combination, even though our PC's are more than capable of doing this - and the underlying technology is all right there in the kernel - but distro's just don't seem to be catering to this need, since…

Actually trivial now.

Just add a video card and USB card for each head/terminal and pass them into a VM!

(It’s a shame combo video+USB cards don’t exist - would save on slots)

Re: Starlink from 1984

#36

Post by Panzerschrek »

How did it work? As I know DOS wasn't even a proper operating system, there were no separate processes, only single running task. So, how was it possible for multiple users to run multiple programs in parallel?

Re: Starlink from 1984

#37

Post by whobre »

Panzerschrek wrote: post #36

How did it work? As I know DOS wasn't even a proper operating system, there were no separate processes, only single running task. So, how was it possible for multiple users to run multiple programs in parallel?

You are describing MS-DOS. As article states, this used DRI's Concurrent DOS, which was basically rebranded MP/M-86 with a basic MS-DOS compatibility layer.

More about Concurrent DOS, eg here: https://nemanjatrifunovic.substack.com/i/196574463/quest-for...

Re: Starlink from 1984

#39

Post by whobre »

nizmow wrote: post #30
aa-jv wrote: post #14

In that era (87/88'ish) I used Quarterdeck Desqview to provide multi-user capabilities on my (then) super-charged 486: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DESQview It was possible to wire things up so that multiple users could connect to a separate Desqview instance and have their own local user context, albeit an MSDOS one .. it was quite functional as a multi-user system for a few years until I got on minix-list and hear…

Kind of a pointless nitpick, but you’d have been very lucky to own a 386 in 87-88, the 486 wouldn’t be mainstream until 1992 or so.

Actually it was released in 1989. People’s memories are a funny thing…
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