1280x1024 seems incredible for 1990, were people using those resolutions at the time?
It seems weird to think I'm reading this on a monitor with less vertical resolution than that some 27 years later.
It seems weird to think I'm reading this on a monitor with less vertical resolution than that some 27 years later.
So, yeah, there were some awesome workstation monitors back then. Huge price tag, though. I seem to recall looking up what my monitor would have cost new, and it was in the multiple thousands of dollars (I got it for $25, because it had a scratched CRT, which I polished out).
I ended up putting it out by the road on large garbage pickup day, after failing to find someone who wanted it (even for free). I got tired of lugging it from house to house. A couple of houses and apartments with stairs were enough to convince me that it was time to go LCD. But, it was a fun problem getting it to work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3M_computer
In the thirty years since, we've got fifty thousand times more performance (a recent Intel desktop CPU easily does 50,000 MIPS) and sixteen thousand times more memory... But most computers barely have two megapixel screens.
1: Backronym for "EMACS"
My brother had a 486 that I think I could run the game Mechwarrior 2 by Sierra at 1280x1024. The refresh rate went down to 60hz but it was doable and we didn't have a top of the line system even at the time (mid-late 90's). Here's a 1024x768 screenshot:
https://r.mprd.se/media/images/94067-Mech_Warrior_2_Mercenar...
But yes, 16:9 is a total abomination and it is a shame that 4:3 is completely dead. They make excellent secondary displays (and good primary displays as well).
most new home PC's likely had 640x480 or maybe 800x600.
2-3 years later, and yes for sure.
Monitors were crazy expensive, though - so was video RAM or cards with a "lot" of RAM. I didn't move up to a 19 inch monitor (Sony Trinitron) until years later, when they finally became affordable to me (around $500.00 USD) - probably around 1996 or 97. I stuck with that monitor for a long while, but eventually got an LCD monitor as a "hand-down" from my work.
A lot of my later equipment came from work cast-offs; sadly that hasn't happened as much as it used to (I have this perverse liking of cast-off hardware). Virtually all of my most recent stuff has been purchased new and assembled, though I do grab the occasional cast-off when and where possible.
There were two faint 'mask' lines in the Trinitron display, but other than that, the colours were every bit as amazing as today's latest AMOLED displays.
Compared to the cost of the box or even broadcast standard 'D1' monitors, the expense on a high resolution screen and the RAM to push the pixels was not a big deal.
Obviously PC's came from a different beginning. Adding on a £3000 screen was not going to happen.
If you follow workstatins back 'to Xerox PARC' they have always been super-hi res. Even Sun workstations of the 'SunTools' era were high resolution, albeit mono.
What you are really pointing out is that the industry sells the minimum it can to hit a price point while keeping margins.