Inside the vintage Xerox Alto's display, a tiny lightbulb keeps it working (righto.com)

author

Ken Shirriff

display of

Xerox Alto

excerpt

In this Alto restoration episode, we repaired a second CRT display, exercising our TV repair skills and discovering a tiny mysterious lightbulb that caused the display to fail in a strange way. For those just tuning in, the Alto was a revolutionary computer designed at Xerox PARC in 1973 to investigate personal computing. It introduced the GUI, high-resolution bitmapped displays, WYSIWYG editors, Ethernet and laser printers to the world, among other things.

path on GitHub

https://github.com/davepinch/pinchy.cc/blob/master/content/sites/righto.com/2017/10/inside-vintage-xerox-altos-display-tiny.md

random

As to what remains, I am now in a position to discern, as I think, with sufficient clearness what course must be taken to make the majority of those experiments which may conduce to this end: but I perceive likewise that they are such and so numerous, that neither my hands nor my income, though it were a thousand times larger than it is, would be sufficient for them all; so that, according as henceforward I shall have the means of making more or fewer experiments, I shall in the same proportion make greater or less progress in the knowledge of nature.

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Ken Shirriff’s Blog
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website

https://www.righto.com/2017/10/inside-vintage-xerox-altos-display-tiny.html