Around 1981 Belgium did produce the DAI computer with a separate graphical
processor.
Bad logistics was the cause that the first computer course on Dutch
Television did not use this computer but the Exidy Sorcerer. 

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Crowther [mailto:peter.crowther at networkinference.com]
Sent: Friday, November 02, 2001 11:04 AM
To: 'squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org'
Subject: RE: [OT] GEM, Blitter, and Atari ST (was: RE: Debian and
SqueakL revisited again)


> From: Kevin Fisher [mailto:kgf at golden.net]
> I still have ancient computer magazines that mention the 
> "Lorraine", the former codename for the first Amiga.

I still have an Amiga 1000, one of the first batch of ten development boxes
that got shipped into the UK.  *Way* ahead of its time, with huge hardware
acceleration to help with the graphics --- a blitter, line drawer and
polygon filler on one chip, and a scan-driven video coprocessor on another
that allowed you to change I/O register contents as the scan passed a given
point on the screen.  I still miss the ability to slide entire *screens* of
information up and down the monitor smoothly.  Oh, and it had a decent
multitasking OS instead of a DOS clone :-).

I think the Amiga illustrates an important point for the thread about
'modern' games.  The designers went to a lot of effort to push common
operations into faster blocks --- in the Amiga's case, into hardware.  This
cost CPU cycles, as the coprocessors stole from the processor bandwidth (and
the 68000 had no cache).  Squeak can do the same by pushing common
operations into faster blocks --- in Squeak's case, into plug-ins that may
then use native hardware support.

		- Peter