Parallax Graphics
Parallax Graphics, Inc., was an American display adapter manufacturer that developed high-specification video cards for various platforms. The company was founded in 1982 as Parallax Systems by two Cornell University graduates.
History
Parallax Graphics was founded as Parallax Systems in November 1982 by two Cornell University graduates, including Martin "Marty" Picco.[1][2]: 13 The company's first products built on the duo's electrical engineering thesis paper and were developed and testbenched from within one of their garages.[1][3] They soon hired five other engineers, all ex-employees of graphics controller manufacturers.[3]: 368 Parallax soon moved into a proper office building in Sunnyvale, California, by the summer of 1983.[3]: 368 As the founding duo lacked the business acumen to market the company's wares, the duo hired a chief executive officer to manage the company that same year.[1]
The company's first product family was called the Rampage Graphics Terminal.[4] The initial entry, the 600 Series,[5] and was unveiled at the National Computer Graphics Association Conference in summer 1983 at the McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois.[3]: 383 Rampage was a color graphics controller designed around a proprietary bit-slicing drawing processor capable of drawing 12 million pixels per second. Its instruction set comprised 85 primitives,[4] including single operations for polygon, box, circle, and vector drawing commands, as well as modes for opaqueness–transparency, solid flood fill, stippling, outlining, and cut-and-pasting.[3]: 368 It was released initially for Digital Equipment Corporation's Q-Bus–based computers and was lauded for its high speed.[1][3]: 368 The company later developed in 1984 a variant of Rampage, the 1000 Series, for Multibus systems as well as for Q-Bus.[1] This rendition of Rampage increased the drawing operations per second speed to 88 million.[5]
Starting with the 1200 Series family in 1986, Parallax dropped the Rampage name and began developing entries in the heretofore unnamed family around VLSI CMOS gate arrays,[1][6] with the 1280 Series possessing one and the 1280 Series possessing three.[6][7] The 1280 was available for Q-Bus machines and the IBM PC and PC compatibles.[7] The 1280 Series could display graphics at resolutions of 1280 by 1024 pixels as well as a mode emulating NTSC video, at 640 by 482 pixels. In windowed mode, the card could generate real-time NTSC video at 30 frames per second; in fullscreen mode at NTSC resolution, the card could generate 60 FPS video.[8]
In February 1984, the company changed its name from Parallax Systems to Parallax Graphics and raised US$1.75 million in venture capital from Hambrecht & Quist and Bay Partners.[9] In May 1989, Dynatech Corporation of Burlington, Massachusetts, announced their acquisition of Parallax Graphics for an undisclosed sum. Dynatech had purchased Cromemco the year before.[10] Parallax continued to operate as an independent subsidiary of Dynatech, and in July 1989, they signed a contract with Sony Microsystems of Palo Alto, California, to license their Viper VMEbus display adapter for Sony's NEWS Unix workstation.[11]
- ^ a b c d e f Reghbati, Hassan K.; Anson Y. C. Lee (1988). Tutorial: Computer Graphics Hardware – Image Generation and Display. Computer Society Press. p. 23. ISBN 9780818607530 – via the Internet Archive.
- ^ Staff writer (May 2010). "Peopleware". EContent. 33 (4). Information Today: 13, 15 – via ProQuest.
- ^ a b c d e f Pournelle, Alexander (October 1983). "The Fourth National Computer Graphics Association Conference". Byte. 8 (10). Byte Publications: 366–378 – via the Internet Archive.
- ^ a b Staff writer (1983). "Parallax Systems". Digital Design. 13. Benwill Publising Company: 117 – via Google Books. Unknown month.
- ^ a b Lewell, John (1985). A–Z Guide to Computer Graphics. McGraw-Hill. p. 228. ISBN 0070374570 – via the Internet Archive.
- ^ a b Wilson, Andrew C. (January 1987). "DEC Graphics-Board Vendors Provide Low-Cost Alternatives". ESD. 1 (2). Sentry Technology Group: 35 – via Gale.
- ^ a b Staff writer (May 1986). "Videographics processor – Parallax Graphics". Computer Graphics Today. 3 (5). Media Horizons: 41 – via the Internet Archive.
- ^ Bellamah, Pat (February 3, 1987). "Processor Combines High-Res Graphics and Real-Time Video". PC Week. 4 (5). Ziff-Davis: 11 – via Gale.
- ^ Staff writer (February 1984). "Top-of-the-Wire". S. Klein Newsletter on Computer Graphics. 6 (2). Technology & Business Communications: 9 – via Google Books.
- ^ Staff writer (May 5, 1989). "Minigrams". Computergram International. GlobalData – via Gale.
- ^ Staff writer (July 10, 1989). "Sony picks Parallax video boards". Computergram International. GlobalData – via Gale.