International Business Machines Corporation

Dean A Stockwell

Harry Cheselka

William F Nemecek

By selecting the starting time of the display readout of a pel buffer raster generation, the pel data is mapped to a display screen with an arbitrary displacement with respect to the screen for relocation or scrolling of the pel image on the screen. To compensate for non-congruency between the pel data window and screen viewport definitions and to provide scrolling on a pel basis, the positioning of the window on the screen includes fine adjustment achieved by a determinable delay between the scanning of the buffer and the generation of the screen raster. The display circuits include means to extend the window background to fill in gaps between the edges of a window of pel data chosen to be displayed and a larger screen viewport in which it is to be displayed. System read/write access times to the buffer are interleaved with and synchronized to the data fetch times of the display.

Graphics image relocation for display viewporting and pel scrolling

Disclosed is a display system having one or more display terminals, each of which includes a base unit which acts as a display and supports a keyboard for operation as a keyboard/display terminal, the terminal in turn interfacing with a plurality of features connected thereto. The features can be quite independent of the display, such as a card reader, or can be an operationally integral part thereof, such as extended capacity buffer operating jointly with the main buffer of the display, or can be interactive with the display, such as a selector pen or program function keyboard. The base unit and the features receive transmissions from a controller via a feature bus-out in the base unit and transmit to the controller via a feature bus-in in the base unit. The base unit also provides priority control in permitting features to respond to a controller poll. Commands are also directly addressable to the base unit and features by the controller, with the base unit performing interface functions between the controller and the features such as parity checking and time out error reporting.

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Albany, NY, United States of America

Dean A Stockwell