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The Tektronix 405x series was a series of graphics microcomputers produced by Tektronix in the late 1970s through the early 1980s. The display technology was similar to the Tektronix 4014 terminal, using a storage tube CRT to avoid the need for video RAM. The computers included a CPU, RAM, keyboard, CRT and data cassette tape drive in a single housing. Later models sported a GPIB parallel bus interface for controlling lab equipment. A simple operating system and BASIC interpreter were included in RAM.
The 4051 microcomputer used an 8-bit microcontroller; the 4052 and later models used bit slice 16-bit CPUs for speed. The computers were popular in research laboratories and other locations where interactive plotting was important, as the storage tube video yielded much higher quality output than comparably priced RAM-based solutions of the day. The 405x series met its demise in the late 1980s as video-RAM based graphics cards became cheap and powerful enough to enable high quality plotting in commodity computers without the restrictions of the storage tube CRT.
Because the memory tubes did not flicker as much as a conventional CRT, and because the BASIC programming interface allowed simple, rapid prototyping of vector graphic displays, the 405x series were used in many film contexts. In particular, 405x computers can frequently be seen in early Battlestar Galactica sets.
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