🚀 go-pugleaf

>From Deutsch@PARC-MAXC Thu Jul  9 03:37:16 1981
I have developed, and hope to publish soon, a detailed proposal
for a protocol between bitmap workstations and mainframes.  The
protocol is probably not suitable for a 300 baud connection, but
1200 might be quite reasonable.  What it demands on the terminal
end is something of approximately the computing power of the
present home micros -- it needs to be able to do RasterOp, some
simple memory allocation, and sequential communications.  It
needs quite a lot of memory for the bitmap(s), but memory is
getting cheaper fast.  It is designed for exactly the present
kind of workstation -- bitmap display, keyboard, mouse or
similar pointing device.

Such a protocol is, of course, not sufficient to let you read
your mail elegantly at home.  What it requires is a system
(hardware and software) architecture in which the mainframe
is decoupled from the display.  Fortunately this is a very
reasonable architecture even for the present generation of
workstations like the Star.  If the display component and the
mainframe component are located close together, the bandwidth
between them will not significantly degrade responsiveness
compared to the present more tightly integrated architecture.