The first frame buffers from Evans and Sutherland were at University of Utah, DOD SITES and NYIT CGL as I recall. Circa 1974 to 1978. They were 19 inch RETMA racks. Took three to get decent RGB. 8 bits per pixel per FB. On Sun, Mar 5, 2023, 10:02 AM Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS wrote: > I am confused on the history of the frame buffer device. > > On Linux, it seems that /dev/fbdev originated in 1999 from work done by > Martin Schaller and Geert Uytterhoeven (and some input from Fabrice > Bellard?). > > However, it would seem at first glance that early SunOS also had a frame > buffer device (/dev/cgoneX. /dev/bwoneX, etc.) which was similar in nature > (a character device that could be mmap’ed to give access to the hardware > frame buffer, and ioctl’s to probe and configure the hardware). Is that > correct, or were these entirely different in nature? > > Paul > >