[Simh] 8-bit pseudocolor on modern Windows PC?

[Paul Koning]

> On Jan 27, 2016, at 9:48 AM, Paul Hardy 2 <paulhardy2 at btinternet.com> wrote:
> 
> As a hobbyist, I successfully run VMS on a Simh emulated VAX (actually on a Raspberry Pi, but that’s irrelevant). I’m doing some software archeology trying to preserve some historic software which produced maps and charts on VAXstations and AlphaStations. This used 8-bit pseudocolor graphics, manipulating bit planes and colormaps. Variants of the software exist for VWS and for DECwindows/Motif.
>  ...
> So,
> a) Does anyone know of an Xserver implementation that runs under Windows on a modern PC and supports depth 8 pseudocolor visuals?
> b) Does anyone know of a SimH implementation of the VCB02/QDSS or SPX card?
> c) any other ideas?

I'm curious what level of 8 bit color support is needed.  There seem to be two rather different flavors.

1. Given a preset 256-entry color map, handle 8 bit indexed color.  This would be quite easy.  It's basically what happens when you display a GIF file.

2. Handle 8 bit color, *including* updating the look of the display dynamically if entries in the color map are changed.  That would be  harder.  You'd have to keep a backing store of the 8-bit data, and regenerate the truecolor image whenever the color map is changed.  Doable, but messy.

Is #2 actually important in practice?

	paul