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From: gnu@l5.uucp (John Gilmore)
Newsgroups: net.info-terms
Subject: Re: VT-100 on DG Ecliplse?
Message-ID: <86@l5.uucp>
Date: Mon, 9-Sep-85 15:49:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: l5.86
Posted: Mon Sep  9 15:49:07 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Sep-85 07:50:02 EDT
References: <177@bunny.UUCP> <180@bunny.UUCP>
Organization: Ell-Five [Consultants], San Francisco
Lines: 20
Summary: DG terminal software is very primitive

When I worked at DG in '79 or '80 or so, their editors and terminal
software was a strange combination of advanced and primitive.  It was
advanced in that the shell and various other programs used flexible
kernel facilities to give you command line editing, including cursor
motions and insert/delete (as well as word-erase and
lop-one-off-the-end and kill-whole-line).  On the other hand, the
control characters that would do this were wired in to all the programs
and the kernel.  DG had only built two or three terminals at the time,
so this was no big deal, and part of their strategy when selling you a
system was to get you to buy 5 or 10 or 50 of their terminals at the
same time.  They probably made more on the terminals than on the CPUs!
(I remember hearing someone brag that the new Dasher terminal -- in the
plastic case, not in the metal U-bracket with tilt and swivel) would
cost under $200 to build and would sell for $1800.)

Given these economics, their software certainly had to enforce that
you wouldn't just buy ADM-3A's with your inexpensive DG cpu.

These days you could run DG/UX under AOS, I think, if you want generic
terminal support.  Or does DG/UX only run on Eagles (MV series)?