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From: dyer@atari.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.terminals
Subject: Brain damaged terminals
Message-ID: <469@atari.UUcp>
Date: Fri, 21-Nov-86 15:12:43 EST
Article-I.D.: atari.469
Posted: Fri Nov 21 15:12:43 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 23-Nov-86 04:15:43 EST
Organization: Atari Corp., Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 58


The most brain damaged terminal?

The ISC Intecolor was an 8080-based microcomputer.  I used one as a
summer students at the National Bureau of Standards.  The regular
staff wouldn't touch the things, naturally.  The ISCs were
affectionately referred to as "the Turkey Terminals," and usually only
the first-summer students got stuck with them.  (Some second-summer
students graduated to Omroms: 8008-based terminals with padding
requirements you wouldn't /believe/....)

The ISC featured the following:

	o  Zero-key rollover optical keyboard.  You had to *completely*
	   release a key before pressing another one down, even a little
	   bit.  The safest way to type on an ISC was with a pencil
	   eraser.

	o  Multi-direction cursor.  The cursor could be programmed to
	   advance not only from left to right (as english terminals
	   usually do), but in any of eight directions (including
	   diagonals).

	   Thus the ISC was sensitive to almost any "noise".  An errant
	   character would usually send it spinning off into odd corners of
	   the s
	      c
	     r
	    e
	   e
	  n
	 .

	   It was amusing trying to use a screen editor in these modes.

	o  Cursor addressing wouldn't work for columns and rows 13
	   (probably because that code is 'carriage return'....)

	o  Lots of escape sequences would cause it to crash.  Other
	   escape sequences would do awful things to the screen colors,
	   the character blink attributes, or the fabric of space
	   in the immediate vicinity.  I was constantly picking up
	   unhealthy shocks from the thing's metal keyboard.

	o  They were *heavy*.  So much brain-damage needs a big power
	   supply, I guess.


I hear that ISC has since cleaned up their act.  One hopes so.

-- 

-Landon Dyer, Atari Corp.		        {sun,lll-lcc,imagen}!atari!dyer

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