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From: hugh@hcrvx1.UUCP (Hugh Redelmeier)
Newsgroups: comp.terminals
Subject: Re: Best hardcopy terminals
Message-ID: <1443@hcrvx1.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 5-Dec-86 19:33:25 EST
Article-I.D.: hcrvx1.1443
Posted: Fri Dec  5 19:33:25 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Dec-86 00:26:49 EST
References: <1438@kitty.UUCP> <2516@phri.UUCP> <1374@hoptoad.uucp>
Reply-To: hugh@hcrvx1.UUCP (Hugh Redelmeier)
Organization: Human Computing Resources, Toronto
Lines: 54
Summary: 

In article <1374@hoptoad.uucp> gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes:
>Oh come now!  If you really want the absolute best hardcopy terminal
>for its time, how can you compare ANYTHING that DEC built to the
>Selectric?

Agreed.

These little hummers ran at 11.9 cps, 134.5
>bps, using the same modems later used for 300 baud ASCII, and contained
>the magic Selectric keyboard that nobody, not even IBM, could quite
>duplicate in newer technology.

Not exactly.  The code had 6 bits of data, 1 parity bit, and 2 stop
bits (I am not sure of the stop bits).  134.5/9 = 14.94444...  These
terminals went at 15CPS.  But hold on -- shift was a character.  You
probably don't want to hear more about the character sets (any of
them).

I bought one of these when decent terminals were unaffordable.  With
much work I got 5th Edition UNIX at U of T to support them.

The most interesting technical feature about them was how their
mechanism seemed to defy causality.  I never figured out how to make
the mechanical parts do what I wanted.


Earlier, I had owned a Flexowriter.  It was built out of an IBM
Model A typewriter, I think.  A Selectric was much better.


Someone posted a note on the DataPoint 3600.  I once bought some
tape drives for a DataPoint 3300 (I think).  These seem to have been
intended to replace paper tape.  Each drive had 4 boards of TTL and
one of MOS (the memory of a tape record, made out of 100-bit shift
registers).  This was also the technology of the terminal (which I
never owned).  In early display terminals, the memory was a major
expense.  For example, the IBM 2260 terminals were refreshed from a
central controller which used a delay line for memory
(magneto-restrictive?)!


For the price, my Atari ST makes a very nice terminal.  But part of
the attraction is what it *could* do with the right software.  At U
of T (again) they have put the Blit software up on the ST.  But they
say the screen has too few to be pleasant (640 x 400).

>and contained
>the magic Selectric keyboard that nobody, not even IBM, could quite
>duplicate in newer technology.

In my experience, the keyboard with the best feel was that of an IBM
029 keypunch.  Not all of them were as (I think it depended on the
country of manufacture).  The ones I liked were very light, but with
a definite tactile feedback.