[TUHS] AT&T Blit terminal plus terminal OS

[Gregg Levine]

On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 8:24 PM, Larry McVoy <lm at bitmover.com> wrote:
> My fond memories, if my old brain doesn't fail me, is being a TA at
> the University of Wisconsin.  I shared an office with another TA,
> we had one BLIT but I managed to scrounge another one.  We had a
> serial line that ran from our building to the building that had
> all the vaxen, just one.
>
> So I bread boarded some 8051's (I think that's them, they were 8 bit
> computers that you could flash).  What I noticed was that all the stuff
> we did was 8 bit clean, only used the lower 7.  So, 8th bit was the mux.
> On was me, off was my office mate.  I programmed the 8051's and convinced
> the lab (run by Paul Beebe, he still around?  Wouldn't be surprised if
> he's on the list) to let me stick one in there, the other in our office,
> presto!  Two BLITs and two extremely happy TA's.
>
> I *loved* the BLIT, it was pretty much everything I wanted from a terminal,
> it was like the NCD Xterminal only a decade or two sooner.  And kind of
> more cool because it worked over a serial line.
>
> --lm
>
> P.S. Pretty cool that I'm responding to the guy who wrote yacc.  Thanks
> for that, I've gotten a lot done with lex/yacc over the years.  As have
> countless other people.  Might be interesting to hear your storie about
> what people have done with yacc - has anyone ever added up how many
> yacc grammers there are out there?
>
> On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 04:00:53PM -0700, scj at yaccman.com wrote:
>> This brings back fond memories.  Applications running on the main computer
>> downloaded custom code to run on the Blit--this was the biggest
>> challenge--writing an application to run on two machines at once, with two
>> different OS's, different hardware and different endian-ness.  When it was
>> working, it was great, but debugging new code could be a real challenge.
>>
>> Steve
>>
>>
>> > Like this:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/87479714@N05/8087576305/
>> >
>> > That one has the Bell Labs USB modification, and works like a charm under
>> > Windows 7! :)
>> >
>> > -Ben
>> >
>> > ________________________________________
>> > From: tuhs-bounces at minnie.tuhs.org [tuhs-bounces at minnie.tuhs.org] on
>> > behalf of Brantley Coile [brantley at coraid.com]
>> > Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2012 11:47 AM
>> > To: Brian Zick
>> > Cc: tuhs at tuhs.org; arnold at skeeve.com
>> > Subject: Re: [TUHS] AT&T Blit terminal plus terminal OS
>> >
>> > Like a lady bug with no spots.  I have a 730 in my office.
>> >
>> > iPhone email
>> >
>> > On Oct 14, 2012, at 11:18 AM, "Brian Zick" <artistenator at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >>> I used a 5620 for a while, hooked up to a BSD 4.1 Vax. The vax was
>> >>> overloaded
>> >>> so things were slow, but it was a relatively pleasant environment. The
>> >>> keyboard
>> >>> was really nice, and there are still people who pine for the 3-button
>> >>> round
>> >>> Depraz (sp?) mouse... :-)
>> >>
>> >> What does a Blit 3-button round Depraz mouse look like? I've searched,
>> >> but alas I have not found.
>> >>
>> >> Brian Zick
>> >> zickzickzick.com
>> >> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
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>
> --
> ---
> Larry McVoy                lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitkeeper.com
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Hello!
Great government! I saw one of those and a 3B at the Vintage Computer
Festival last May. The terminal worked fine, the computer kept telling
the two people to go ******** themselves.

-----
Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com
"This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again."