[TUHS] First CRT terminal on Unix?

Jon Steinhart jon at fourwinds.com
Fri Nov 24 05:49:42 AEST 2017


"Ron Natalie" writes:
> My guess is the tty culture on UNIX revolved around the Model 37.     This had
> upper and lower case as well as having the concept of NEWLINE as both the shoot
> the paper up and move the type element back to the left side.    It ceratainly
> is ingrained into nroff, all those ESC-8/ESC-9 stuff that nroff puts out are
> direct commands to the Model 37.
> 
> I suspect that it was just the case that most PDP consoles were Model 33’s.  
> They were cheaper and pretty ubiquitous.   Even when I started with UNIX in
> 1977, most of our machines had Model 33 consoles even if they had CRTs or
> fancier printing terminals (LA36 or Model 37’s).

I don't think that I agree with this.  I recall that there was a "public terminal
room" on maybe the 4th floor of building 2 that was filled with random terminals
of all types hooked to modems.  It's where I first came across glass ttys.  I know
that many of the UNIX machines had modems; I would borrow a Silent 700 or Execuport
so that I could work from home which annoyed my parents since I would tie up the
phone.  So while I don't recall doing so one could dial one up from one of the glass
ttys in the public terminal room.

Jon



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