[TUHS] virtual consoles / Alt-Fx

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi,

Ron wrote:
> The AIX for the PS/2 had a thing called the HFT which allowed you to
> switch the VGA head between different virtual screens long before
> LINUX came along.

AIX 3.2.5 on the POWER RS/6000 still had the HFT, High Function
Terminal.  /dev/hft0 IIRC.  It had a framebuffer which was extremely
slow when used as a TTY; one could follow the old text rippling up the
screen to make way for the new line at the bottom.  Interrupting a
cat(1) didn't cut the wait for the HFT to catch up with what cat had
already written; seconds passed.

Given ‘startx’ was the main command entered this was only a pain when
debugging something outside of X Windows.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.