gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) (12/02/86)
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? The IBM 2741 was packaged in a desk, but various people
including Anderson-Jacobson, Trendata, Datel, and others put the
mechanism onto a desktop. 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. The print quality was superb -- the
same as the standard for business correspondence, the Selectric
typewriter -- and hundreds of fonts were available on typeballs. They
used any kind of paper you could wrap around a platen, tractor feed or
not, and would make carbons if you cared. Ribbons were easy to
change. While these were not portable terminals, I personally know a
salesman who lugged one to customer sites for demos, and know another
person who set one up on the Metroliner train between Washington and
Philadelphia and called out to his system in Paoli. (They were providing
phone service on trains in those days.)
The only drawback, besides the speed and the half-duplex operation of
the underlying protocol, was that hanging your hair, fingers, jewelry,
or other "personal objects" inside the print mechanism could be
hazardous to your hair, fingers, jewelry, ...
--
John Gilmore {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu jgilmore@lll-crg.arpa
"I can't think of a better way for the War Dept to spend money than to
subsidize the education of teenage system hackers by creating the Arpanet."bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) (12/03/86)
From: gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) >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? The IBM 2741... One of the nicer features of the 2741 were the little programs people would write which would make the type ball dance about without striking the paper, it was truly capable of ballet. -Barry Shein, Boston University
hugh@hcrvx1.UUCP (Hugh Redelmeier) (12/06/86)
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.
chiaraviglio@husc2.UUCP (lucius) (12/07/86)
In article <1443@hcrvx1.UUCP>, hugh@hcrvx1.UUCP (Hugh Redelmeier) writes: > In article <1374@hoptoad.uucp> gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) writes: > 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). Yes we do! Us depraved brain-damaged-thingamagig-lovers gotta have it! All of them! -- -- Lucius Chiaraviglio chiaraviglio@husc4.harvard.edu seismo!husc4!chiaraviglio Please do not mail replies to me on husc2 (disk quota problems, and mail out of this system is unreliable). Please send only to the address given above, until tardis.harvard.edu is revived.