On Fri, Oct 22, 2004 at 01:16:30AM -0400, Doug McGarrett wrote:
At 12:59 AM 10/22/2004 +0200, you wrote:
Wed, 13 Oct 2004, by gorebofh@comcast.net: [..]
Why is an Xterm called that after a Terminal when a Terminal is where something ends.... What were they thinking calling it that. Isn't it properly called a console? Or what? What do you call a box that's only using a command line, like run level 3....That's not a Terminal is it? I have no idea what to call these things, because I've been told Terminal is where something ends, so it would be console, but... OK I've confused myself.... I think I'm going to run too the store and get a pack of smokes heh.
So what is a Terminal, and what is a console? Someone help! ;)
/snip/
I don't know if this is a troll, but if not, then this:
A what???
When computers were, sometimes, thousands of miles away, and connected by a telephone line--at perhaps 120 Baud--the device at the operator's end of the line, connected by a physical modem, which is to say a physical microphone and speaker into a telephone handset--the gadget that you used to access the computer--usually a Teletype machine--was called a terminal. You wrote your code onto punched paper tape, and fed it into the TT machine, and via the telephone into the computer, wherever it was. The computer would figure out what you wanted, and answer, via TT. The computer understood a version of Fortran, and BASIC. Most of us wrote our code in BASIC, except those few of us who had just graduated from engineering school and had been taught Fortran in school.
BASIC from what I've read was what Young Hackers used too cut their first code. What about Assmebler? Was that used in school? I research OSs a lot and have seen old Macs using a Hex style syntax for something. I'd love to get my hands on some of these things. I think a 286 is about as old as I could use though, anything passed that and I don't think I'd have an OS that would work on it.
There were no programs, in the modern sense, altho the computer that I could access in the mid 60's could play Tic-Tac-Toe, and, I think, Black Jack. Anything else, you wrote yourself. And of course, we did. Tons of stuff in BASIC (mostly) to solve engineering problems. I suppose others wrote stuff to solve--medical problems? --highway problems? --who knows?
Modern sence? Not trying to start anything, I juts have a love and respect for older computers. If anyone caught the history channel last night / 5 AM before I went too bed there was something on TV about Ancient technology, and they found this boat wreckage from the time Jesus was around, and in it they had seen some weird looking giant copper / Gold box. Well, they finally let this guy X-Ray it after 20 years, and he was amazed too see that this thing was like thousands of years old, and was a computer. It had things inside that turned like a clock, and it would compute a lot of things like when the Sun would rise and set and different things with the sky and the stars. It did it VERY accurately too. I was amazed too get a look at it. I have a fixation on things like computers, so me seeing one that old, I just lit right up. I mean come no, these people had no electricity but they could invet something too compute. It's amazing how intelligent these people were. And they even found what appeared too be a Battery. They looked into it more, and it was about the size of a vase you would keep flowers in, had the metals inside, and it was in fact a Battrey. Well, it's slightly off topic but we are talking about older technology, so it's not that bad, and personally I'm intrigued and in awe at these people that made these things so very very long ago.
The input, as I have said, was either from keyboard or from paper tape, the output was on 8-1/2" wide yellow paper rolls out of the TT machine.
The "console" was a somewhat later version of the TT machine, and was not in use for very long, IIRC. It was just a CRT, either green screen or black/white, which replaced the TT machine. It had a keyboard and a CRT.
Some early computers had a "console" and an audio tape storage unit, and may not have connected to a mainframe a thousand miles away, but actually had local computing power. HP made one, as I remember, and they had their own version of BASIC, which was somewhat more powerful, but not really compatible.
I've read about these things! Dude these were AWESOME! http://www.oldcomputer.net or oldhardware or one of those. It has a list of older hardware. Ahh! http://www.oldcomputers.net <--- awesome site if you guys have never went there. A good friend of mine showed that too me because he knows I love this stuff. On the left hand side you navigate too look at a picture of the computer, and it has a date for it, and they have a section where you can look at ads for these things when they first came out. It's simply amazing. They have a lot of links to other similar pages too. But simply click on the links at the left where you see the date and it displays an image of the machine, and a fairly good description of it and what it did and information about it.
Radio Shack made a computer that had a console, and it did word-processing. Apple also had one: its screen was only 40 characters wide, and it drove anybody that used it crazy.
You could actually consider that the ATARI and Commodore computers used a "console," which was comprised of a keyboard and a TV set. The ATARI was much more like a modern computer than the Commodore, since it had an actual operating system, but both could do real computing in BASIC, and could control external devices via rudimentary I/O ports.
Commodore had an OS. Well sort of, BASIC was in ROM ;)
Naturally, all the I/O was in text format, except for early pictorial output from the ATARI and Commodore machines, which displayed on a TV screen. Control I/O had to be formatted like BASIC I/O code.
been there--doug
-- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com