10 Feb
2011
10 Feb
'11
6:05 p.m.
On 10 Feb 2011 at 16:02, Fred Cisin wrote:
On Thu, 10 Feb 2011, Richard Hadsell wrote:
Actually, 72 columns. 73-80 wasn't used--that may go back to 704
hardwarware, I don't recall.
And 1-5 for statement numbers and 6 for continuation, so the actual
statement area was 66 columns if you didn't count the label field.
The CDC 3290's standard configuration was 50 characters x 20 lines.
You could get an option that would give you 80 x 13. Uppercase only,
of course.
The best the 6602 operator's display could do was 64 lines x 64
columns. That never stopped anyone from using O26 rather than trying
to find a spare keypunch. I believe that most of MACE/Kronos was
coded using O26 by Greg Mansfield using whatever systems were
available on the QA floor. It was the closest thing to a real
editing video terminal that most people had.
Doubtless there are many other early displays that did not do 80
characters. Heck, my TV Typewriter after modification only did 64
characters (originally it was 32 characters).
Cheers,
Chuck
Right. I meant that the size of the coding forms
might have been
used to decide the size of the terminals.
Absolutely, with a few steps in between, such as the FORTRAN language
being designed with a fixed 80 columns. The cards caused a de-facto
standardization throughout the Data processing industry.