19 Sep
2018
19 Sep
'18
12:30 p.m.
On Sep 19, 2018, at 3:24 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 9/19/18 12:04 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
My "favorite" weird terminal is the Harris 2200 display advertising editing
station. It was used in newspapers in the late 1970s, where I ran into it connected to
DEC's Typeset-11 system. I think each terminal was a display head connected to some
sort of PDP-11 controller. Not sure, it may have been something else.
The communication protocol was seriously mind-bending. Multidrop BISYNC over an async
line (DL11-E at the PDP11 end), half duplex with modem control signals for the poll and
line direction handshakes. It usually worked. But I did have some painful 2 am debug
sessions at the Philadelphia Bulletin when it didn't quite work all the time...
paul
I haven't heard any discussion about the
Fujitsu coax terminals.
There hasn't ever been much talk on cctlk about non-ASCII terminals.
It's one of those things that never crossed my mind before having to deal
with that world in the context of working with the Museum's holdings.
Burroughs and Sperry had their own incompatible polling terminals too.