SuperTerm Maintenance Manual

[Eric Smith]

On Thu, Feb 1, 2018 at 10:56 AM, Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:

> > On Feb 1, 2018, at 12:51 PM, Eric Smith via cctalk <
> cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> > console terminal [...] VT52. (It was not good
> > practice to use a CRT as the system console, IMO.)
>
> As for CRTs, it all depends on the design assumptions.  Lots of operating
> system console interfaces are designed on the assumption you have hardcopy
> consoles, and if so a CRT is a bad idea.  But you can certainly make CRT
> consoles and have it work -- consider the CDC 6000 series.
>

Just a wild-ass guess, but I suspect that a typical CDC 6600 system would
have had a printer that logged console interaction?  I'm only suggesting
that a CRT console with no logging was a bad idea.

Of course, in principle the logging could be to disk or tape, but I don't
think most "machine-room" people would have trusted that nearly as much for
a console log. One wants a log of what happened on the console even when
the system was not working well.