From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: random832@fastmail.com (Random832)
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2017 11:33:53 -0500
Subject: [TUHS] First CRT terminal on Unix?
In-Reply-To: <2B43893B-29EA-460C-9426-9C0127B7F5D8@retrocomputingtasmania.com>
References: <2B43893B-29EA-460C-9426-9C0127B7F5D8@retrocomputingtasmania.com>
Message-ID: <1511368433.1204138.1181170712.5C35EA76@webmail.messagingengine.com>

On Wed, Nov 22, 2017, at 05:43, Nigel Williams wrote:
> I stumbled into a reddit post on Unix with the claim about early Unices
> only being accessed via printing terminals, and it suggested a question
> to me as to the first “glass teletype” or CRT terminal to be used with
> Unix. 

While this isn't necessarily indicative of what was physically used
either as a dumb terminal or with specialized applications, the 1BSD
termcap predecessor at
http://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=1BSD/etc/ttycap may be
informative.

Of the 22 terminal descriptions listed, nine seem to be for CRT
terminals: Three without cursor-addressability (adm3, datamedia,
teleray) five with (adm3a, beehiveIIIm, fox, hazeltine, hp2645), and the
tek4014 (which was an advanced graphical terminal as others have
mentioned, but completely unsuited to vi). The ADM-3A is of course
famous as the most common terminal used at Berkeley, and the one vi was
designed for.

As far as I know (and I've gone looking for this specifically, oddly
enough, out of idle curiosity), no version of termcap/terminfo has
contained a description for the VT05.