[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[cowan@mercury.ccil.org (John Cowan)]

Jeremy C. Reed scripsit:

> I guess it was common to use the Teletype Model 33 independently without 
> any video display. 

Yes, it was.  The first video terminal I ever saw was the DEC VT05.

> Did it automatically print to paper everything typed to keyboard in 
> real-time?  Or maybe only when LINE FEED or RE-TURN key was pressed?

No.  It was a full-duplex device, so echoing was normally provided by
the remote system, just like today.

> How would RUB OUT be used when using the sh shell? (I tried looking 
> through the code and manual for some old 32V and previous versions but 
> didn't see code for it yet.)

RUB OUT transmitted the character DEL (0x7F), which was the default
"intr" character (typically ^C today).

> When did the sh shell provide intra-line editing?

With @ and #, from the beginning.

> Were the early Unix versions case insensitive? (Like could I run "DaTe" 
> from shell?) If not, how to get the model-33 to work with it?

The stty settings iuclc and olcuc lowercased input and uppercased output,
and they still work today.  If you tried to log in in all upper case,
login would downcase your username and turn on these settings, a feature
not present today.

> What about the model-33 printer? Did it print lowercase?

No.  IIRC, it printed lower case as upper case, but I may be wrong.

> How was the "HERE IS" key programmed? Was it used in Unix?

I think it was done in the hardware of the teletype.  By default it
sent a string of NUL characters.

> What was the "REPT" key used for?

It was a shift key which, when held down, caused other keys to be
repeated.  The Model 33 did not provide auto-repeating keys.

> I also noticed there wasn't any tilde key. So I looked at some old Unix 
> code and didn't see tilde used for home directory until 1980 csh. But 
> how was tilde entered for previous uses? (Maybe I just overlooked on 
> keyboard.)

None of `, ~, {, |, or } were present on the keyboard.  If there was
a way to type them to Unix, I don't know what it was.

> Was there any concept of intra-line editing when using a model-33 -- but 
> without seeing what is being typed or having it print over (and over) 
> same line content? (I should assume that intra-line editing can only 
> happen on video terminals.)

On DEC OSes, the RUBOUT key echoed as \, and you had to count them to
see what you had, or push ^R to get the line re-echoed cleanly.  The
modern uses of ^R, ^U, ^O, and ^Z on Windows all come from DEC.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
All "isms" should be "wasms".   --Abbie