[TUHS] Re: virtual consoles / Alt-Fx

[Ralph Corderoy <ralph@inputplus.co.uk>]

Hi Paul,

> So, as far as I can tell virtual consoles were invented for concurrent
> CP/M around 1983, made their way to Xenix in the late 80’s and became
> part of Linux in the early 90’s.
>
> Have I missed other prior art?

RISC iX for the ARM2 CPU had virtual consoles hopped between with the
function keys.  It was based on 4.3BSD and shipped on computers from
Acorn like the R140 in ’89.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC_iX

The ARM2 was the first generally released ARM and was created by Acorn
Computers in Britain because they wanted to move on from the 6502 they
used in the BBC Micro, etc.  They knew of RISC, didn't think much of the
16-bit CPUs on the market, and after a visit to Western Design Centre
thought they could have a go at chip design.  Roger Wilson, a very
seasoned and experienced assembly programmer on multiple instruction
sets, designed the instruction set; it was beautiful.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.