From: Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
To: Paul Ruizendaal <pnr@planet.nl>
Cc: "tuhs@tuhs.org" <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: [TUHS] Re: virtual consoles / Alt-Fx
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2023 09:30:03 -0600 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CANCZdfoJhC1KF2m1=AAVkNxxw0-ub3W+eowYcdFOu36tAuz=6A@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <78FE1F5F-7408-4BB0-8D2E-62AA00465774@planet.nl>
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2668 bytes --]
On Mon, Mar 13, 2023 at 9:13 AM Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org>
wrote:
> Thinking a bit more about terminal multiplexing was a major use case for
> early X, I recalled using Linux virtual consoles in the late 90’s for this
> purpose.
>
> According to Wikipedia, virtual consoles originated with Xenix and before
> that with concurrent CP/M.
>
> Perusing the documentation of those on Bitsavers, I can see that virtual
> consoles have a prominent mention in the manual for concurrent CP/M (1983),
> but not those of its forerunners MP/M II and MP/M (1979). I cannot find a
> mention of virtual consoles in Xenix documentation as late as 1988.
>
Venix/86R 1.0 Boston Softwre Works Edition had virtual consoles. It was
released in 1986.
https://groups.google.com/g/mod.newprod/c/iYLc3cdnyms/m/Him5XgqwT70J is a
reference. However, it was inspired by Xenix and Microport System V/AT
according to the author. The stock version of Venix/86R 1.0 didn't have
them, nor did the PC version that we have some sources for. Here's the
relevant bits from the blurb:
Virtual consoles, as found in VENIX on IBM-compatible machines, and also in
XENIX and Microport System V/AT.
But also interesting was:
Support for simultaneous use of a monochrome display (for terminal/console
use) and a color graphics display (for graphics).
which I thought interesting at the time, but was pretty old-school Unix
Workstation by then.
No such thing as a virtual (as distinct from pseudo) tty on 16-bit Unix or
> early 32-bit, as far as I know; one could argue it does not make much sense
> with physical terminals. Wikipedia says no such thing existed on SunOS
> either.
>
> I think virtual consoles where present in Linux from a very early point.
>
Ditto for the 386BSD BSD/386 line of code. I think they were added in the
patch-kit phase, not the original Jolitz code phase. FreeBSD 1.0 Beta had
them in 1993 for sure, as did NetBSD of the time.
I have a memory of them on 0.98pl13 on Linux as well, but that version
sticks in my head as a proxy for anything between 0.96 (the first one I
tried) and 0.99 (the last before 1.x Linux). This would be approximately
1992 or 1993.
I've not done the deep-dive into the ancient code bases to see if I can
suss out when they arrived.
> 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?
>
Maybe a little. Good information about Microport System V is kinda hard to
come by these days...
Warner
[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 3907 bytes --]
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2023-03-13 15:30 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 22+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2023-03-13 15:12 [TUHS] " Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS
2023-03-13 15:24 ` [TUHS] " Clem Cole
2023-03-13 15:27 ` Clem Cole
2023-03-13 16:17 ` Paul Winalski
2023-03-13 15:41 ` Warner Losh
2023-03-13 15:48 ` KenUnix
2023-03-13 15:48 ` Clem Cole
2023-03-13 16:14 ` Dan Cross
2023-03-13 17:26 ` Miod Vallat
2023-03-13 20:35 ` Dan Cross
2023-03-14 16:42 ` Derek Fawcus via TUHS
2023-03-14 22:46 ` Charles H Sauer (he/him)
2023-03-15 4:26 ` Heinz Lycklama
2023-03-13 15:27 ` Ralph Corderoy
2023-03-13 15:30 ` Warner Losh [this message]
2023-03-14 3:27 ` Rik Schneider
2023-03-13 15:33 ` Ron Natalie
2023-03-13 15:45 ` Heinz Lycklama
2023-03-13 17:04 ` Ralph Corderoy
2023-03-13 15:49 ` Brad Spencer
2023-03-17 8:14 ` Marc Donner
2023-03-14 3:33 Rudi Blom
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to='CANCZdfoJhC1KF2m1=AAVkNxxw0-ub3W+eowYcdFOu36tAuz=6A@mail.gmail.com' \
--to=imp@bsdimp.com \
--cc=pnr@planet.nl \
--cc=tuhs@tuhs.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).