[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[Doug McIlroy]

> Interesting that they had both - I don't remember hearing about the 37
> but that doesn't mean much. :-)

The only model 33 on any PDP11 in Bell Labs research was the console.
Otherwise all terminals were ASCII devices. Model 37's predated Unix.

doug

[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[arnold]

Doug McIlroy <doug at cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:

> > Interesting that they had both - I don't remember hearing about the 37
> > but that doesn't mean much. :-)
>
> The only model 33 on any PDP11 in Bell Labs research was the console.
> Otherwise all terminals were ASCII devices. Model 37's predated Unix.
>
> doug

So the model-33 wasn't ASCII?

Thanks for the info.

Arnold

[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[Dave Horsfall]

On Wed, 6 Aug 2014, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:

> So the model-33 wasn't ASCII?

Nope; it was 5-bit Baudot (technically ITA2).  Upper case only, and there 
were codes to shift between letters and figures.  Grep thee the net for 
"ASR33".

-- Dave

[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[Jaap Akkerhuis]

> 
>> So the model-33 wasn't ASCII?
> 
> Nope; it was 5-bit Baudot (technically ITA2).  Upper case only, and there 
> were codes to shift between letters and figures.  Grep thee the net for 
> "ASR33".

I've used an ASR33 with an PDP-8-E, an ASR33 with an opto coupler
to some tymeshare services and an ASR35 as a console to an PDP-8-I
but theses where all ASCII.  According to wikipedia "A companion
Model 32 used the more established five-level Baudot code."
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype_Model_33>.

More teletype history at <http://www.pdp8online.com/asr33/asr33.shtml>

And have a look at the picture of Ken & ennis with two 33's
<http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/picture.html> and comments
from dmr. Note te ASCII keyboard.

	jaap

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[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[Ronald Natalie]

On Aug 6, 2014, at 3:47 AM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:

> On Wed, 6 Aug 2014, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
> 
>> So the model-33 wasn't ASCII?
> 
> Nope; it was 5-bit Baudot (technically ITA2).  Upper case only, and there 
> were codes to shift between letters and figures.  Grep thee the net for 
> "ASR33".

Nonsense.   The Model 33 as ASCII but Upper Case only.   It definitely was not Baudot.
The Baudot version of the same thing was a model 28.   

[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[Mary Ann Horton]

On the model 33 (ASCII) teletype, control G, the BEL character, rang a  
metal bell inside the box, and it went "ding".

I had a friend who came across an older, Baudot teletype (I think he  
said it was a model 27.)  It also had a BEL character.  He said  
instead of going "ding", it went "splat", and a printed character  
appeared on the paper in the shape of a bell!

Quoting Ronald Natalie <ron at ronnatalie.com>:

>
> On Aug 6, 2014, at 3:47 AM, Dave Horsfall <dave at horsfall.org> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 6 Aug 2014, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
>>
>>> So the model-33 wasn't ASCII?
>>
>> Nope; it was 5-bit Baudot (technically ITA2).  Upper case only, and there
>> were codes to shift between letters and figures.  Grep thee the net for
>> "ASR33".
>
> Nonsense.   The Model 33 as ASCII but Upper Case only.   It  
> definitely was not Baudot.
> The Baudot version of the same thing was a model 28.
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs
>

[TUHS] Baudot/ASCII (was Re: terminal - just for fun)

[Dave Horsfall]

On Wed, 6 Aug 2014, Dave Horsfall wrote:

> > So the model-33 wasn't ASCII?
> 
> Nope; it was 5-bit Baudot (technically ITA2).  Upper case only, and 
> there were codes to shift between letters and figures.  Grep thee the 
> net for "ASR33".

Eek!  For some reason I was thinking of Amateur RTTY (I happen to be an 
Amateur "ham" radio operator).  Computers are mostly used now, with both 
Baudot and ASCII, both FSK and AFSK, but you do see the occasional 
die-hard using a boat-anchor.

-- Dave (vk2kfu)

[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[John Cowan]

arnold at skeeve.com scripsit:

> So the model-33 wasn't ASCII?

The keyboard could send all of ASCII except lower-case letters, grave,
braces, and vertical bar (i.e. excluding x60 to x7E).  The high-order
bit was always set.  Using the paper tape reader and punch, you could
transmit arbitrary 8-bit characters.

It was the model 32 that was Baudot.

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        cowan at ccil.org
Dream projects long deferred usually bite the wax tadpole.
        --James Lileks

[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[Steve Nickolas]

On Wed, 6 Aug 2014, John Cowan wrote:

> arnold at skeeve.com scripsit:
>
>> So the model-33 wasn't ASCII?
>
> The keyboard could send all of ASCII except lower-case letters, grave,
> braces, and vertical bar (i.e. excluding x60 to x7E).  The high-order
> bit was always set.  Using the paper tape reader and punch, you could
> transmit arbitrary 8-bit characters.

Sounds like an Apple ][+ keyboard.

-uso.

[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[Jeremy C. Reed]

On Wed, 6 Aug 2014, John Cowan wrote:

> > So the model-33 wasn't ASCII?
> 
> The keyboard could send all of ASCII except lower-case letters, grave,
> braces, and vertical bar (i.e. excluding x60 to x7E).  The high-order
> bit was always set.  Using the paper tape reader and punch, you could
> transmit arbitrary 8-bit characters.

I guess it was common to use the Teletype Model 33 independently without 
any video display. (I read that it could accommodate a modem too.) 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?

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.)

When did the sh shell provide intra-line editing?

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?

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

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

What was the "REPT" key used for?

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.)

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.)

(My book in progress explains a lot about the history of ex/vi but 
the earliest version I have is 1.1 which included the support for 
intra-line editing and even visual mode for HP 2645 and LSI ADM-3A 
cursor-addressible terminals. I am hoping my book can also introduce the 
basic usage concepts for readers who have no familiarity with the 
hardware around then. One of the TUHS list participants and termcap/vi 
developer already told me some about the hjkl arrow keys, for example.)

[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[Armando Stettner]

My answers, embedded though I'm sure millions will reply.  From my recollection....

  aps



Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Jeremy C. Reed" <reed at reedmedia.net>
> Subject: Re: [TUHS] terminal - just for fun
> Date: August 6, 2014 at 8:26:22 AM PDT
> To: tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org
> 
> On Wed, 6 Aug 2014, John Cowan wrote:
> 
>>> So the model-33 wasn't ASCII?
>> 
>> The keyboard could send all of ASCII except lower-case letters, grave,
>> braces, and vertical bar (i.e. excluding x60 to x7E).  The high-order
>> bit was always set.  Using the paper tape reader and punch, you could
>> transmit arbitrary 8-bit characters.
> 
> I guess it was common to use the Teletype Model 33 independently without 
> any video display. (I read that it could accommodate a modem too.) 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?

The 33 was capable of full-duplex so this depended upon what it was talking to (or how it was optioned).  Teletype did have an OEM acoustically coupled modem on 33's (and 32's??).  In the "barebones" version, they were current-loop machines (make-brake contacts to represent the 1's and 0's for the code).  There was also an OEM option for RS232.


> 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.)

When you pressed RUBOUT, the 'deleted' character was printed on the paper by the system to which the 33 was connected and removed from the butter (pointer moved backwards, etc.).


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

I first experienced this with the CSH but maybe there were others before.


> 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?

I recall that there was an STTY command that would allow case to be ignored.  Remember, the shell would look for a file name in a set of directories (later, $PATH) for the file name to fork/exec.

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

I do not believe so.

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

32's and 33's were focused on Telex and TWX services.  Hence the "HERE IS" (popular with Telex or TWX call initiations) and REPT (I can't recall its meaning but, geez, looks like a request to repeat last transmission or indicating that what follows is a repeat transmission).


> What was the "REPT" key used for?

See above.


> 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.)

I thought the tilde (~) was used in the C language.  I remember seeing tildes as home directories in V7 or certainly in CSH.  Again, my recollections...

> 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.)

As implied before, I don't recall any intraline editing (beyond backspacing or erasing-the-last-character commands for those "glass tty's" that could support it) until CSH.

> (My book in progress explains a lot about the history of ex/vi but 
> the earliest version I have is 1.1 which included the support for 
> intra-line editing and even visual mode for HP 2645 and LSI ADM-3A 
> cursor-addressible terminals. I am hoping my book can also introduce the 
> basic usage concepts for readers who have no familiarity with the 
> hardware around then. One of the TUHS list participants and termcap/vi 
> developer already told me some about the hjkl arrow keys, for example.)
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs
> 

[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[Jaap Akkerhuis]

>> 
>> When did the sh shell provide intra-line editing?
> 
> I first experienced this with the CSH but maybe there were others before.

If I remember correctly traditionally there were the kill and erase
(#, @) characters, later on Berkeley added thinks like ^W (rub out
last word) and similar stuff.  This was all handle by the terminal
driver in the kernel (saved context switches).  Later people started
to move the edit operations to the CLI applications and libraries
like "readline", the terminal driver runs in cbreak (or whatever
it was called) mode.

	jaap

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[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[Ronald Natalie]

Cooked mode (or ICANON for later drivers) did the ERASE, KILL, (and later) WERASE.

The later TCSH, KSH, BRL 5R2 version of the (with editing turned on) Bourne Shell, etc... ran the shell in raw (-icanon) mode to do fancier editing including moving the cursor back over already entered text and to insert/delete at the cursor.

[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[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

[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[scj]

While on this thread, I have to share my favorite Model 37 TYY story.

The Model 37 was a mechanical marvel--under the hood it was filled with
levers and cams and all manner of strange mechanisms.  Dennis Ritchie had
one at home long after most of the rest of us had moved on to glass
teletypes.  It mostly worked, although as it aged the mechanical systems
got a bit rickety and had a tendency to insert an extra blank character
into the line you were typing, especially if you were typing fast.

The last straw for Dennis happened late one evening when he was doing the
usual housekeeping after compiling a large program:
    rm *.o
(after all, disc space was very limited in those days) and he got back the
message:
    .o not found

[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[A. P. Garcia]

On Aug 6, 2014 12:54 PM, <scj at yaccman.com> wrote:
>
> While on this thread, I have to share my favorite Model 37 TYY story.
>
> The Model 37 was a mechanical marvel--under the hood it was filled with
> levers and cams and all manner of strange mechanisms.  Dennis Ritchie had
> one at home long after most of the rest of us had moved on to glass
> teletypes.  It mostly worked, although as it aged the mechanical systems
> got a bit rickety and had a tendency to insert an extra blank character
> into the line you were typing, especially if you were typing fast.
>
> The last straw for Dennis happened late one evening when he was doing the
> usual housekeeping after compiling a large program:
>     rm *.o
> (after all, disc space was very limited in those days) and he got back the
> message:
>     .o not found

ouch.

Another Model 37 classic:

"values of beta will give rise to dom!"
[ http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/odd.html]
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[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[Ronald Natalie]

Actually, I had a Model 37 (ASR) in my house for a while (originally property of Rocky Flats Weapons Center).    It had a big NEWLINE key on it and it's one of the few terminals where you didn't have to turn on cr/nl mapping.    It also dealt with all those ESC-8 and ESC-9 characters and the like that nroff put out by default.   It also put had a big green PROCEED light that came on with DSR or CD on the serial interface.    Mine didn't have the greek type box that you switched in and out with SHIFT IN / SHIFT OUT characters and yes, an unprogrammed HERE IS drum.

One neat feature about the RUBOUT (or DELETE) character is that it was "all ones" in binary.    The way you'd correct errors in off-line generated paper tape was to backspace the punch and then hit rubout.   The input device would subsequently ignore any such characters.

[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[Ronald Natalie]

At the University of Maryland all the teletypes were given unique "site id's" encoded on the here-is drum.   The UNIVAC port multiplexors would send ENQ to them to get the site id to record in the login sequence on EXEC 8,

[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[Milo Velimirović]

I used v6 on an 11/45 -- my comments refer to my recollections from the mid-late 1970s.

On Aug 6, 2014, at 10:26 AM, Jeremy C. Reed <reed at reedmedia.net> wrote:

> On Wed, 6 Aug 2014, John Cowan wrote:
> 
>>> So the model-33 wasn't ASCII?
>> 
>> The keyboard could send all of ASCII except lower-case letters, grave,
>> braces, and vertical bar (i.e. excluding x60 to x7E).  The high-order
>> bit was always set.  Using the paper tape reader and punch, you could
>> transmit arbitrary 8-bit characters.
> 
> I guess it was common to use the Teletype Model 33 independently without 
> any video display. (I read that it could accommodate a modem too.) 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?

What video? I don't recall ever seeing a TTY have video displays.
Terminals could operate in either Full Duplex or Half Duplex. The former required every character to be echoed in order to be printed. In HDX mode every character typed was both sent down the wire and printed.

Yes, some TTYs had an attached acoustic coupler and/or a paper tape reader-punch.

> 
> 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.)

It wasn't really used. Most often rubout was used on systems where a "text" would be prepared offline and punched on paper tape as it was being typed. Hitting rubout would punch holes in all positions on the tape effectively obliterating  whatever had been typed. Once the offline text was complete the tape could be transmitted to a host for further processing. This was the Automatic Send part of the ASR-33. I recall doing this in the early 70s at a community college I went to -- but this wasn't connected to a UNIX system.

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

[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[Mary Ann Horton]

Quoting "Jeremy C. Reed" <reed at reedmedia.net>:


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

I don't think sh ever did line editing, unless sh is a link to bash or ksh.
I first saw this in csh around 1978, ed-style.  David Korn added EMACS
editing to ksh in the early 80s, and Alan Hewitt wrote a mini-vi version
which Korn also included.  Once I had access to vi in the shell, I switched
from csh to ksh and never went back.

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

HERE IS was intended for two teletypes connected to each other via modem.
There was a short ID string hardcoded somehow into the teletype - I think
the limit was 8 or 16 characters, and if not null, typically was a short
ID of whose teletype it was (e.g. the organization name or site in the org.)
If you press HERE IS, it was as if you had typed those characters.
More interesting was that if one side of the link sent the ASCII ENQ
(enquiry, control E) character, the other side would respond with its
HERE IS string.

You were supposed to type a message offline onto paper tape (editing
with the "back space" button on the tape punch, which rewound the tape
reel one character so the most recent char was ready to be punched again)
and then type RUB OUT, which obliterated the typo.)  Then you would put
the tape in the reader, dial the number of another teletype, and press
Start on the tape reader.  Your tape would read and be transmitted to the
other side.  Sort of a primitive email system, it was widely used by news
media.  There was even a "Telex" network of these things - the Wikipedia
entry for Telex has some background and a few vintage photos.

I think if you put an ENQ at the beginning of your tape, the other side
would identify itself, so you were sure it went to the right place.
Of course, the tape kept reading, so you'd better have several NULL
characters after the ENQ.

I never tried this, my ASR33 days were spent dialing up computers, not
other teletypes.   I actually bought one of these things as a college  
sophomore so I could access the computer center from my dorm room!   
UNIX didn't
use HERE IS.

   Mary Ann

[TUHS] terminal - just for fun

[Mary Ann Horton]

I just discovered that Wikipedia has a nice article "teleprinter" that  
goes into detail about these devices.

About "HERE IS" they state this:
Some teleprinters had a "Here is" key, which transmitted a fixed  
sequence 20 or 22 characters, programmable by breaking tabs off a  
drum. This sequence could also be transmitted automatically upon  
receipt of an ENQ (control E) signal, if enabled.[19][20] This was  
commonly used to identify a station; the operator could press the key  
to send the station identifier to the other end, or the remote station  
could trigger its transmission by sending the ENQ character,  
essentially asking "who are you?".

Quoting Mary Ann Horton <mah at mhorton.net>:

> Quoting "Jeremy C. Reed" <reed at reedmedia.net>:
>
>
>> When did the sh shell provide intra-line editing?
>
> I don't think sh ever did line editing, unless sh is a link to bash or ksh.
> I first saw this in csh around 1978, ed-style.  David Korn added EMACS
> editing to ksh in the early 80s, and Alan Hewitt wrote a mini-vi version
> which Korn also included.  Once I had access to vi in the shell, I switched
> from csh to ksh and never went back.
>
>> How was the "HERE IS" key programmed? Was it used in Unix?
>
> HERE IS was intended for two teletypes connected to each other via modem.
> There was a short ID string hardcoded somehow into the teletype - I think
> the limit was 8 or 16 characters, and if not null, typically was a short
> ID of whose teletype it was (e.g. the organization name or site in the org.)
> If you press HERE IS, it was as if you had typed those characters.
> More interesting was that if one side of the link sent the ASCII ENQ
> (enquiry, control E) character, the other side would respond with its
> HERE IS string.
>
> You were supposed to type a message offline onto paper tape (editing
> with the "back space" button on the tape punch, which rewound the tape
> reel one character so the most recent char was ready to be punched again)
> and then type RUB OUT, which obliterated the typo.)  Then you would put
> the tape in the reader, dial the number of another teletype, and press
> Start on the tape reader.  Your tape would read and be transmitted to the
> other side.  Sort of a primitive email system, it was widely used by news
> media.  There was even a "Telex" network of these things - the Wikipedia
> entry for Telex has some background and a few vintage photos.
>
> I think if you put an ENQ at the beginning of your tape, the other side
> would identify itself, so you were sure it went to the right place.
> Of course, the tape kept reading, so you'd better have several NULL
> characters after the ENQ.
>
> I never tried this, my ASR33 days were spent dialing up computers, not
> other teletypes.   I actually bought one of these things as a  
> college sophomore so I could access the computer center from my dorm  
> room!  UNIX didn't
> use HERE IS.
>
>   Mary Ann
>
> _______________________________________________
> TUHS mailing list
> TUHS at minnie.tuhs.org
> https://minnie.tuhs.org/mailman/listinfo/tuhs
>