From: Brad Spencer <brad@anduin.eldar.org>
To: Paul Ruizendaal <pnr@planet.nl>
Cc: tuhs@tuhs.org
Subject: [TUHS] Re: virtual consoles / Alt-Fx
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2023 11:49:09 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <xono7owr6ru.fsf@anduin.eldar.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <78FE1F5F-7408-4BB0-8D2E-62AA00465774@planet.nl> (message from Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS on Mon, 13 Mar 2023 16:12:37 +0100)
Paul Ruizendaal via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> writes:
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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?
Not Unix, but OS-9 Level II on the CC3 had them. Not exactly a console,
as a fixed console device really did not exist in the same way as Unix
on OS-9, but multiple shells each running in their own screen with
different sizes if I recall correctly. This would have all been in the
early to mid 1980s in a 8/16 bit environment.
--
Brad Spencer - brad@anduin.eldar.org - KC8VKS - http://anduin.eldar.org
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2023-03-13 15:49 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
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 [this message]
2023-03-17 8:14 ` Marc Donner
2023-03-14 3:33 Rudi Blom
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