[inforoots] Re: GUIs and glass teletypes

[Carl Baltrunas]

Ah the memories... glass teletypes, and tricks...

    try submitting a batch job via cards, which assigned a particular 
tty in the user area as the default tty, and then edit a file...

I used to do this for fun from time to time, to tell the users that I 
was waiting for my card deck which was editing a file for me, then have 
my editing session appear on the terminal I was sitting at, with me 
then doing the editing without having to login to the terminal, exit 
the editor (TECO) and bang, the terminal is no longer logged in.


And one other thing... at Gallaudet College for the deaf in Washington 
DC, we had to modify every single program from the vendor, that sent 
messages to the terminal or the operators console (a DEC LA36) to 
include a <bell> (^G oct 007) with any program prompt in order to get 
the operators' attention.  Odd, all the operators were deaf.  (Yes, 
they were, or very hard of hearing).  They invented a little gizmo that 
sat inline to the console or connected to the speaker on the console (I 
forget which) that whenever a bell was sounded, it enabled a relay to 
cause a 110V circuit connected to a light bulb on the wall to cause the 
light to flash on and off until input was received from the console 
terminal.  Depending on your point of view, this was an electronic form 
of the GUI.  No flashing light, nothing to do, except make sure the 
printer wasn't running out of paper.  Flashing light, go check the 
console and reply to the prompt.

It even worked when all the lights were off in the computer room :-)

-Carl


On May 11, 2005, at 9:46 PM, John C Green Jr wrote:

> =======================================
> Posts to inforoots at computerhistory.org is information known to or the 
> opinions of the poster.  All posts to inforoots at computerhistory.org 
> are archived.  By posting to this list you grant a license for use of 
> this material to the Computer History Museum located in Mountain View, 
> California, USA. =======================================
> At 12:24 AM 5/11/05, Carl Baltrunas wrote:
>
>> No mention dumb of glass terminals, let alone the Hazeltine or 
>> SuperBee
>> terminals which had protected areas which could be used to create 
>> forms
>> and then interact with the user to fill in those (sometimes 
>> multi-page)
>> forms.  Often these forms were the GUI, and when a return or send key
>> was pressed, only the data in the unprotected fields was sent back to 
>> the
>> computer as a single burst-mode record.
>
> I joined a "Unix on a micro" company in JUN1981.  We soon had
> to patch some command (forget if it was wall, write, talk)
> as any user could send a text string to a user logged on as
> root from such a brain dead terminal to:
>
> <FORMFEED>
> cp /usr/hacker/hacked-password-file /etc/passwd
> <transmit screen><FORMFEED>
>
> The victim would see a short blur of characters and then a
> blank screen.
>
> The patch prevented any <CTRL> characters from being transmitted
> by the wall/write/talk command except <CR><LF><SPACE><FF>.
>
> Also with the multiplexors commonly available then, driving an
> RS-232 line at 9600 baud would cause the receiving computer to
> miss a character from time to time.
>
> Regards,
> JC Green
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> inforoots mailing list
> inforoots at computerhistory.org
> http://mail.computerhistory.org/mailman/listinfo/inforoots