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mavericko · Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 4:58 am Post subject: Understanding Unix Terminals

I have heard that in the good old days of Unix,
there used to be a Unix Server and some 100 Terminals connected to it.

My doubt is how are the dumb terminals connected to the Unix server. ??!!
(Teminal = Dumb Monitor+Dumb keyboard+RS232 interface)

Did the server have, say 50 Serial ports ??
Each one being /dev/tty0 ... .. /dev/tty49 .. something like that ???? Exclamation

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CPUagnostic · Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 5:33 am Post subject: Re: Understanding Unix Terminals

mavericko · Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 5:43 am Post subject:

Did they use something like this ???
http://www.orbitmicro.com/products/moxa/C320Turbo.htm

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TheDuke · Senior Member Joined: 09 Aug 2004 Posts: 740 Location: USA

Ever hear of "datakit"?
Unix machines used various methods to connect to thier terminals. My personal experience with Unix-terminal connectivity was with an old AT&T 3B2 computer. The machine had a bunch of boards installed in it that each had four ports for a terminal. In addition it had two built-in ports, one for the console, and one for an auxilary console. The terminal connectors were either 8 or 10 pin; They looked like ethernet jacks & connectors, but they were not. I think it was datakit, but I could be mistaken. Terminals in other rooms might of been connected via some sort of hub, but I never saw the hubs or the actual infrastructure.
The terminals that we used were AT&T 630 dumb terminals, and we had a few VT100 compatibles as well.

PCs running under Linux or FreeBSD (or another unix variant) can use dumb terminals as well. When I ran Linux on my desktop, I had a TRS-80 Model 100 connected as a dumb terminal via the RS-232 serial port (with the help of a null-modem adapter.)

EDIT: Out of curiosity, I examined the HP-UX server at work. The console (an HP dumb terminal) is connected to an 8-port hub via 25-pin RS-232. There is then a 9-pin serial connection between the hub and the server.
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geekboy · Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 9:26 am Post subject:

I once had a chance to buy an old mainframe with a half dozen terminals for $20. I have regretted it ever since. Laughing

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mavericko · Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 9:47 am Post subject:

TheDuke · Senior Member Joined: 09 Aug 2004 Posts: 740 Location: USA

Celt · Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 2:23 am Post subject:

There were also things called "DTCs" (Data Terminal Controllers) These were basically terminal servers which communicated to the Unix host via the LAN port, and had literally hundreds of serial connections out the front.
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