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Did you have multiple MS-DOS machines? My first programming class was in 1991 on a DEC VAX running VMS. We had a room with 30 VT100 style terminals so everyon

Did you have multiple MS-DOS machines? My first programming class was in 1991 on a DEC VAX running VMS. We had a room with 30 VT100 style terminals so everyone at least had their own display and keyboard.

pjmlp 6y ago
Yes, it was the modern lab on a technical school for informatics, a mix of 286 and 386 models from Siemens-Nixdorf. The Xenix PC tower was brought from the teacher's research lab, he was usually on a motorbike, but on labs day we would bring his car with the tower in it. By the way, we had two labs, the older one was full of 8086 and 8088 models, without hard disk, using 8" floppies. My typing skills exam was done editing a document with edlin.
- lizknope 6y ago
  Did the PCs have ethernet? Our campus network had a lot of DOS PCs but they ran a bunch of DEC Pathworks stuff to turn them into terminals to the VAX. We also had some PCs with a DOS telnet client to telnet directly to the Unix machines. Just wondering why they didn't turn the DOS machines into terminals or ethernet / network to connect to the Xenix PC tower.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    No way, first we are talking about a high school, not something with university resources. Then those were the days of Novell NetWare, and yes one of the labs did had a couple of them, not all, connect via Novell. As for the Xenix tower, as mentioned, it did not belong to the high school, rather the teacher would bring it along with him from his main job, kind of renting it for the lab classes. So nothing that could ever work in a permanent setting.
mrlonglong 6y ago
Ooh. This sounds a lot like University of Portsmouth (in the UK), as they had 3 DEC VAX minicomputers running VMS supporting quite a lot of terminals across campus during the early 90s. The terminals were VT220 though. VMS Phone was useful for annoying other students.
- lizknope 6y ago
  We had a mix of terminal types from VT100 to VT420 I believe. Yeah, the phone / talk stuff was great. This was in 1991 at my school.

pjmlp 6y ago

Yes, it was the modern lab on a technical school for informatics, a mix of 286 and 386 models from Siemens-Nixdorf. The Xenix PC tower was brought from the teacher's research lab, he was usually on a motorbike, but on labs day we would bring his car with the tower in it. By the way, we had two labs, the older one was full of 8086 and 8088 models, without hard disk, using 8" floppies. My typing skills exam was done editing a document with edlin.

lizknope 6y ago
Did the PCs have ethernet? Our campus network had a lot of DOS PCs but they ran a bunch of DEC Pathworks stuff to turn them into terminals to the VAX. We also had some PCs with a DOS telnet client to telnet directly to the Unix machines. Just wondering why they didn't turn the DOS machines into terminals or ethernet / network to connect to the Xenix PC tower.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  No way, first we are talking about a high school, not something with university resources. Then those were the days of Novell NetWare, and yes one of the labs did had a couple of them, not all, connect via Novell. As for the Xenix tower, as mentioned, it did not belong to the high school, rather the teacher would bring it along with him from his main job, kind of renting it for the lab classes. So nothing that could ever work in a permanent setting.

mrlonglong 6y ago

Ooh. This sounds a lot like University of Portsmouth (in the UK), as they had 3 DEC VAX minicomputers running VMS supporting quite a lot of terminals across campus during the early 90s. The terminals were VT220 though. VMS Phone was useful for annoying other students.

lizknope 6y ago
We had a mix of terminal types from VT100 to VT420 I believe. Yeah, the phone / talk stuff was great. This was in 1991 at my school.