3 ms·
Mainframes don't buffer keystrokes at all: rather, they send a screen to the terminal with marked "fields", and then the terminal handles all keystrokes until y
by thequux 3y ago
Mainframes don't buffer keystrokes at all: rather, they send a screen to the terminal with marked "fields", and then the terminal handles all keystrokes until you press return or one of the attention keys to submit the changes back to the mainframe. Thus, even on a heavily loaded system, typing is instant because the main CPU doesn't get involved at all
- mike_hearn 3y agoRight, but what I mean is, if you press some keys to move from one screen to another, you can start typing before the navigation is complete and those keystrokes will be buffered by the terminal. They won't just be discarded, meaning you can learn to type ahead of where the server is up to.