4 ms·
> B) CPUs were slow. It's hard to fathom now but not only were the CPUs slow they were shared (in many cases) by multiple terminals. Simply processing extra let
by formerly_proven 2y ago
> B) CPUs were slow. It's hard to fathom now but not only were the CPUs slow they were shared (in many cases) by multiple terminals. Simply processing extra letters, matching strings to known commands, goes up the longer the command.
DEC systems often had (at least) two options for serial communications, a cheaper PIO-based one and cards that could do DMA (yes, DMA for 300-9600 baud serial lines). The former would cause more CPU load. Yes, minicomputers where so slow that handling a 9600 baud serial line (~900 characters per second at most) wasn't negligible.