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I owned an AT&T 3b2/400 multi user system in 1985 running Unix System V. Came with a bound set of loose leaf manuals (might have been about 10 of them iirc). [1

by larrys 12y ago

I owned an AT&T 3b2/400 multi user system in 1985 running Unix System V. Came with a bound set of loose leaf manuals (might have been about 10 of them iirc). [1] I learned pretty much everything I needed from those manuals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLwd32muHwM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLwd32muHwM [1] Had about 12 Wyse 30 terminals hooked up to it as well as a Courier 2400 model to be able to dial into it.

frou_dh 12y ago
It's weird having never used a real terminal, because while I understand what it means that Unix is a multi-user system (and have obviously used terminal emulator programs as well as ssh-ing into servers, etc), the notion of a big physical box with arrays of dedicated ports that physical terminals plug in to is really alien.
- larrys 12y ago
  It was really cool and fun even though a simple green terminal screen. I had one in front of me and one in back of me. The one in back was typically logged in as root. (Was an office with a lock and a small enough place that I didn't have to worry about anyone knowing what that was..) Hard drive was 70mb with 4mb of memory. And a tape drive for backup. (System was perhaps 30k in 80's dollars iirc approx etc.) That said right now I'm staring at 3 Thunderbolt displays hooked up to a Mac Pro with over 25 terminal windows going. All in different colors. (Well actually not different colors for all of them). But using even the simple green screen was really cool. Definitely got a buzz using that system. I remember the first test to show that it was "multi user". I put two of the terminals next to each other, hit return at the same time, and ran two things at concurrently. (Might have been ls -Rlt / or something like that.)
  - vram22 12y ago
    >Might have been ls -Rlt / or something like that. Ha, I used to do that sometimes, to make long-running disk I/O happen so that I could check something or the other that needed the I/O happening. Redirecting a process's output to /dev/null and putting it in the background with & can also be useful for many things.

by larrys 12y ago

frou_dh 12y ago

It's weird having never used a real terminal, because while I understand what it means that Unix is a multi-user system (and have obviously used terminal emulator programs as well as ssh-ing into servers, etc), the notion of a big physical box with arrays of dedicated ports that physical terminals plug in to is really alien.

larrys 12y ago
It was really cool and fun even though a simple green terminal screen. I had one in front of me and one in back of me. The one in back was typically logged in as root. (Was an office with a lock and a small enough place that I didn't have to worry about anyone knowing what that was..) Hard drive was 70mb with 4mb of memory. And a tape drive for backup. (System was perhaps 30k in 80's dollars iirc approx etc.) That said right now I'm staring at 3 Thunderbolt displays hooked up to a Mac Pro with over 25 terminal windows going. All in different colors. (Well actually not different colors for all of them). But using even the simple green screen was really cool. Definitely got a buzz using that system. I remember the first test to show that it was "multi user". I put two of the terminals next to each other, hit return at the same time, and ran two things at concurrently. (Might have been ls -Rlt / or something like that.)
- vram22 12y ago
  >Might have been ls -Rlt / or something like that. Ha, I used to do that sometimes, to make long-running disk I/O happen so that I could check something or the other that needed the I/O happening. Redirecting a process's output to /dev/null and putting it in the background with & can also be useful for many things.