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Pham Nuwen posted:Terminals are considered obsolete these days, outside of specific applications (usually hardware or auto parts stores with really old computer systems), and that's kind of a tragedy. They were really amazing in one important way: when you logged on at a terminal, even for the first time, all your poo poo was there. Because in the end, you were really just logging on to the same computer over a serial line. All your programs are there, your configurations are set up, your files are accessible. It will all be like that once again when GNU/HURD is ready for release 
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Sep 10, 2015 16:37
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axolotl farmer posted:It will all be like that once again when GNU/HURD is ready for release My grandchildren will finally have good computers
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Sep 10, 2015 17:19
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The other place the concept still lives is in citrix style thin clients. I suspect those are mostly obsolete (except in small niches) as well, but a lot of people could have swapped their office PC for one with minimal issues.
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Sep 10, 2015 17:34
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Pham Nuwen posted:Terminals are considered obsolete these days, outside of specific applications (usually hardware or auto parts stores with really old computer systems), and that's kind of a tragedy. They were really amazing in one important way: when you logged on at a terminal, even for the first time, all your poo poo was there. Because in the end, you were really just logging on to the same computer over a serial line. All your programs are there, your configurations are set up, your files are accessible. Aren't thin clients basically terminals with the UI elements handled by the client end?
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Sep 10, 2015 17:37
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WeX Majors posted:More specifically, the Research Teleray 10 model. Here's one in the 80's favorite color Wanna paint this like the General Lee and have it boot up with a MIDI of "Good Old Boys"
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Sep 10, 2015 18:07
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WeX Majors posted:For people who might have been upset at me trying to learn something, I hereby gift the thread with a link to a copy of the August issue of ComputerWorld Holy gently caress, that HP 3000 series ad is mental. $32000 for 1MB of RAM? Christ!
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Sep 10, 2015 18:23
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Back then most people had a 8 bit processor that could only address 64kb of ram anyway.
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Sep 10, 2015 19:16
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Isn't having everything in the cloud a return to the days of terminals?
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Sep 10, 2015 19:18
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Computer viking posted:The other place the concept still lives is in citrix style thin clients. I suspect those are mostly obsolete (except in small niches) as well, but a lot of people could have swapped their office PC for one with minimal issues. I can definitely see the attraction of not letting people have a PC to gently caress up, and making sure that all their work is always saved on a server. Setup is basically just "power it on, enter the address of the Xenapp gateway, done."
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Sep 10, 2015 19:26
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cheerfullydrab posted:Isn't having everything in the cloud a return to the days of terminals? In an extraordinarily broad sense, of a server storing most things and access occurring remotely to it, but terminals were effectively just really low powered computers that connected to the server itself to do the real work. There's no real modern equivalent, since even remote desktopping to your work PC or using steam to stream games to a crappy laptop hooked up to your TV involves a "client" that is a standalone computer. Clients in the termserver sense cannot really do anything on their own. I deal with termservers daily for work, but it's to accomodate serial connections for laboratory instrumentation. That having been said, my experience with actual terminal clients is limited, so if there's anything I've kinda muddled, feel free to correct me (this is addressed to everyone, not really just you). If you have any questions about dumb crap like baud rate/data bits/stop bits/parity or how to clear the port on a Xyplex though, I'm your man. 
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Sep 10, 2015 19:44
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Shlomo Palestein posted:In an extraordinarily broad sense, of a server storing most things and access occurring remotely to it, but terminals were effectively just really low powered computers that connected to the server itself to do the real work. There's no real modern equivalent, since even remote desktopping to your work PC or using steam to stream games to a crappy laptop hooked up to your TV involves a "client" that is a standalone computer. Clients in the termserver sense cannot really do anything on their own. Without some modification, thin-clients are useless without a server to connect to. I've seen some stuff about people being able to hack together a serviceable linux install, but they're not (at least used to not be) standalone computers at all.
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Sep 10, 2015 19:56
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Back of the Bus posted:Holy gently caress, that HP 3000 series ad is mental. $32000 for 1MB of RAM? Christ! I know! Who the hell even needs a whole MB? Just excessive, really.
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Sep 10, 2015 19:58
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Dewgy posted:I know! Who the hell even needs a whole MB? Just excessive, really. I mean what kind of lovely programmer needs more than 64k? What would they even do with that much space? Wastefulness, I say. *boots C64, best computer, waits 45 minutes to play Wheel of Fortune*
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Sep 10, 2015 20:59
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The funniest thing about terminals is that these days, when they're used, they're terminal emulators on modern hardware.
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Sep 11, 2015 00:21
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Also there's nothing intrinsically valuable about a terminal client not having any autonomous capabilities unless your terminal service actually requires it (for security or consistency reasons or something). Ask Google why Chromebooks even function offline.
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Sep 11, 2015 00:59
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Code Jockey posted:I mean what kind of lovely programmer needs more than 64k? What would they even do with that much space? Wastefulness, I say. God, just imagine how many superfluous GOTO statements they must be making.
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Sep 11, 2015 13:47
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Ozz81 posted:Wanna paint this like the General Lee and have it boot up with a MIDI of "Good Old Boys" Boot up a terminal?
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Sep 11, 2015 14:14
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Keiya posted:The funniest thing about terminals is that these days, when they're used, they're terminal emulators on modern hardware. Well drat, after all these years using terminal emulators and knowing what terminals were.....i think my brain was broken for not really getting it.
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Sep 11, 2015 14:31
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Jerry Cotton posted:Boot up a terminal? Yessir, it might take a bit seeing as it's old tech, so I might have to flip my CD on to the B-side while waiting.
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Sep 11, 2015 14:35
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My boyfriend acquired a bunch of terminals from his work that they were throwing out, and gave them to me. I have one of them hooked up on a workbench with a Linux machine on one port and with the other free for connecting to embedded projects. The Linux machine is set up that way just because it's fun, but for embedded projects I'd rather use a real terminal than an emulated one because it's easier than dragging over a laptop and opening up PuTTY. Weird fact: Linux's ls doesn't work properly on a real terminal if colours are enabled; they'll bleed because they're terminated in a way that works with a terminal emulator but not a real one apparently. I took apart one of the terminals and it has an Intel 80186 CPU in it, something that probably belongs in this thread in its own right. It's an x86 CPU that has a bunch of support stuff integrated (timers, interrupt controller, DMA controller, address decoding.) It wasn't compatible with the standard versions of these and other chips which limited its adoption in personal computers, but it caught on somewhat for embedded systems where the high level of integration is valued over flexibility.
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Sep 11, 2015 15:38
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Pham Nuwen posted:Terminals are considered obsolete these days, outside of specific applications (usually hardware or auto parts stores with really old computer systems), and that's kind of a tragedy. They were really amazing in one important way: when you logged on at a terminal, even for the first time, all your poo poo was there. Because in the end, you were really just logging on to the same computer over a serial line. All your programs are there, your configurations are set up, your files are accessible.
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Sep 11, 2015 22:18
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Roaming profiles, folder redirection, etc. It may not be perfect but I think it more or less works. Also: quote:First, I don't think even Microsoft has really bothered making it work well (even with their own apps [that means "applications" btw you noobs]), and second, there's no control over how applications store their data, so you can't be sure that porting the users directory will retain relevant program data. It's a shame, because it also makes doing a data backup and reinstall of Windows a nightmare. mystes has a new favorite as of 04:28 on Sep 12, 2015 |
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Sep 12, 2015 04:19
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Pilsner posted:If I'm not mistaken, it is possible to put the user's data directory on a shared drive of such, but I have a hard time believing it will give anything but trouble. First, I don't think even Microsoft has really bothered making it work well (even with their own apps [that means "applications" btw you noobs]), and second, there's no control over how applications store their data, so you can't be sure that porting the users directory will retain relevant program data. It's a shame, because it also makes doing a data backup and reinstall of Windows a nightmare. It does suck. My Dad borrowed a laptop from work for a conference he had to go to. The loving thing was GPO locked via AD to map the user's document drive to a network share. Really? On a goddamned loaner lappy? (Fixed it, but I am sure the admins were pissed.)
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Sep 12, 2015 04:36
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Samizdata posted:It does suck. My Dad borrowed a laptop from work for a conference he had to go to. The loving thing was GPO locked via AD to map the user's document drive to a network share.
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Sep 12, 2015 04:58
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mystes posted:I don't think properly synchronizing laptops with some sort of shared profile is really a solvable problem with any current operating system, though. It would require either locking users out of desktops until they checked in the changes from the laptop, only allowing the laptop to be used when internet access was available to sync changes (might as well use a remote desktop then), or having a way to merge multiple sets of changes to the registry (on windows) or configuration files (on Linux) which would be hard. Of course, these were the same chappies whose proudly labelled "VPN access" was actually an amazingly bad open source file navigator with only download access. And, really, my whole point was if you have a loaner lappy for a bunch of non-tech academics, do NOT tie it to an Active Directory LAN only setup. It's a bloody LOANER.
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Sep 12, 2015 05:11
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Good ol' dumb terminals. This was pretty much ubiquitous in any library I visited (school, public, university) well into the 2000's. We'd make them do weird poo poo but I forget what or how, sorry. But I did guess my high school library's admin password - DEWEY. Perhaps the most widely-used software written using BASIC. 
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Sep 12, 2015 06:52
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I miss Dynix. It was so much easier to use than the terrible web-based mess my library moved to afterwards.
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Sep 12, 2015 07:52
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The Sausages posted:Good ol' dumb terminals. This was pretty much ubiquitous in any library I visited (school, public, university) well into the 2000's. We'd make them do weird poo poo but I forget what or how, sorry. But I did guess my high school library's admin password - DEWEY. This gave me a flashback to when I used to work at Software Etc. We had a few computers on display to demo software and I was trying to come up with a way to make it easier to store a few programs at once on the XT while also locking it down a bit because we needed a couple of company apps on there as well. I used... Direct Access! It was essentially just a fancy batch file but it made things so much easier for me because people always wanted to gently caress with the computers. 
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Sep 12, 2015 12:30
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The Sausages posted:Good ol' dumb terminals. This was pretty much ubiquitous in any library I visited (school, public, university) well into the 2000's. We'd make them do weird poo poo but I forget what or how, sorry. But I did guess my high school library's admin password - DEWEY. Never not SUPER search! I cannot wait for the day when my child asks what a Microfiche is, poo poo, even the Dewey Decimal system.
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Sep 12, 2015 14:15
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The Sausages posted:Good ol' dumb terminals. This was pretty much ubiquitous in any library I visited (school, public, university) well into the 2000's. We'd make them do weird poo poo but I forget what or how, sorry. But I did guess my high school library's admin password - DEWEY. Aww, this takes me back. My grandma was the director of the local library when they rolled these out. She was so proud of them and they worked great through and were used until 2006 or so.
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Sep 12, 2015 15:31
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BattleMaster posted:Weird fact: Linux's ls doesn't work properly on a real terminal if colours are enabled; they'll bleed because they're terminated in a way that works with a terminal emulator but not a real one apparently. That probably means you set the $TERM variable incorrectly, or there's a bug in the corresponding termcap/terminfo database entry. (I don't remember which one Linux uses.)
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Sep 12, 2015 16:26
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Keiya posted:I miss Dynix. It was so much easier to use than the terrible web-based mess my library moved to afterwards. God, so much this. Lightning fast too instead of "whelp too many hobos browsing Redtube, guess it's gonna take five minutes to return a single author search".
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Sep 13, 2015 00:07
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ryonguy posted:God, so much this. Lightning fast too instead of "whelp too many hobos browsing Redtube, guess it's gonna take five minutes to return a single author search". My university had a menu-based registration system you could access by telnetting to the school's VMS systems (two VAXes and two Alphas), which would then connect you to a mainframe somewhere off-site. It was way, way faster than the web interface... the web interface was basically a trap for freshmen who didn't know better.
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Sep 13, 2015 00:15
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The Norwegian library search system still has terminal access, apparently - their setup guide mostly focuses on putty and alternatives, but they still let you pick from a wide selection of VT terminals in the login screen. There is also a web interface now, but I doubt it's nearly as popular.
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Sep 13, 2015 01:01
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cheerfullydrab posted:Isn't having everything in the cloud a return to the days of terminals? This cycle of pushing things out to servers and pulling things back to clients and pushing things out to servers and so forth has been going on for so long that people have been calling it the Wheel Of Reincarnation since 1968.
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Sep 13, 2015 05:38
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The Sausages posted:Good ol' dumb terminals. This was pretty much ubiquitous in any library I visited (school, public, university) well into the 2000's. We'd make them do weird poo poo but I forget what or how, sorry. But I did guess my high school library's admin password - DEWEY. This reminds me of the green CRT monitors and the very very similar system my local public library ran back in the 90s. Oh man that's some good nostalgia, I used to poke around those library machines all the time. I miss them.
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Sep 13, 2015 07:36
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Bloomberg did a short video on the last remaining cassette tape manufacturer: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-01/this-company-is-still-making-audio-cassettes-and-sales-are-better-than-ever
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Sep 13, 2015 08:45
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Code Jockey posted:This reminds me of the green CRT monitors and the very very similar system my local public library ran back in the 90s. Oh man that's some good nostalgia, I used to poke around those library machines all the time. I miss them. Amber monitors were great. I don’t regret having 16.7 million colours, but I could stand having amber text in more places.
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Sep 13, 2015 08:48
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Just noticed the date. 
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Sep 13, 2015 09:06
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Nice project on dumb terminals: http://hackaday.com/2015/09/11/marty-youve-gotta-come-back-with-me/ EDIT: A few pages back someone mentioned core memory. Here's one from the IBM 1401:  http://www.righto.com/2015/08/examining-core-memory-module-inside.html Humphreys has a new favorite as of 11:34 on Sep 13, 2015 |
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Sep 13, 2015 11:04
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